WordPress has been a preferred choice to host a website for individuals and businesses for a while now. Consumers are aware of the themes available for a WordPress website as well as the new addons and integrations that spark the look, feel and overall performance of the WordPress website. In addition to this, there are so many hosting providers that give WordPress hosting plans at lucrative rates. However, consumers spoil themselves with too many choices without paying much heed to making the most out of a WordPress hosting plan. This leads to either a wastage of resources or overpaying for a limited number of the same. Which is why it becomes critical to know what could be the best WordPress hosting plan for your website.
This article attempts to guide you on how to narrow down to the best WordPress hosting plan. To make things simpler, we have split the process into two parts. Part A will speak about how one should understand their own requirements whereas Part B will speak about how to choose a web hosting provider. Sounds interesting? Let’s deep dive, and know how.
Part A. Understand your basic requirements
This goes without saying. If you are looking to stay ahead of your business competitors, then a precursor to choosing the best WordPress hosting plan is understanding your requirements. In order to do this, start asking yourself these simple questions.
1. What is the budget for my WordPress hosting plan?
Any cost that is saved is a penny earned. As a business, you should try to draw a limit to your
spending when it comes to hosting a WordPress website. There are consumers who overestimate their requirements and spend a lump sum on unwanted resources. So, draw a limit first because doing this in advance will help you narrow your options and direct you towards the best WordPress hosting plan.
2. What is the estimated traffic on my website today and a few months down the line?
After drawing a budget, decide what you want to do with the website? Is it an e-commerce website, or just a corporate website? Defining the purpose of the website will help you figure out what kind of traffic you can expect every month. This will give you some more clarity on the resources required like bandwidth, speed etc. which will help you gauge your requirement better.
3. Should I choose a WordPress hosting plan based on tech support, scalability or server uptime?
These things work in a tandem and not a silos. So, as a thumb rule try to find a hosting service provider that gives you tech and sales support when needed, allows you to upgrade resources on time and guarantees a great server uptime no matter what. A word of caution as we speak of tech and sales support; many service providers tout that they give 24/7 support but in reality they are miles away from that promise. In such a case do ask other customers and industry experts about the same before you choose a WordPress hosting provider.
Part B. Choosing a WordPress hosting service provider
Once you answer these questions, you can move on to finding a reliable hosting provider to give you the best WordPress hosting plan. Here are the parameters that a business trying to have a stable and effective online presence should try to meet.
4. Domain parking service – Domain parking allows you to reserve a domain name today or even in the future for your WordPress website. Choose a good top level domain for your website and ask your service provider if you can park the domain name with them. Some providers allow you to park domain names at a cheaper price.
5. Backup-recovery – Fixing hacked websites takes time. Because retrieving the data from the website itself is a time consuming ordeal. So, it is advisable to be prepared with a service provider that will help you with a good backup-recovery plan if there ever is a virus or a malware attack. Security add-ons like CodeGuard, are great cloud backup recovery products that are WordPress compatible.
6. Security measures – To further the point made above, ensure that the security of your WordPress website is not threatened. WordPress is compatible with Sitelock to make data on the website free of viruses and malware. In a bid to choose the best WordPress hosting plan, it is essential that you take security onto account since it makes users and visitors trust your website.
With these pointers you will be able to zero down on a web hosting provider that can give you the best WordPress hosting plan. Also, break no sweat in case you spend more time researching on one of these pointers. They are just to make sure that your hosting provider doesn’t rip you off with expensive plans. Hope you enjoyed reading this article. Till then, happy plan-hunting.
