Top 10 Tips to Pick Cost-Effective WordPress Hosting

Nearly all web hosts give support to WordPress, but not all of them are good choices. When talking about picking a cost-effective web host for hosting WordPress, you should take a lot of factors into account in addition to the price.

The make your life easier, we have worked out the following 10 tips, which are the most important things to do in the selection process which need to deal with carefully.

1. Price goes first

If you are intended to select a cost-effective web host or web hosting package, price is the first thing to consider, of course. The cost depends on your budget primarily, but generally speaking, a price between $3/mo and $7/mo is reasonable for shared WordPress hosting, and that between $20/mo and $70/mo is advisable for VPS hosting. A package with a price too high is not affordable, and that with an extremely low price is probably a scam.

2. Take free features and extras into consideration

To make the services more attractive to WordPress users especially those with a limited budget, some good web hosts offer many extras and free features in their web hosting packages. Usually, there are 1 free domain name, free WordPress installer, free advertising credits, and free backup service. These things add additional value to the services.

3. Do a research into the company’s reputation

The reputation is essential because if you go with a web host that is not trust-worthy, your needs cannot be satisfied even if the company claims to offer everything. Those web hosts with a bad fame are totally scams. Now the question is that how to figure out whether a company is reliable or not. Well, there are many ways actually.

For example, you can search on Google for the gathered information, or visit a specialized WordPress hosting review site like WhatsWP to read professional ratings and reviews on the company.

 4. Watch out for the money-back policy

To some extent, the money-back guarantee is the insurance for your payment because it enables you to ask for a refund when you are not satisfied with the service and cancel the account. Nowadays, most web hosts allow a full refund period ranging from 30 days to 90 days, and what you should be careful about are their terms on some sensitive issues like the non-refundable fees and the ownership of domains. It is better to go with a web host with a long money-back period, as well as the detailed and clear terms on the refund policy.

5. Ensure the 100% WordPress compatibility

Good compatibility ensures that WordPress itself can run without any problem. As the minimum system requirements of WordPress are PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0, you should make sure that the web host has these things. A company offering the latest versions of PHP and MySQL, running suPHP as PHP, and using Apache web server with mod_rewrite module is more recommended.

6. WordPress installation service is important

The installation of WordPress is somewhat confusing if you are a beginner. In this case, what you need is a 1-click script installer which automates the whole installation process from downloading the zip files to installing the software on your account. A web hosting package without such a tool but includes free installation handled by the support team is still acceptable.

7. Try the control panel offered by the web host

The control panel plays a vital role in the management of the hosting account as well as the WordPress sites running on the account. Those web hosts utilizing cPanel as the control panel are able to provide an easy way for managing domains, files, security, and so on. If your hosting provider does not offer cPanel, you’d better have a try on the panel demo by yourself before making payment.

8. Know the quality of the customer service

The quality of customer service is important as it can never be a pleasure that you get no response even in a whole day after you send a question. To check the quality, you can contact the support team for pre-sale questions to experience the professionalism and the response speed.

Nowadays, most good web hosts get customers supported in several ways including live chat, phone, and email. The companies listed in this award page even keep the response time within 30 seconds for live conversation and phone call.

9. Make sure that your WordPress site is safe with them

Before making the final decision, you should go through the feature list, try the control panel demo or ask the support team to see whether the company has enough security features that can keep your WordPress site safe and secure. Basically, suPHP, SSH and SSL are necessary, and it would be better if the web host has backup software.

10. Make clear of the web hosting performance

A web host delivering bad performance is far away from being a cost-effective choice. If your website frequently suffers from invisibility or slowness, it can never be a success. To solve this problem, you can search for the real customer reviews or read some uptime and speed statistics on some review sites which have been monitoring the performance of the web host.