Over 500 new websites are built and developed every day using WordPress, and most of the 100 fastest-growing US businesses use WordPress. Since WordPress continues to be hot with no signs of cooling down soon, you must find and hire the best provider of WordPress hosting services.
Now, why can’t you just choose any provider to host your WordPress website? it’s because the wrong one might end up harming your website, such as security breaches, site crashes, loading speeds, and other problems.
Since your ultimate goal here is the success of your website and increased sales make sure you follow the tips below to find the right provider who can do exactly just that.
Table of Contents:
Check the Security Measures
Maintaining the security of your website is one of the most crucial jobs of a hosting provider. Some good security measures they should have in place include:
- Brute force defense
- Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection
- Domain Privacy
- Firewalls
- Server hardening
- SSL
- Virus scanning
See to it that you understand and know how much of the security of your website is being handled by the hosting provider and how much will be left in your care. Generally speaking, you will be more responsible for maintaining the security of your website if you choose a cheaper plan.
Choose a Rock-Solid Customer Support
Don’t forget to check the customer support of your chosen provider of WordPress hosting. One of the best ways to vet it is to contact the customer support team before you buy your hosting plan. It will help you test and determine how helpful and fast they respond.
You also need to have the assurance that you can reach out to them in the most convenient way for you. Identify how they deal with support requests. Is email or phone support available? Do they use a chatbot or ticketing system? See to it that you also check their response times.
Search for Special Items
When it comes to special items, it’s all about what suits your business. The broad categories of the different service types have a subcategory of unmanaged and managed hosting plans. Unmanaged plans are fine if your budget is tight or you prefer taking things into your own hands.
If you have a mission-critical website, such as an eCommerce site, you will be better off with a managed solution. The following are other special items to look for in managed hosting solutions:
- 24/7 WordPress support
- Frequent and automatic backups
- Automatic WordPress core, plugin, and theme updates
- Automatic WordPress installation
- Malware removal and cleaning
- Network and server security monitoring
- WordPress database optimization
If you need a fully outsourced solution, the best WordPress hosting provider will also offer website enhancements including SEO, analytics reporting, and new forms and pages.
List All Critical Features
Many features often come with hosting platform options, which include the things you need and don’t need. You can also try to create a checklist of the needs and wants of your unique business and website.
The selection process will be easier for you if you prepare a list of your like-to-haves and must-haves. Below are a few items to serve as your guide:
- Are backups automatic? If yes, how often?
- Do you need to pay extra or are backups already included?
- How much bandwidth do you need depending on your expected traffic?
- Is there access control or full root access?
- Is a domain name included in the package or is it extra?
- Is a control panel available?
- How many websites do you plan to have?
- How much memory do you need?
- Is there an SSL or Secure Sockets Layer?
- How much disk space or storage is available?
- Will the host deal with site migration? Is it free?
- Are WordPress plugins and core updates included?
Considering all these things might feel a bit overwhelming so you need a priority list to make things easier for you.
Pick a Pricing That Suits Your Budget
It is also important to be comfortable with your chosen WordPress hosting plan’s pricing. Don’t forget that there might be additional expenses for your WordPress site so your budget must be able to accommodate any extra needs. These items include:
- Custom domain name registration
- Freelance content creators and contributors
- New plugins
- Subscription fees for e-commerce services
A cloud-hosted or shared solution should be appropriate for simple websites with low traffic and infrequent updates. You will also want to opt for a managed dedicated host for e-commerce sites with lots of frequent updates and traffic. While this can be a bit pricey, you can be sure it will be worth it.
Make Reliability and Speed Your Priority
The loading time of your website is an important aspect of user experience. Since Google always wants the best experience for its users, it is another critical factor in the SEO efforts of your website.
Your pages must have a super fast loading time, preferably in less than one or two seconds. Any time longer than this will lead to most visitors leaving a website. Statistics also show that most customers end up abandoning a website if it loads for more than three seconds. Lengthy loading times mean missed opportunities, and thus, missed revenue as well.
How can you tell if you are getting the reliability and speed you need from a hosting provider? First, don’t forget to inquire about the uptime percentage. Try to aim for an uptime guarantee of at least 99.97%. It is around 150 minutes of downtime all year long. Sadly, there is no such thing as 100% uptime so you should aim for a high uptime percentage. It leads to the need for speed.
See to it that your chosen WordPress hosting provider uses a CDN or content delivery network. The CDN must also have servers in critical countries for your business. When the provider has more server locations, your website will also load faster for anyone visiting it no matter where they are in the world.
