Web Hosting like a pro

In case you have been wondering about free or paid options for hosting services and whether you should opt out for on or offshore hosting, here are some closer definitions on the matter.

Onshore hosting is a way to host your website, or app to the location within your country or the place you operate. This is also called standard web hosting and it means that the company and company servers are located in the same country. You can pay for these services, and get full control of your assets, or you can choose a free web hosting service.

There is a range of possibilities for free hosting services. And you are expected to embrace these options in case you are launching a startup and still testing your business, or operating on a limited budget and have to “move” quickly.

Hosting and offshore hosting

So, you must be at ease with the following rules, if you decide to get free onshore hosting:

You and your business are located in the same country. No torrents, no grey area content, everything must be accessible to the legal organizations. You may be accepting adverts on your website or try to upgrade soon if the storage of bandwidth quality doesn’t comply with your expectations.

Now we are coming to the second option, and that is offshore hosting, both free and paid. Most businesses in search of offshore hosting solutions are based in the USA and Western Europe. You may ask why – and the answer is usually the type of business and website content –  whether it is copyrighted, banned, adult or something else. The legal issues are more relaxed as many offshore web hosting companies do not comply with DMCA requests or complaints. They are just following the local regulations, avoiding local law violations.

But there are some concerns about safe free offshore hosting options. The first one is – safety. That including the safety of your data, level of encryption, protection against attacks and hackers. Then, not enough control over your assets. You are stuck with whatever you are given, including a possibility for a sudden crash. And if you are on a free version, your website is by all means stuck on a single server among thousands of different websites. A pure horror picture, some might say.

We wouldn’t mention the rest of the reasons to avoid free offshore hosting services, like the lack of control, lack of support or a negative impact it might have on major search engines. This is one of the easier decisions you might ever have – quality, reliable and secure offshore hosting is easy to find. You just have to pay for it.

Wait, what about SEO?

Web hosting service does have an impact on where your website ranks in search engines. It does not guarantee a rankings boost per se, but can save you from consequences – and they can be significant ones, if choosing the wrong host. It is important not to base your decision on price alone. Uptime/downtime and speed, one of major hosting factors, affect SEO big time. It can fluctuate significantly from month to month, and so you need a close look and a proper backup if anything goes wrong. Control and stability of service is a much more important factor than price. Because you want the most speed for your website and a quality UX for your visitors. So, choosing to host your website onshore could get you the most speed, as your website is close to your potential visitors. So, by hosting your site in the country where your visitors are mostly coming from, you can do a big favor to your business and search rankings.