These days, web hosting in UAE can appear to be a commodity. You simply select the disk space and bandwidth you require, and you're ready to go. Previously, you were bound by a variety of restrictions; now, you are spoiled for choice, and hosting prices have become nearly insignificant for most firms.

But it's a tremendous error to think of web hosting as a commodity like power or gas. The basic fact is that there are a lot of moving pieces in web hosting, and they all have to work together to provide a high-quality, uninterrupted service. Choosing a low-cost host may appear to be a wise decision, but it could be a false economy owing to the harm it can cause your company.

Now, let's have a look at five criteria to consider in order to determine whether your web hosting is actually helping or hindering your business.

1. How long it takes for your website to load?

The speed at which your website loads is referred to as load speed. You can check your PageSpeed on a number of different websites. For a multitude of reasons, load speed is critical. The reason is that faster loading websites provide a better user experience than slower ones. Simply put, people loathe having waited for a page to load.

However, it isn't simply desktop users that are impacted. In the United States, mobile browsing has exceeded desktop and laptop browsing, with 51 percent of users preferring mobile to 42 percent in 2015. If there's one thing mobile user’s desire websites, it's for them to work quickly.

Google realizes this, hence it states explicitly that site quickness is one of the criteria it deems when pursuing its overall search algorithm. It won't say how much of a ranking factor load speed is, but it doesn't often reveal its formula, so it's worth noting when it does.

Without going into too much detail about what determines load speed, there are a slew of variables at play, many of which are design-related. These are the changes to your website's code that a skilled, and generally expensive, web developer must make.

What's the bottom line? Increasing the speed of your website can be costly and time-consuming. However, the sort of web hosting you select is one area where you might see quick results. You may substantially enhance your load speed by upgrading to SSD hosting or migrating to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting offered by VPS Hosting Companies Dubai
for a fraction of the cost of rewriting your site's code.

2. Do your neighbours make a lot of noise?

Noisy neighbours are a pain to live with. They're antisocial, boisterous, and tend to degrade the neighborhood's atmosphere.

The same may be said for web hosting. The truth is, if your host is willing to provide you with as much disk space and bandwidth as you require for only a few dollars per month, guess what? On that server, you're not alone.

 This is a serious issue. Your host isn't going to make a big issue about it, but there will always be people on those types of deals who want to expand the scope as far as they can. They'll be the ones squeezing every ounce of processing power out of their $2 per month hosting. Perhaps they're utilising the server to send out mass emails to their mailing list, or perhaps they're running dozens of RAM-intensive scripts for their various affiliate sites.

One thing is certain, whatever they're up to. A small number of loud neighbours will occupy the server's essential resources, causing the server's performance to suffer.

Obviously, there are software like Cloud Linux offered by cloud hosting companies that operate as a restriction on how much power particular clients have, but you need to realize if your host has these sorts of mitigators in existence.

3. Is the IP address well-known?

If the server on which you are hosted is found to be delivering spam or hosting malware, its IP address is likely to be blacklisted. That's terrible news for you because it can have an impact on everything from email delivery to search ranking.

You can use a variety of apps to keep track of your server's IP reputation and see if it gets banned.

Other customers on the same server as you may be running vulnerable apps or out-of-date software, which is one of the most common causes for being banned. This isn't always done with malice in mind on their part. Usually, it's only a misunderstanding or an oversight.

Go have a look at an example. Hackers are unlikely to reveal their methods, although they are usually on the lookout for vulnerabilities to attack. An out-of-date contact form is a classic example of a vulnerability that can be used to transmit spam.

An out-of-date content management system (CMS), such as WordPress or Joomla, is another example. These are becoming more prevalent these days, but the problem is that once the design step is completed, the naïve business owner is unaware of the importance of keeping their software up to date. These updates are necessary for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is to address any security vulnerabilities.

One option for the host to address these issues proactively is to regularly monitor the software on a server as well as outgoing emails, using a tool like Spam Experts to look for known spam, phishing, and malware-related email fingerprints.

Again, these technologies are not free, and some hosts may object to the additional expense of safeguarding their IP reputation. Responsible hosts, on the other hand, will use them to anticipate difficulties and prevent their clients from being blacklisted.

4. Do you struggle to work faster during peak times?

If you have a busy ecommerce website located on a shared server, you may have noticed sluggish performance during peak times or during busy seasonal periods.

If this is the case, your RAM-hungry shopping cart programme is most likely running out of steam. The thing is, shared hosting is designed to fulfil the majority's needs. This means that important server resources like CPU and RAM are distributed evenly among all the websites on the server. As a result, all you have to do now is wait in line to acquire the power you require.

What's the end result? Slow performance that irritates your visitors and costs you money in lost purchases.

You can say goodbye to these types of performance difficulties for a few dollars more every month. A virtual private server (VPS) allows you to scale up or down as needed. You have complete control over the amount of CPU or RAM allotted to you, and that power is guaranteed.

Ponder that for a moment. Instead of competing for processing power and memory with hundreds, but perhaps not thousands, of other businesses, you have it all to yourself, with the flexibility to expand up as needed.

If you don't have a systems administrator on your team, there are some additional monthly charges, such as a control panel licence and possibly a managed server service, but this is a sensible investment for your company.

5. Is it allowed to use non-standard software?

On a shared hosting plan, you may occasionally need to run software or versions of software that aren't approved. Let's say the shopping cart software you need requires the most recent version of PHP, but your host does not currently provide it.

Alternatively, your host may provide standard software that is slower than the alternatives. For example, instead of LiteSpeed, they may use Apache or MySQL instead of Percona on the web server. That isn't to suggest that the slower solutions don't have their benefits (for example, Apache is very secure), but if you want to run more advanced technologies, a shared hosting environment might not be the ideal choice.

Web hosting is not a commodity in the same way that power or petrol are. There are several reasons why you should choose your web hosting service carefully.

Whether it's LoadSpeed, noisy neighbours, a bad IP reputation, peak hours, or non-standard requirements, you must weigh the costs and benefits for your business and arrange your hosting accordingly.