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Things to Consider When Choosing WordPress Hosting Provider

Things to Consider When Choosing WordPress Hosting Provider

There is more to creating a website then just simply working on the visual and textual content. Planning, scheduling and relocating resources are also important parts of building your online presence. Therefore, a website is a project and a serious one at that.

WordPress is a number one choice for many when it comes to web design, and rightly so. This website building tool became available in 2003 and changed the world of web design permanently. You can use free options or buy premium templates, it all depends on your needs and requirements, but at the end of the day, you will have a website.

Besides taking care of actually having a prepared website to publish, you have to think about web hosting services. Once you build your website, it’s only natural to have a place where to store it and publish it from. This is where WordPress web hosting comes in, but you also have to know what to consider in order to choose the right one.

 

Weigh the features you are offered

WordPress web hosting provider should attend to your desire to grow and expand in the future, not only to provide the features you need now. You will invest money and time in your website with certain goals in mind when doing so. So it’s only fitting that you choose the appropriate WordPress hosting service which will make sure you can develop your business and website at the required pace.

What you have to pay attention to are several things that a WordPress hosting provider offers. First, examine the plans that each provider offers. The prices may vary, as well as the features and service. In the end, you should look for those more inclined to provide a flexible service since that will allow you to adapt quickly to changes.

If you are unsure what plan is the best for your WordPress website, consult sales or support and you can even hire a third party to do this part for you. The more information you have before deciding upon a certain web-hosting plan, the better decision you will make for your website.

Check the size of the space they offer and how they plan to accommodate the expansion of your website and under what conditions. Make sure that they are specifically oriented to provide the hosting services for WordPress since that will be an asset. Free consult and support is also a great bonus, especially if you are not that experienced with hosting and what it entails.

 

Think about the security

With current scandal involving Mark Zuckerberg and selling Facebook user data, the world needs to know that their information is safe and kept confidentially. In addition, you as a website and business owner need to make sure that security measures on the WordPress hosting server are top notch.

Websites are breached all the time. That causes private information of their clients, customers and partners to leak and do financial and other damage. Data theft is one of the biggest dangers when you publish your website, so it’s only fitting to make sure you are well protected.

WordPress hosting providers know this and the majority do as much as they can to keep you protected, the only issue is if that is enough for you. That is why you should make yourself very clear what kind of security measures you expect and which hosting provider will make you the best offer.

There are several things you can focus on in order to determine if the WordPress hosting provider has appropriate security measures in place. Ask their customer service what they offer as protection – a firewall or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). Check with their support if they will help you with SSL certificates and does their offer include automated backups.

Additionally, do some research and see if you can find any information about the WordPress hosting company and security breach. This will not only show you how often they were breached but also how they handled the issue and improved their security measures.

 

Check the WordPress hosting support

Problems happen and you will have to deal with troubleshooting from time to time. Hopefully, you will find a WordPress hosting service provider who takes the support seriously. This means that their stuff is professional, available and knows WordPress to the detail.

Common errors are something that any support personnel should recognize immediately and give you the best solution to fix it. Errors like internal server errors, white screen of death and others experienced in most cases.

One of the ways to know if the hosting service company is right for you is to look for the ones specifically oriented towards the WordPress or pointing it out as one of their offers. At least this will help you narrow down the potential hosting providers.

An additional way to make sure you will get the support you need is to see if the company offers documentation for users and other WordPress recommendations on their website. Every responsible company will provide its potential users with as much information as possible so everything would run smoothly.

 

Research the reputation of the hosting provider

Reputation can tell a lot about the company, and that is why, in today’s business world, it is highly important. The same applies to a WordPress hosting provider and, so, that is also something to pay attention to when looking for one.

It’s impossible not to leave a trail if you do any public business today. A company can build its reputations thanks to the many reviews posted online. Depending on those, the reputation can turn to be positive and negative, which can have a considerable impact on one's business and their client.

You have to be careful and analytical with any type of review. Pay attention to details and what reviewers highlighted as satisfactory and disappointing about the service of a certain WordPress hosting company.

However, pay less attention to reviews posted on the company’s website and try to find the ones on independent sites. This way, you will make sure that the reviews are not intentionally positive and find opinions that are more objective. The more reviews you read, the more information you will gather and that will help you to come to the final decision.

 

Load time of your website

Load time is really important for websites since that will define their traffic and thus the conversions. If your site needs longer time to load, that can chase the users away and create quite a problem for you. You will lose potential customers, profit less and you will start being invisible to the search engines.

Check the size of bandwidth the WordPress hosting provider offers and see whether that agrees with your website. Consider the possible website growth right from the start since that will save you a lot of trouble later.

The bigger your website gets, and the more people visit it on daily basis will have an impact on your load time. Therefore, you should look for a WordPress hosting company that can give you everything you need speed wise, and even more.

 

Expert third party reviewers

There are user reviews and then there are expert ones. The latter includes ratings by the respectable websites, magazines and IT bloggers who usually based their reviews on a comparison. This is useful since you will find out who are the WordPress hosting companies present on the market and the extent of their offer.

Expert reviews are supposed to be unbiased and completely objective, so look for those that are not sponsored by anyone in particular. The best thing about these experts is that they communicate with their readers and you can often find the answers you are looking for or ask a question yourself.

 

Prepare the questions in advance

Always ask questions, especially if you are a beginner and want to understand everything better. You should make a list of everything you are interested in order to find the best WordPress hosting service for your website.

Consider right from the start how many WordPress websites you plan to have. Set aside those hosting provider which offer unlimited subdomains and see what other scripts you may need to install.

Compare the prices for backup services, additional packages and ask for a better offer than the general one posted on the company's website. Find out if the WordPress hosting provider can support any additional and unique software you will use on your website.

Sometimes, WordPress hosting companies are willing to make individual offers for those who plan to use a wider spectrum of their services and for a longer period. Don't forget that just as you look for a suitable WordPress hosting provider, the serious ones will cherish every possible client.

 

Quality over price

It’s always tough to make a decision when it involves money. You try to find the perfect relationship between the price and quality, so you wouldn’t pay more in the end for correcting the mistakes. However, when it comes to hosting, aim for the quality above all else.

This doesn’t mean that you will avoid the low-priced offers, but rather that you will concentrate on what is best for your website and not your budget. This type of expense is not hard to plan and the prices can be predicted more or less for a long run. However, remember that in order to do so, you need to define your website as much as you can right at the beginning.

 

What to look for in WordPress hosting provider

Some things may be too technical for you to look for. Your WordPress template will come designed and prepared to your liking, but the lingo and definitions are something you have to learn on your own.

For example, you should pay attention to the CPU limits of the WordPress hosting plan. This means that hosting provider uses a certain computing power that it will share with all its clients. You need to know how much is yours and how it will affect the speed of your website.

Another important thing to consider is SSH/sFTP availability on the server. Namely, in order to upload, change and update your website on the server you will have to connect to it via encrypted SSH or sFTP. It’s important that this connection is secured in order to prevent any data theft or leaks.

Additionally, check for the TLS and SSL encryption technologies which create secure encrypted communication between the browser and server. Namely, your visitor’s browser and WordPress hosting provider's server. TLS is a newer technology and its web page starts with "https" and some providers may consider this as an extra cost.

 

Always go for dedicated IP address

Sharing an IP address is common for websites on one server. This is usually not something people pay much attention to, although it can potentially lead to problems. If one of the websites you share an IP with happens to be a spammer - that may regard you too.

Specifically, the IP address can be blacklisted for malicious behaviour and that means that your website’s SEO rankings will fall as well. This is why you should make sure that the WordPress hosting provider offers dedicated IP addresses. Not only will you be independent of others, but also you will be able to position yourself on the Internet more easily.

 

The conclusion

No matter if you use free WordPress templates or you bought a complete website, you will still have to find the best hosting options. It may seem like a demanding and complicated thing to do. But, with research, patience and analysis of data, you collect you'll be able to find the perfect WordPress hosting company.

Websites are more than just the trend in the business world, they’re a necessity if you want to succeed. Therefore, paying attention to every aspect will only help you develop a functional and fully operational website to the satisfaction of both you and your clients.




Author : David Koller

David Koller is a freelance passionate blogger, copywriter and occasionally an SEO consultant for AGSEO, the best SEO agency Sydney has to offer

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