How to Choose a Fast, Robust Web Hosting Service for Your WordPress Site

So, you have a fantastic business or blog idea that you want to make reality. You’ve thought it through, made notes, worked out all the details from funding to market share, and you’re ready to take the plunge and get your website up and running to showcase your content. Great, but have you thought about web hosting?

If the answer is no, don’t panic, get a coffee and read on.

WordPress Web Hosting

WordPress is a wonderful content management system (CMS) which is considered by most to be the best of its kind. Many hosting companies can help you get started with the tool and thanks to an exciting range of plugins and many web design companies able to customize it to your needs; you can have a professional site up and running quickly.

Despite the ease of hosting, there are some features you should ensure you have before you commit to a web hosting company. Let’s take a deep dive into what these are.

Best WordPress Hosting

Finding the best WordPress hosting is no easy task. You can start by looking at this post, Best WordPress Hosting Post featured on Web Design Blog, as it is informative and breaks down the important issues to consider. That said, if you have a specialized site such as e-commerce, for example, you may find a hosting company that is better geared to your needs. If you need web designers or WordPress experts, you know that you can count on TOLS Multimedia.

As such, the factors that determine what kind of hosting you require will vary.

Traffic Levels

Try and determine how much traffic your site will receive. Take into account your ambition. If you are running an e-commerce store, for example, you may have plans to feature at the top of Google or have a heavy ad campaign in mind. This could make your traffic spike and hopefully, it will.

However, this will create bandwidth issues.

Bandwidth is a measure of how many bytes served over a given time period. If you have big dreams, then consider your choice of server type with care.

Servers

Servers are where your site will live online. There are several options to choose from. Here is a brief breakdown of each one:

• Shared Hosting – This is the cheapest option available and as the name suggests your site will live on a server with lots of other sites. This is fine if you expect low traffic levels and do not need features such as shell access and extensive database access.
• Virtual Private Servers (VPS) – Virtual private servers host your site in a virtual machine or simulated computer. Like their shared hosting cousins, they tend to host lots of sites in one machine. They have similar limitations too but tend to give better performance overall. The key aspect to take away is that any kind of shared hosting may result in site performance loss should another hosted site receive high traffic.
• Dedicated Server – Here, your site is hosted on its own server. This gives you full control over the server, and your site will not be affected by the performance of others. This could be the way forward if you are planning to generate high traffic levels.
• Could Servers – Cloud servers offer limitless expansion and run as the name suggests in the cloud. Unlike hardware-based hosting, you can simply pay your provider more money to get more space and indeed less money if there are features you don’t need.

Support

Hopefully, you’ll have your own professional or team of professionals that can handle web hosting maintenance for you. Perhaps you know quite a lot about it and WordPress makes it fairly straightforward with its five-minute installation process.

Nonetheless, you need a provider that can offer professional quality support. There will always be times when you need to be able to talk to a competent human being on the other end of the phone, rather than monotonous arguments with a chatbot.

Ideally, look for a provider that offers 24-hour phone support.

If you don’t have a specialist and you don’t have the time to learn how to keep a server up and running, you can always use a managed service. If you’re pushed for time, this could be a good option for you.

Reviews

As with most online purchases, reviews count for a lot. Rather than look at stars, take the time to read the reviews. They can be quite insightful. Sometimes, a bad review can give valuable clues about how good or bad various aspects are of the hosting company.

A person can leave a bad review about one part of the business but praise another. As such, check out the reviews before parting with your cash.

Security

Most web hosting is up to speed on security but ensure you check this out for yourself. Take advice if you need to, and remember if you lose data, you will be liable and face serious ramifications. This becomes a particular problem if you are planning to build something off the wall. Always take care with web hosting hacks as you do not want to leave your site vulnerable.

As a general rule, always go for the best WordPress hosting you can afford.