One of the features you’ll find most commonly advertised when comparing hosting providers nowadays is their ability to run various kinds of scripting languages, database solutions and similar tools that you may or may not be interested in.
Sometimes, those are bundled with the default hosting package by default, potentially making it more expensive than alternative solutions on the market. It’s important to know what exactly those features are, and whether you’re really in need of them, before settling on any hosting provider for the long term. Sometimes this can save you quite a lot of money.
Scripting Languages
There are various languages out there, and some of them enjoy a lot more popularity than others. If you plan on scripting anything on your site, you should start your search with a host that provides support for your preferred language of choice. That might sometimes be expensive or rare on the market though, so if that’s the case, it might be worth the effort to learn an alternative language and go with it for your next project(s).
PHP is a good choice for something that’s offered by pretty much every hosting company on the market right now, and at various attractive rates. It’s also a relatively easy language to learn and doesn’t take too long to get familiar with, and despite the slight stigma it might have in some developer communities, it’s still a pretty good choice for various types of projects. Plus, it’s easy to integrate a PHP site with many types of databases out there, which is another important point to consider if you’ll be working on a dynamic site.
Databases
This brings us to the next point – what kinds of databases do you need to have support for? There are several popular solutions on the market, and some of them enjoy more support from their developers and user community, making them more attractive choices for those who want something fast and reliable. If you’re using cPanel or other similar solutions that are popular on the market right now, you might also have the ability to easily connect to your database with a few clicks.
If you’re not sure, just go with a host that supports MySQL, as this is something you’ll find most commonly referenced in online guides and similar materials. However, keep in mind that you may not always need database access. Not every site needs to store long-term information in the kind of structure that databases are designed for, and if you don’t think that you’ll be updating the content of the website too often, it might not make much sense to pay extra for database access. This is actually something that can cost a lot of money with most hosting providers, so it’s definitely an important point to think about, especially if you’re on a limited budget. Database costs can quickly scale up if you’re not careful as well, which is another thing to be aware of if you do end up signing up for that.
Can Your Site Be Static?
In the end, remember that not every site out there needs to have a dynamic component to it. If you don’t think that you’ll be updating its content too often, and if there are no components that specifically require regular interaction, it might make more sense to go with an entirely static solution. This depends on how you envision the site in the long run of course, but keep in mind that you don’t always need to make everything update on a regular basis, and sometimes your visitors will actually appreciate a more static approach to the design of the site.
That’s because static sites have the advantage of often loading faster and being more stable. If something breaks in the backend, that’s often a pretty big issue for a dynamic site that can bring the whole place down until that problem is resolved. But with a static site, you rarely have to worry about problems like that, as simple HTML can’t really break down in such a way. Certainly not in a way that affects the entire website, which is the main concern at hand with a dynamic solution.
You should think carefully about whether or not you really need your new sites to have a dynamic component to them. It’s not rare that you’ll find out that this is not the case, and that can save you a lot of money on the hosting provider that you choose. As we mentioned above, that might not always be the case though – in some cases you’ll be pretty much forced to go with a dynamic package – but if you’re able to configure your deal and avoid paying extra for something you’re not going to use, common sense dictates that this is one of the best ways to get more value for your money.