How to choose the best WordPress Hosting

To create a website, one must have good-looking theme, reliable web host and content for the site. In this, web host is the most important feature, because bad web host will often down you site, reduce the speed of loading and not reliable too. Some of the beginners will make mistake in choosing the hosting provider and then they realize and make change in future.

Web host is the only thing which cannot be transferred easily like theme and content.

WordPress HOSTING REQUIREMENTS:

WordPress is most popular web-based software, which works with almost all the hosting providers. WordPress requires two simple specifications, which all the hosting providers have contained:

PHP5.2.4 or more
Mysql 5 or more.

TYPES OF WordPress HOSTING:

Before choosing the best wordpress hosting provider, you have to consider following things:

• Online & Offline support
• Most Reliable
• High reputation
• 99% up time
• Fit to your needs

Free Web Hosting:

There are many web host providers, who offer free WordPress web hosting with some catches like below:

• Ask you to place their advertisement banner in your site.
• Ask you to add their text link at the footer.
• Someone will resell their hosting to get some profits, which results in often down time.
• Has lot of restrictions like limited space, minimum database and language incompatible.
• The major cause of few hosting is 99% down time and don’t have proper support.
• If they stop their service, then you are at risk and cannot recover your data and tables. We always not recommend choosing free web host provider at any cause.

Shared WordPress Hosting:
Shared hosting is the most commonly used web hosting because of its reasonable price. As the name implies, many websites sharely hosted in a huge server. This will impact in performance if any of the website crossing the usgae limit.

Pros:
Normal or cheap rate.
Secured than free hosting.
Good to start for small company or beginners.

Cons:
Since its a shared hosting, all the usages are limited to each hosting. If you reached the limit, then the hosting providers force you to upgrade your plan or block your hosting. Eventhough they express it as “Unlimited hosting”, actually its false. Read their usage terms and conditions and confirm the usage limits with hosting providers before starting to buy.
Impact in overall performance.

VPS Hosting:
Virtual private server(VPS) or Virtual Dedicated server(VDS) are not a complete dedicated server, since hardwares are shared from the server but has lot of controls than shared hosting. This type of servers are best use for e-commerce. Some hosting providers has Managed VPS hosting, where they will do all the technical works like updating the system and maintenance.

Pros:
Lot of controls and access comparing to shared hosting.
Can install any software and upgrade hardware at any time.
root access to php and Apache.

Cons:
Need some technical knowledge to setup and maintain this hosting. To overcome this some hosting providers offers managed VPS hosting.
Since the hardware is shared, you won’t get full dedicated performance and control over the server.
Need to manually update the system and software.

Dedicated Server Hosting:
Its a complete server which you can take for lease, rent or purchase from the hosting providers. You are the owner and you can do anything on that server. Since you have to setup and maintain the server security, performance and everything depends on you.

Pros:
You can run any script without restriction.
Complete control over the server.
Best fit for high traffic websites.

Cons:
Very expensive.
Have administrator knowledge to setup and maintain the server.( Instead use Managed dedicated server which is maintained by the hosting provider.)

Conclusion:
Choosing wordpress hosting is depends on your need.
Testing –> Free hosting
Starter, small blog, small business –> low traffic –> Shared hosting
e-commerce, media –> medium traffic –> VPS hosting
Large company, media hosting website –> High traffic –> Dedicated hosting