In many ways, the process of choosing a hosting for your WordPress website is similar to choosing a roommate. Make the wrong choice and you will find yourself in a stressful and unpredictable situation, not knowing what sort of issue might come up down the road.
Fortunately, we are here to cut down any problems you might face and help you out in the process of picking a hosting company. We will start by explaining a little bit about WordPress and what to look for when you are searching for a provider that has WordPress hosting plans.
WordPress
We have all heard of WordPress one way or another. It’s a known and popular platform that functions as a content management system. In other words it enables you to create a website and post, edit, update content on it.
WordPress is one of the most customisable platforms out there, offering many different ways and options for you to edit and adjust how your website will look and work. Also, it is open-sourced so it’s great for people that are both tech-savvy and not.
Now let’s look out the different types of WordPress Hosting and what to look for when choosing one.
WordPress hosting
There are several types of hosting. We have cloud, VPS, shared, and dedicated hosting. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. Also, we have two subcategories, unmanaged and managed hosting.
In terms of price: The cheapest out of all are shared and cloud hosting, followed by the virtual private server and the dedicated hosting as the most expensive one. Note, if you want to have a managed version for either one of these, you would have to pay a premium price.
In terms of hosting environment: some of these hosting have shared resources, as the name suggests, shared hosting is one of them, accompanied by cloud hosting. Once again let’s look at this as a roommate situation, multiple people, one housing. Each one has its own private space and they all share the same kitchen and other amenities.
Then, when it comes to VPS hosting, users share the server but their websites are separated from each other. Think of this as a close-gated community. You can customize your interior to your liking but there are still rules that you need to stick to by being part of the community. Lastly, a dedicated server. This is where you have complete control and can customize everything to your liking.
How to find a hosting provider
Since our focus in this article is on WordPress, you will need to find a hosting that works with WordPress. Here are some things that you pay attention to when searching for WordPress-optimized hosting.
Pricing and budget
Whenever you are looking for a hosting plan, keep in mind the budget that you have at hand. Choosing a plan that is within your budget is highly important. There are other costs associated with having a WordPress website, such as: additional plug-ins, e-commerce services, domain name, etc. Therefore you need shouldn’t spend all your money on hosting.
Note, a shared host or a cloud host solution will do just fine for a website that has low-to-moderate traffic. On the other hand, you need to consider a dedicated host solution if you are considering an e-commerce website with high-traffic and constant updates. It will come at a price but it’s the best way to go.
Customer Support
When choosing a WordPress hosting company you need to make sure the company provides great customer support. The best way to do this is to get in touch with their customer support before subscribing to a hosting plan. Find out the way they process requests, how you can get in touch with them, meaning do they offer phone calls or just email support, and make a note of their response time.
Security
In addition, we need to have a look at the company’s security measures in place. It’s their most important task, keeping your website secure. There are many ways to accomplish this, such as: firewalls, SSL, DDoS, scanning for viruses, and other security measures.
Note that the cheaper the hosting, the more security responsibilities you will have, and vice versa.
Speed and Reliability
Lastly, we recommend prioritizing speed and reliability when choosing a hosting company. They are a key component of each user’s experience. The reason behind it is that nobody wants to spend more than they should have to when they are researching for some information or just browsing the net.
Keep in mind if your website performs well it will boost your search engine optimization (SEO) by ranking it higher on the browser’s search results.
Conclusion
Choosing a WordPress hosting plan as well as a provider is a process within itself. You need to find a plan that fulfills your resource requirements and a provider that will offer excellent support, among other things. Take your time before you decide so you don’t end up with a contract that you are unhappy with.
