How to choose web hosting in Belgium: 7 criteria to check

First, which type of hosting?

There are three main families of hosting. What sets them apart is mostly who takes care of the technical side.

A VPS gives more freedom, but you become responsible for updates, security and backups. For the vast majority of freelancer and small business websites, good shared or managed hosting is the right choice.

1. Where is your data?

Your website and email contain personal data: contact forms, customer accounts, orders. The GDPR makes you responsible for protecting it, and your hosting provider acts as a processor under Article 28.

In practice, ask:

• which country the servers for the website, the email and the backups are in;
• whether the provider supplies a data processing agreement (DPA);
• which subprocessors it uses itself, for example for backups or spam filtering.

A provider with servers in the European Union makes this easier, and it is also a selling point for your own customers.

2. Performance

A slow website drives visitors away and hurts your search ranking: Google measures page experience with the Core Web Vitals, including how fast the main content appears. Part of it depends on your website, part on the hosting.

On the hosting side, look at:

• the type of storage: NVMe drives are much faster than old hard drives;
• the PHP versions on offer if you use WordPress: a recent version is faster and still maintained;
• whether caching and HTTP compression are included;
• the distance between the servers and your visitors: for a Belgian audience, a server in Belgium or a neighbouring country answers faster than one in the United States.

Be wary of “unlimited” promises: the resources of a shared server are shared, and the terms of use almost always set a fair-use limit.

3. Security

The SSL certificate, the padlock in the browser, must be included and renewed automatically. Without it, browsers show a warning that drives your visitors away.

Also check:

• that the provider applies server security updates without you having to ask;
• that each website is isolated from the others, so that a hacked site does not infect yours;
• that incoming mail goes through spam and virus filtering;
• that the customer area offers two-factor authentication.

4. Backups

Ask how often the website is backed up, how long backups are kept, where they are stored and how a restore works. A backup stored on the same server as the website is useless if that server fails.

Even with a good provider, keep your own copy from time to time. The classic rule is three copies, on two different media, one of them away from the server: that is your safety net if something goes wrong.

5. Email addresses

An address such as contact@your-company.be inspires more trust than a Gmail address. Check how many addresses are included, the storage of each mailbox, whether there is spam filtering, and whether the addresses remain included after the first year.

To keep your messages out of spam folders, the provider must let you set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain. A good provider does it for you or explains how.

For a .be domain name, registration goes through a registrar accredited by DNS Belgium, either your hosting provider or another one. Check that the domain is registered in your name, not in the name of the provider or your agency: that is what lets you leave whenever you want.

6. Support

The day your website stops loading, the quality of support matters more than anything else. Ask three questions: in which language does it answer, through which channel (phone, chat, ticket) and how quickly.

A large provider often offers support around the clock, but you speak to a different person every time. With a small local provider, you often talk directly to the person who runs the servers, with more limited hours. Both can work: what matters is knowing what to expect before the outage.

7. The real price

Be wary of introductory prices. Before comparing, check:

• whether the price is shown excluding or including VAT (21% in Belgium);
• whether it is a promotional rate valid only for the first year;
• the commitment period, and whether you have to pay several years upfront;
• what is charged on top: SSL certificate, backups, email addresses after the first year, domain name renewal.

A common example: an offer shown at €2.99 a month excluding VAT for the first year costs €3.62 including VAT. If it goes up to €8.99 excluding VAT at renewal, you then pay €10.88 a month, three times as much. Our comparison of cheap web hosting in Belgium sets out these gaps for several providers.

A Belgian host or a large international provider?

Large international providers have very low introductory prices, extensive infrastructure and support you can reach at any hour. A Belgian host, often smaller, relies on other strengths: proximity, language, knowledge of the local context and more stable prices. Neither is better in absolute terms; it depends on what matters most to you:

• Language and context: a Belgian host knows Belgian VAT, .be domain names and what Belgian customers expect. You are served in French, and often in Dutch or German too.
• Invoicing: for a VAT-registered business, an invoice from a Belgian host carries Belgian VAT. There is no reverse charge to declare, as there is with a supplier established in another EU country.
• Applicable law: in a dispute, a contract under Belgian law and Belgian courts is easier to enforce than one governed by foreign law.
• Latency: a server in Belgium is a few milliseconds away from your Belgian visitors, which helps pages load quickly.
• Scale: a large provider absorbs an exceptional traffic peak more easily and offers more add-on services, such as servers on several continents.

If your website mainly targets a Belgian audience and you want a contact person who is easy to reach, a Belgian host is a logical choice. If you need a global presence or very specialised services, an international provider will suit you better. Either way, the seven criteria above stay the same.

Being able to leave easily

The best provider today may not be the best in three years. Before signing, make sure you can leave without depending on anyone:

• SFTP access to your files;
• an export of your database;
• a domain name in your own name, with the transfer code available on request;
• no exit fees and no commitment still running for months after you leave.

The 7 criteria at a glance