Choosing The Right Hosting Company For Your Translation Business
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Kept you waiting, huh? Turns out (although it’s not really a surprise) that blogging and working as a freelance English-Russian translator at the same time is not that easy as it seems. Finding a perfect balance between my English-Russian translation projects, marketing, networking and writing articles for this blog is a real challenge. But your amazing feedback and support on social media give me a ton of motivation to keep going. And I thank you for that. If you’ve missed my first two parts you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
But back to our today’s topic. Choosing the right hosting company for your translation business is probably the hardest thing you’ll ever do for your website. Why is that? Well, because there are literally thousands if not millions of hosting providers out there. And to make things worse each and every of them offers quite a different range of services (and extra bonuses) which make it really hard to compare one hosting provider with another. Of course, there is a whole bunch of websites that offer comprehensive hosting shopping guides but my problem is that most of the time it seems like they’re simply promoting certain hosting companies one way or another. That means their opinion is not very honest. Even opinions of other users you read on forums or rating websites sometimes sound like someone was paid to badmouth one hosting company and praise another. Maybe I’m paranoid, I don’t know. But it certainly seems like hosting business is a tough world where companies will do everything they can to get ahead of the game.
But what the hell is hosting anyway?
I suppose this is the question I should have answered at the beginning of my blog post. Hosting means storing all the data of your website on a computer so they could be accessed through the Internet. So technically it’s like renting a place on a hard drive. You can host your website from your own computer by they way. But it might not save you much money, and it definitely won’t save you time. That’s why many people prefer going to hosting companies that offer different plans depending on the type of service you’re looking for. This is where the confusing part starts. The majority of the hosting providers I know, automatically assume that they’re dealing with tech-savvy users who know what they’re doing. That’s why every time you go to their website you’ll probably be overwhelmed by a sheer amount of technical terms they throw at you. Dedicated hosting? VPS? Cloud hosting? How could you possibly know all that stuff (unless you work in this field)? The answer is simple: you don’t have to know it. All you need to know is what kind of website do you need and what do you need it for. Do you need a simple one-page portfolio website? Do you plan to blog? How many monthly visitors will you have? Those are the questions you have to ask yourself. And this is where you can actually test your future hosting provider. Don’t know what this or that means? Ask their tech support! Technical support in my opinion is the single most important thing when it comes to choosing the hosting company for your translation business. Because when something is not working on my website, I need to know I have someone I can rely on. This is actually the reason I had to break up with my previous hosting provider. They outsourced their technical support to India and not only it was hard to understand them, but the level of their technical knowledge was so low that most of the time I was able to resolve my problems myself. Which brings me to this:
7 Important Things To Look At When Choosing Hosting Provider For Your Translation Business
1) Price. That’s an obvious one, isn’t it? The rule of thumb here: not too cheap and not too expensive. Jumping on the cheapest offer you can get isn’t necessarily the best idea, while overpaying isn’t very smart as well. Everything below 3-4 bucks is considered cheap. Everything above 15 bucks is way too expensive for your needs. My golden mean? I say around 9-10 USD per month should be enough. I’m paying 8 USD at the moment and I’m quite happy with the type of service and extra features I get for that kind of money. An important tip here: many hosting providers offer huge discounts at sign up because this is how they roll. Try looking past those discounts at the real monthly cost. This is what you will be paying after your first year. Unless you’re planning to change your hosting provider every year which is a lot of hassle if you ask me.
2) Knowing your needs. Are you planning on having one or multiple websites? How many domain names you want to register? How big is your traffic going to be? The answers to those questions will determine what hosting plan will suit you best. Those are the questions sales reps normally ask you when you’re shopping around at different hosting companies. To tell you the truth, you won’t have that much of the traffic. In the last month, I had something around 1000 unique visitors. That’s an incredible achievement by our industry standards. But this happens because I have a blog where I share something useful and actively promote it in social networks. It’s not like those 1000 people turned into my customers. If your only goal is to promote your services with just one single page then this number will be much less. So forget about those expensive cloud hosting plans and other fancy types of hosting services. The very basic hosting plan should suffice for the hosting needs of your translation business.
3) 24/7 technical support. Like I’ve said before, it’s the single most important thing for your website. Something not working? Your website is down? Have you been hacked? You’ll need a reliable support team to resolve all your issues quickly. Sometimes companies offer premium support feature for an extra fee (couple bucks a month). That way all your support tickets will be given the top priority. Sometimes companies offer premium support for free for a month or so. If you can get it for free I suggest you use it.
4) Website backups. Yes, you’re probably going to need this. Imagine you replaced or deleted some file by mistake or if your website stopped working because of the conflict between your theme and your new WordPress version after the update. Those issues can be easily resolved by restoring a backup copy of your website. Ask your hosting provider if they offer this type of service and whether it’s going to be an extra cost. Some companies include it in their plans, some don’t. I prefer to have this option enabled for my websites in case things go south or I get hacked. This way I won’t have to build everything from scratch again.
5) Room to grow. Although in the context of your translation business a shared hosting plan is pretty much everything you’ll ever need, you should ask your hosting provider if their plans offer scalability. Who knows, maybe you’ll be one of those bloggers with great marketing and business ideas and thousands of translators from all over the world will be looking up to you? Or perhaps you’ll be selling online courses and webinars on your website? Think about your future and decide whether you’ll need more power and whether your hosting provider can meet your needs.
6) Be careful with reviews. What I’ve learnt is that you have to take every online review with a grain of salt. There are a lot of websites who simply earn money by being affiliated with this or that hosting company. There are a lot of fake reviews out there as well. Some are obvious some are not. Try looking at the fine print or even better: ask people you know what hosting provider they can recommend. For example, I can recommend Siteground. This is my hosting company and I’m happy with them. They offer great premium support, my websites certainly run faster with them than with my previous hosting provider and there is also a ton of cool extra features, like daily backups and weekly hack alerts. They also offer free domain name registration when you sign up for one of their plans. And they offer pretty large discounts (around 60% off) for new signups at the moment. You can check them out here. I also suggest using the cool tool called Who Is Hosting This. It will tell you who is hosting this or that particular website. How can you use it? Well, let’s say you like someone’s website. It’s fast, and it works smoothly on all devices. By typing the domain name into the search bar you’ll see what hosting company that person is using to host his/her website.
7) Hosting your email address. Your email is important and you better ask your hosting company in advance what email solutions they offer. Most of the companies these days will allow you to host your own email and it will look something like this: yourname@yourdomain.com. That’s what most companies do. And this is what you need. But it’s better to play it safe and to ask in advance in order to avoid any unpleasant surprises in the future.
Your Homework
Alright, this is probably my longest post to date. Choosing a hosting provider for your translation business is an important step indeed and I want you to think very carefully before you sign up for a plan. Don’t fall for the cheapest offer. Be careful with reviews, it’s better to ask people you know and trust. Don’t lock yourself into 2-3 year contracts. Look at all the features you get and ask your host’s technical support questions if you don’t understand something. I know it’s hard but it’s an important decision you will have to make. This is an investment into your translation business so make it count.
In my next blog post I’ll talk about WordPress and HTML templates, as well as other content management systems (aka CMS). We’ll discuss their pros and cons for your translation business and I’ll explain what CMS I’m using and why. Check out the home reading material as well. There are some pretty useful tips in there.
Home Reading
1) How To Pick Up The Right Web Host: 15-Point Checklist
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18 Comments
Kevin · April 2, 2015 at 6:05 pm
This is a great article. Dmitry, you did your research on this!
I like how you addressed the need for backups. This is crucial, and you only need to break your website once before you realize how valuable it is. If you update your site regularly, you want to do it at least weekly, in my opinion.
Although you said anything over $15 is too much for your needs, if you have the means and your site is important enough (can’t afford any downtime), I personally like the WordPress hosting over at wpengine.com. They start at $30/month and you’ll need to use an email service like Google Apps for Business (which is great anyway). But they offer one-click restore, staging site to test your site changes and a lot more security and speed features. It’s high end. But, of course, it’s quite a bit more expensive, so if you’re new to the game, definitely try one of the cheaper options. Host Gator offers good customer support for the affordable price range. There are plenty out there to choose from.
Well done on this article. I hope this adds something to the conversation!
Dmitry Kornyukhov · April 2, 2015 at 6:25 pm
Thanks Kev! Yep, I’ve heard some great things about WPEngine too (probably from you :). Although in my opinion $30 a month is a bit of an overkill (well, at least for translators who need something relatively simple). I’m sure they offer some top-notch services for that price but the real questions is: will you be able to use them to the full potential? Not everyone is tech-savvy enough to understand and use all those extra features you get with that 30-dollar plan. When I was choosing my current hosting provider I’ve spent days doing my research, comparing plans, reading reviews, talking to tech support. And I ended up choosing the wrong provider anyway. This is where an article like this would come in handy 🙂 My idea is simple: you have to understand what you’re paying for. The last thing you want to do is to spend money on something you don’t need or don’t use. That’s why I urge people to ask questions before buying anything. It’s really hard when there are so many offers and choices out there. I just hope someone will find my advice usefull and it would help them to choose the right hosting provider for their translation business.
Frederik · April 3, 2015 at 8:00 am
Hi Dmitry,
Very interesting stuff 🙂 I have an appointment with a sales rep of a local hosting company in a few days. Having read your article, I now know what to ask him specifically and what I have to watch out for.
Great tip to use Who Is Hosting This, by the way, I’ll unleash it on some of my favorite (translation) websites.
Thanks!!
Dmitry Kornyukhov · April 3, 2015 at 6:11 pm
You’re welcome Frederik! Let me know how it goes and feel free to ask any questions. Happy Easter!
Frederik · April 6, 2015 at 12:57 pm
Hi Dmitry,
I was wondering if there is a tool that does the opposite of Who Is Hosting This. I mean, is there a way to find out which website are hosted by a particular hosting company?
Also, thank you, Sarah, for mentioning Proz, as I was considering that option too.
Dmitry Kornyukhov · April 7, 2015 at 2:02 pm
Hi Frederik, I’m not sure about doing the opposite. But perhaps you can ask your host to give examples? Although I doubt they will do that.
Sarah · April 3, 2015 at 8:30 pm
Thank you for this very useful article! When I was deciding about hosting a year ago there were no such articles about hosting written especially for translators so I read guides to hosting written for a general audience.
Have you tried Proz.com hosting? It comes free with a Proz.com membership but only for one website. I was using it but I was not fond of their technical support. Once it took 5 days for them to reply to a question about DNS servers.
Do you think that the location of the host matters when it comes to our target market of clients? For example, if your target market is Germany would you be best going with a host their, or if your target market is Russia go for a hosting company there?
Dmitry Kornyukhov · April 3, 2015 at 11:36 pm
Hi Sarah,
I’m glad you find my articles useful! I think I’ve tried using Proz.com hosting service but it wasn’t up to my standard. When it comes to hosting I prefer going to companies who specialize in it and know what they’re doing. As for the location of your hosting company it doesn’t really matter. What matters is where their data centers are located. You can ask your hosting company about that. For example my hosting provider has data centers is US, Europe and Asia. Since my target audience and my customers come from Canada and US mostly, my data center is located in US. Many hosting providers allow you to choose your data center’s location when you sign up for hosting plan.
Diana Collins · April 3, 2015 at 10:38 pm
Hi Dmitry,
I love your explanation. I am kind of new on this stuff and I am looking for reliable information. Yours is very easy to understand. Thanks a lot 🙂
Dmitry Kornyukhov · April 3, 2015 at 10:48 pm
Thanks Diana! Yep, it’s kinda the whole point. Make it as easy as possible. Most people are normally afraid of trying something new but not me. I like learning and sharing the knowledge with my fellow translators. If I could built my own website that means you can do it too! Have a lovely weekend and Happy Easter!
Shai · April 6, 2015 at 7:45 pm
Great article, Dmitry.
1) In relation to points 1 and 2 that you’ve made, I’d add: Stay away from unlimited plans. There is no unlimited in website hosting (in IT in general, and in life) – and often the unlimited plans are the most restricting ones. Pick a reliable plan that meets your need and costs a reasonable amount (like in translation and other services, too cheap comes at a price).
Also, focus on what you need, not the bells and whistles that you may think you need. Most personal blogs/brochure type of websites don’t need a much.
Always look for special offers (promotions or coupons – prefer the account lifetime offers over the one that apply only to the first billing cycle) before signing up. A good place to start is at the Shared Hosting Offers section (the type of hosting most users need when they start) of WebHostingTalk (there is also a section for VPS hosting), but a simple web search could yield other offers. With that said, once you found a good deal and a good host – support them and don’t try to haggle just because you might have seen someone else offering the same for less or more for the same price.
2) At the time of this writing, I’d recommend against using the services of any hosting brand that is owned and operated by Endurance International Group, Inc. (EIG). They are basically the hosting equivalent of the big translation brokers.
3) Backups are important, but the backup service of most shared hosting services is not really that reliable (you usually don’t get a history, just the least daily/weekly copy) – shared hosting is affordable and what most users need, but it has some drawbacks. Better to backup manually (especially for websites that don’t change much) or pay for this service. And if you are using your host’s email server, make sure to backup your email using a program like MailStore Home, or an email client.
4) Don’t register the domain name with the host. If you will have some kind of disagreement with the host, you really don’t want your domain to become a hostage. A professional and ethical host won’t play these games, but better not to take that risk.
5) If availability or any other aspect of the service are extremely important, pay monthly so you could leave anytime you want without committing to more than a month in advance. However, because most website we are talking about year don’t need a whole lot, and barring extreme cases, an annual subscription is a good idea: the most affordable, and you don’t really take a huge risk. But never commit to more than one year in advance, never! Things can change rapidly, and a great host can become garbage very quickly for all sorts of reason.
6) If you target a clients from a specific region, better to have the website hosted as close to them as possible (many shared hosts offer a server in few data-centers in the US and Europe). But for static websites, or smaller websites in general that don’t get huge traffic each day, this is really not critical – especially with CDNs and caching in place.
7) I cannot agree more about the point about support. When a hosting offer is too cheap, usually it comes at the expense of support (and other technical aspects). With shared hosting you never get VIP type of support, for obvious reasons, but you do want someone to answer the phone or reply to a support ticket within a reasonable amount of time – and even more importantly, that the problem will be looked at and solved.
Dmitry Kornyukhov · April 7, 2015 at 2:30 pm
Wow! Thanks a lot for your input Shai! I’m sure a lot of people will find this information very useful. I agree with your point of monthly payments. It makes things much more easier when your hosting provider goes bad (sadly that’s what happened to me with my previous host).
Lingvopedia · April 21, 2015 at 9:38 am
Thanks for this nice article.
Dmitry Kornyukhov · April 21, 2015 at 2:19 pm
You’re welcome guys!
Frederik · April 28, 2015 at 11:04 pm
Hi Dmitry,
I just ended a 30 min chat session with a Siteground employee. Their support is really great and it got me convinced that they are really a good and reliable hosting company. Plus, your own site runs fast and still has a lot of features, so I’m thinking about registering with Siteground as well.
Thanks again for your great advice and for sharing your experiences with us, websiteless translators 🙂
Dmitry Kornyukhov · April 29, 2015 at 1:56 am
Hey Frederik! My pleasure! Glad I could help. Siteground is a pretty great provider. Had no problems with them so far 🙂
Steven · May 16, 2015 at 7:12 pm
What about hosts-with-webbuilders such as Wix or Weebly. Would you recommend any of these? They carry more restrictions, but they do take the hassle out of building a site.
Dmitry Kornyukhov · May 16, 2015 at 9:16 pm
Hi, Steven. Thanks for your comment, I haven’t tried them but I’m generally not a big fan of such websites. Their resources are limited, there are not so many design options and some hidden costs. They do take the hassle of web-design. But I like to be in control of everything what’s going on with my website: analytics, SEO, speed, etc. Even if those websites have these features, you’ll probably have to pay for them and end up paying more that with WordPress.