You are happy in life because you have finally published your website. It’s working just fine, the audience is growing and everything seems to go very well until suddenly your site goes down. For those who have a website, there is no bigger nightmare than this one. Right?
The truth is that having a website requires a lot of care. In addition to investing in design and content, you need to take care of the part that the user does not see, but that makes all the difference: the infrastructure. In this case, it is the server where the site is hosted.
Many people invest the time and money to create a website, but they do not give proper attention to hosting until something bad happens. At this time, they realize that “there is no point in having a powerful car if the road is of poor quality”. With hosting that’s how it is. Your site may be the best on the internet, but if you “roam” on low-quality hosting, your performance will be impaired.
If you have had problems with your hosting, perhaps it’s time to assess whether it is worth keeping. To help you with this analysis, we’ve listed 7 signs that tell you – it’s time to switch web hosting company. Check out!
1. Your site goes down frequently
Anyone who has a website wants it to stay in the air 100% of the time. However, achieving this is very difficult. In most cases, the servers where the sites are hosted need to undergo maintenance and are not free from technical problems, which can compromise the operation of the machine.
Because of this, we can say that it is reasonable to expect a server to be available for at least 99.5% of the time. This time is referred to as uptime. To give you an idea, a 99.5% uptime hosting can be out of the air for about 3 ½ hours every 30 days. For many websites, this downtime is long and can bring great losses. In these cases, the ideal is to choose a hosting that guarantees a minimum of 99.7% availability.
If your site goes out frequently, you should check if the problem is in the hosting. Most companies offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is usually on the company’s website and/or the terms of service. If the company does not comply, it must reimburse the customer in proportion to the time that the site was down.
As the downside of getting the website off the air is greater than any discount you may receive, stay tuned. If your business does not offer stability or guarantees, it may be time to switch hosting.
2. Loading of your site is slow
On a website, slowness is one of the worst problems. A site that takes the time to load loses visitors, who give up waiting and leave the page. It also loses position in search engines like Google, which consider the site loading speed a ranking criterion.
A site may be slow for a variety of reasons, which may be related to your site, your hosting, or both. To clarify this question, I recommend using this free Google tool: PageSpeed Insights. By entering the URL of your site, the tool evaluates how your performance is and where to improve. Among the evaluated points is the response time of the server.
Because it is a timely evaluation, it is not always possible to identify the problem on the server. So if your site is optimized and you think it is still slow, you have other alternatives to check if the problem is in your hosting. You can check the average server response time in Google Analytics, the “site speed” item, or hire a professional tool for server monitoring, such as Pingdom.
3. Email does not always work
Many hosting companies offer email in the plan, which is usually an advantage for those hiring. The problem is when the email service is unstable or does not work properly, causing damage to the site owner.
If you have frequent problems with the email service of your hosting, look for its origin. Has it been any incorrect configuration or is it an instability problem? Has the problem finally been solved?
If the problem persists, it’s worth thinking of one of the following solutions: use an external email service, such as Google Apps, or switch hosting.
4. Support left you in the hand when you needed it most
One of the most important issues in a hosting is the quality of its support. It is important to be able to count on the company whenever you need it. Even on Saturday at midnight, if at this time your site is down. And as important as getting support contact, is having your problem solved.
Support is also a great help when you just hire the hosting and need to make the settings to have your domain and your site working properly. Because it involves technical issues, support help can make all the difference. Better yet if you can choose the most convenient contact channel for you, like chat, ticket, phone or email.
If the hosting support you hired is not available when you need it, or if you cannot resolve the issues, it may be time to switch hosting.
5. Your site is near the limits of hosting features
It may seem strange, but sometimes you need to change hosting because your site is succeeding. When a site grows in audience and content, it starts to consume more hosting resources, such as disk space and bandwidth, for example.
At this time, many sites are unavailable because they reach some limit of resource imposed by the hosting. Therefore, it is important to track the use of server resources and move your site before reaching these limits. Doing so only when the site is unavailable will undermine the reputation of the site and its placement on Google.
6. Your files deleted
Having your files accidentally deleted from your hosting is not a frequent problem, but it can happen. Mainly in poor hosting companies, they do not have an efficient system of data protection of customers. That’s why we always recommend that you keep a backup of your site.
If you’ve ever gone through this and lost the files on your site, think twice. Isn’t it worthwhile to host a more reliable company?
7. You’ve found a better hosting
This is the best of the scenarios: You have found a better hosting for your site. The company offers more quality, or the plan is more attractive, or maybe it has a better cost-benefit ratio.
If your current hosting does not offer the best service for your website and you’ve found a better option, switch your hosting. Just be careful not to change hosting just because of the price. Otherwise, you run the risk of having the same problems that we have just cited in this article.
So, should I change my hosting?
The decision on switching hosting should be very well thought out and planned. And by opting for the exchange, you need to make sure you’re choosing the right hosting for your site. Migrating a website can be tricky, especially if you include email, so you have to take all the necessary steps to make it work.
Some hosting companies offer free migration service, which facilitates this process of moving hosting. If you are looking forward to migrating your website, you can get in touch with our team.
I hope this article has been useful for you! If you have any questions or comments, share here with us.
