Tips for choosing the best Hosting plan for WordPress websites

The first thing you need to do to launch a WordPress Website is to buy a domain name and find website hosting. Website hosting services keep your domain online while providing server management to ensure your site operates at peak performance.

In other words, the type of hosting plan you choose can affect the uptime and online performance of your website. So, if you’re new to website hosting, this comprehensive guide will teach you everything there is to know about choosing the best WordPress hosting plan.

Understand The Different Types Of Web Hosting
There are billions of websites on the internet. All of these websites are different and cater to different audiences. In the same way, there are many different types of hosting to meet all kinds of business needs.

Let’s discuss the most common types of WordPress hosting: shared, dedicated, VPS, and cloud hosting.

Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most common and cheapest model of web hosting. With shared hosting, multiple websites occupy the same server for web maintenance, uptime, and data storage.

You can think of a shared hosting model, such as renting an apartment with roommates. Getting an apartment with roommates is often affordable, but it comes with more ties.

Shared hosting plans are ideal for new websites that don’t manage high website traffic. Popular websites and online stores will not be of much use from shared hosting. Why? These sites can drain important server resources from others.

Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is the opposite of shared hosting. With a dedicated server (read: single server), you can have your own server environment with dedicated resources.

High-traffic websites and ecommerce stores can benefit from the use of dedicated servers as they provide a stable hosting environment and increased performance along with a content delivery network.

However, like shared hosting, Dedicated hosting plans may rely on ancient physical servers.

VPS
A virtual private Server (VPS) is somewhat similar to dedicated hosting. Both offer private servers to customers. However, VPS is based on a hybrid model.

Websites can receive their own virtual servers, but they will most likely have to share hard drives with other customers. With VPS, customers essentially own their hosting environment.

The service provider is responsible for maintenance and upkeep.

Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is fully virtual and is designed to provide data security features, high scalability, availability, and flexibility for website owners.

Your server network contains tremendous server power, which you can use at any time. Cloud hosting comes in three main categories:

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): this cloud computing Model allows users to purchase a monthly subscription for cloud hosting. They have no control over the server.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): this Model is used primarily by IT administrators. Users rent storage, network, and cloud computing resources from hosting providers.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): PaaS users can rent an entire platform for cloud hosting. This option is used by software developers who have the expertise to complete complex development activities.
Knowing the differences between these hosting options will help you make the right choice for your website’s needs.

Consider Website Performance
Your expert guide to choosing the best Hosting for WordPress
Website performance is one of the most important factors to consider before buying WordPress web hosting. Imagine that you are benefiting from a successful marketing campaign that brings hundreds of thousands of potential customers to your online store.

When this happens, your website crashes and all these people leave immediately and never come back. This is a nightmare scenario for any business owner. And that’s why the performance of your WordPress site is an important factor in choosing a web hosting plan.

When comparing different packages, pay close attention to random access memory (RAM), disk space usage, and Central Processing unit (CPU). These additional features will play an integral role in the performance of your website.

You should also pay attention to the transfer speed, as it determines how fast your website will be. If you want to delegate this task to someone else, you should choose managed hosting. Also, be sure to consider website accessibility, which basically makes your website user-friendly. By considering accessibility when choosing web hosting, you are also targeting an audience of people with disabilities and amplifying your reach. With the help of Accessibility Checker, you can ensure that your site is functioning properly and ensure a positive user experience.

Make Sure Your Web Hosting Plan Is Scalable
Website performance is not the only factor to consider when purchasing a web hosting plan. Scalability refers to how your server resources will be used as your website grows.

In general, scalability will determine whether your website can handle sudden website traffic. Let’s say your website experiences high traffic and orders during the holiday season.

Eventually, your website server struggles to keep up and crashes at the worst possible time. To avoid this dreaded outcome, you should invest in a hosting plan that can scale with your website’s performance (ideally dedicated or VPS hosting).

Factors in website uptime
You can buy a web hosting package with all the bells and whistles, but if your website dies at a critical moment, it’s all for nothing. Uptime is determined by the amount of time your website stays online.

Although every website receives periodic maintenance, the best websites are online at least 99% of the time. The opposite of uptime is downtime, and this is every webmaster’s worst nightmare.

When your website goes down even for a few minutes, you can lose thousands of dollars. For example, even a minute of downtime can cost e-commerce giant Amazon up to $220,318.80.

Plus, your SEO rankings can also take a hit if sudden downtime becomes a habit.

Thus, just choose a web hosting provider with a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Do not forget about caching
Website loading time is one of the most important factors for SEO and user experience (UX). After all, there are billions of websites online.

People won’t wait forever for your website to load, especially if your competitors have faster websites. To improve the loading time of a website, you should rely on caching.

Caching occurs when someone visits your website, and saves slow-moving website elements on their device. Every time the person visits your website again, these elements are preloaded, which increases the speed of the website.

Managed web hosting providers can automate the caching process for you. How? Either by adding a caching plugin to your website’s backend or using a content delivery network (CDN).

Prioritize Data Security
Another factor that you should consider when choosing a hosting plan for your WordPress Website is the security of your data and your user data.

You want to ensure that your hosting provider offers reliable encryption and authentication methods to protect your website and email accounts from unauthorized access and data breaches by implementing DMARC policies and taking other necessary actions.

One common way to achieve this is to use standard protocols such as SAML or OAuth to enable single sign-on (SSO) for your website.

SSO allows your users to log in to your website using their existing credentials from other services, such as:

Google
Facebook
X (formerly Twitter)
The best part? They do not need to create a new account or remember a new password.

However, SAML and OAuth are not the same, and they have different advantages and disadvantages depending on your use case.

For example, SAML is better suited for enterprise applications that need to support multiple identity providers and complex authorization rules. OAuth is more flexible and easier to integrate with mobile and web applications that require third-party APIs.

Make Sure Your Web Hosting Has The Latest Technology
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) built on the PHP framework. PHP is used worldwide to build dynamic websites and online portals.

As a result, WordPress needs to use a database to store all the data that your website generates. To achieve this feat, you will need:

PHP 5.7 or higher version
MySQL 5.6 or higher version
Using low-quality web hosting technology will not give you the performance and benefits you need to maintain a productive website.

Pay Attention To Backup Policies
Backups ensure that your website can be restored if it is hacked or compromised. It is also a saving grace during website crashes.

Usually, WordPress hosting providers offer backup services for free through the control panel. Some may charge for additional backups. Nonetheless, WordPress backups are an essential component of any web hosting plan.