10 Tips in Using Hosting Service by Best Practice
It's easy to get your prefered hosting service nowadays because of the amount of providers. However, not everybody can use it properly even they have used the service many years. Based our editorial experience, almost every hosting service is different from each other. We have generated following 10 tips to help managing a healthy hosting account. It's extremely helpful for hosting novice who is not so familiar with the business.
Pay by paypal
It's highly suggested pay your hosting service via paypal instead other solutions like credit card. Why is that? Because in case you find the hosting is not what you needed, you can request money back easily. Especially when your hosting provider does not cooperate with the dispution, you can do chargeback request directly from paypal center.
Disable auto renewal
Many hosting service have auto renewal option turnned on after account setup. It's not good to clients because not everybody will use the service for more than one year. The trick is they provide us "regular price" other than promotional one from the first sign up. We might receive very good price for sign up but pay much more for renewal. The only way to save money is probably to renew several years. Hence, it's suggested to check if your account is set to auto renew after account setup.
Free domain or not?
Yes, almost every hosting provider offer free domain opportunity. Should you take it? We suggest no. Using free domain option means your business is tied up to hosting company. Most hosting companies are actually domain reseller from certified registrars like Godaddy, Enom etc. Thus if you need to transfer out to other company, they can not handle it efficiently or even ignore your request sometimes. That's why we always suggest use domain and hosting from different providers to keep your properties in safe hands.
Dedicated ip or not?
Many providers highlight dedicated ip offers to attract visitors. Especially from old times when dedicatd IP was considered as great feature for SEO. But such advantage does not exist anymore today. Google has clarified this multiple times from official announcements. When do we need dedicated IP? Mostly when we operate an online cart that needs SSL protection. SSL installation requires a dedicated IP address to proceed.
Evaluate addon products carefully
It's easy to pick up a cheap and good hosting service, but it's not the end. Many hosting providers even those leading brands put advertisements in hosting control panel. They either provide this service directly or affiliate with third party providers. They always give good reasons to convince people to get registered. Once you get into such service, you may receive unlimited marketing emails.
Check account usage regularly
Every hosting service provides analyzing tools for account usage such as disk and traffic. This will help us understand how much we have used and how is our website performing. The traffic report will also tell us some unnatural visits like hacking attempts so we can apply necessary security reinforcement.
About shared SSL
Shared ssl is working the same as dedicated one. However, please keep in mind the secure url will be working on server address not our actual domain. For example https://serverid.servername.com. It's always provided free but may be not perfect choice if you're promoting a cart site. Your dedicated ssl will keep everything on your own site but not others.
About secure FTP
Secure ftp is highly suggested if you concern about account security a lot. You just need to make initial configuration then everything will be transfered via secure tunnel. Check with your hosting support if they support secure ftp or not.
Pay attention to hosting announcement
Your hosting team will always send out newsletter every few periods. It's not all about marketing, sometimes they send out announcements for security fix on some popular website softwares. If you use such softwares, you should follow their guidance to upgrade its security. They also send out promotional offers for your account service sometimes that could save a lot such as for renewal. If you keep an eye on this, you're saving money with their service.
Don't use from pubic computer
It's not recommended to login your hosting from public computers because it will leave cookies. Especially for ftp connection, it will keep your connection once it's configured from softwares like filezilla, it brings big security issue by doing this. Unless you can clear out everything after use, it's never recommended to login your hosting service from pubic computers.
