When you are looking for web hosting for WordPress to help your business, you want to be sure that you choose the best WordPress hosting solutions for your needs.
Your website is the first impression that customers will get of you. Their experience on your website will determine whether or not they purchase your products and services.
You have a lot riding on your website, which is why only the best WordPress hosting solutions will do. The goal here is to help you understand everything that you need to know to choose the best web hosting for WordPress, as well as the best WordPress hosting companies to consider.
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Understanding Shared vs. Managed Hosting
One of the first things that you need to understand is the difference between shared and managed WordPress hosting. The primary differences between these two options are the cost and the amount of assistance is provided. In this section, you can get a closer look at these two options to better decide which one works best for your business.
Shared Hosting
With shared hosting, you are getting a web hosting solution that uses a portion of the resources on a single server that has many other websites also using resources.
The biggest advantage of a shared hosting option is that it’s the most affordable option due to the fact you are sharing the server with other sites, often times only costing about $3/month.
This is a great option for businesses that are just starting out or any other business that understands they need web hosting for WordPress, but may not have the biggest budget for these services. This is also a good option for bloggers, personal websites, and hosting solutions for small businesses.
Pros of Shared Hosting:
- Affordable
- cPanel
- Free Email Accounts
Cons of Shared Hosting:
- More frequent downtimes
- Not ideal for high-traffic sites
- Slower response time
If you are looking for an affordable option, you will want to consider a shared hosting option.
Managed Hosting
Managed hosting that offers the most advanced and powerful technologies so that you have a secure and fast website. Manage hosting companies handle a variety of hosting issues including security checks, backups, updating your WordPress, and many other potential issues that may come up. You also get excellent customer support with managed hosting.
With managed hosting, the hosts want the company’s to be better able to focus on their business and they will handle the technical aspects of your business.
However, with the convenience of having these web hosting companies manage the technical aspects of your website, these are services that you pay a lot for.
This is why managed hosting is the best option for businesses who have a high-level of traffic or lack the technical skill to manage your own website.
Pros of Managed Hosting:
- Premium custom support
- Frequent core updates to keep your site secure and functioning properly
- Daily backups so that you can restore your website quickly if needed
- Uses the latest technologies so that your site is always secure and fast
Cons of Managed Hosting:
- Managed WordPress hosting only works with WordPress sites
- Limitation with specific plugins, especially those that can slow down your site.
- Very expensive option
If you want the freedom to take a more hands-off approach to your website hosting and can afford the higher cost, managed WordPress hosting is the best option.
How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting
There are several things that you should consider when you are deciding on the best hosting options for your WordPress page. This section will focus on the main areas that you should focus on to help you decide which hosting option is the best one for your needs.
Managed vs. Shared
One of the first things that you should consider is whether or not you want managed or shared hosting services. Do you have a limited budget? Then you might be better off going with a shared hosting option.
However, if you have a high-traffic website or you want to be able to focus on other aspects of your business rather than the technical aspect of your website, you should invest in the expensive managed hosting services.
Budget
A major consideration for the hosting service for your business is your budget. As previously mentioned, one of the key differences between managed and shared hosting services is the cost.
Managed services are significantly more expensive than shared services. Something that you should remember is that you often get exactly what you pay for with these services. Choosing the cheapest option may not always be the best one for your business.
Features
What type of features do you need for your business? You want to be sure that you select a WordPress hosting company that has the features that your business needs.
Think about what you really need from your hosting company. Some things to consider to help decide on essential features include:
- Whether or not you need migration service or tools
- If you have multiple WordPress sites
- SSL provided or HTTPS supported
- If you need unlimited domains or subdomains
These are just some things to think about when you are deciding on the features.
Customer Support
Customer support gives customers peace of mind that their website is in good hands. 24/7 support means that you can get the support that you need, when you need it the most. What if your site goes down outside of typical business hours?
Your business can not afford to have your website down for a long time, so 24/7 customer support should be a top priority when deciding on a hosting company.
Backups
Sometimes things happen that are out of your control. When the unexpected and unavoidable happens, having the most current backups are an essential part of your disaster recovery plan.
It can be a good idea to look at how often backups are done. For instance, some places may perform backups on a daily basis.
Benefits of Web Hosting for WordPress
The benefits of web hosting for WordPress can really depend on the type of WordPress hosting that you are getting. In this section, the benefits of shared and managed hosting.
Cost Effective
The biggest benefit of shared hosting is that this is the affordable option to consider. Maintenance fees for servers can be extremely expensive, but with shared hosting these costs are shared by the other sites on the server. That’s why shared hosting is much cheaper than managed services.
Scalable
If you go with a larger hosting company, you have the ability to scale your website as needed. This means that as your business and website grow, you can easily upgrade as needed. This allows you to stay with the hosting company that you already trust even if you need to upgrade your site.
Trusted Professional Services
You need to have the ability to focus on your business, especially if you may not have the technical skill to handle your website management.
When you used a hosting service, you don’t have to worry about the regular maintenance required to keep your website up and running as much as possible. You can get the freedom of trusting a highly experienced professional with this task.
Managed Hosting Benefits
Managing your website hosting can be a lot to handle on your own, whether you have experience or not. This is time that takes away from growing your business.
Let's You Focus on Your Business
You need to make sure that the plugins and themes are kept updated. You need to make sure that your backups are done on a daily basis. That’s only a part of what is necessary to host a website yourself.
Managed hosting companies will take care of these tasks for you, which gives you more time to focus on growing your business.
Expert WordPress Support
WordPress hosting companies are experts in dealing with WordPress sites, meaning that you can get the support that you need for your site.
If there are any issues with your website, the hosting company offers help to get everything functioning normally. They can also just offer advice on your WordPress site so that you can optimize it for your needs.
Because you pay more for managed hosting, you get a high level of customer support.
Better Security
Having a secure website is essential for your operations and to ensure that your customers are protected. Your reputation depends on having a secure website.
Unfortunately, the popularity of WordPress makes it an attractive target for attacks. With a lot of managed hosting services, you get SSL certificates, which offers your website the security it needs to keep your data safe.
Better Performance
The performance of your website is critical to your success. Managed hosting solutions offer you the best level of performance for your website, ensuring that your website loads quickly.
Managed hosting services take care of setting everything up to optimize the performance of your website.
Top Web Hosting Companies to Consider
This section will list the top WordPress hosting solutions for you to consider for your business.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy has long been a popular name in hosting websites. You have the option for shared plans, dedicated options, and VPS when you opt for GoDaddy WordPress hosting.
It does have some pretty nice features, such as access to a free email and domain for a year, regular malware scans, and automatic core updates for WordPress.
There are different plans to consider here, including their Ecommerce plan that gives you free access to those premium WooCommerce extensions and features.
GoDaddy is an affordable option that you can consider for your hosting needs. The problem is that this option only really offers hosting for a single website.
If you have multiple websites that need hosting, you will need to upgrade to their Pro plans, which can cost you around $25 a month.
For those with basic needs, you can get pretty decent features for a better price than some other options available to you. But, this is really only a good option if you have a single website that you need to host.
GoDaddy
Pros
Cons
Bluehost
Bluehost is an excellent choice for you to consider, offering both shared and managed hosting. With a starting price of $3.95 a month, you get an affordable hosting site.
This company offers SSL security, backups, free domain, unmetered bandwidth and so much more for your business. There is an estimated uptime of 99.96% and has an average 584 MS. Another good reason to select this option is that this is an option that is officially recommended by WordPress.
It’s important to know that this hosting solution doesn’t offer free site migration if you have their cheapest plan it and it could cost you $150 to transfer a site. However, if you do get a Plus plan or a higher plan, you can get a free migration service for one of your sites.
You should also know that with Bluehost, you get a massive database of tutorials for WordPress as well as 24/7 customer support.
Pros
Cons
DreamHost
DreamHost really excels in the area of storage space. It may not have an abundance of options, but if you just need something basic this can be an excellent option for your business.
This is a popular choice, with over 340,000 customers, and is a recommended host by WordPress.org. Like many of the other options on this list, there are shared, managed, and VPS hosting solutions for you to consider.
You can enjoy SSL, SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, and a WordPress website builder with any of their plans.
One downside of this option is the lack of 24/7 support, meaning that you may not get the customer support when you need it most. The support is available 7 days a week. Another downside is that you cannot choose a server location outside of the United States.
Check out our in-depth DreamHost web hosting review to learn more about this service.
DreamHost
Pros
Cons
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting offers both managed and shared hosting solutions that you can consider for your business. All of the plans that you can get with A2 Hosting include Cloudflare CDN, SSL, and have various server locations that you can choose from.
This company has data centers in Netherlands, Singapore, and the United States. It has an estimated 99.98% uptime, with downtime at only 1 hour and 32 minutes a year. It’s also considered one of the fastest hosting options available, with speeds of 299 MS.
A considerable shortcoming with A2 hosting is its customer service. While it does offer 24/7 support, sometimes you have long wait times to access their chat support. You do have the option of calling their support as well.
Their cheapest plan starts at $2.99 a month, requiring a minimum of 36 months with the company. After that, the cheapest plan renews at $8.99 a month.
A2 Hosting
Pros
Cons
Our Conclusion
If you have a WordPress site, knowing the best hosting options can ensure that you get a website that works for your business. You rely on your site to not only bring customers to your company but to get the conversions that your business needs to meet your sales goals.
This offers some of the best advice on choosing the best hosting solution as well as the top hosting options to consider for your business. Think about what you need for your business, then pick the option that best meets your needs.
