10 Compelling Reasons Why You Need Website Hosting

If you’ve got a website, it’s most likely being looked after by a web hosting company. This is the norm in the world of websites; you create your website, design it, and populate it with content, but essentially it lives with your host on their server.

You can host it yourself… But it’s quite a lot more of a mission than simply choosing a good web host from the start. Considering hosting your site on your own server to save costs? It’s not likely to be cheaper than an excellent web hosting company, and it’s not really as simple as it might initially sound, so… Here are 10 compelling reasons why you need website hosting in order to be successful.

10 Reasons Why You Need Website Hosting

Makes Your Website Accessible to the World

This might seem obvious, but website hosting is what makes your site visible and accessible to the rest of the world. Without hosting, your website is digitally homeless… And nobody’s going to see it, which means no sales.

If you’ve got your own server, you can house your site on it, but it takes a ton of resources and you’ll have to manage it all on your own. Keeping your site accessible to the world all on your own is a time-consuming and expensive experience so… Choosing regular web hosting is probably a better idea.

Domain Management

You might be able to host your own site, but most people can’t register their own domain. You’ll still need to do that through a domain registration company, but signing up with a web host means that’ll probably be taken care of for you.

This means you can manage your website and your domain from the same platform, which is convenient and streamlines the whole process. As long as you need to sign up with a company online anyway for your website, you may as well as save yourself the stress of trying to manage your own server.

Freedom to Customize Your Website

Most web hosts give you plenty of freedom when it comes to customizing your website to suit your needs and your tastes. Aside from design, you can install whatever themes, plugins, and content management systems you’d like to really tailor your website to your needs and preferences.

Using your own server is like owning a home. There’s a certain amount of freedom in it, but if anything goes wrong, well… It’s all on you to fix it.

Web hosts are like landlords that you rent a home from. You can hang whatever picture frames you want, choose your own furniture, and bring your own belongings to the home. You might not be able to knock down a wall or rip up the carpets, but you have a decent amount of freedom to make your website feel at home.

The biggest difference here is that with your own server, you probably have more customization freedom than you actually need. On the other hand, with a web host, you can customize a fair bit, but you don’t have to deal with the potentiality of having something go wrong and it falling completely on your shoulders to fix.

Security Features to Safeguard Your Website

All web hosts offer security features, but not all of them offer great security features. As long as you’re working with a reliable, reputable web host, you’ll benefit from features such as firewalls, malware scanning, DDoS protection, SSL certificates, and more.

Regular backups are also an important part of keeping a secure website, and it can be extremely time-consuming to back up your own data if you’re hosting your own website. So signing up with a reliable web host goes a long way towards keeping your peace of mind.

Trying to keep your site secure without the robust security features a web host offers can be tough. You’ll have to choose and install security features on your own server, but not just that, you’ll have to keep your own eye on potential threats and make sure they’re not getting through.

Storage Space for Your Website’s Needs

A web host gives you an external storage capacity where you can store all your website’s data and files. Pictures, videos, databases, and other content take up a lot of space, and if you’re using a stable, reliable web host, you’ll be able to store all that information quite safely on their servers.

This frees up space on your own device, so you’ll have the freedom to add files and go wild with content without being limited by the space on your own device.

Of course, if you’re the only one on your own server, you’ll be able to use all the space you want to store stuff. But why use your own space when you can use someone else’s and free yours up for other things?

Allows for Scalability and Growth

As your business grows, the right web host will help you to upgrade to higher-tier plans so you’ve always got ample resources to fuel your business to new heights.

Scaling can become very tricky if you’re trying to host your own site. If you find that your own server has run out of resources, it’s not always just simple and cheap to add more.

And if you’re going to buy a massive server for yourself from the very beginning, you’d probably be better off spending that money on a really great web host from the start. Cloud hosting will offer you everything you need, and you’ll end up being way more scalable than you would on your own server.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Benefits

Search engines look for more than keywords when ranking websites. Some of the less-known things they analyze and use to rank websites include uptime and web page loading speeds.

While there are many steps you can take to help speed up your own website, your web host plays a huge role in how quickly your web pages load. Web hosts with excellent uptime and fast loading speeds can actually boost your website ranking!

Hosting your site on your own server can go a long way toward freeing up resources or speeding up your website’s loading times. But most web hosts have other useful features that contribute to SEO, so it’s worth choosing a host over hosting yourself.

Will Regularly Back Up Your Website’s Data

Backup can be super tedious if you’re trying to do it yourself. But hand that responsibility over to your web host, and it’ll happen in the background quickly, easily, and without any stress on your part.

The other bonus of a web host is that if something does happen and your site needs to be restored, your web host will do that for you, taking that stress and responsibility off your shoulders. You can spend anything from a few hours to a week trying to restore your site yourself, which could be better spent on other important tasks.

Customer Support to Help When You Need It

Ever tried to fix a technical problem when you’ve got nobody to ask for help? Trying to do tech troubleshooting yourself can not only be frustrating but there’s always potential for something to break!

Web hosts’ customer support is always available when you need it, so even if you’re having a bout of insomnia and trying to fix an IT problem in the middle of the night, someone will be around to help you get it right.

On the other hand, if something goes wrong with your own server, troubleshooting could end up being a lot more complicated. And if something really is wrong, your web host should cover you with fixing things and helping you come up to speed again, but on your own, it’s just you without any support.

Read More: 11 Best Web Hosting Services for 2023

Cost-Effective Solution

Web hosts offer very competitive pricing, whether you’re looking at dedicated or cloud hosting. It might be tempting to just forgo the monthly cost and invest in your own server, but costs add up—remember, you need space, cooling mechanisms, and a whole lot of time if you’re planning on hosting your own site. And that’s on top of the cost of the actual server.

Considering it’s extremely pricey to own and run your own server to host your own site, shelling out a fee for web hosting every month is very well worth it, even if you do choose a top-tier option.

Conclusion

Web hosting is one of those things that most website owners don’t really think about. And yet every website is built upon a web host, so they’re a pretty important part of your whole business!

In most cases, you don’t need compelling reasons to get website hosting. It’s something that comes with the territory of creating websites, but if you’re a tech whizz and considering hosting it on your own server, we recommend seriously thinking about investing in a regular web host first. You’ll save yourself time and money in the end!

About the Author

Paul Wheeler runs a web design agency that helps small businesses optimize their websites for business success. He aims to educate business owners on all things website-related at his own website, Reviews for Website Hosting.