How to Choose the Best Web Hosting for WordPress

If you’re in the market for a new WordPress website, you’re probably focused on re-designing it. You want to improve the look and feel when your visitors are on it. 

But you can’t forget about website hosting. 

Website hosting is an incredibly important — but often overlooked — element of a strong website. It’s the network environment where your website’s data is stored so your content can actually be found online. When you purchase a hosting plan, you’re essentially renting space on the provider’s server. 

In this post, we’ll go over the essential things you must keep in mind when choosing a website host for your WordPress website and how to keep things in good order. We’ll also explain why we highly recommend choosing a WordPress-specific host if you have a WordPress website.

In this blog:

• Why is web hosting important?
• What to look for in a website host
• Why you should choose a WordPress-specific host
• How we can help you maintain your website

Why is Web Hosting Important?

Your website host is responsible for ensuring your servers stay up and running 24/7 and maintaining a high performance level. Your website’s performance and speed can make the difference between a terrible and a fantastic visitor experience, which directly impacts how many people interact with your content and “convert” on your website (e.g. click to the next page, contact you, download something, or buy a product). As a result, hosting also affects SEO because user experience and site speed are two of Google’s most important factors for ranking websites. 

To top it all off, a good web host makes it easy to maintain your website with an intuitive control panel. If you, the owner, can hardly figure out how to make updates or manage content because of a complicated control system, your site’s maintenance will dwindle. 

What to Look for in a Web Hosting Service

With so many options to choose from, it can be overwhelming to choose a website host that fits your needs and budget. 

First, here’s a quick overview of the primary hosting types:

• Shared Hosting: This is what most businesses use. It allows multiple websites to use one server, which makes it the most affordable option. Each customer has a limit on the amount of resources they can use. 

• Dedicated Hosting: Instead of sharing the resources and costs, Dedicated Hosting gives you a server just for your website alone. You get total control over the resources and more customization, but that makes it more expensive. This option is best for technically advanced websites that get high daily traffic.

• Virtual Private Server (VPS):  VPS is somewhere in the middle. You share a server with other websites, but your website is the only domain in your specific virtual compartment, so there are fewer limitations to the resources you have. This means you have your own dedicated operating system, storage, and unlimited bandwidth. It’s typically more affordable than Dedicated Hosting, but more expensive than Shared. You might choose VPS if your traffic is consistently spiking, you have two or more websites, or you want more control over your server customization. 

Once you’ve determined which of the above fits your needs, you can narrow things down to a provider. 

To help you do so, let’s now look at the primary factors to consider when choosing a specific website host. 

Safe and Stable Servers

Your host plays a key role in making sure your network space is able to fight online threats like hacks. Choose a hosting service provider that offers SSL certificates to protect data and your visitors’ personal information. If you have a WordPress website, it’s also helpful to have a spam prevention tool to remove unwanted comments from blog posts. 

High Uptime

Website uptime measures how often your website is available to users. Pick a host that guarantees a high uptime so you know your website will always be accessible. Most good hosts promise a 99.9% uptime, which means they guarantee your website will be accessible to visitors 99.9% of the time. 

Quality Customer Service

Most website owners aren’t expert web developers! And even those who are (or clients who hire us to help maintain their websites) are bound to come across the odd tech issue. Good customer service and support resources can mean the difference between a major headache that affects the user experience (or a complete site shutdown) and a quick fix.

High Speed

As we’ve touched on, slow loading times can kill your website conversions and SEO efforts. So, choose a host that prioritizes super fast load times. To give you an example, 64% of smartphone users want it to take less than four seconds for a website to load. 74% of mobile users expect them to load within five seconds (or else they’re outta there!). 

Plugin and Theme Updates

Next, choose a host that allows you to keep up with your website’s plugin and theme updates. This helps ensure security and prevent broken functionality on your site. And it should be simple to make these updates. You shouldn’t feel like you need to contact Customer Support every time your website is due for an update. 

Intuitive Interface

On a similar note, the best web hosts offer an easy-to-use interface so you don’t have to be a web developer to maintain a healthy website and update content. Even if you are (like us), an intuitive interface makes things so much more efficient—and reduces the chances of something going wrong. 

Why We Recommend WordPress-Specific Hosting Platforms

If you have a WordPress website, it’s best to choose a host tailored specifically to work with WordPress. This makes sure every server is optimized for a single type of software. There’s no need for the servers to juggle a bunch of different types of software to accommodate non-WordPress websites. 

This way, your website can easily maintain a high level of performance and security, which also minimizes the chance of crashes. It can also mean you get additional features like automated backups and upgrades to make managing your website even more efficient. Plus, the support teams are experts in WordPress software so you’re guaranteed knowledgeable help. 

Want Us To Take Care of Your Website?

The right host makes keeping your website healthy much easier, but there will always be a learning curve.

That’s why we offer Drio SAFE, our elevated WordPress Hosting and Maintenance Plan that’s exclusively for Drio clients.  

Drio Safe doesn’t simply “park” your site somewhere online. It keeps it safe and healthy. 

You’ll receive priority attention and pricing for alterations to text, images, functionality, blogs — or for additional pages. As a part of Drio SAFE, we watch your website like a hawk to keep it healthy and running smoothly. We manage updates, plugins, vulnerabilities, patches — and stand ready for when anything unforeseen occurs.

Because we built your website and know it inside out, we know exactly what it’s supposed to look like and how it should be functioning. That means we’re the first to know if something happens — and most times, adjustments or fixes are made without any downtime.

If you’re an existing/past client of ours but not on our Drio SAFE, get in touch if you’d like to upgrade! 

And if you’re just looking for someone to redo your website from the start, you know who to call. Check out our website design services.