Over the past few months, the world as we know it has drastically changed. Everything we thought we knew is no longer as certain. The way we shop, do business, and relate to others has changed.
If you are looking to build a website for yourself or your business, you are not alone. Even once COVID-19 is a thing of the past, many of its effects on our daily lives are going to remain. People will still use online portals more than ever before, even if they can go into a store or office in person.
When building a website, web hosting is going to be the first thing you need to secure. Web hosting is the most fundamental piece of the puzzle. But how is web hosting going to change?
There are a number of changes in web hosting industry trends that are already happening. They are even more likely to continue through the end of this crisis. Look out for these trends when searching for the right web hosting.
High bandwidth
Over the past few years, website owners have begun to realize that they need more bandwidth than they ever imagined. With billions of people online, even local websites can receive millions of visitors. No matter how niche you are, there is a huge audience out there for you.
Shared hosting plans are cheap and convenient, but when many websites on the servers are experiencing high levels of traffic, they become slow and may suffer from downtime. Web hosting providers are realizing that they need to provide more bandwidth protection on their shared hosting, and that more and more people want affordable VPS hosting.
With everyone stuck at home, traffic to websites around the world has shot up. While it will certainly drop once the crisis is over, we can expect to see some of the gains remain.
Cloud hosting is becoming the norm
Hosting plans have generally depended on the existence of individual physical servers. Transitioning to cloud-based hosting has been taking a while. However, cloud hosting has become increasingly popular over the past few years, as website owners have realized that the cloud is more reliable, flexible, and modern.
COVID-19 is only taking us further into a world in which physical location no longer matters as much. Having to host your website on a traditional server, rather than using the resources of a number of servers, suddenly seems incredibly archaic. We can expect to see a much larger migration towards cloud hosting, with new site owners using it as a first port-of-call.
Mobile is key
We all use our mobiles a lot more than we probably would like. For better or worse, we now live in a smartphone-dominated world. The internet these days is mostly accessed from mobile devices. This has been true for years already and shows no signs of slowing down. Web hosting providers have had to adapt to offer the best plans for mobile devices.
Now that we are all home, it is possible that some people are using laptops or PCs more than their phones to access the internet. However, any changes in this regard are unlikely to last once we have our freedom back.
The web hosting industry has had to adapt to a world that is changing at an impossible pace. Keep an eye on these trends – they’re likely to have a permanent impact on the industry as a whole.
