Choosing a WordPress Hosting Company

How to Choose a WordPress Hosting Company

WordPress hosting has become increasingly competitive over the last decade with hundreds of hosts surfaced through a quick Google search. But how do you weed through the results to find the host that’s right for your business? ReachFarther maintains a strong relationship with two global hosting leaders and through our partnerships can provide competitive prices, secure environments, daily or real-time backup services, fantastic 24/7/365 support, and industry-leading performance. If you'd like to speak with someone from our team, complete our quote form and we'll be in touch, or keep reading for information on how you can make an informed decision about what host is right for you.

Your WordPress website runs on a set of open-source software, likely a LAMP stack:

L – Linux: The server operating system
A – Apache: The web server running on top of your Linux operating system
M – MySQL: An open-source database technology that stores your website data
P – PHP: The scripting language used to write the code that runs WordPress

Each of those pieces needs to function together in order for your website to perform at it’s best. A host who can maintain a stable environment, keep it up to date, and alert you to any issues is of paramount importance. Here are some important factors to consider when evaluating different hosting options.

Quality of Support This is vital, because when you’ve got a problem you need answers quickly. A host that provides 24/7/365 phone and chat-based support is ideal so you’ve always got someone ready to help.
Value Price is a consideration, and it can vary widely. The low-cost hosting providers advertise great deals but often sell add-ons that increase your monthly price. Something as simple as daily backups is an add-on feature with many budget plans, and that can leave you in a lurch in an emergency. Many also require you to sign long-term deals that cannot be broken, so you’re stuck with them even as your business needs change. Make sure you understand what you’re getting, or more importantly, what you’re not getting for your dollar.
Backups and Restores Bad things still happen to websites, from hacks, to simple content editing mistakes. What happens if one of your employees accidentally deletes an eCommerce order or blows away an important piece of content? You need a means to recover the lost data quickly and easily. Choose a host that includes daily backups in your plan so you’ve got peace of mind.
Multiple Environments Find a host that will provide multiple environments at no additional cost. This means you’ve got a “public” site that the world sees, and a practice site where you can test content, author before publishing, or test plugin updates without affecting your public site. This is invaluable when modifying your site or adding tools, and can make or break a successful development project.
Performance The technology used by hosts varies, and their decisions can impact the speed of your solution. We favor cloud-based solutions that make it easy to scale your plan as necessary, and they're also more stable due to redundancy built into the networks.
Maintenance We’ve discussed the many systems that work together to make WordPress the great CMS that it is, and you need a host that can support all of them. Each of the underlying components of the LAMP stack requires periodic updates both for functionality and security, so make sure your host will handle those updates for you. This is different than maintaining your website copy and the plugins that your site uses, and companies like ReachFarther can provide WordPress maintenance services to keep everything working perfectly.
Location As servers have moved into the cloud, the physical location of your web host has become less important. However, some degree of proximity is still important. For instance, if your business is in Morris County, NJ, you probably want to use a server based somewhere in the northeastern United States rather than in Australia. Internet traffic still travels across many networks and each additional hop means a slight performance hit. So if your customers will primarily be visiting from a single geographic area, try to find a host who will provide cloud services from a cluster near them.

We know that this can be confusing, and we're here to help. Fill our our contact form or request a quote and someone will respond as quickly as possible with a hosting plan that fits your business and your budget.