Best Web Hosting for WordPress
In choosing a hosting provider for your website, it’s essential you find a web hosting service that suits your specific needs. For many, WordPress web hosting is often a qualifying factor, as a majority of website owners prefer to use WordPress to manage their sites and content. While WordPress also offers web hosting, it’s the WordPress CMS (content management system) most users are after. With plenty of room for customization, a large list of themes, and essential plugins, WordPress CMS is a popular choice for website owners.
Of course, in selecting the best web hosting for WordPress, there are several factors to consider. The web hosting provider you choose will still depend on the type of website you run and the capabilities you need, as there’s a plethora of sites that simply offer WordPress hosting. Before we cover the best hosting sites for WordPress CMS, let’s take a closer look at what WordPress hosting entails.
Suggested Reading
Whether you’re not interested in using WordPress or you’re ready to learn more about web hosting, you can find additional information on the pages provided below:
WordPress Web Hosting Explained
As mentioned, website owners have the option to both host and manage their site via WordPress or simply use the WordPress CMS through their own hosting provider. For the sake of this article, we’ll focus on utilizing WordPress CMS, as the hosting side of WordPress doesn’t offer the features most other top providers do.
In terms of the CMS, a range of web hosts will offer WordPress hosting. Within this, you can typically sign up and have the CMS already installed and ready to go. From here, each host will differ in what it offers for WordPress integration. For the most part, you’ll have the ability to download and install WordPress plugins, update the CMS, and more. However, managed WordPress hosting offers a bit more.
Essential Definition
Infrastructure is the collection of physical and virtual components that are used to build, operate, and manage information technology services. The components consist of hardware, software, data centers, networks, facilities, and related equipment.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting works quite similar to your average WordPress services, but there’re a few more advantages to it being managed. First and foremost, you’ll often have access to 24/7 customer support and, just like it sounds, many (if not all) technical aspects are managed for you. In other words, the site’s speed, security, uptime, and more is managed by the host. While managed WordPress hosting will be more expensive, the benefits of such often outweigh the costs.
In short, managed WordPress hosting seeks to take the difficulties out of the entire process and experience. This is ideal for business owners, as it allows them to have a well-run website without devoting a great deal of time to performing such tasks themselves. In essence, you can create the content and get it on site with ease, while most other processes are covered by the host.
Best Web Hosting for WordPress: Top Providers
While there’s a large list of companies who offer WordPress hosting, there’s a select few who make the CMS integration a breeze, keeping the process simple for users. If you’d like to find a host with seamless upgrades and easy WordPress installation, consider the web hosts provided below.
SiteGround
An official, WordPress recommended host, SiteGround boasts a range of benefits for users, from 24/7 customer support to an in-house team for site speed and security issues. With SiteGround, you’ll get automatic updates, unlimited monthly data transfers, and more. However, users don’t have access to unlimited storage, which may be an issue for many. That aside, SiteGround plans range for $4 to $15 a month.
Bluehost
Bluehost has been around for years, and they’ve become a common choice for WordPress Hosting, as with all the hosts listed here. Also officially recommended, BlueHost offers 24/7 customer support, of which you can utilize via phone, email, or live chat. For the most part, they’re ideal for smaller businesses, yet not limited to such. They too, like SiteGround, don’t offer unlimited storage, yet they do offer a variety of other features like a free SSL certificates and enhanced cPanel.
1&1
An editor’s choice on PCMag, 1&1 is considered one of the best web hosting providers for WordPress. Each of their plans offer unlimited webspace, websites, and security with an SSL certificate. Of course, they also offer 24/7 customer support. Other than that, they’re pricing is quite low compared to competitors, with plans ranging from $8 to $15 a month (though they often offer signup deals for the first 12 months).Essential Definition
An SSL Certificate, or secure sockets layer, is essentially a data file used to encrypt private or sensitive information over the web. In other words, it ensures the data being transferred is only seen by each party. SSL certificates are essential for ecommerce stores and other sites who keep personal information.
How to Choose Web Hosting for WordPress CMS
Whether you choose to go with a web host mentioned above or look elsewhere for WordPress hosting, there’s a few things to keep in mind to make the selection process easier. Of course, you’ll need to consider your specific needs and how you’d like to scale your website in the future. For additional help, take a look at the list of tips and things to consider below:
- Avoid free WordPress hosting, or free web hosting in general. Unless you’re simply planning on running a blog or temporary site, free hosting is always going to be limited with features. If free hosting does interest, at least ensure the host allows you to upgrade seamlessly when needed.
- Consider managed Wordpress hosting. Though plans for such will cost a little more, the features and benefits are ideal. As mentioned, most technical aspects are handled for you with managed Wordpress hosting, so you can focus on more business-oriented tasks.
- WordPress or not, you need to also determine which type of web hosting will suit you best, whether it be shared or cloud-based, among others. VPS and cloud are two of the most common and more popular choices, though it’s going to depend on your needs and preferences.
- Keep speed and security in mind. As you seek a web host, such as those above, may mind to their speed and security features. Site speed is concern for most web users (your audience), so speed is essential. Of course, the same goes for security.
- Uptime should also be a top concern for you. Though you’ll find most companies boast a 99.5% and higher uptime, that’s not to say they all do. Plus, a mere 0.1% can make quite the difference for some sites.
Most companies do not have the resources to build their own infrastructure and trying to do so can put a huge strain on the company’s budget and time. IaaS providers give businesses a cost-effective and quick solution to their infrastructure that won’t deplete or strain their resources.
Don’t Forget to Monitor Your Site with StatCounter
No matter the type of hosting you select, it’s always a good idea to monitor your website to ensure it’s performing well and keeping users engaged. In doing so, you’ll be able to gauge how users behave on your site, and even see what pages they tend to leave your website on. Then, you can make necessary changes to acquire more traffic and retain users once on site. Of course, you can use the web tracker from StatCounter to track specific metrics of your website and much more.
If you need any assistance in utilizing our tools, or have any questions, you can fill out the form below to contact StatCounter support.
As our trusted domain and web hosting provider, 1&1 offers easy WordPress integration to help you get your website off the ground seamlessly. If you are in need of a web hosting solution, we recommend 1&1.
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