How to Choose a WordPress Hosting Provider: 6 Things to Consider
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, currently holding a 66.7% market share. It is a free and open-source software that can be used to build creative websites, blogs, and projects.
WordPress is one of the most popular and trusted systems in existence, and with good reason. It has a huge community of passionate developers who are constantly improving and enhancing the platform with new features and functionality.
But what if you’re looking for a new website, blog, or project and don’t want to use WordPress?
You have a number of options when it comes to hosting providers, but before making your decision, you need to take into consideration certain factors. In this article, we will discuss six things you should consider before signing up with a hosting provider.
Server Stability
The first and most important factor to consider when choosing a website host is server stability. A reliable and stable server is the key to a successful website. If you are planning on using the service for the long term, then investing in a stable and reliable hosting platform is essential. There are a number of reasons why a server might become unstable, ranging from poor internet connectivity to too many website visitors. No matter the reason, if your website is down for more than a few hours, you’re losing valuable traffic and revenue.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is another important consideration when choosing a website host. Just because you have bought a lot of RAM doesn’t mean that your website will run smoothly. You need to make sure that your hosting provider has enough bandwidth to handle the load. Otherwise, your site could become temporarily inaccessible or even permanently down.
Geolocation
Another important factor to consider when choosing a website host is geolocation. If you live in a country that is not named Sweden, for example, you will need to make sure that your hosting provider is located in an area that is near to you. Otherwise, you’ll have to endure really bad delays in page load times. To give you an idea of how much delay you might encounter, let’s say you’re located in Stockholm and your hosting provider is based in another country. To ensure that your pages load fast, you will need to connect to them via a VPN (Virtual Private Network), which you can get for free from many providers. When choosing a VPN, make sure that they offer a fast server and that their servers are located close to you. This will help reduce the number of failed connection attempts that you make and ensure that your pages load fast.
Customer Support
Another important factor to consider when choosing a website host is customer support. Just because your hosting provider has excellent features and tools doesn’t mean that they will provide excellent customer support. You should be able to contact the support team whenever you need help or have questions about the service. Otherwise, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to use the tools or contacting third party support individuals via email.
Scalability
Scalability is another important consideration when choosing a website host. Just because you have bought a lot of RAM doesn’t mean that your website will be able to handle a lot of incoming traffic. You need to make sure that your hosting provider has servers that are highly scalable, or in other words, are able to handle a high volume of traffic. It’s important to not buy a hosting plan that is only capable of scaling to a certain level, as this could end up being a real problem once your website starts getting popular.
Reliability
Reliability is yet another important consideration when choosing a website host. Just because your web host is reliable doesn’t mean that everything is going to run smoothly. You need to make sure that they are capable of keeping up with the amount of traffic that you’re planning on getting on your site. If you’re not sure how much traffic you’re going to get, then you can ask them for a free trial account so that you can find out. When choosing a hosting provider, make sure that they have enough reliability to handle your expected traffic levels.
Features
Finally, we have features. There are a lot of hosting providers out there, each offering a variety of features. You need to make sure that the features that you need are available and work well together. For instance, if you’re looking for a free solution but don’t want to use WordPress, you can take a look at the Joomla hosting plans from Bluehost. They offer a free domain and you don’t need to install anything to create a website with Joomla. It’s also one of the most popular CMSs out there, so it’s definitely a good choice if you’re looking for an established platform.
As you can see, there are a lot of important things to consider when choosing a hosting provider. You need to make sure that they have enough bandwidth, that their servers are stable, that they provide good customer support, can scale effectively, are reliable, and offer the features that you need. Of course, pricing is also an important factor, but without a good understanding of the other factors, it can be hard to know what pricing should be. There are a lot of hosting providers out there, so take some time to compare the different plans and services before choosing one.