Finding a host for your project can seem like a daunting task, especially if it’s the first time you’re setting up something more complex, but don’t worry – in the end, it all boils down to proper research and knowing what features you need in your package. After that, with just a few quick searches, you should be able to find the right company for your needs and get a deal that matches your business situation.

Storage Space

Probably the most obvious one, you’ll want to find a host that can fit the sites you’re planning to run. This may often not be a big deal, as most companies on the market already offer various packages that can put you in a position where you don’t even care about how much you’re uploading, but if you’re planning to run a more specialized service with more advanced storage requirements, you’ll definitely want to think carefully here.

Examples of sites that fall in this category include image hosts, video sites, and various other content-heavy services. If you think that you’ll need a really big amount of space at your disposal, talk to the hosting providers you’re considering and see if they can’t give you a special deal that will fit your needs.

Security

You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where your sites get compromised due to a fault of your host, and that’s thankfully not very difficult to prevent with a little research. There are some common attack vectors used by malicious actors, and as long as your hosting provider is covered on these fronts, all you have to worry about is setting things up in a secure way on your end. If you’re running some more complex applications on that host, you may want to spend some extra time reading up on proper security practices for them, and it may even make sense to hire someone who specializes in this type of security to do it for you.

Keep in mind that even the best host in the world won’t save you from problems that you create yourself, so keep an eye out for updates and new releases of the products you’re using. One of the most common ways sites get compromised is when their administrators get lazy in maintaining them up to date – all it takes is one faulty app that can be used to gain access to your system, and it’s all downhill from there.

Preinstalled Features

If you need specific features to be readily available on your server, you should make that clear in your search. Not every hosting provider offers cPanel, for example, and if you insist on using it as your control panel solution, you’ll want to narrow down your search. Likewise, if you’re going to be deploying WordPress sites in rapid iterations, it could be worth the cash to go for a host that allows you to instance them easily. In some cases, the process can be simplified to just a few clicks, allowing you to focus on the more important aspects of setting those sites up, like their actual content.

Some hosts understand the importance of speed, and provide you with a suite of features oriented towards your website performance. It is important that the host you choose recommends WordPress themes that are fast, as it can save you a lot of time in choosing a suitable theme.

In other cases, you may actually be looking for the opposite – a host that allows you to set up a new site in a clean, minimalistic way. These also exist on the market, and may actually be cheaper depending on the specific set of features that you’re looking for. But considering how little you’ll usually have to pay on top of your regular subscription to get access to advanced features like preinstalled apps, it often doesn’t make sense to stick to the cheaper options. Just be careful not to exceed your budget and you should find that most modern hosts give you a good degree of flexibility.

Support

Hopefully you’ll never actually need to use the support of whatever company you’ve chosen, but if something goes wrong, you’ll definitely appreciate having a reliable service on that front. Poor support can cost you a lot of money if your sites go down at a bad moment, and you should be careful to work with a company with a proven track record in this area. Even if it only happens once, you’ll appreciate getting a fast answer to your questions, and having someone professional take over the situation in case things don’t work out.

Beyond that, you should of course be on the lookout for any special features that you might need in your sites, and narrow down your search according to them. But as long as you keep an eye out for the ones we listed above, you should end up pretty satisfied with whatever company you end up choosing, even if it costs you a bit more than you planned initially. You definitely won’t regret the investment later on if something goes sideways.