Choosing a Hosting Company for Your WordPress Website

Where your website lives online

These computer-based servers “serve” your website to your customers, so they see your pages. All websites require this and WordPress is no exception!

August 25, 2024

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Blog | WordPress Hosting

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Do I really need website hosting?

Yes! Are you ready to get small business website online? Then you’ll need hosting!

A hosting company essentially holds your website on servers so that visitors can reach it. These servers “serve” your website to your customers, so they see your pages. All websites require this and WordPress is no exception!

For the WP SiteGenius Business Pro Membership, that includes videos on how to make your own WordPress website, I demonstrate how to set your site up at Hostinger.

They have several shared hosting plans. I’ll go through the differences between different types of hosting a little later in this post. What’s great about Hostinger is that they offer a free domain with sign-up, have the industry-standard cPanel, and are solid with my site running with 100% uptime.

At WordPress.org you can view their current recommendations for the best WordPress hosting companies. These change over time so you can check it if you ever decide to change to another hosting provider.

What’s the Difference?

You share resources on the server. Each site takes up a private space on the server so you can’t get into other sites and they can’t get into yours. This is the best type of hosting for a business that is just starting out.

There are four main types of hosting for small to medium businesses.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting stores your website on a server with other people’s websites. You share resources on the server. Each site takes up a private space on the server so you can’t get into other sites and they can’t get into yours. This is the best type of hosting for a business that is just starting out.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting can consist of:

Dedicated IP: An IP address is assigned to your website instead of a shared IP
Dedicated Virtual Server: A server is created virtually, being a computerized version of an actual, physical server
Dedicated Server: A server that solely hosts your website and no others

These are useful as your business grows but you’re not ready to foot the bill for cloud hosting which tends to be on the expensive side. With the exception of the dedicated IP server, the others have what are called scalable resources. This means that maybe you have a quick increase in traffic because you launched a promotion, and then the server accommodates all of the extra visitors that you don’t usually have.

Managed WordPress Hosting

This is WordPress hosting that is managed for you! They usually offer a server, a set of security protocols that you have to follow. They don’t update the site but they do take care of more than at a shared hosting server. However, you end up paying more for this service. Depending on your site traffic, this might be a good choice as it increases. If you’re just releasing an informational website for your business to share your message with the public, and you’re growing your business, then shared hosting is a good choice.

Cloud Hosting

You launched your business and it grew! Success! Cloud hosting lets your website be on a distributed network, with available resources to handle rapid increases in traffic. It also provide the best uptime overall, and strongest performance for medium to enterprise businesses. I’m mentioning it here because it is available, but if you small business is in its beginning stages, then you wouldn’t need this type of hosting quite yet.

This is a quick overview of the general types of web hosting available for your WordPress site.

I look forward to seeing you in the community forums as you begin your genius wesbite-building journey!

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