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How to Choose a Web Hosting Company, with Dave Taylor
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May 29, 2025
Did you know that there are over 1.8 billion Web sites on the Internet now, and that there are over 300,000 web hosting companies? Given that, how on Earth do you figure out which Web hosting company should be hosting YOUR web site? Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ talks about the many, many facets of good Web hosting, focusing on the three S's: Speed, security and support. This video is sponsored by Hostinger.com and if you're interested in that sweet 15% discount mentioned in the video, please click on this link: https://www.hostinger.com/DaveTaylor and be sure to also specify "DaveTaylor" as the discount code.
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0:00
there are a million web hosting
0:01
companies let's talk about how to choose
0:03
one Dave Taylor here and I want to talk
0:12
about web hosting everyone has a website
0:14
some people of more I have three four I
0:18
don't know at least four different
0:19
websites that actually kind of lose
0:21
track after a while so here's the deal
0:24
net craft in January of 2018 figured out
0:28
that there are over one point eight
0:30
billion web sites billion with a B
0:34
that's a lot of websites and it turns
0:37
out that there are over 300,000 web
0:41
hosting providers so that already gives
0:44
me a bit of a headache this is like oh
0:46
my gosh how do you possibly choose when
0:48
you have 300 thousand different options
0:50
and you're one of 1.8 billion web sites
0:54
out there
0:54
the answer is you take your time and you
0:57
think about the core essential
0:59
characteristics that you need for a good
1:01
host now before I go further let me tell
1:04
you there are some mighty big hosts out
1:06
there one on one hosts six point seven
1:09
percent of all web sites and then going
1:12
down that list of top host is
1:14
Squarespace Hetzler online blue host
1:17
liquid web host gator IBM cloud and
1:20
GoDaddy between them they represent I
1:23
don't knows ten to fifteen percent of
1:25
the overall Internet that's a lot but
1:28
here's the question do you really want
1:30
to host at a site where there's a
1:32
million other sites also there Wow
1:35
maybe maybe not so let's talk about the
1:38
actual decision of how to figure out or
1:40
how to evaluate different web hosting
1:42
companies and I'll tell you it really
1:44
comes down to the 3 s's and those are
1:47
speed security and support now let's
1:52
talk about nuts and bolts and then we'll
1:53
come back to those 3 s's the first thing
1:56
you need to figure out is what kind of
1:57
server you want and ranges all the way
2:00
from shared hosts to VPS to dedicated
2:03
servers now let's go back and let's talk
2:05
about it so a shared host is when you
2:08
have a computer and it's hosting lots
2:10
and lots of web sites now that's the
2:12
least
2:13
ffensive option and that's how most
2:15
people have their sites hosted right if
2:17
you go to somewhere like Bluehost or
2:19
GoDaddy
2:19
then you're probably gonna be on a
2:21
shared server and what that means is
2:23
that you're competing for resources with
2:26
everyone else that's on that same server
2:28
so if you and I are both on the same
2:31
system and I suddenly get a mention in
2:33
the front page of the New York Times
2:35
then I'm getting huge amounts of traffic
2:38
which is taking resources away from your
2:41
hosting so you know one of the things to
2:44
really look at is performance and when
2:46
you have shared hosting your performance
2:48
generally is you know at at least it's
2:51
vulnerable to the traffic that the other
2:53
sites on that server get moving up a
2:56
level VPS or virtual private servers and
3:00
that's kind of an interesting sort of
3:01
hardware software pairing there because
3:04
a VPS is something where it looks like
3:07
you have your own server but there's
3:09
multiple VPS is running on an individual
3:11
piece of hardware now VPS is generally
3:14
cost a little more and the advantage is
3:16
that you actually get a lot more
3:18
flexibility so if there's custom
3:20
software you want to run or you want an
3:22
inventory database and you want to make
3:24
sure no one else is like able to access
3:27
your data set or your partition a VPS
3:29
can be good now when you go up the food
3:32
chain and you're someone like the New
3:34
York Times then you're on a dedicated
3:35
server you have your own physical
3:37
Hardware somewhere in a server room
3:40
somewhere in the world in fact you
3:42
probably have it mirrored or duplicated
3:44
in multiple places or you're using a
3:46
content delivery network we'll go back
3:48
to those and so that's a dedicated
3:50
server that's the most expensive that's
3:53
where you go from dozens of dollars a
3:54
month to thousands of dollars a month
3:56
and you know if you need it because
3:59
you're getting a million visitors a day
4:00
or something then a dedicated server is
4:02
a really good option
4:04
now next criterion you have to look at
4:06
it you have to look at what software is
4:08
included and for most people that's just
4:10
about WordPress and so if you're getting
4:13
WordPress then there's a bunch of other
4:15
things that might come with it an email
4:17
management system there might be like
4:19
Shopify or another shopping backend
4:21
there might be support for specific
4:23
kinds of plugins or different
4:25
architecture
4:26
and there are dedicated wordpress
4:29
hosting companies so I've used some of
4:31
those too right so their focus is we
4:34
just want to work with people running
4:36
WordPress now since that is a
4:38
significant percentage of the overall
4:39
number of sites on the web which is
4:42
pretty impressive actually then you know
4:44
that might be you you might be someone
4:46
looking for some company that really
4:48
focuses on WordPress now
4:50
the next things you have to worry about
4:52
are going back now to that New York
4:55
Times is you have to worry about disk
4:57
space and bandwidth quotas and I have
4:59
had this bite me in the butt more than
5:01
once where I've been with a hosting
5:03
company and everything's been really
5:04
good and then have published an article
5:06
and it's just gotten super popular and
5:08
suddenly they're saying oh you're over
5:10
your bandwidth quota we're gonna have to
5:12
charge you another couple of hundred
5:13
dollars and this is like what so why do
5:16
I get a penalty for being successful so
5:19
really pay attention to those you want
5:21
to look for companies that have at least
5:23
really good disk space quotas so you
5:26
have a lot of space remember there's a
5:28
lot of log files there's a lot of stuff
5:30
that goes on more and sort of above and
5:33
beyond your actual site so there's a lot
5:36
of back-end things that can eat up disk
5:37
space I know that I have one site that's
5:40
over five gig of space on a drive and I
5:42
don't even know where all that space is
5:44
going but it's a lot of really big
5:46
images than actually I do know where
5:47
it's going but you know this is the kind
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of thing where you need to make sure you
5:51
were aware before you go to host your
5:53
site and then they come back and say oh
5:55
well we only give you one gig of space
5:57
and then it's $10 a month for each
5:59
additional gig and you're like hmm I
6:01
need five gig so I really need six gigs
6:05
so now it's suddenly I'm paying another
6:06
50 bucks a month that was not what I
6:08
expected
6:09
right same with bandwidth be aware of
6:11
your bandwidth needs look at it over the
6:14
last three to six months if you're
6:15
migrating a site and then be really
6:17
optimistic about how much traffic you
6:19
might get and make sure your hosting
6:21
company can handle that now another
6:24
thing that's really important is file
6:25
access methods whether you're using just
6:28
WordPress or something else you're still
6:30
going to want to get to the backend
6:31
you're still going to want to be able to
6:33
upload files and images and such not
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always within the framework of WordPress
6:38
so there's access
6:40
systems like SFTP which is secure File
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Transfer Protocol or a really common one
6:45
is cPanel or there's a bunch of variants
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of that I like cPanel it can be a little
6:50
clumsy because it's trying to solve
6:52
everything for everybody
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but it is pretty common you want to have
6:56
something like that and you want to know
6:57
what they use before you find out that
7:00
you have to pay for their IT people to
7:02
copy a file for you that would be bad
7:05
and then there's the Big B backups
7:09
now backups are super important because
7:11
people's sites get hacked all the time
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and I've had my sites attacked I've had
7:16
all sorts of problems and I can tell you
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it's very very rarely someone sitting in
7:21
their office or basement trying to get
7:24
to your site nowadays it's really all
7:27
bots it's really all automated software
7:30
attacking thousands or tens of thousands
7:32
of sites at the same time so don't feel
7:35
like you're being picked on but you
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really really want backups because you
7:39
really want to be able to say oh my gosh
7:41
where's my homepage I need to roll back
7:43
a week before any of this bad stuff
7:45
happened and that super important and I
7:48
would tell you check how reliable the
7:50
backups are because I had a very sad
7:53
situation many many years ago were
7:55
actually had my own server and I was
7:57
hosting other companies and it was going
8:00
really well and a hacker came in and
8:02
wiped out my system and then I found out
8:05
that my colocation facilities backups
8:08
weren't actually working they were
8:10
saying they were doing daily backups and
8:12
weekly full backups but sadly none of
8:16
them worked
8:16
none so I lost customer data and that
8:19
was really awkward that's when I said
8:21
you know what I don't want to be in the
8:22
hosting business so now I hire other
8:25
companies to host for me so that's way
8:27
way less stress but backups are super
8:29
important and obviously security is
8:31
really important it's one of those 3 s's
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right now another thing to think about
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is email settings and mailboxes if you
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want to have your web hosting company
8:40
also host email addresses for you and
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even if it's just a redirect or forward
8:45
you want to be able to be like Dave at
8:48
ask Dave Taylor comm even if I might not
8:51
have any actual
8:52
mailboxes on the assitive taylor actual
8:55
hosting server right so make sure your
8:58
company can do that kind of stuff your
9:00
hosting company okay we're almost down
9:03
on I have this long list of things to
9:05
check out right so another one to look
9:08
at is site analytics you really want to
9:10
be able to get some analytics about how
9:12
your site's doing not just Google
9:14
Analytics and frankly some people don't
9:16
really want Google getting all that data
9:18
on their site but however you feel about
9:21
that Google Analytics are good but you
9:23
want actual I'm hosting server analytics
9:26
too because they're looking at different
9:28
things they're looking at for example
9:30
your bandwidth day by day so you can
9:32
look at oh every Monday morning I seem
9:36
to get vastly more bandwidth needs than
9:39
any other time during the week mmm why
9:41
could that be and you can sort of work
9:43
backwards and figure out what's going on
9:44
or if they say oh you're way over quota
9:47
you can go back and say well where did
9:49
that happen what occurred here what days
9:51
caused this you know maybe what files
9:53
are actually suddenly being uploaded and
9:56
downloaded that's causing me to use all
9:57
my disk quota right all that sort of
9:59
stuff and back to security you want a
10:02
company that's really managing security
10:05
on their hosting service because there
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are all these BOTS and all these bad
10:09
guys and all this malware all just I
10:12
just see it it's like you know in like
10:14
sharks pecking and chewing at this them
10:18
I don't know floating web post right and
10:20
you have to have a vigilant host company
10:23
because you probably don't have the
10:25
expertise to manage all of this now
10:28
there are security plugins you can get
10:30
for things like WordPress and you
10:31
absolutely should and you should install
10:33
them this is why things like 2-step
10:35
verification is really good if you can
10:37
install something like that but the
10:40
hosting company needs to be managing
10:42
security too so that's something you
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really want to ask them and speaking of
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security it's been at least a year to
10:48
have all your sites should be running on
10:51
secure SSL right so you should no longer
10:54
have HTTP you should all have HTTPS
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Google has said a long time ago now that
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they will prioritize secure sites
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because they believe that's important
11:06
whether or not you're selling stuff
11:07
whether or not you have forms on your
11:09
site so look for a hosting company that
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has SSL Certificates and can help you
11:14
install them because that's really
11:16
important okay has a lot to look at
11:20
right and then there's speed I talked
11:22
about speed is one of the 3 s's but I
11:25
haven't quantified that the way to check
11:27
speed is to actually go to websites that
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are hosted on that server and in soup
11:33
the super easiest way to do that is to
11:35
look for the hosting company's site and
11:37
see how fast it is if you go to a
11:40
hosting company and their home page is
11:42
slow to load that's not a great sign you
11:46
really want to have something where
11:47
you're like wow how on earth is that so
11:49
fast that's what I want I want my site
11:51
to be super fast if nothing else Google
11:53
has come out and very clearly said you
11:56
need super fast hosting because if your
11:58
pages serve up slowly you will
12:00
eventually go lower and lower and lower
12:02
in the search results that is not good
12:04
and then support so that's the third s
12:08
of our 3 s's right you want companies
12:10
that have 24/7 support you know I have
12:13
one hosting company that I work with on
12:15
a small site and it's just a guy and I
12:19
know that sometimes he goes on vacation
12:20
sometimes he's taken the weekend off I
12:23
know that I anticipate that so that's
12:26
okay but if I'm using a site where this
12:29
is part of my business or it's really
12:30
important to me then I want 24/7 support
12:33
and I don't want to just have phone
12:35
support I like chat support personally
12:38
email support is good if I send an email
12:40
what I like to see is have it
12:42
automatically issued a trouble ticket so
12:44
it goes into their support system and
12:47
then hopefully within a few minutes I'll
12:49
get at least an initial response from a
12:51
first-level person saying we understand
12:53
we categorized we you know I see what's
12:56
going on we're rebooting your server we
12:58
know there's an issue or can you give me
13:00
more details so you know someone's
13:02
managing it it might escalate up
13:04
sometimes the problems that we have can
13:06
be pretty darned complicated and that's
13:08
a drag so those are the 3 s's speed
13:12
security and support so we talked about
13:15
all of those so you also need to know
13:17
your pricing plans and
13:19
you know I gotta say hosting companies
13:20
are all over the map and what they
13:22
really want you to do is they really
13:25
want you to sign up for the long term
13:27
so I've been doing this video in
13:28
cooperation with a company called host
13:30
injure and they're a hosting company and
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this is why they asked me to talk about
13:34
hosting and I thought let's look at how
13:36
they do things so real quick host injure
13:39
starts out with really inexpensive entry
13:42
point of a dollar forty five a month and
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you can see here on this slide that
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there's the three different web hosting
13:49
plans the premium shared hosting is a
13:51
pretty good deal at two ninety-five a
13:53
month is pretty immuno minimal cost and
13:56
that gives you an unlimited number of
13:58
websites unlimited email accounts
14:01
unlimited bandwidth you know 2x
14:04
processing power I don't know what that
14:06
means versus regular and weekly backups
14:09
so there's a lot going on in that
14:12
package you know you can move up to
14:13
business shared hosting and you know how
14:16
do you decide which of these tiers to go
14:18
in well you want to sort of have this
14:20
sort of optimistic best-case scenario of
14:23
your site getting a lot of traffic and
14:24
selling a lot of products and being
14:26
really successful you don't ever want to
14:28
set up your hosting based on things
14:30
going poorly because obviously why are
14:32
you in business why do you have a
14:34
website if you're being so pessimistic
14:35
come on be more positive so you know
14:39
look at that and say what's my best case
14:41
scenario and I will say I believe in
14:44
never going to the cheapest possible
14:46
solution always move up at least one
14:48
level because it makes a huge difference
14:50
in how you were treated by customer
14:53
service it can often make a big
14:56
difference in the performance of your
14:57
site once it's hosted there so all of
14:59
that's really important but let's drill
15:01
it just a tiny bit more on this premium
15:04
hosting because I want to illustrate how
15:07
so many hosting companies have these
15:09
sort of tricks that they play and you
15:11
know tricks probably not fair how they
15:13
try to you know they really want you to
15:15
commit for the long term so if you look
15:17
at the way they have the premium shared
15:19
hosting it's 695 a month for your
15:22
minimum possible three months right but
15:25
if you go up and you commit to two years
15:28
right wellnot 1224 four years sorry if
15:32
commit to four years of hosting right
15:34
now then you can drop that price down
15:37
dramatically to under three dollars a
15:39
month now
15:40
that's really pretty darn good pricing
15:43
and I understand from host and jurist
15:45
perspective it is a huge benefit to them
15:47
to be able to actually commit customers
15:50
for the long term that's really a great
15:52
way for them to be able to manage their
15:54
business and for them to offer better
15:56
service which then is good for you but
15:58
you know for years that's a long time
16:02
right so maybe you want to start
16:04
something smaller now they recognize
16:06
that's an issue so they actually have a
16:08
30-day money-back guarantee but let's be
16:10
honest it is a pain in the booty to
16:12
actually migrate a server or migrate a
16:14
website over to a new server so the
16:17
number of people that give up after 30
16:19
days I'm sure is fairly small so this is
16:22
an example of what I would do is I would
16:24
probably go for something like six
16:26
months or a year and then if things are
16:28
going really well a couple of months
16:30
into it then go back to their customer
16:33
service people and say I love you guys
16:35
can I bump up to that four year plan and
16:38
can we prorate things and see how we can
16:41
make this work most hosting companies I
16:43
know would be thrilled to have you come
16:45
along and say oh my gosh yes
16:47
you know we love you just as much as you
16:49
love us and that's wonderful
16:51
now here's a really cool thing is if you
16:53
look in the description on this video I
16:55
have a 15% discount code so that 295 a
16:59
month goes down even more so that's
17:01
pretty good deal but again host injure I
17:05
don't host assert a site on their server
17:07
so I am just talking about what they
17:09
present and they are a great example of
17:12
one of the 300,000 hosting companies out
17:15
there are they big are they small do
17:17
they have a skyscraper in downtown
17:19
Berlin who the heck knows right at some
17:22
level it doesn't really matter in fact a
17:24
lot of hosting companies end up using
17:26
servers that are run by other hosting
17:28
companies and that's okay because it's
17:31
really that personal touch it's really
17:33
having someone help you make sure your
17:34
site is running stays running and is
17:38
secure and that's really what matters so
17:40
this has been a really long discussion I
17:43
hope it's been really helpful you know
17:45
when you're going to
17:46
use your web hosting company be slightly
17:49
skeptical about what you read on one
17:51
site so go and do a little cross
17:53
comparison and honestly in my opinion
17:55
the very best way to find a good hosting
17:58
company is to talk to other people
17:59
social media is great for this I posted
18:02
something on Facebook and within 24
18:04
hours I had 30 or 40 people telling me
18:06
about their favorite hosting service and
18:08
why and that was great information
18:10
because really you know we can just
18:13
absorb all sorts of stuff and go and
18:15
read 1.8 billion websites worth of
18:18
hosting information but to have two or
18:20
three of your friends or colleagues say
18:22
we're here here's how much we pay and
18:24
here's the experience we have that is
18:26
invaluable
18:27
so talk to people find out where people
18:30
are hosting things if you're interested
18:32
check out hosting jur and that's all I
18:34
got for you so be careful out there and
18:37
pick a great web hosting company because
18:39
it really makes things much more fun and
18:41
with that I'll catch you in my next
18:43
video
18:44
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