How To Find The Right WordPress Host

Google’s first production server, rumored to still be in use at the EIG data center in Provo, UT. Source: Wikimedia.org

The company that hosts your website matters.

It should be a no-brainer, right? We thought so, too, but the more we look at our member uptime data the more we find the low cost monthly plans people are hosting their sites on aren’t up to snuff.

This isn’t going to be an article reviewing website hosts. There are plenty of those – most of which are affiliate reviews or otherwise unreliable. It’s also not about finding “the best WordPress host”. What’s great for one person or company may be completely wrong for another. If you’re looking for a good site to compare hosts we recommend Review Signal. They use an algorithm that scans the web for unique mentions and calculates a score that we find to be fairly reliable.

This is an article about finding the right host for you.

Each website has different needs, but here are a few things everyone running WordPress should look for:

1. Servers Optimized For WordPress – Many web hosting companies allow you to host any kind of website you’d like. That’s a good indication that they don’t know enough about WordPress. It’s not always a serious red flag, but we’ve yet to find a host that supports hosting any kind of site that knows WordPress thoroughly.
2. A Serious 99.99% Uptime Guarantee – Don’t sign up with a company that guarantees 100% uptime. It’s not possible in typical hosting environments and shouldn’t be promised. 99.99% allows for reasonable maintenance to be done without a significant impact on availability. Check the fine print, too, and be sure refunds are available if the uptime isn’t met. Also, it’s worth asking them how they measure uptime and if they accept external reporting. Some don’t and will use their own internal tools which don’t measure public availability of the website, only the internal availability of the server itself. They will tell you your site is up even when no one can access it.
3. Do You Need Email Hosting? – Some hosts don’t include Email services for free or at all. That’s not a problem for some, but for others it can create an additional expense. We recommend using a cloud based solution like Google for Work for businesses or Gmail for personal use as the focus of web hosts should be on websites, not Email.
4. A Clear Upgrade Path – Hosting companies use many methods to calculate usage including bandwidth, CPU cycles, pageviews, and more. When you hit the limit you could be in for some serious overage charges or your site may be shut down, so make sure you pick a plan that you’re going to be able to live with for a while and that upgrading is just a click away if needed. You don’t want to be on a platform that requires your site to be migrated to be on a more powerful server as you grow. Try to stay away from hosts that use CPU cycles to measure usage as that will be impossible for you to predict until you’re on their platform and equally impossible for you to refute if the host says you’ve exceed your limit.
5. How Do They Handle Traffic Spikes? – Let’s say you have a big day. Something you wrote gets picked up nationally and your site suddenly becomes flooded with traffic. How is that handled? Will it be shut down? Will resources be allocated automatically? How much would it cost? These things matter a great deal for websites with the potential to go viral.
6. Truly Great Technical Support – This can be difficult to analyze prior to becoming a customer, but it’s crucial. Try to get in touch with their tech department and ask some of the questions listed here. Go through the reviews on Review Signal and see what others are saying. Check out the hosting company’s social media to see what’s been posted there and how they respond. Also, think about what kind of support you need. Does it need to be 24/7? Can you live without phone support or live chat? What kind of resolution time do they promise? Companies who say they answer tickets in seconds/minutes are probably counting automated responses, so ignore that. Look for a company that can answer all of your questions confidently and even provide suggestions for making your hosting experience better.
7. Migration Support – If your site is hosted already and you’re looking to migrate, find a host that can handle that for you. They have the tools and experience to make it a seamless experience and if they don’t offer the service for free or at an affordable rate, look elsewhere.
8. Shared/VPS/Cloud/Dedicated, Oh My! – Choosing the right level of hosting means understanding the differences between the various offerings. Shared hosting is the lowest level and essentially means your site is on a server with dozens to hundreds of other websites (here’s a reverse IP lookup tool that can tell you how many sites may be hosted on your server – it could always be more because many servers host more than one public IP address). It’s risky in terms of performance and security, but comes with the lowest price tag. Shared hosting should only be used if your site has minimal technical requirements and isn’t likely to grow quickly. VPS, or virtual private server, is typically not much different than shared hosting. Your website is still on a server with other sites, but it’s usually segregated onto its own virtual machine giving you a bit more security and control over your hosting plan. You may also have access to tools allowing you to host multiple sites on your account. These plans have to be carefully vetted to ensure that the performance will be worth the additional cost. Cloud hosting is usually the same thing as VPS, but sometimes also includes a CDN (content distribution network) that automatically clones your site and pushes it to geographically diverse locations to improve performance. Dedicated hosting is what it sounds like; you’re renting a physical server that only you use and have full control over. This is typically much more expensive than other types of hosting and carries with it a whole slew of other concerns, not the least of which is whether or not your server will really be dedicated to you. Oftentimes support for dedicated servers is limited to hardware functionality and operating system updates, if that, so be sure to ask about support as well.

Good stuff, but who do you recommend?

Not knowing your requirements makes it impossible for us to make a great recommendation. We routinely help our members migrate to better hosts after we assess their needs and have a conversation about their goals, but in general we recommend staying away from GoDaddy, Web.com, Namecheap.com, and any company owned by EIG, including HostGator, A Small Orange, HostMonster, BlueHost, and many more. All of those companies have a history of under-performing servers, poor technical support, and underwhelming uptime.