I understand and agree with you. Selecting a suitable hosting service for a website or a blog is a hectic task. I don’t think you won’t be an exception unless you would have faced issues and learned from it. However, I am about to share the key points to consider or WordPress hosting checklist to check before choosing your best WordPress hosting provider.
Instead of worrying once done everything, it is intellectual to know things before and avoiding mistakes. Hope, this article would be more helpful in such a way saving your time as well as bringing a better outcome.
Terms to know before prompting WordPress Hosting
Before getting into the WordPress hosting checklist, let me list out the various terms in WordPress hosting. Hosting comes prior to the particulars like exact domain name, well optimized SEO-friendly content rich blog, and furthermore.
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To be precise, I don’t want to dig your time talking about choosing your domain name or checking the availability of particular domain names. Instead, these particulars are good to know before prompting for a best suitable WordPress Hosting service at affordable price.
Essentials terms to be aware of
If you are familiar with these below terms already, please skip this section and switch over to the WordPress hosting checklist. If you are a beginner and don’t have much idea about hosting, make use of it.
#1 Free WordPress Hosting
Any individuals may offer some part of their server space to you for free. But it never means free. They wanted to place their banners on your site, in turn. Newbie’s those who have limitations on their budget will prefer this type of Free WordPress hosting. You don’t have full control over your site and traffic.
Either way, even pro-bloggers can have dummy site on free hosting for testing the site with new plug-ins or themes updates instead of running their authority sites. But, I don’t recommend to go for free considering security, or if you are serious about promoting your business.
#2 Shared WordPress Hosting
Shared hosting has your space on a server connected to the internet where thousands or millions of other business will be on the same server. Shared hosting saves your time as the cost is shared among different occupiers. The drawback is that, once the server goes down due to any hardware malfunctions or anything, every website will face the downtime. Data security is a somehow a challenging one here.
#3 VPS WordPress Hosting
Virtual Private Server is a type of hybrid shared and dedicated hosting. There are multiple websites hosted on the same server. However, you will have dedicated virtual space securing your data from other customers or participants on the same server. You don’t face any downtime challenges as if other websites go down.
Managed VPS hosting means that the hosting service providers will take care of your entire server related technical tasks. On the other hand, unmanaged VPS hosting; you will be provided with server space, but you will have to handle everything else.
#4 Dedicated WordPress Hosting
Dedicated hosting refers to that single individual business having a space on a particular server. In short, the dedicated server only for you; not sharing with other customers. For high traffic driving sites, requiring more extensive storage, bandwidth, security and fast loading, dedicated hosting would be optimal.
Continue reading further for the WordPress hosting checklist to know about the crucial factors to know before to opt for appropriate WordPress hosting company.
WordPress Hosting Checklist: Know Before Hosting
Every favorite hosting provider will be at top-notch in serving with typical features and benefits. But, there may be unique abilities that are hard to understand makes a difference and stand out among any other familiar hosting services. Here you go for the WordPress hosting checklist or comprehensive list letting you know things to consider and check before pinpoint any WordPress Hosting service.
1. Analyze your website needs for your business
Before getting started to analyze and compare various WordPress hosting providers, it is recommended to know the nature of your business. Accordingly, you can claim for the need of a website for your business. It can be of a business website or a service page having a static number of pages driving nominal visitors, else an e-commerce website getting massive traffic or a blog frequently coming up with huge content.
You will have to make sure to know the website need and performance to choose among the types of hosting like shared or dedicated or VPS or anything. With this analysis, you may choose the hosting type that suits you.
2. Know your experience in running a website
Some beginners may be struggling to start up with their first website or blog. On the other hand, some experts frequently launch multiple sites hassle-free. With expertise, hosting and set-up will be easier. Hence, depending on your excellence in installing and running a website is a crucial factor in deciding on the level of support or user-friendliness required.
Managed hosting can assist you in such scenarios as the service provider will handle all your server related technical tasks. Getting managed hosting for WordPress will allow you to only focus on running the website without worrying about any other issues. If you are tech-savvy, then you can save your budget going on unmanaged or minimum support offering services.
3. Is your business geo-specific?
Any web page has to be a fast response to the audience when they are looking for something that is related to your webpage. There are hosting service providers having data centers in multiple locations. If your business is a geo-specific targeting specific country or city, buy a server space; where the data center is available around your target location. Hence, you can render a fast response to your visitors and increase your click-through rates.
CDN’s are designed to minimize the distance between your visitors and your website’s server. To avoid latency, CDN’s are the Content Distribution Network that stores the cached version of images, video streams, or any feeds that may slow down your loading speed. CDN’s at various multiple locations delivers your content ignoring the delay.
4. Capability to handle the amount of traffic of your site
Website traffic is one of the vital deciding factors to choose the hosting. In case of launching a new website, predict your website traffic. Not the exact numbers, however, know the approximate or round off values of website traffic your site or blog might drive.
If you are looking for a WordPress hosting checklist for one of your existing sites to switch over from another hosting, then check the statistics of your existing site traffic.
Also, don’t miss out to have a rough calculation or prediction about the growth in traffic for the next three or six months. Depending on the page views or user engagement, you have to prefer the hosting provider that can manage the amount of traffic when your website even hits the peak.
5. Cpanel accessibility
Any service or product that has to be user-friendly and having a pleasing interface. In like manner, you have to more conscious in picking the best WordPress hosting that comes with a feature for hassle-free set-up. Cpanel or dashboard should also include analytics on server uptime, storage used, sub-domain details, and more.
6. Uptime and Security Features
Server uptime is a predominant factor. However, any hosting provider will be promising for the 100% uptime. But make sure to check existing customer reviews and decide further.
Data security is an inevitable thing when it comes to WordPress Hosting. Security features are the first and foremost in the WordPress hosting checklist. Pick your choice that offers free or paid SSL, safe and secure file transfers, releases frequent security patches and more.
7. Compatibility with latest versions
It is recommended to have a WordPress hosting that is compatible with latest versions of any database or language. For instance, the hosting should support PHP 7.2 or above, MySQL 5.6, etc. Moreover, have a hosting that supports a wide range of languages and databases like MariaDB.
In case of any alternate database connection or switchover is required in future, there is no need to go for another hosting service provider by the time.
8. Set of features and other technicalities
There are set of server related features that decide the performance of your website. Caching is one among, built-in advanced caches including Memcache, Varnish, Nginx. Especially Redis cache improves your database performance.
Few other points to consider are data backup, auto-healing features, server transfers, dedicated firewalls to protect from malicious activities. There are popular hosting providers that offer free WordPress Cache Plug-in for better performance, built-in WordPress Command Line Interface to have over your WordPress sites and so on.
9. Check for Migration service
Hassle-free migration is a considerable factor that you have to check before choosing any hosting for your WordPress sites. Nowadays, almost ever popular hosting providers support you with 1-click migration service to switch over to your suitable hosting.
One step ahead, some WordPress hosting providers do have pre-installed WP Migrator Plug-ins. Such plug-ins will help you to migrate your WordPress sites efficiently from your old hosting to a better new provider.
10. Flexibility for future extensions
Every business will move towards its progress where future expansions will be there. It may be of additional sites, sub-domains, storage, bandwidth or anything. For every future enhancement, you should not switch between multiple hosting service companies. While choosing at the start, it is better to have a flexible hosting service.
A hosting company that has flexible plans enabling you to have additional storage or bandwidth anything you wants specifically extra than what they offers by default. For a single purpose, you don’t require to change the plan or move on to other hosting service. It is enough to pay extra at actual to what particularly you want.
11. Go with popular names at affordable cost
I always prefer most popular and standard WordPress hosting company. Any players that come and plays a role for the short span of time is nowhere recommended considering the data security and migration headaches. So, always go with a WordPress hosting company that survives for a decade. Because they know the value of their customers and they can provide you award-winning features or services at affordable cost.
Have proper planning and decide on your hosting budget. You cannot pay what you cannot afford. There will include multiple pricing plans from each hosting provider. Higher end plans will offer you advanced features, customization options, bandwidth and more. But you cannot afford the cost. Therefore, you list down your requirements and pick your optimal plans with good features and benefits.
12. Responsiveness of the support team
You may inquire various WordPress hosting providers, and you may check how prompt they are in replying, how flexible and user-friendly, and how detailed they are with information. By this, you may get an idea about their customer support responsiveness too.
Some companies are favorite among people for its award-winning customer service whereas others fail in such category. If you are seriously looking for a company that provides extensive customer support, read more existing customer reviews and decide upon.
Verdict on WordPress Hosting CheckList
Choosing a suitable WordPress hosting should majorly depend on speed, security, reliability, support, and cost. The things I have shared above as WordPress hosting checklist comprises all these crucial factors. Examining this checklist will result in getting you the proper WordPress hosting service for better and fast performance of your sites.
All the above, you will have to analyze and know your needs. Determining your need and buying a hosting service can save your penny. Moreover, it makes you free from headaches promising extraordinary results regarding your website or blog performance.