Like getting the foundation of a new building right, picking any of the best web hosting services is crucial. However, even the best web hosting services might not fully support WordPress. So, it is better to go for a full WordPress hosting service if you are going to be working more using WordPress. Questions of what features you should look for in a WordPress hosting service are ones that you must carefully ponder about.
The success or failure of your company is quite dependent on the web host you use. So, how do you avoid making the wrong choice of WordPress hosting service? That’s what this article covers. We will be looking at the essential features to consider while starting a blog on WordPress. Let’s get straight to it!
1. Budget/Cost
The first thing to look out for when choosing the best WordPress hosting service is the price tag on the features it offers. Normally, the first instinct is to always check out for the free hosting services, but if you want to really make money from your website you should go for a cheap hosting solution. You always get what you pay for. If you use free or almost free web hosts, your site will be slower, sometimes splintered with ads you have no control over, and your earning potential is limited.
However, pricing does not automatically denote quality hosting service, and it only indicates the possibility. What qualifies a hosting web service as excellent are the features it provides. From the quality of support and security of the servers, take your time to contrast the features.
Before you finally decide on the price offer that is the best, compare the number of views your page gets per month together with the income you generate from the page.
A Good hosting service should have options for an upgrade as time goes on. So, you can always go for better features. For now, focus on only the ones your website needs.
2. Page Loading Speed
With the inclusion of your website in the considerations for Google rankings, having fast loading speed for pages is now more important than ever. Moving to a faster host is also one of the best ways to increase page speed.
Also, slow loading pages can negatively affect the user experience and visitors’ engagements with your website. With improvements in internet browsing speeds, people have now become used to fast-loading sites. That is why delays in website loading time usually leads to a loss of web visitors. Any loading time beyond 3 seconds can affect your conversion rates.
You can check the speed performance of a web host provider with the right website speed tools. With software tools like WebPageTest, Pingdom and GTmetrix, a website speed can be determined.
Although a good hosting service is expected to provide fast page loading times, the number of installed plugins really matters. Dozens of activated plugins or poorly written website themes can have drastic effects on a website’s performance.
3. Server Uptime
While smaller companies might not feel the effect, server downtime could result in huge revenue losses for the bigger firms. A typical case study is Amazon, which lost as much as $66,240 of potential revenues per minute during their 30-minute downtime in 2013. Hence, the stability in uptime of your website host is an essential factor to consider when looking out for a service provider. While we could agree that it is practically difficult for any WordPress service host to guarantee a 100% uptime, a 99.95% industry-standard up to 99.99% should be your bargain range.
A case study of the different website hosts’ uptime scores is recommended to determine the WordPress hosts with the best uptime deals. The use of monitoring tools for web servers could also confirm what the uptime scores say.
4. Scalability/Upgrade Potential
Website growth and increase in web traffic often prompt the need for an upgrade in the features or web capacity provided by your WordPress hosting service. For instance, start-up individuals and enterprises whose websites are not a source of income can consider one of the best shared hosting plans to be a good bargain. The shared hosting provider plans are affordable, although they offer low flexibility with available resources being shared with other users. However, as the website begins to have higher engagements and many daily visitors, the need for a scale-up in performance and features arises. For such cases, a shared hosting plan might be insufficient for the successful management of on-site activities.
Other reasons for an upgrade could be a search for a larger storage capacity. Quest for faster response time could also be a reason. With many computers that run on the same server, there is a resulting queue that often leads to bad networks.
There are many other possible reasons, but one thing is important – your WordPress service provider should have flexible plans that cover additional features.
5. Customer Support
One of the top benefits of having a WordPress hosting provider rather than hosting your website all by yourself is the access to online help when you need it. Therefore, it has always been best to make sure the web host service you would be signing up for is one that cherishes its customers. A good hosting service support team should keep enhancing its customer support strategies. Such an excellent support choice should also be readily available whenever they are needed. Sudden downtime in operations or other issues that put your website on hold can be very frustrating. The way out of such is to have a support team that can be instantly accessed. Good WordPress service providers understand this and work to ensure your issues are resolved as soon as possible.
To determine if your preferred choice of web host can provide you with stellar WordPress customer support, first verify that the service host provider has WordPress plans. Another way to identify WordPress hosting providers that have great support is by checking their help documentation. You can also consider subscribing to any of the best WordPress maintenance services to save you the hassle of dealing with many technical issues.
6. Security
With a higher acceptance of online processes and digital activities, the risk of data breaches or hacks has also increased. Hence, security is a top feature to look out for when choosing a WordPress hosting service. Many of the leading WordPress hosting services understand this and include a tough WordPress application firewall that prevents unauthorized access from bots and hackers.
Further security measures are security WordPress toolkits that serve as a virtual assistant that aids with scanning your site for security concerns and offers recommendations for necessary updates. Asides from the security features installed by the website service host, you should always use the latest security applications that help to protect your website.
For cases of an eventual security breach, a backup service can be used. Daily or periodic backups should also be carried out to minimize the amount of data lost in emergencies.
Therefore, the basic security features to consider are the presence of a firewall web protection service, efficient backup systems, availability of free SSL certificates for end-to-end encryption of data between server and user, and previous record of security breaches and level of the effect or data exposed.
7. Content Management System
A content management system (CMS) is a software tool that aids in creating, managing and modifying the contents for a website without any special prior knowledge of coding.
Rather than writing background codes for setting up a system to publish and edit web content, the content management system handles all that. With a good CMS, you only write your content on a simple interface like Microsoft Word, and that is all.
Also, uploading and managing media files and images is easy as well. It is done by browsing through the media library rather than direct interaction with the web server. You can also decide to use top WordPress plugins add galleries to your website pages and posts. Or, perhaps the chosen WordPress theme has a built-in image functionality.
Make sure to optimize your image sizes. The utilization of a content management system offers the leisure and ease of creating and managing your page and web content all in one place.
8. WordPress Specific Features
Distinguishing specific WordPress hosts from the general WordPress hosts can be confusing since they might offer WordPress services. For instance, a web host provider that offers Linus Hosting services should definitely host a WordPress site successfully. However, there are some services provided specifically by WordPress service hosts, such as WordPress patching, WordPress optimization etc.
Asides from these added services that specific WordPress service hosts provide, they offer a higher level of experience since they are more focused on WordPress activities. Even if it seems they are the same as the general website hosts, the assurance of meeting your specific expectations is enough.
9. Reputation & Reviews
Hosting firms that have existed for a long time have already built a reputation for themselves. Either positive or negative, current and old customers will always have something to say about the hosting companies and their services. Most of these WordPress companies know this, so they have a dedicated section for customer reviews and feedback.
One recommendation would be to focus on the reviews that discuss the quality of specific services they enjoyed. These are quality reviews because they give an idea of the features the WordPress host provides. By carefully going through these quality customer feedbacks, the decision-making process is easier.
Conclusion
There are many WordPress hosting company options to select from. However, it is expected that this article has helped to explain the significance of the crucial features to consider. By putting the above features in mind and comparing what you plan to use your website for, you should avoid making the wrong choice of a WordPress hosting service.
