Тips to select best WordPress hosting
Web hosting is an important element of any successful website. Selecting a good WordPress hosting makes a huge difference in performance of your website, besides improving your SEO.
There are several types of WordPress hosting options available – Free, Dedicated, Shared, VPS, and Managed WordPress hosting. If you are confused about which one you should select, this blog post will come handy.
Shared here are some tips that would help you select right WordPress hosting for your WordPress website
Know your WordPress hosting requirements
You can never select right web hosting unless you know requirements of your WordPress website. So before you start evaluating web hosting service providers, it would be nice to you put all your website requirements needs on a paper and analyze them
- What kind of website are you creating?
- Would you need Windows applications?
- Will your website use a special version of PHP?
- Do you plan to use special software on your website?
- What traffic volume do you expect?
These are some of the basic questions you need to ask yourself. Depending on your website requirements, you can consider different WordPress hosting options.
Here are three popular WordPress hosting options and their comparison.
Shared Hosting
If you expect low traffic volume, you can consider Shared hosting, which is also the least expensive among the three. In shared hosting, your website will share the resources with other portals. The server level performance and security is managed by the service provider. One of the drawbacks of shared hosting is performance and behavior of your website may be affected sometimes.
Virtual Private Server
In VPS hosting plans, a separate virtual server is provided to your website. Your hard drive, memory, and processing power are not shared with other users. VPS servers are more powerful than Shared hosting but less powerful than dedicated servers. If your website needs any additional resources, your website hosting provider can provide them quickly without migrating your account.
Managed WordPress hosting
In this type of WordPress hosting, major technical aspects of web hosting are managed by service provider. You pay a specific fee to the service provider to use their infrastructure while the service provider manages the rest.
The idea of Managed WordPress web hosting is to keep the WordPress website management a hassle-free task for you. The service provider has a support team which can fix any issues with the performance of your website.
Now that you know the main types of WordPress hosting, let’s take a look at some important features that you should consider while choosing a WordPress hosting.
Important features to look for while selecting WordPress hosting
Server Uptime
Nothing is more important than Server uptime in web hosting. While most web hosting service providers offer an uptime guarantee of 99.5% and above, it is necessary to check their past server uptime scores and see whether the server uptime guarantee holds ground. Leading WordPress web hosting service providers publish their uptime records from time to time. Make sure to get the Server uptime records before selecting any service provider. The golden rule to follow: Server uptime below 99% is not acceptable.
Server upgrading options
A large number of WordPress blog owners go for free or shared hosting plans to keep costs low during the initial period. All website owners expect the traffic to grow within 2 to 3 years and they would need a powerful hosting plan to support the increased inflow of visitors. In such scenarios, the website hosting service provider should provide convenient options to upgrade your hosting plans without affecting your website availability and performance.
Costs/Pricing
You will find web hosting service providers offering low hosting sign up fees to host your domain on their server. Don’t get carried away by the lower hosting sign up plans. You need to also check the renewal costs that you would be paying after a year or two. Many web hosting service providers offer low hosting signup plans to lure customers and often charge higher renewal costs. It is an industry trend and you cannot do much about it. The only thing you can do is check the renewal costs, compare it with others and take your decision.
Performance and Speed
The performance of your website and the loading speed of pages are two crucial elements of user experience. The performance of your website greatly depends on the resources allocated. Make sure the service provider is using quality hardware that ensures uninterrupted service. Also, ensure that the CPU, memory and disk space are more than enough for your WordPress website.
There is no point in selecting a WordPress hosting plan that does not have necessary features. The hosting plan you select should offer good transfer speeds that will ensure the pages load faster and users are not kept waiting when they visit your WordPress blog or website. It is necessary that service provider is able to maintain assured transfer speeds even under high loads.
Quality customer support
Website issues are common, but you need to ensure they get resolved quickly. The quality of customer support provided by the web hosting service provider tells a lot about their reliability and professionalism.
If the customer support experience leaves a lot to be desired, it is a red flag. The best way to get an idea of their customer service is checking reviews and opinion of their existing and past customers. Don’t limit yourself to reviews on their websites only. Check other review websites to get a clear picture of their dedication and customer service.
Easy to use interface
The service provider should offer an easy to use interface to manage your WordPress website. This will ensure you can make the basic changes in your website without calling tech support every time. The user interface should offer access to important functions of your WordPress hosting. It doesn’t matter if the user interface is based on Plesk, cPanel or other third part control panel. The most important thing is it should be user-friendly.
Selecting the best WordPress web hosting would not be a difficult task if you focus on tips and important aspects mentioned above.
