How to Choose a Hosting Provider for Your WordPress Website in 2022
Key Takeaways
- When thinking about a website hosting provider, you’ll first need to consider their server location, speed, and price – as these will have a massive effect on your business.
- One factor you may not have considered is their customer service reputation. You don’t want to be caught out dealing with terrible technical support when your site’s gone down.
- Some of the best hosting providers include Bluehost, DreamHost, and SiteGround – among others. Read on to discover the best in each category.
Choosing a hosting provider to use for your website is one of the most significant decisions you’ll make when building an online presence for your business.
When choosing WordPress hosting, you mustn’t just go for the cheapest option on the market because it might end up being the one that costs you the most in the long run.
Everything from your website’s loading speed, security, and overall performance can be affected by the hosting provider you choose. Therefore, it can also significantly affect your site’s SEO performance.
There are a few different WordPress hostings available on the market. You can choose between free, shared, dedicated, and managed hosting options.
We’ve created this guide to share our insights and help you make the right decision when choosing a hosting company for your business.
Let’s start with the basics.
How does choosing a website hosting affect your business?
Poor hosting may result in your website becoming slow and buggy.
Bad hosting means you’ll spend more time fixing bugs rather than growing your business. It can also put your website at risk of breaking with each new update.
Furthermore, many hosting options do not permit you to make important updates unless you manually request them each time.
Don’t fear! Your website hosting can also positively affect your website.
The following are the different aspects that can be influenced by your website hosting.
Website Speed
According to a Google study, 53% of visitors will abandon your mobile website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. So, if a user cannot see the navigation or the first couple of site sections, they will exit your website almost immediately and look elsewhere.
You need to be able to optimise your website for speed. The truth is, no matter how many hours you spend trying to optimise your images and videos or minify CSS, you can’t make significant progress if your hosting is slow.
Therefore, it’s essential to choose a hosting provider that is fast and efficient, especially when it comes to a mobile experience.
Sales
Your slow WordPress hosting provider might be the reason you are receiving fewer leads.
Websites that frequently go down, don’t work correctly, become slow, or are generally unreliable, can drive your target audience away.
All this can result in the loss of potential leads, which is the primary goal of having a website in the first place.
Security
Website security is crucial. Visitors will always avoid websites that don’t appear secure.
It’s always better to prevent a future issue that may arise than to respond to it after it happens. A hosting provider that relies on security and comes with an SSL certificate can ensure that your website is safe for all visitors and clients.
Many hostings providers on the market offer backup and anti-spam solutions. Make sure you do your research and take security into account when you’re choosing a hosting provider.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is essential for anyone who wants to see their website in the first few positions on Google.
Website speed and security have become crucial ranking factors for search engines. These factors strongly depend on the hosting provider you choose.
You should invest your money wisely when it comes to choosing a WordPress hosting provider.
What you need to look out for when choosing a WordPress hosting
When selecting a website hosting provider, you should be on the lookout for some of these benefits, as they can positively influence your site’s overall performance.
Server Location
When selecting a hosting provider, consider which is the closest server option geographically to your location or the location of your target users.
The server location can influence your website speed performance. If you live in London, for example, and you target the UK in general, there is no point in picking a server in the United States. Your visitors will definitely notice a significant difference in how quickly the website loads if the server is not close to their location.
If you expect to receive regular traffic from all over the world, make sure that your hosting provider has a CDN (content delivery network) featured in their service package. A CDN helps your website load faster from everywhere in the world as images and videos are loaded from the nearest server.
Speed
As we already mentioned, speed is crucial for website performance. Choose a hosting provider that already offers good speed and allows you to optimise your website.
Today, fast web hostings load your website quickly in areas with or without data centres. Make sure you choose a hosting that allows your site to load fast, especially on mobile devices.
Price
We believe that hosting solutions cannot be selected based solely on the price itself and recommend you do your research to see what hosting providers will benefit your business the best. There’s always a chance that you’ll find desirable packages at an affordable price, but web hosting is an investment and features should be prioritised.
Customer Support
When choosing a hosting provider, consider if the company offers good technical support. Problems might arise occasionally. So, it’s essential to trust that your hosting provider will handle your issues quickly and pain-free, especially since you’re paying them good money!
Research what type of customer support options they offer. Do they have a live chat? Are they responding to emails? Do they have social media accounts that they use to solve customer issues? Check for customer reviews. Are their customers happy with the support they get? How quickly do their problems get resolved in public forums?
Site Traffic
Monthly estimated website traffic should also be considered when choosing a hosting.
What is the amount of website traffic you expect? If your website is new and you’re just starting your business, you probably don’t need support for huge website traffic from the beginning. A shared hosting plan will work great in these cases.
Analyse your monthly traffic to keep track of your website performance and the number of monthly visitors you receive. The data will be crucial for you when deciding if the time is right to upgrade your plans or switch to a completely different hosting provider.
Which are the best WordPress hosting providers on the market?
There are many hosting companies on the market. For lots of people, it’s hard to decide who to trust.
We’ve created a list of WordPress hosting providers that provide professional and customisable services that can skyrocket your website performance.
Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the most popular WordPress hosting solutions on the market. WordPress.org itself recommends Bluehost as a suitable hosting choice!
Bluehost offer WordPress-centric traditional dashboards and tools, one-click installation, a FREE domain name, SSL certificate, email, FTP, and more. Bluehost automatically installs the latest and most secure version of WordPress.
If you choose Bluehost, you never have to worry if your website is slow when there’s a lot of traffic. In addition, their famous 24/7 customer service is always available by live chat, email, and phone. Their web hosting solutions come from as low as $2.95 per month.
Bluehost also comes with a website builder feature. You get design freedom, marketing tools, and insightful data analytics to help your website and business grow.
DreamHost
DreamHost is another hosting provider solution that WordPress.org itself recommends. Their hosting platform is optimised for WordPress and lets you take total control of your server or allows you to choose their team of experts to handle everything for you.
You get a custom CPanel dashboard, free domain, free SSL certificate, one-click WordPress installation, automatic WordPress updates, unlimited space, and free SSDs, which can make your website 200% faster.
They provide a 100% Uptime Guarantee thanks to their numerous data centre locations, redundant cooling, emergency generators, and constant monitoring. DreamHost also comes with a 97-day money-back guarantee. If you’re not happy with the service — you get your money back. Their prices start from as low as $1.99 per month.
DreamHost also provides 24/7 support through chat widget, live chat, and email.
SiteGround
SiteGround is one of the most popular hosting providers in the WordPress community. SiteGround is also recommended officially by WordPress.org.
Their hosting services include unique, secure, and fast solutions since their platform is built on Google Cloud, which uses an ultra-fast network and SSD storage.
SiteGround features include automatic WordPress updates, daily backups, free SSL certificate, free CDN, free email, unique SuperCacher technology, one-click staging, and GIT version control. SiteGround also offers location-specific hosting with six different data centres in the USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
SiteGround comes with a 30-days money-back guarantee. You can test their services and get your money back if you’re not happy with the services they offer.
Their customer care team is among the highest-rated support online. They are available 24/7 through their live chat.
WPEngine
WPEngine is a managed hosting solutions provider for WordPress. They are considered to be one of the best-managed hosting providers in the world.
Their hosting solution comes with automated updates, managed upgrades, one-click staging, daily backups, free SSL certificate, optimised WordPress caching, and more, so you can focus on growing your business, not maintaining your website.
WPEngine also comes with 24/7 live chat and phone support. Their subscription plans come with a higher price range (around $24.00 per month), and they are confidently offering a 60-day money-back guarantee to their users.
HostGator
HostGator is one of the first hosting providers and has supported millions of WordPress websites since 2002. All their hosting plans include a website builder with tons of templates, one-click WordPress installation, 99.9% uptime guarantee, free SSL certificate, free domain for the first year, unmetered bandwidth, and even $100 in AdWords credit to help you start your SEO on the right foot.
Their WordPress hosting plans offer advanced security, including malware protection and site backups. They also offer free WordPress migration.
They have affordable subscription plans starting at just $2.75 a month with a 45-day money-back guarantee. HostGator offers fantastic 24/7 customer support through chat, email, social media, and public forums.
Hostinger
Hostinger’s mission is to offer premium hosting services to its customers. The company constantly updates its technology and improves its customer support to provide the best possible service.
Hostinger has been on the market since 2011, and it’s a fast-growing and popular hosting providing company. Some of the great features that come with the subscription plan include unlimited bandwidth, free domain for the first year, free SSL certificate, one-click WordPress installation, unlimited databases, SSH access, free website migration, managed updates, and WordPress optimised speed acceleration.
Hostinger also has 24/7 live chat support, and their prices start from as low as $2.19 per month. They also offer geographically specific hosting with seven different data centres in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.
If you’re planning to launch a website for your new business or you’re considering changing your hosting provider, we suggest you spend some extra time researching the companies we’ve recommended.
You can even contact these companies and learn more about their different subscription plans. Meanwhile, you’ll get a good idea of the quality of their customer support!
Selecting the right hosting service provider is an investment in your business instead of an expense. Don’t go for the first hosting company and don’t choose the cheapest option on the market.
Choosing a hosting provider is an important decision that can positively or negatively influence your overall website performance and, therefore, the quality of your users’ experiences.