Need Hosting For Your WordPress Site? Here Are The 3 Biggest Factors

There are many factors that contribute to the success of a website, but none is as critical as getting the right hosting service. The hosting industry has grown exponentially in recent years and blossomed into a colossal multi-billion dollar industry. There have been advancements in the technology used and, generally speaking, the associated costs of hosting have come down too. There are innumerable companies offering hosting services, which makes the task of choosing the best one that much harder.

Key considerations

WordPress as a script is very light-weight, and any decent company can meet the minimum requirements needed to host it. They make installing it easy, so even the inexperienced can find the learning curve to be very gentle. Before shortlisting any probable candidates for your hosting, there are a few things that you need to think through.

Your Needs

The first is the nature of the website you want to create. A simple blogging site might not have the same requirements as an e-commerce one. A website expecting high traffic volumes will need a more sophisticated hosting solution than one that targets a niche market.

Performance, Reliability, Support

The hosting service needs to offer unparalleled support to your website when it comes to uptime, bandwidth speeds and customer support. The reputation of your brand relies heavily on how stable and snappy your website is. Your host should be able to offer you these guarantees.

Pricing

• For those who have nothing to spend, there are companies that offer free WordPress hosting. The disadvantages of these greatly eclipse their presumed benefits. Reliability is a rare thing with them, and you often have to make do with banner ads included in your site.
• If you are serious about your blog, consider shared hosting. It is not expensive, and offers a good starting point for novice users.
• If you want scalability as an option, you can look into VPS hosting. It is much more generous with the resources you get. Package features of VPS are often attractive, and allow you a great degree of control.
• Dedicated server hosting is the best, but only if you can meet the costs of the service, and have expertise in system administration.
• Managed hosting is also an option, and its biggest advantage is that it takes away all the technical aspects of your website. It is very pricey, unsurprisingly.

Once you have addressed all these, you can start finding the most suitable hosting services. There are those companies that have been around for a while, and have built a reputation around their services. But you shouldn’t be so quick to get on board without doing a little homework. A good fraction of the reviews you find online are fabricated, and might not represent the actual performance of the hosting service. Only consider those services that have undergone some kind of testing, ideally by third parties. Explore the different features the various packages have to offer and ensure there is support for the scripts, applications and software that you might want to install. Learn more about scalability, including the ease of doing so and the cost. Also, give some thought to the security. It will go a long way in establishing customer trust, and protecting any confidential data that you may hold in the website.