Whether you are an established blogger or starting out, picking the right hosting company will be crucial to the success of your blog. Of course, you can choose to host your site free of charge with WordPress or Blogger and you can even move to their paid options when you come to monetise your site. The better option is to find a hosting company to work with that meets your needs now and in the future. We look at some of the things you should consider when you are making that decision – and help you pick the best hosting company for your needs.
For the purpose of this article we are assuming that you are looking for a shared hosting service for a self-hosted WordPress site. You may want to consider how much support you need because the cheapest shared hosting options will have an expectation that you can cover all the technical aspects of running your blog by yourself and that you won’t need help with things like backups, SSL certificates and CND (content delivery networks). If that’s not the case, read on to find out more.
The first thing to check is that the hosting company you are talking with does indeed specialise in hosting WordPress sites. A good WordPress hosting company will have configured their servers and implemented high-performing back-end code specifically to support WordPress websites. That in turn will ensure you don’t need to worry about speed and reliability.
You should check that they have implemented a CDN (content delivery network) to allow your site to be served across the world at lightning quick speeds.
And, you should check their reliability. Here google and twitter are your friends – check what has been published by other users about the hosting company you are considering.
This leads neatly into the second thing to consider. The reputation of your potential Hosting company is a good indication of how well things are likely to go for you. Use Google, but remember that most recommendations for hosting companies carry affiliate links so that the author gets some revenue if you do decide to use one of their suggestions. Check on twitter – it’s a good way to see if there are unanswered support issues or an unreliable service. And, do join some of the Facebook support groups for bloggers and ask there. Other bloggers are generally very willing to share their experience and make recommendations.
Do check what support the hosting company you are considering working with can offer. From their own website and blog, you may get an indication of whether they know what they are talking about. Ask what support hours are available and what communication channels they use (phone, email, support ticket on their site, chatbot etc).
Price matters to most of us. Check beyond the introductory price offer. How much will the price go up if you get a lot bigger? Are you signing up for a one year deal with a price that will rise exponentially when the offer expires? Are there hidden mandatory costs for SSL certificates, email services or domain registration? Do your homework and you won’t get any nasty shocks
What add-on services do you need? We suggest you make sure that your Web Hosting company CAN provide SSL certificates, email services, domain registration, a firewall to manage potential DDoS and regular backups.
Finally, ask if you can check out their control panel. You should be provided with an easy way to manage your site and a snapshot of the control panel will help ensure that you are working with a company that is used to helping bloggers rather than IT professionals.
Looking to move hosting company yourself?
Our recommendations come from our own experience. We currently work with LyricalHost for one of our WordPress blogs and are in the process of moving the other blogs to the same platform. They managed the migration for us and their customer offer covers our key requirements by providing good security, and integral SSL and email services. We love their easy to use dashboard and have found their support to be excellent and very efficient. Check out The Frugal Flexitarian to see a site hosted by LyricalHost
We work with IONOS for all our larger website applications, which includes all the blogl backend site analysis and database management. IONOS can host WordPress sites with an efficient cloud delivery network to ensure high loading speed anywhere in the world, but they also allow you to have a dedicated server at any of their locations if you want a more hands-on and technical solution. IONOS offer a range of services, with each one being available individually, so you can cherry pick to get the best, and most cost effective, solution you need.
Disclosure – This post contains affiliate links; we earn commission from qualifying purchases.