As WordPress as a platform gained popularity, there was a huge influx of WordPress based websites across the world wide web. This gave rise to a special kind of website hosting specifically for WordPress based websites called WordPress Hosting. All industry leaders of the Hosting industry pushed out their WordPress hosting plans and every one claimed theirs to be the Best WordPress Hosting. But how do you know if one is truly the best? Well, after deep research of what goes in and the kinds of features that really matter for your beloved WordPress website, this post will help you determine, the Best WordPress Hosting plan for you. Let’s look at a few features and aspects that form the ingredients for this.
Hosting Security: Nothing beats the fact that your website’s security is the most important aspects that you should be concerned about. WordPress as a platform is Open Source and a whole lot of WordPress development depends upon 3rd party plugins and themes which can make your website vulnerable to security breaches. A good WordPress hosting plan will include critical security features such as Malware scanning, Site Lock, data backups and even support for SSL certificate integration. One honourable mention for security in WordPress hosting is ResellerClub. Not only do they provide weekly backups of your WordPress website but they have 2 essential proprietary security tools CodeGuard and SiteLock. SiteLock not only identifies threats, but also fixes them for you automatically. This way, SiteLock works in the background to protect your website. It monitors your website/database regularly and if any changes are detected, it notifies you. It also allows you to restore your website/database to a previous version. They also help integrate SSL certificates in 3 easy steps.
Managed Services: Let’s face it, you cannot be handling your business and at the same time looking into your WordPress website maintenance and other technical details. Having Managed WordPress Hosting services will take care of the overall maintenance and hygiene, updates and memory management, server performance monitoring, scheduled backups some WordPress Hosting Providers also take care of instantly adjusting to traffic spikes by scaling up your CPU & RAM. Another advantage that Managed WordPress Hosting is that you usually have access to additional developer-friendly features that you might not get otherwise. Features such as SSH access, Composer, HeidiSQL, Sequel Pro, and Git can make your development work easier and also provide support from the dedicated account managers to add new functionality and features to your WordPress website.
Top of the Line Data Centre: Your WordPress website uptime largely depends on the quality and infrastructure available at your WordPress Hosting Provider’s Data Centre. If the provider is claiming to be the Best WordPress Hosting Provider then you should not accept an uptime of less than 99.9%. Many will guarantee 99% uptime on their WordPress hosting plans and to verify this, start digging deeper into their data centres. Check if they have latest HVAC architecture, the kind of networking peripherals used such as switches and routers, and overall hardware configuration of their servers. All these aspects contribute to your website’s security and uptime.
WP-Database Optimization: WP-Database is where all your website data such as posts, blogs, pages, comments, theme settings, plugin settings etc. is stored. As your website grows, the WP-Database also bloats. This can impact the performance and speed of the website. Good WordPress Hosting Providers understand the importance of keeping the WP-Database lean and in good shape and hence provide inbuilt WP-Database optimization within their WordPress Hosting plans.
Excellent Support: 24X7 support over calls and email is mandatory. However, apart from having the support staff available, it is important to know how qualified the support staff is with respect to WordPress. Apart from that, there is nothing more annoying than being on hold when your website is in dire trouble. Try to find out overall call lag times, call centre size, email response turnaround time and if you have chat functionality is available because it is really easy sometimes to get commands and screenshots copy-pasted on chat and email rather than on call. The quality of support provided will at times determine the best WordPress Hosting service.
All this apart from, your core performance indicators like traffic supported, processing power, storage space etc. provided within the WordPress hosting plan should be adequate for your website. It takes a lot to claim to be the Best WordPress Hosting provider but now you know what to look for. Hope this helps and I would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments section below.
