How to choose a WordPress Host (step by step)

WordPress Hosting is a 16 billion dollar industry with a lot of “legit reviews” which often lead you astray because the writers of the reviews are often getting a large kickback from the hosting company they are recommending. As such the reviews funnel people towards a particular host because of the large affiliate payout as oppossed to whats best for the person purchasing the hosting plan – ie you. In this post I will recommend, based on your particular scenario, a host and particular plan best for you without favoring a company based on its highest affiliate payout.

Table of Contents:

• Short Answer
• Longer Answer

Short Answer (probably SiteGround is the answer)

If you are in a rush and don’t want to go through the below series of questions in order to tailor to your specific case then the short answer is,

• For the majority of WordPress users (ie non-technical people trying to create their own website) SiteGround is the correct answer because they have very affordable (from $2.99 p/month) and highly feature rich plans. Shared hosting and won’t increase in price after the initial contract period (usually 1-3 years).
  • Even if you are a designer or developer using WordPress for clients consider SiteGround an option as its larger plans, which are still very affordable (from $5.99 p/month at time of writing) you can white label hosting to sell to your clients and they have tools to manage all client related needs as a freelancer or small agency.
• For more technical users (developers perhaps or teams) who have skills in back end developers or perhaps have a developer on board in your team you are technically skilled enough to use Amazon Web Services or Digital Ocean if you want a very very fast and highly customized experience without any of the issues that comes from speed that comes from inefficient themes and plugins as well as shared hosting. The tradeoff is that setting up your host will take more of your time but you get high levels of control over your site’s host.
  • If you are technically minded and still want good service but not the time spent get a dedicated server account with SiteGround as you will still have a good base to be performant and can save time on managing server’s in more detail.

Longer Answer

Answer a series of questions in order to more fully understand what host provider suits your needs.

1. Are you (or someone in your team who is able to work with the site) technically minded in terms of development or server management?
   • YES, consider using Amazon Web Services or Digital Ocean because these hosts allow more control over your host. The trade off is that you will spend more time doing server related tasks.
     • If you don’t have time to take a little longer with server tasks (like setting up a site, setting up SSL etc etc) then consider answering ‘NO’ to this question as a proxy for avoiding the more technical requirements and taking advantage of WordPress Hosts who can take a lot of time out of server tasks – which is similar to what a non-technical user also wants.
   • NO, continue to the next question.
2. Do you have more than one website you need to host?
   • YES, continue to question 2a.
     • 2a: Are you a freelancer who will create sites for clients?
       • YES, use a SiteGround ‘GoGeek’ plan (from $7.99 p/month at time of writing) which allows you to sign up your clients to your host and charge them for it. You will make an extra monthly income and they have all the tools to allow you to manage this for your client. You don’t need to be a developer to do this as the tools they give you a UI in order to manage your clients hosting accounts (known as white label accounts).
       • NO, you should still use SiteGround but go for a slightly lower priced plan in the ‘GrowBig’ plan (from $4.99 p/month at time of writing) which allows multiple sites and many other features but doesn’t allow you to white label hosting for your clients.
   • NO, in this case go with a SiteGround ‘StartUp’ plan ($2.99 p/month at time of writing) which is still very feature rich but only allows one domain name.

NOTES:

• If you are not sure about one of the questions opt for the lower cost account as its always easy to upgrade if your site ends up requiring more features (data etc).
• All SiteGround plans are ‘managed’ so you don’t need to worry about updating plugins, themes and WordPress core itself which would be the case with non-managed hosting.
• 30 Day Money Back guarantee on all SiteGround Plans.