Having a website to promote your business is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have.
The majority of potential customers in your industry use the Internet as their primary source of information and expect an excellent visitor experience on your website. If something goes wrong, you can easily lose your credibility.
One of the prerequisites of good customer experience regarding your online presence is quality hosting. Releasing a website without having reliable hosting is like building your house on quicksand. Before you even manage to gain some traction with your website, it will slowly sink into a multitude of problems: poor loading speed, recurring downtime, security issues, unresponsive customer support from your hosting provider, and not being able to benefit from flexible hosting plans to get the most for your $.
The Internet is an exciting place that seems to develop at the speed of light. Web hosting services have evolved as well in more recent years. While they may not be as visible as other parts of the digital landscape, hosting services are vital and have adapted to the increasing number of websites and the necessities of small businesses. Here is what to expect in terms of web hosting in 2023 and beyond:
Multi-cloud hosting
The number of businesses using dedicated physical servers for their websites is decreasing. At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced people indoors and increased the demand for reliable online services. Adapting to the situation in the last couple of years has only been possible due to cloud hosting, which is able to serve businesses with diverse requirements and different levels of traffic.
Cloud hosting involves the use of multiple cloud service providers and enables access to applications and websites using cloud resources. If traditional hosting required websites to rely on a single server, cloud hosting is a network of connected virtual and physical cloud server hosts. The first benefit stemming from cloud hosting is greater flexibility and scalability. This means that organisations only pay for the resources they use. Next, cloud hosting is associated with lack of downtime because sites and applications are not affected by hardware failures anymore.
Other considerations for choosing cloud hosting are finding a provider with excellent data security options, using dedicated servers for sensitive data, and requesting specialist services that manage the cloud-hosted environment optimally.
Green hosting
Have you ever considered the digital footprint of every file you store in the cloud? If information is virtual, this does not mean it does not leave a physical trace.
The Internet’s annual CO2 output is equal to 31 million cars driving around the world all at once. According to 2017 statistics, 70 million servers are running on non-renewable energy, contributing to 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions. How is this possible?
To get an answer we need to think of the physical locations where all website data get stored. These are called data centres and there’s definitely a lot of resource-consuming activity going on in these places.
Hardware in data centres, just like our home gadgets, gets hot when used for a long time, so it needs a cool environment. Ensuring a controlled temperature for hardware, together with the energy they consume in order to function, leads to a significant amount of CO2 that has an impact on the environment.
In recent years, concerns about the digital carbon footprint of data have emerged, encouraging users to avoid storing files they do not need. One more thing that you can do to reduce the impact of your online presence is to opt for green website hosting. Such services will become the norm in the following years as data centres will collaborate with companies that specialise in producing energy from renewable, non-polluting sources.
Managed web hosting services
Being able to create more value for customers is a key differentiator in any industry. In the web hosting industry, providers are also concentrating on adding extra tools and services to basic packages to attract more website owners.
Managed web hosting, for instance, was developed to cater to the needs of users who lack the technical knowledge to maintain and operate a website. With this type of hosting, the service provider handles all website-related functions, such as making updates and ensuring optimal performance. The main advantage for the website owner is they can focus on their work and growing their brand instead of dealing with technical aspects they find difficult.
Managed web hosting has definitely kicked into gear during the pandemic, as a large number of newcomers that lacked technical skills flooded the cyberspace, desperately needing assistance. Managed hosting is slowly shifting from the latest trends to a must have as it saves time and money and enables website owners, and more importantly, business owners, to focus on what is important for them.
Competitive pricing
As we have seen in the previous point, the demand for hosting services went up in the last few years. According to a basic law of economics, higher demand causes prices to go down, a phenomenon we can clearly see in the web hosting industry.
Because more and more businesses are asking for website hosting lately, the number of providers has increased, too. The web hosting industry has become highly-competitive and service providers need to offer attractive hosting packages at affordable prices in order to survive.
This means that if you need web hosting services, now is the time to access them. Web hosting packages are being offered at lower prices than they used to before the pandemic. At the same time, conduct your research before choosing a web hosting company. If services are too cheap, there is probably a reason behind it.
Artificial intelligence
How can artificial intelligence (AI) influence the web hosting industry? This field’s fast growth pace in the last years can be explained precisely through the multiple applications of AI.
AI can find an application almost anywhere, and so it does in web hosting. It is able to recognise threats such as malware during the first stages of emergence and inform users on potential dangers before they can cause damage. AI can ensure safer web hosting by informing us of potential cyber-attacks.
Another area where AI can help is optimising server performance. AI’s ability to learn helps to improve server performance by using predictive analytics. AI is even used to manage the heating and cooling systems of data centres in a way that reduces energy consumption.
There is no doubt that in the following years web hosting companies will come with new creative ways of leveraging AI’s huge potential. Optimisation is vital because quality web hosting is all about speed, security, and uninterrupted uptime. Without AI’s ability to analyse large amounts of data and spot glitches, web hosting companies would not be able to ensure the website performance that users expect nowadays.
Wrap Up
Offering quality web hosting services is a challenge because this type of service requires both experience and innovation. VMA provides reliable website hosting services and offers you one of the key elements you need to look at when establishing an online presence. For years, we have been offering our customers benefits such as 24/7 server support, business grade servers located here in Australia, money back guarantees, different web hosting packages to suit every customer’s needs, and managed WordPress hosting. Now we are also looking into the most important web hosting trends for 2023 and are determined to be one step ahead. Our aim is to make sure our customers benefit from the highest level of services.
