Planning to have a WordPress Blog or Website? Great! With the installation requiring only a few clicks within the hosting control panel to go online, setting up a brand new website is just a matter of minutes. Sounds easy, right? Not really!
There are more important factors to take into consideration than just the initial installation and setup when it comes to building a WordPress website. One of the key components of the WordPress site that is often overlooked is web hosting.
A website needs a good web hosting service to be successful, and hence it is essential to choose your WordPress hosting service wisely. Wondering what should be considered while selecting a web host? Here are some simple and effective tips to help you out.
Consider Your Website Needs
Before jumping into the plunge, you must know the requirement of your website. Things like your current website traffic, the chances of growth of your website and scalability plays a crucial role while determining the host for your site. Determine your budget and other hosting requirements first to head in the right direction.
Look For Scalability
You invest your time and money for creating your site and want to watch it grow. Hence, you should check whether the host has flexible plans to accommodate all kinds of sites.
Look for different hosting packages and find the one that fits the bill. Check their description to see whether it has a WordPress-specific mention and ask if they offer free consultations to help you get the right plan.
Keep an Eye Out For Security
With the increasing stories of sites getting breached, enforcing security of the sites has become even more essential. Fortunately, there are many hosting providers that understand the importance of robust security measures and offer a number of server-level protections to keep your site secure.
To determine whether the WordPress web hosting company is secure or not, consider the following key points.
- Does the host provide firewall or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection systems?
- Whether they help the clients to set up SSL certificates
- Do they offer automated backup solutions?
Go through the feature list of the host for each plan and do a little bit of research. If the company that you’re eyeing found to be careless with their security in the past, take it as a red flag and look for the one with better security.
Check Whether They Offer Timely Support
The WordPress web hosting should offer top-notch timely support to their customers. However, in reality, it is not always the case. Instead of wasting hours in troubleshooting, you’ll want to have a host with good customer support.
WordPress errors like the white screen of death, internal server errors and compatibility issues are common these days. Hence, you need a host who can help you with WordPress-specific troubleshooting. Check whether the web hosting company you’re considering offer substantial documentation and WordPress-specific advice to its users.
Read Customer Reviews
The best way to determine whether the hosting service is reliable or not is to check the customer reviews. Go through the reviews on their website and get to know what the customers have to say about the uptime and speed.
Find out whether its customers are satisfied with the plan and service they offer. Gauge what they are doing right and where they’re dropping the ball.
Don’t Fall For the Unlimited Hosting
No doubt cost is a big factor while picking the web hosting service for business but going for the hosting service just because it is the cheapest is not a good idea. Features and quality of the services also matter when selecting a host.
Although you may pay less in the beginning by choosing the cheapest host, you will end up getting less and paying a lot more in the long run.
It is easy to fall for tempting unlimited hosting plans, but before jumping in, you need to smell the roses. It sounds awesome but you need to think that is it really worth to jump right on board with unlimited hosting.
From storage to hardware, CPU power and RAM, almost everything is finite in this world. So, it is simply impossible to offer unlimited access to storage, bandwidth or other computer resources. In reality, unlimited is nothing but just a tricky industrial term sprinkled with caveats.
Take Features and Performance into Consideration
Guaranteed uptimes, abundant disk space, adequate bandwidth and fast servers are some of the key performance features to look for while choosing a web host. If a website frequently suffers from slowness or downtime, it can never be successful.
Some web hosts offer many extra features like free WordPress installer, domain name, advertising credits, and backup service in their web hosting packages.
The Bottom Line
Choosing a reliable WordPress hosting company is crucial for running a successful online business. With a good host, your website will load faster and stay up and running all the time.
Do a bit of research, analyze online reviews, make host comparisons and pick the one that suits your business. Keep the above tips in mind while looking for a web hosting service, and you will make the right decision.
