Launching and running a website can be a tricky experience. Your web hosting plays an important role in overall website management and performance.

 

However, there may be signs indicating that you are better off with a new web host.

 

While we confess these problems are not fun to deal with, they may have a silver lining. This is because they’ll lead you to a better hosting plan, contributing to the success of your online business.

 

When’s The Time To Upgrade Your Web Hosting?

As your business grows, so do your website’s needs. Do you feel that you’ve outgrown your current web hosting service? In other words, is it time to upgrade your web hosting?

 

To help you remove the guesswork and narrow down your decision, here are the issues you need to keep an eye out for.

Sluggish Speed

The loading speed can kill or cure your website. A slow-loading website impacts search rankings as well as kills conversions.

 

Google's research on page speed revealed that a page load time of 3 seconds increases bounce rate by 32%. Similarly, 5 seconds increase the bounce rate by 90%.

 

 

Image Source: Think With Google

 

Therefore, it’s important to look for causes that are impacting your site speed. The easiest way to find out is to run speed tests using tools like GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom.

 

Though there are plenty of ways to speed up your site, one of the best strategies is to upgrade your hosting plan.

 

It’s also better to opt for a web hosting service that offers a Content Delivery Network (CDN). The use of a CDN eliminates many issues that come with the distance between visitor and website.

Too Much Downtime

Every second your website becomes unavailable to the users, it’s considered down. The famous cliché - time is money - cannot be more true with downtime.

 

Downtime can make your business suffer in terms of sales and reputation. For example, research by Statista shows that the average hourly cost of downtime for businesses falls between $301,000 and $400,000.

Image Source: Statista

 

Besides cost, frequent downtime also makes Google think of your website as dodgy, which in turn has a greater impact on your traffic and ranking.

 

Among the various reasons for downtime, low-quality web hosting is one of the most common. So, if you keep finding your website frequently down or your site’s uptime below 99.9%, it might be a sign to upgrade.

 

You can use tools like Uptime Robot or Uptrends to measure the uptime of your site.

Heavy Traffic

A common reason why people often upgrade their hosting plan is bandwidth usage.

 

In the initial stage of your business, your ultimate goal is to grow. But as your business grows, your site will start receiving heavy traffic. This will eat up your available bandwidth, causing the site to crash frequently.

 

Let’s take an example of Queue-it's virtual waiting room. During Black Friday 2017, a small business using Queue-it's virtual waiting room encountered a 260% increase in traffic and the site crashed.

 

Image Source: Eggplant

 

Are you persistently hitting the bandwidth limit on your web hosting? If yes, well, that’s a huge sign that you need to upgrade your hosting plan.

 

To decide on which plan will be a perfect fit for your site, you can calculate your estimated needed bandwidth. Also use tools like Loader, K6, and Gatling to stress test your website for heavy traffic.

 

Inadequate Security

With increasing data breaches (4.1 billion records in the first half of 2019), optimal security should be the first thing that you must look for in a web hosting plan.

 

As you might imagine, not all web hosts offer the same level of security. Choosing the wrong web hosting services with inadequate security can leave your site exposed to exploitation by various malicious parties.

 

As per the Symantec Threat Landscape Trends report, there were 7,836 sites compromised in Q1 2020 through form-jacking, a way to steal user data through checkout, contact and other forms.

 

Image Source: Symantec

 

Thus, you need to find a web hosting service that takes your site’s security more seriously. Some important features that you need to look out for are backups, (SSL/TLS) certificates, and malware scanning.

Hosting Starts Getting Expensive

Web hosting cost is a recurring one and depends on which hosting provider and plan you choose. You can find plans from $1 per month to over a few hundred dollars per month.

 

The cost of your hosting can also depend on the add-ons you choose. For instance,  as mentioned earlier, when your business grows, your hosting requires additional storage and bandwidth to accommodate increased traffic. That means increased costs.

 

Different hosting providers offer hosting plans at different prices. The features may vary from one provider to another. Here’s a quick comparison of the entry-level packages by top web hosting providers.

 

You can even find plenty of high-quality as well as affordable web hosting providers without burning a hole in your pocket.

 

If you require added performance or extra features, then it’s the right time to upgrade your web hosting services.

 

Upgrading Your Hosting Is Easier Than Ever

A lot of people fear changing their hosting provider as it looks like a daunting process. But it actually isn’t. Furthermore, to make the upgrading process a breeze, many hosting providers offer free migration services.

 

So take a look at these five signs on your website and see if your current web hosting service is helping you grow or holding you back.

 

If you feel like it’s hindering your growth, upgrading to a new hosting plan is a wise decision.