Looking to find the best web hosting service to host your blog and landed here on this article? Then you must read this as we are going to various important things that you should consider while choosing a web hosting company. Also, I had made a list of some good web hosting companies based on my research about them.
Being a blogger myself, I know the importance of choosing a good company for better customer experience using their hosting service after the purchase. Not just from that perspective, selecting the right company would help you in providing a better experience for your visitors with a faster loading website that can indirectly help you rank higher in the search engines.
So sharing with you some things that I would recommend you to check before selecting a company for your WordPress website.
Things to Check Before Buying Web Hosting:
1.SSL Certificate:
Installing an SSL certificate on your blog is highly recommended because most popular browsers are providing a warning to their users whenever they try to visit a website without an SSL certificate installed.
Moreover, according to the Search Engine Journal, Google admits of giving preference to the sites having the certificate installed. Ultimately that can help in boosting the rankings of your blog pages in the search engine results.
However, you need not buy an SSL certificate separately because most of the reputed hosting companies allow you to install a free SSL certificate from websites like Lets Encrypt. So check if they provide an SSL certificate while checking their web hosting plans.
2.Multiple PHP Versions Availability:
Most good hosts offer Multiple PHP versions. Running your website on a server with the latest PHP version can be faster. This is a key aspect to check when you are migrating to a new website as a change of PHP version can create compatibility issues with the plugins or themes that you are using currently.
3. SSD Storage:
Even though most good companies provide SSD storage only it is always better to ensure that they are providing this type of disk space. Also, you need to check the amount of disk space that you would get so there would be no trouble when the storage requirement of your website grows bigger.
4.Customer Support:
Customer support plays a key role as long as you host your website. There are different types of issues that might arise such as technical issues, malware injection, etc at any point in time and they are the reliable people who can guide you in the right way whenever they happen.
Good hosting companies offer 24X7 support around the year through different methods of communication such as Phone, Email, Live Chat, etc. However, most companies provide support through email or ticket-based only.
Live Chat support is offered only by few hosting service providers. When you don’t like to wait for a long-time for their reply and want to communicate immediately, having live chat support is highly useful.
So it is always better to learn how they offer support as it would be easy to communicate for you whenever needed in the future.
5.Daily Backups:
When you are using a popular platform like WordPress, the themes or plugins get regular updates from the developers. Keeping your plugins and themes up-to-date is very important but these updates can break your site.
Not just them but there are many things that can make your website non-functional as it was before. Having a backup especially Cloud Backups taken by the hosting service providers can help in restoring your website and make it function normally within less time.
However, it is always a good choice to take the backups of your site on your own. This way you won’t need to rely on the hosting company. But choosing a hosting company that offers backups can save time as they can restore easily without the need to use your backup.
6.Money-Back Guarantee:
There are many chances that you might have a bad experience with a hosting company after buying a hosting plan. Ultimately feeling that you have wasted your hard-earned money. This is why it is better to look for a money-back guarantee.
Buying from a company that provides money-back guarantees, you can easily request for a refund if you don’t have a good experience as a customer. However, you can get a refund only within a specific duration after making your purchase. So make sure to read their refund policy and other terms carefully.
7.Email Accounts:
Sending an email is a professional method to reach out to other bloggers. So you need to check whether your host allows you to create email accounts and manage them through your hosting plan.
This way it would be easy to create a professional email address with your domain name. However, if they don’t allow you to create email accounts, you can manage them through Zoho Mail or Gsuite service.
8. Number of Websites You Can Host:
Most hosting companies allow you to host a single website on their basic plans. Especially when you want to host multiple websites or start a new one later it is better to buy the plans that support multiple websites.
Of Course, you can upgrade the plan most of the time but checking this initially would help you choose the right plan that would suit your requirements.
9.Free Migration(Optional To Check):
One should look for a free migration when you are planning to move your website from one web hosting company to another. However, if you are planning to start a new website then there is no point in checking about this.
Even though these are important things to check, depending on the hosting provider and their pricing different kinds of useful features such as , Content Delivery Network, Malware Protection are provided as part of the hosting plan.
Let me share with you some of the best web hosting options that are reliable hosting providers as per my research and experience about using some of them.
Best Web Hosting Options in 2020:
The best web hosting services are listed down below based on their pricing and affordability for a beginner to purchase for hosting their WordPress website. You would be seeing the cheap WordPress hosting companies first and expensive ones later in the list.
Host Armada is a new player in the hosting industry but they provide cheap wordpress hosting services starting at a low price with a huge discount for new customers. They offer many good features such as Multiple PHP versions, Daily Backups, Email Accounts, etc even on their basic plans.
Key Features of Host Armada Hosting:
- Free SSL
- 7 Daily Backups on the starting plans
- Multiple Data Center Locations
- Email Accounts
- Ticket, Phone, Live Chat Support 24×7
Fast Comet is one of the companies offering web hosting at affordable prices with many features like SSD storage, Let’s Encrypt SSL, etc. The best part is that they store Backups every single day even on their basic shared web hosting plan, Fast Cloud so you need not worry about taking backups at all.
If you are just getting started then it can be a great choice to select and start your blogging journey because the pricing of the plans is more affordable currently starting at 2.95$ with a 70% discount.
Key Features of Fast Comet Web Hosting:
- Daily Backups
- Bit Ninja Server Security
- Multiple PHP Versions
- Free Website Transfer
- 24X7 Ticket, Phone, Chat Support
Green Geeks is an affordable web hosting provider offering Eco-Friendly web hosting to its customers. More or less it provides almost all the similar features that a company should offer such as customer support, Free Wildcard SSL, etc.
The best part is that they provide Unlimited Web Space even on their basic plan, LITE. However, you would be able to host multiple websites with increased performance buying their PRO or PREMIUM Plans.
Key Features of Green Geeks Hosting:
- Unlimited Web Space
- Free Domain for 1st Year
- Free WildCard SSL
- 24X7 Support
- Performance can be increased upgrading to a higher plan
4.Siteground:
Siteground increased the prices of their hosting plans recently and they become a bit expensive especially for the newbies to afford. However, they are one of the best hosting companies providing good technical support and reliable hosting servers. The best part is that they have recently started hosting its infrastructure on Google Cloud.
So if you are planning to host a website on Siteground, it would be wise to buy a plan for 2 or 3 years because the renewal prices are costly.
Key Features of Siteground:
- Free CDN
- Daily Backups
- Unmetered Traffic
- 24X7 Customer Support
- Free SSL
WPX hosting is a reputed WordPress hosting company and it is used by many big bloggers to host their websites that get large volumes of traffic to their websites. They offer many premium features such as WPX Cloud CDN, Enterprise Level Security to protect your websites from any kind of DDOS attack and fix them if needed.
Key Features of WPX Hosting:
- High-speed Custom CDN
- Staging Area
- 24X7 Fast Responsive Support
- DDOS Protection
- Malware Scanning and Removal
Kinsta is a Managed WordPress Hosting company that is similar to WPX hosting offering many premium features. It has 24 Global data centers that are powered by Google Cloud Platform. They also detect DDOS attacks and fix them for you.
Key features of Kinsta Hosting:
- SSL support
- Multiple Data Centers
- Free Site Migrations
- Daily Backups
- Hackfix
If you need to handle high volumes of traffic then Kinsta or WPX hosting is a good option to choose. The hosting plans of these companies are expensive compared to other options recommended in this article,
However, they are the best choice if you are looking for a company that takes care of every aspect of your website. So if you can invest then these two are the best options to choose from the entire list of options.
Final Thoughts:
Always estimate your requirements like budget, traffic, free migration before you proceed to select a hosting so that you would be able to make a decision. Remember choosing the right hosting company to host your WordPress website is essential but can be overwhelming with too many hosting options out there.
Check the most important features like SSL certificate, Customer Support availability, Money-back guarantee, etc as discussed earlier. More reliable web hosting services would be added here so make sure to bookmark and check it regularly.