Every nonprofit should own its own domain name (e.g. ".org", "org.sg"). This is not just an invaluable piece of virtual real estate, it is also a critical foundation to build your organisation's branding and visibility. But once you have acquired your domain name comes the next step of selecting a web and email hosting provider. This is where things may start getting confusing for a lot of nonprofits with all the technical terms being thrown about.
This article aims to demystify the web hosting options out there and try to simplify the key decision factors in choosing a web hosting provider, especially for a nonprofit with budgetary and resource constraints.
First, you can buy or register your domain name with a different vendor from the actual service that ultimately hosts your website. Sometimes, you can acquire your domain name cheaper from a different vendor than the one which actually offers the web hosting. In fact, as the domain name registration is a pretty standard and commoditised offering, you can simply choose a service that offers you the lowest registration fee. Just make sure you choose one which offers free DNS Management so you can decide where to point your domain name after registration.
In contrast, there is a wide range of types of web hosting plans and follow-on services and support that can be offered by a web hosting service provider. This is where it can often be confusing to anyone trying to choose a web hosting provider.
Types of Web Hosting Plans
Here's my quick table of the 6 most common types of hosting plans.
2 use physical servers, rely on virtual servers and another plan really refers to the type of services bundled with the hosting.
- 1st, the lowest cost option - shared hosting. This is where your website is hosted on a shared server with many other websites.
- VPS hosting is the next level of shared hosting, where a physical server is divided into a limited number of virtual servers each hosting.
- Cloud hosting is really just VPS hosting across a network of servers which may be located in various locations, instead of a single server.
- The physical server options of having your own dedicated server or a co-located server (your own server but stored in a shared physical location with other servers) are usually not suitable for nonprofits unless you are very large and have sufficient resources or manage a lot of or highly sensitive data. Having your own physical server requires technical expertise and trained staff or an outsourced service provider for the day-to-day management of hardware, operating systems and standardised applications.
- Managed hosting just means you can choose any of the above hosting plans and have it come bundled with technical support from the web hosting provider, such as hardware and software setup and configuration, maintenance, hardware replacement, technical support, patching, updating and monitoring. Unlike standard dedicated hosting, the hosting provider looks after the A popular sub-category is WordPress managed hosting.
Pros and Cons of Different Web Hosting Plans
Here is my quick summary of the pros and cons of the various types of hosting plans:
5 Must-Haves in Choosing Your Web Hosting Provider
Needless to say, you have to ensure any plan you choose fits your requirements in terms of the amount of storage (for both your website content and email needs) and bandwith (remember to factor in both website and email traffic).
Once you have the size of the plan in mind, here are 5 key things to consider before you sign any web hosting contract:
1. Server Reliability, Uptime Scores And Security
This is really a basic requirement for any web hosting service - i.e. minimise the amount of time that your site is offline