What is the Best WordPress Hosting? Things to Consider

This blog post is about a question I get a lot as a WordPress Performance Specialist.

And this may seem as an easy question to answer, the answer is actually a little bit more than pick this webhosting company. As with all things, context matters.

Now, before we jump into the things to consider, let’s talk about the purpose of a site first. You will have different requirements for your small blog versus an WooCommerce powered WordPress site.

Act accordingly.

So, these the things you should pay attention to. Let’s talk money first.

PRICING

The most important thing is remember that you get what you paid for.

• Can you go for $5 a month hosting? Sure, but it comes with drawbacks.
• Can you pay too much for hosting? Well, that depends. What does a particular hosting plan solve for you? And what are the set of features the hosting company provides?

Having said that, some sites will be fine on relatively cheap hosting plans you can find at SiteGround or GoDaddy Pro. What you do want, though, is a hosting plan that is built for WordPress. You want your WordPress site to perform well out the box.

PERFORMANCE

That quickly brings us to performance. Performance is always crucial, but you don’t need a Porsche 911 to bring your kids to school, but it is a great way to bring you fast from A to B. See what I’m getting at? If you have a site that makes you money in one way or another, these are the things to consider: In an ideal world you don’t want you hosting plan to throttle, to limit you in any way possible. So, that means, unlimited workers, unlimited bandwidth, no memory usage limits, that sort of thing.

Super rare. There are not a lot of hosting companies that offer this. But try to find them anyway if you do have a site that makes you money. A WooCommerce store, for instance.

SCALABILITY

If you expect your website to grow over time, you’ll want a hosting plan that can grow with you. The hosting provider should offer plans that can be upgraded to accommodate your site’s growth.

SECURITY

This is hard to gauge if you don’t know where to look for, but your WordPress site needs the best security possible. Your hosting provider should offer strong security measures, including firewalls, DDoS protection, and daily backups. SSL certificates should also be included.

Support for WordPress

Not all hosts are created equal when it comes to supporting WordPress. Some hosting providers offer managed WordPress hosting, which means they handle all the technical aspects of running a WordPress site, like updates, backups, and security.

You may not want that, so you may want to have different tools like Git integration, automatic deployments, etc.

You should definitely want to have WP CLI available. That, to me, is a must. It is is as close to magic with WordPress as you can get.

Customer Service

Ideally, your hosting provider should have a strong reputation for customer service. This means 24/7 availability, multiple ways to contact them (email, and live chat), and quick response times.

Not including phone here because you will always get better support when you write out your issue. Removes the guesswork for the support teams.

Reviews and Reputation

Lastly, take a look at the host’s reputation. Look at online reviews and ask for recommendations. Keep in mind, however, that every host will have both positive and negative reviews, so look for trends rather than individual reports.

There is a reason why I have listed this as the last item.