5 questions to ask before choosing cloud hosting services
Cloud computing as a service has gradually climbed to the list of favourites for businesses. This technological innovation has empowered businesses by increasing their pace and productivity. Given the rate of cloud adoption within small and medium businesses, cloud web hosting is also preferred when it comes to website hosting for several reasons. This includes storage, security, performance, reliability etc. As industry watchers, it makes us wonder how are these businesses narrowing down on cloud web hosting when it comes to putting up their website? What are the things that they factor in before taking the decision? As we probe further, we hit a few spots which made us feel that this pretty much is a common thread between successful business who have adopted a cloud hosting policy. This article aims at providing you with a few useful tips to keep in mind should you do the same.
Here we go!
Before you choose cloud hosting services, do ask yourself these 5 simple questions.
Is the server uptime consistent enough?
A consistent uptime record is the mark of a great cloud hosting service. As someone who is considering to buy cloud hosting services, you should always know what kind of an uptime is a good uptime. Is it 90%, 95%? Or is it more? The truth is that a good cloud hosting service will provide you with 99.9% uptime. Always ensure that you ask your colleagues or people from your industry about the uptime that their cloud service provider is guaranteeing them. This will give you a fair idea as to what your benchmark should be.
How secure is it?
Any cloud hosting service that maintains a record of security should definitely be trusted. But how would you know what makes a cloud hosting service safe enough? In that case, check if your service provider complies with the standards and upgrades of the industry. You can figure this out by getting in touch with their clients and get an idea about the frequency of updates for security. Also, ensure that your data is protected from malware or phishing attacks. This question is particularly important if you are choosing servers in countries with lots of servers. Typically, there are more data theft attempts in these countries. For example, if you were choosing a service provider in Pakistan, you should definitely do your research in advance to find out which are the best. If this research is satisfactory, move on to the next question, which is:
What kind of a back-up/recovery plan does it provide you with?
Cloud hosting services are secure. But what if an earthquake or a geographic disaster affect your region? In order to maintain business continuity, it is essential that your cloud hosting service has a backup or a recovery plan. With a good back up plan for cloud hosting, you can rest assured that you business days won’t be affected. On the contrary, it will add to your business days because you will still be running your shop and making money on those odd days.
Will you get your hands on all the reports?
A cloud hosting service that gives you an overall report of what upgrades it has done, how many upgrades it has done and what attacks were checked for and what performance it has given over the month, is a service to vouch for. Some of these key performance indicators will be responsible for the smooth functioning of your website. You may not feel that it is affecting your business directly because you don’t really earn anything from it. But these reports give you satisfaction as a business that the security and safety of my website is looked after.
Will it provide you with enough resources to scale your business?
Any business ambitious enough will definitely consider this as one of the key elements while choosing cloud hosting services. If you are upping the ante when it comes to your business, it is but natural that you will need your resources to walk hand in hand. After all, profitability is the only motive of any business. So, a hosting partner that helps you climb the business ladder is a partner that you should opt for. Cloud hosting, luckily, enables a huge amount of resources. It is well known for its scale because it does not store any of its data on local hard drives etc. Instead, it stores data at a remotely located data center where upgrading resources are possible.
All things considered
Ensure that your cloud web hosting is fitting right within your budget. There is no use spending a lot on a resource that can be availed at an economical rate. Also, ensure that you take exclusivity and functionality of your cloud hosting into account. Another thing which deserves a mention since we touched upon the topic of scaling is that your cloud hosting plan must allow you to migrate from one cloud hosting to another. This is important from the user’s point of view. On the whole, ensure that cloud hosting makes things easy for you because that is what your website and your business would want.
