So, you have chosen a theme for your WordPress website and are now thinking of hosting your WordPress website on a server. We won’t be surprised if you have already come across a lot of hosting plans that promise to offer the same on slashed rates with SSL certificates. With the number of options floating around, it is very natural for one to take their eye off the important aspects that go into choosing the right WordPress hosting plan for their website. This article aims to give you an exhaustive list of things that you should keep in mind while choosing WordPress plans.
Ask yourself the right questions
This is so basic. But people still forget to keep a check of what their website actually needs. To start off with, ask yourself-
1. What is the budget I have allocated for my wordpress hosting service?
2. What is the estimated traffic per month on my website today and three months from now?
3. Should I buy a wordpress hosting plan keeping scale in mind?
4. Do I really need 24/7 support?
Surely you must have answered these questions in your mind as you read them. However, these questions, though important, will provide you with a macro-view of your requirements. If you think you have satisfactory answers to these questions, dig a little further and take performance, security, up-time and other such things into consideration as well. Here is a list of the feature specific questions while choosing WordPress plans:
1. Server up-time – The server uptime is an indicator of the health of your website. It’s more or less the pulse-rate at which your website is beating. Servers generally have a 99% server up-time which is good. Anything above is considered to be outstanding. A low server up-time should be somewhere around 95%. So, while choosing a WordPress hosting plan, make sure your servers are in the pink of health.
- Backup-recovery– In case your website gets hacked or some data gets stolen, it is always safe to have a recovery option for your website.
- Speed, Support and Performance– We have clubbed these aspects as one since they are more or less interdependent. If you are looking for WordPress plans that provide great speed then your website will surely perform well. Along with great performance, you will need
support for your website in case there are minor glitches or if you want to migrate from the type of server you are using.
- Geographic location of the data center- Your server better be located at a place near your vicinity. Because the farther your data center is located, the latency and download speed get affected, leading to a slower page load time.Choose the right type of WordPress Plan
After a basic understanding of what your needs are in terms of features, choose the options available in the market. You will come across Shared hosting, VPS hosting, Managed hosting and Dedicated hosting.1. Shared hosting: Shared is the cheapest web hosting service available among all the hosting plans. They start with $2 and go till $4 per month. Shared hosting is good if your business needs a separate blog or a website which is not really data heavy. The disadvantage of using shared hosting is that they restrict you with respect to resources. Also since you share this hosting service with other websites hosted on the same server, you also run a risk of suffering the same fate as the other website in case anything goes wrong with even one of them.
2. VPS hosting: VPS hosting plans start with $4. They provide you more space and also allot you enough resources to be independent. With VPS hosting you can take advantage of their scaling capabilities as your business grows. Since VPS provides more control, businesses prefer VPS hosting to shared hosting for their wordpress website.
3. Managed hosting: Managed WordPress hosting provides users with services that are aimed towards the work done on WordPress platform. Because of this, the ones who manage the website are able to solve all the issues related to performance, plugins etc. This pretty much ends your problem of managing a wordpress website.
4. Dedicated hosting: Dedicated hosting is more like a home which provides you with all the resources specifically aimed towards your requirements. There is no sharing of space or even issue with security. However, these services are slightly expensive as compared to others because of the pricing of the resources in the market. So, if you are a business which has more than 100,000 visitors a month, going for a dedicated server will be a wise choice of investment.
This check list is almost exhaustive. Consider these pointers as a tool that can help you find a good WordPress plan for yourself.
