You knew exactly what you wanted when you were building your site, from themes to plugins, everything was laid out cleanly for you to put together. But when it came to choosing WordPress hosting, you were at a loss, not because of lack of choice, but of too many in the market.

Admittedly, a number of site owners do not focus on hosting because of its technical nature. The majority choose to develop using WordPress because it enables anyone to build a site without technical know-how. When faced with hosting, they struggle to outline and stick to their priorities.

That being the case, we can solve the issue of technical know-how by identifying key areas to look at, without being too technical. With this guide, you can make well-informed decisions based on what you need and prioritize instead of the hype you see in your searches.

Focus Areas in Hosting

Once you get the initial set-up out of the way, it’s time to spend some time thinking about your hosting needs.

Needs or Requirements

Everything begins with your needs and priorities. While there certainly are no rules on what you should get, deciding on what is best means considering all factors related to your website, and eventually, your business.

Speed

Speed highly affects your visitor’s experience on your site. When lag time becomes an issue that is making you lose revenue, especially on eCommerce sites, it’s time to re-assess your hosting solution. When optimizing hosting for speed, the availability & locality of a data center help provide the promised speed and reliability. This requires you to dig deep into your hosting prospects’ websites and read the fine print. For example, LCN offers UK-centric WordPress hosting with its data centers purpose-built in the UK, while providing respective 24/7 UK-based support. WPEngine on the other hand, lets you pick the closest data center to your location.

Security

It is important to put Security as a mission-critical part of your decision-making, otherwise, you might find yourself facing data breach lawsuits and losing billions in revenue. It’s not surprising that Shared Hosting will be vulnerable to attacks. It is after all being shared with more than one client. If one client is affected, the attack automatically spreads to the rest. It is prudent to take a stance of proactive prevention, rather than being sorry later.

Reputation

At some point, the only difference in hosting packages is the reputation of the hosting provider you will choose. Ensure you do a background check and ask peers or current customers for feedback.

Scale

Is your site ready to make the changes to keep up with your needs? Needs to change drastically. Future-proofing is a part of planning to ensure that companies maximize their software, hardware, and subscriptions as well as prepare for any expansion in business operations.

Support

Should problems occur during operations, you need to be able to rely back on a team that knows your site from the inside out. This is especially critical during downtimes when you need to troubleshoot fast. If your hosting provider is true to their claim, then they should be able to help plan your disaster recovery and business continuity-type policy according to the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) you have signed up for. Having solid support that you can depend on gives you peace of mind.

Costs

Again, weigh up on your priorities so that you can properly come up with a budget. The most expensive does not necessarily mean the best. The most logical and useful hosting package is one that can serve your needs at full capacity at a reasonable fee.

Don’t put hosting as a second priority next to your site’s design or UX. With careful planning, you can get the best solution to your hosting issues, so that you can focus on business operations.