Time to change your website host?

When is it time to change your website host?

Websites hold so many different powers for businesses, such as, the power to increase brand awareness, become discoverable and grab the attention of the media. However, there is one important aspect of the website that often gets overlooked and that is the actual hosting of the website.

Website hosting is a key component for businesses and can have an effect on your overall profits. If your website goes down this could lead to a loss of revenue. For example, a few years ago e-commerce giant, Amazon had an outage for 40 minutes that lost the company over $4 million.

Apart from downtime, a slow website host can also affect the way you rank on search engines. And a website host that doesn’t back up your data can increase your security and malware risk.

Look out for the signs below to help you determine whether or not its time to change your website host.

Uptime or downtime?

If your website is experiencing more downtime then uptime, it is time to move on. Your website should be up at least 99% of the time, taking into consideration malware, high traffic, power outages and technical glitches.

Security

Security risks have increased and website hosts have started to take more precaution. If your website host does not offer you basic security like anti-virus protection or firewalls you could be putting your business in the direct line of cyber-attacks.

Bandwidth

A typical internet user will wait just 3 seconds for your website to load. If your users are experiencing longer loading times you might need to increase your bandwidth to accommodate your online customers. If your website host does not have larger package options, it would be advisable to find one that does.

Customer support

Unfortunately, not every website host offers customer IT support. If this is the case with your hosting package, you should strongly consider finding a host who does allow you to report any website or account issues that you may have.