See, when you open a web page, what literally happens is your browser sending a request to that website's server for all the images/text/whatever-under-the-sun is in that hyperlink. In effect, what you are doing is accessing whatever is in asdf.com/asdf/asdf/asdf. Conversely, the same is true when you have visitors on your own website.

When looking for a good web host, it's crucial to understand how many requests they can actively respond to. This is known as bandwidth. Generally speaking, web hosting providers have tiered packages that cater to different levels of "requests" per month. Although, not all of them offer a clear-cut "Package A is for websites with 100,000 visitors or more". So, be careful not to just pick the cheapest hosting provider you can find. Remember, you get what you pay for.

If you have thousands or even millions of visitors per month, the ability of your website's servers to respond to all those requests at the same time is not enough. You also need to make sure you can respond fast. When was the last time you waited 30 seconds for a web page to load?

In the last 10 years, with the evolution of the internet and the rise of global ecommerce giants, everyone desires instant gratification. From your Amazons to your Lifehack blogs, everyone is expecting they "deserve" to get what they've come for immediately. Consider this, a research by Google in 2018 revealed that 53% of mobile users leave a site that takes longer than three seconds to load.

Although a few of you might argue that speed depends on what you have on your page (a piece of text loads almost instantaneously compared to a video), the root of page speed is server capacity and server location. You can make optimization on your website, but if your web hosting provider's servers are in Europe and you're serving content to Australia, you'll inevitably get slowed down. The same could be true even if your web host's servers are in the same continent, but your web host overloads their capacity.

Finding a good web hosting provider means you need to also know where their servers are and how fast they can deliver data. Again, price is not everything, but it certainly matters.

Now let's say your website has speed, bandwidth, and ample storage for all those GIFs. Do you think that's enough? Not quite.

Realistically speaking, you can have all the best and most expensive pieces of hardware and technology in the world, but if you don't subject them to regular maintenance, they will end up breaking down sooner. This is what most web hosting providers avoid.

Sometimes, though, it can be a little too much. The internet never sleeps, and there's always someone awake. While a website is just a hobby for some, for most of you, it's an important sales and marketing channel. You wouldn't want the cash registers to shut down in the middle of a good day would you?

Keep in mind, all web hosts do server maintenance, but it's important to calculate how much impact it will make on your business. Make sure to consider uptime before you decide to pick a web host.