WordPress is the dominant content management system (CMS) on the market today. It has many features that appeal to both experienced and novice users, but its biggest advantage is that it is totally free and open source.
Whether you are starting a new personal blog or a commercial site, it shouldn’t take a lot of thinking to choose to build it with WordPress, and it looks like you’ve already made the right choice there.
However, when it comes to finding the right web hosting provider for your WP site, you may feel at sea surrounded by endless choices — and the more reviews you read, the more confused and less decided you become.
Truth is, there isn’t a single web host out there that has it all. Even experienced webmasters go through the same tedious process when searching for the most suitable hosting service for their next site project.
There are several criteria to take into account when choosing a hosting provider for WordPress. Let’s explain some of the most important ones in hopes of simplifying the selection process for you.
Cloud Technology
Many providers nowadays use cloud computing technology for its unmatched availability and scalability. Cloud servers are much more flexible than traditional server networks and more resilient to hardware failures.
Cloud-based hosting is more cost-effective than traditional hosting and can be readily scaled up or down on demand. If you expect your website to go through gradual periods of growth or if you expect to have frequent traffic spikes, you can save a lot of money with a flexible cloud hosting plan.
Fast Storage Devices
The type of storage devices your host’s servers are equipped with can have a significant impact on the performance of your website.
WordPress stores all of its data and content in a MySQL database kept on the server’s hard drive, and it constantly writes and reads data to and from the hard drive.
Using SSD storage drives for hosting WordPress sites has become a standard practice among the leading companies in the industry. The I/O rates of SSD drives are considerably higher than what outdated HDD drives can offer.
And what’s even faster than standard SSD is NVMe SSD. So if you are looking for the fastest experience, you should definitely opt for the latter.
Uptime Guarantee
Years ago, a 99% uptime guarantee was considered a big thing in the web hosting industry, but today, you shouldn’t settle for anything less than 99.9% guaranteed uptime.
If you are running an e-commerce website, every minute of downtime may cost you a lot of money in lost customers and sales. Frequent downtime is one of the main reasons many website owners change their hosting provider.
There are a few things a web host can do to offer the highest availability and uptime. These include having modern and well-maintained sever hardware, offering adequate CPU and RAM allocations for each account, having proper security systems in place, and around-the-clock proactive monitoring of the servers to fix any issues before they even lead to downtime.
Knowledgeable Support Team
Some companies have the best server hardware, but when you face a serious technical issue with your server or website, you’re left hassling with inexperienced support agents who may not even speak proper English!
A skilled and knowledgeable technical support team that is available 24/7 may come at an extra cost, but you’d realize that it’s well worth every penny when you need prompt technical assistance from an expert server admin.
If you want a more involved support service that can assist you with site-specific issues, such as theme and plugin configuration, code errors, and other site customizations, then you should look into managed WordPress hosting.
Small business owners find managed WordPress hosting more productive as the host takes care of most routine technical tasks of updating, backing up, securing and monitoring the performance of the website and server.
You can find several professional companies that exclusively focus on managed WordPress hosting and nothing else. If you are interested in learning more about how managed WordPress hosting can benefit your small business website, take a look at the detailed review published by Geek Hut on their Medium page.
Automated Backups
It only takes one sudden glitch to wipe out all of your website’s data and hard work. As a highly dynamic system that often makes use of several third-party plugins, WordPress is very susceptible to code errors and glitches. Sometimes, an innocent action like updating a plugin can break your website.
Keeping recent backups of your website’s files and database is of critical importance, and more so if it is a small business website that handles sensitive customer data. If the hosting plan does not include automated daily backups that you can easily restore, you better look elsewhere.
But even daily backups may not be safe enough for very dynamic websites, i.e. an active e-commerce site. In this case, you should consider keeping hourly backups. Additionally, having your site’s backups stored in a remote server is obviously safer than storing them locally.
Such advanced backup options may come at an extra cost, but that’s nothing compared to the potential cost of not having a recent backup when you need it.
Site and Server Security
Being the world’s top content management system makes WordPress a major target for hacking attempts and malware attacks. The more popular your website is, the bigger target it becomes for various types of security threats.
Web hosting services that are optimized for WordPress usually include different security enhancements aimed at protecting both your server and website. Look for companies that offer automatic scanning and protection from malware, brute force attempts, DDoS attacks, spam bots, and other potential threats.
You can learn more about hardening the security of your WordPress website in a comprehensive article covering this topic on the official WordPress website.
Takeaway
Each WordPress website may have different technical requirements that must be fulfilled by the web hosting provider. Finding the right host for your website may take long hours of research, and it should.
In this article, we discussed some of the major characteristics of a reliable WordPress hosting company. These include utilizing a high-performance server infrastructure, monitoring the network and servers for optimal uptime, having a skilled and fast support team, keeping automatic backups of your website, and taking the necessary measures to secure your website and server.
Keep all of the above-mentioned points in mind when checking out different providers, and take your time to research other users’ reviews before you make a final choice.
