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8 min read How To Choose a Hosting Provider for Your Wordpress Website in 2022

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.

Google mobile usage case study screenshot

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 pricing plans

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 hosting subscription plans

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 subscription plans screenshot

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.

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