At Tomedia, we offer a variety of hosting plans to suit the needs of all small to medium sized businesses. But with so many different hosting plans on offer, it can be hard to know which one to go for! In this blog post, we’ll be talking about some of the things you should be looking for when choosing a hosting plan for your site.

Generally speaking, there are three main things that you will need to consider when choosing a website hosting plan:

1.  Understand the different options available, and the pros and cons of each

When choosing a hosting plan for your website, the key is to understand the different hosting options available, and the pros and cons of each. This will help you to identify the option that best aligns with the needs of you and your business.

There are six main types of hosting services available:

• Shared hosting: With shared website hosting, your website is hosted on the same server as multiple other websites. This means that your website also shares server space (also known as storage space or disk space), bandwidth, and other resources with the other website on its server. Although this has some drawbacks, such as slower loading times and reduced reliability, this hosting option is a good option for small businesses that are just starting out. This is because shared web hosting plans are very cost-effective compared to the other options on this list.
• Virtual private server hosting (VPS hosting): Virtual private server (or VPS) hosting is somewhat of a happy medium between shared servers and dedicated servers. Essentially, this is where a single server is divided into multiple virtual servers. Each of these servers is then allocated to an individual user, so that each user has access to a dedicated server to host their website on. With VPS hosting, although your website will still technically be sharing a server with other websites, it will be hosted within its own secure space. This provides you with a greater degree of security and control, whilst still being considerably cheaper than a dedicated server. The main drawback of this type of hosting is that it can come with the same performance issues as shared hosting (i.e. slower page loading speeds and reduced reliability, both of which can negatively impact your search engine ranking).
• Dedicated hosting: This type of hosting is where you rent a server exclusively, meaning your website is the only one hosted on it. The biggest benefit of this type of hosting is that it offers you the greatest degree of control over the server. On the flip side though, it comes at a high cost, and requires a higher level of technical expertise compared to the other hosting options. This type of hosting is most often used by established larger businesses that experience high levels of web traffic.
• Cloud hosting: Whereas traditional hosting revolves around a single physical server, cloud hosting is spread across several connected servers “in the cloud”. These servers may be physical or virtual. There are two main benefits of this model of hosting. The first is that it is often more reliable, as the server’s resources are spread across several servers, meaning the risk of downtime and malfunctions is lower. The second is that it is more flexible and scalable than many others, meaning that you can easily increase your server space and resources as your business grows over time.  Because you are essentially only paying for what you need, this type of hosting is popular with many business owners.
• Colocation hosting: With colocation hosting, you rent space in a colocation centre. This colocation centre will provide you with power, bandwidth, IP addresses, rack and cabinet space, and other systems for running your server. This provides you with much more bandwidth, as opposed to if you were to operate your servers in-house. Like dedicated hosting, this option is more costly than other types of hosting. However, it also provides you with the highest degree of autonomy and control over the hardware, software, and services stored on your server.
• Managed hosting: With managed hosting, you lease your server space from a hosting services provider (e.g. managed WordPress hosting). The hosting company will then take care of setting up, configuring, managing, maintaining, and providing technical support for your hardware and software. This type of hosting is appealing for website owners with little to no technical experience, who would rather leave the more technical side of things to their provider. You will also usually have access to more customer support with this type of hosting service.

Shared server hosting is the main type of web hosting we offer at Tomedia, as our focus is on offering affordable solutions to suit the needs of small businesses. However, all types of web hosting come with their own pros and cons. The hosting option that is best for you will be determined by the individual needs of you and your business, which we will be looking at in more detail in the next point.

2.  Understand exactly what your business needs.

To choose a web host that works for you and your business, it is important that you also understand exactly what your business needs in its hosting plan.

For example:

• How much disk space do you need?
• How much bandwidth do you need?
• What kind of CPU do you need?
• How much memory do you need?
• How much disk IO do you need?
• How many email addresses do you need?
• What do you need in the way of webmail storage?
• How many website domains do you need?

Your answers to these questions will influence the type of web hosting service that you opt for.

For example, at Tomedia, our smallest hosting plan is the Micro plan, which offer 2GB of disk space and bandwidth, 25% CPU, 256MB memory, 2MB disk IO, and 1GB webmail storage. This type of package is ideal for small businesses who are just starting out who only require a small amount of storage space.

However, if you are a bigger business or require a larger amount of storage, one of our bigger hosting plans might be a better fit for you. These offer between 20 – 100GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, 100% CPU, 1 – 8GB memory, 4 – 10MB disk IO, and 10 – 50 GB webmail storage (depending on the size of the package purchased).

By the same token, all of our web hosting plans also offer an unlimited number of email accounts, and between one to unlimited domains, depending on the package purchased. The package that you choose will be influenced by the number of email accounts and domains that you require.

3.  Budget

The type of hosting that you choose will also be influenced by your budget. For example, dedicated server hosting and colocation hosting are the most costly hosting options, and are most suitable for larger businesses who are prepared to make a bigger investment in their hosting.

On the opposite end of the scale, you have more affordable options like VPS hosting, colocation hosting, managed hosting, and shared server hosting (which is the one we specialise in at Tomedia). 

Tomedia’s hosting package costs range from $5.00 to $150.00 monthly, depending on the amount of storage and hosting services that you require.At Tomedia, we offer a range of Australia-based shared hosting packages to suit the needs of all small to medium sized businesses. Find out more about the hosting services offered at Tomedia here.