Web hosting services is a competitive market, and most of the companies have similar claims in terms of bandwidth, hard disk space and security. However, when selecting a hosting web service, the top factors to consider are bandwidth and storage, as these factors directly impact the performance of the website. Additionally, phone and chat support, malware protection, SSL certification, and money-back guarantee ensures that the consumer has complete protection of their website and 24/7 support helps them to move forward with ease.

Various service providers are providing free hosting for a website; however, there is a certain trade-off in such transactions. Companies offering free website hosting can impose ads, cross-branding, limited bandwidth, limited pages and uncertain downtime. By limiting features in the free plan, companies encourage users to buy the paid subscription plan. Free hosting for websites is generally to increase traffic on their services and sell them a paid plan accordingly.

Leading web hosting service companies provide free domains bundled with web hosting. These free domains are provided on a yearly and lifetime basis. However, free domains are attached to the company’s hosting plans, which provides a free or paid renewable plan and charge additionally for the yearly hosting. It is recommended to buy a paid domain and gain complete access and control of the domain name which can be shifted to any other service provider, whenever required. Check for free domain names.

For making a website secure, installing SSL is mandatory according to the Google SEO algorithm, which ensures your website has the necessary certificates and all information is protected. Other than that, antimalware software which continuously scans and prevents malicious attacks ensures that any financial transaction taking place on the website is entirely safe and secure. Taking continuous backups prepares for the worst-case scenario, and moderating comments on the website ensures no one spams on the website.

Companies like Letsencrypt and Auto encrypt are providing free SSL for the clients with providing https prefix in the address bar and a green padlock. This can be renewed from the hosting company in every 60 to 90 days period. Free SSL certificates are genuine and can be easily integrated into the website. A paid SSL provides a higher level of protection and warranty, which are generally used for e-commerce and financial/payment gateway for end-to-end encryption and secure data and transaction details. Free SSL can only be used on a single website.

Top web hosting providers provide a money-back guarantee with a hosting fee as a refund. Some providers give 30/45 days money-back guarantee, which depends on the hosting provider’s policies. Customers can check it according to their convenience, and the company policy may vary from company to company. A service provider providing a money-back guarantee helps the client to be more adaptable and flexible.

Website uptime is the time that a website or web service is available to the users over a given period. Various factors like hardware configuration and software configuration, affect the website uptime. The greater the uptime of the website, the more the user can enjoy the web services without any glitches and downtime. For website uptime, it depends on the communications provided by the Internet Service Provider (ISP), server infrastructure, and storage medium. Finding a perfect balance between size and cost of server helps the client to save money in the long run and obtain a more functional server.

Free website migration or website transfer refers to a transfer of a website from one hosting provider to another. Hosting transfer includes the transfer of database, domain, site files and media files, which can be easily used on the new server. Top web hosting providers provide free website migration services to help clients to switch from the old hosting vendor to the new company’s hosting services without any hassles.