How to choose hosting for WordPress websites

How to choose hosting for WordPress websites

Web hosting is a service that provides customers with online space storage for their websites and facilitates the operation of the website on the internet. It is critical to pick the right hosting for the smooth functioning of the website.

There are several criteria which directly depend on the type of website to be hosted and which are essential and should be considered when deciding for the right hosting solution. Whether it is a simple personal presentation, business web, e-shop or catalogue portal, it is always possible to estimate the hosting technical requirements in advance. Some websites do need more disk space, a higher bandwidth or greater security.

What are the selection criteria that will help you with your decision?

Physical disk space and RAM size

Sufficient disk space and larger memory size on the server-side are necessary when you need to host product rich portals and eCommerce solutions. As individual website items contain a huge amount of data, the allocation of sufficient capacity is required – otherwise loading of website items will be extremely slow. A large number of images takes a lot of disk space and items with complicated data (e.g. GPS coordinates) demand a lot of RAM. In addition, the database has also an impact on loading speed, therefore we recommend MySQL database version 5.6 at minimum. At the same time, the server should support PHP7.

These requirements can be met primarily by larger hosting providers. When you choose cheap but inadequate hosting, you might encounter certain limitations like insufficient memory or older database version. These compromises can, however, paralyze the whole WordPress website.

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E.g. in Websupport you can edit the offered packages that are provided via Custom Hosting service. You can select the required disk size, database and PHP version, as well as other supported technologies.

Bandwidth

Another inevitable criterion for large WordPress projects is the sufficient bandwidth that can handle high traffic. Bandwidth is the amount of transferred data allowed by the server, between the website, users and the rest of the internet. Therefore you should always consider what bandwidth you need when choosing the hosting provider. Some WordPress hostings cannot handle a large number of visitors as they have data restriction quota on the server. The solution is hosting with unlimited data transfer per month.

WordPress installation

For websites built via the WordPress platform, you need to pick hosting which supports WordPress. On most of the hostings WordPress needs to be installed manually, but some of them (e.g The Hosting for WordPress by Websupport, DreamHost …) provide automatic one-click WordPress installation. This is very useful for less technically proficient users who are just starting with their website now, but also for all those users who simply want to save some time.

Subsequently, you just need to find the suitable WordPress Theme and you can immediately start with the creation and use of your website.

Websupport can also secure the migration of your existing WordPress website from a different provider, as well as regular automatic updates for WordPress CMS.

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Website security

Website security depends primarily on the way how it is programmed. Even the most secure WordPress hosting cannot help if the website itself has weak points. Sensitive data like credit card information used in e-shop purchases can be additionally protected by encrypting the communication between the user and the web browser via an SSL certificate. Websites secured by HTTPS protocol are important not only because of their security, but also increase the website credibility for customers shopping online.

Data backup

You might get to the situation when you need to turn your website back to its original state. This is done by backups on the server. For this reason, it is good to choose the hosting that does regular backups at least 1x/ 24 hours. Just to be safe.

Number of email addresses

Availability of the mail server directly relates to the hosting and domain provider too. Choose the hosting with an unlimited number of e-mail-addresses so that you don’t have any restrictions in this area. Read more at the end, we wrote one Extra tip. Maybe that version is a better solution for you.

Customer support

The hosting quality can be assessed by the support it provides for technical issues. Ideally hosting provider should provide multiple communication methods for getting in touch with customer support (via phone, email, live chat or via online ticket system).

Added value

Here belong all other benefits that hosting provider can offer on top of the regular services. This could be e.g. the already mentioned possibility of free migration of WordPress website, CMS updates, reliable customer service, automatic backups or regular database and PHP upgrades to the highest available version.

Thanks to these criteria it should be easier for you to decide which hosting is right for your WordPress website. If you want to get fully engaged in your website and online business, we recommend choosing a reliable hosting provider you can always turn to. Even in 10 years.

Extra tip

As one of our readers mentioned in the comment, it is wise to separate web hosting from email. Choose a different provider and manage your email network independently of the website. Moving emails is much more frustrating than moving websites. When changing your email provider, keep in mind that all email users need to change all of their mail client settings. And this is a real pain for all.

5 thoughts on “How to choose hosting for WordPress websites

  1. I use Branzone for all my hosting needs. No restrictions everything you discussed in this I’ve had none of those issues with them. Unlimited email is nice as is bandwidth. I’ve screwed up on my site a few times and since they do backups I was able to contact them and they rolled it back with out any problems. Thank god for that. If anyone wants a one click no hassle hosting solution check out Branzone.com I’ve tried godaddy, hostgator and rackspace too, all of them had issues of their own, or didn’t fully support WordPress for some unknown reason. No problems since I made the switch 8 years ago.

    1. Hello Matt,

      glad to hear that from you. We wish you success in your business!

      Have a great day!
      Zlatko

  2. Regarding email, after 15 years of experience, I now tend to choose specialized mail hosting services, different from the hosting for websites. There are a number of such reliable services, e.g. Fastmail or Runbox, to mention just a few.
    It may always happen that one has to switch to a different web hosting, for various reasons. It is a real pain if this also involves moving a number of email addresses (and their users) to the new host. Separating web hosting from mail hosting offers significant advantages, based on my own experience.
    Actually, there are some specialized WP hosting services that do not include mail hosting (for instance WP Serveur, an excellent French WP hosting service that I am using for several of my websites).

    1. Hello Jean-Francois,
      Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
      Have a great day!
      Zlatko

  3. This is the perfect blog I am looking this type of blog its awesome blog here, share great information about this topic. This informative blog helps many readers with their decision-making regarding the situation.

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