WordPress Web Hosting Company - How to Choose One

In many ways, the process of choosing a WordPress web hosting company is similar to  picking the right partner. Make the wrong decision and you may  find yourself facing a stressful separation somewhere down the road, after investing all of that time and money into making things work (or not, as the case may be).Fortunately, it is possible to  boil down the factors of choosing a WordPress web hosting company into four key areas, helping you  to pick a hottie over a dud with relative ease.In this post, we reveal the four key factors that  we believe makes for a great WordPress hosting company. By the time were done, youll know exactly how to find the best host for your needs.Lets get straight to it! SiteGround offers a variety of pricing options to suit all needs.Furthermore, youll need  sales and support  teams that are willing to take the time to recommend specific hosting packages depending on your requirements, as well as informing you  when its time to consider up grading to accommodate your growing website.The best way to determine whether a host fits the bill is to look for variety in their hosting packages, check whether they make a WordPress-specific mention among their descriptions, and finally, check  if they offer free consultations to help you  find the right  plan.2. SecurityAnyone who spends time working with computers understands just how important web security is. There are regularly new stories of big sites getting breached and leaking the private data of thousands of people, so it may seem difficult to understand how small WordPress sites cope.Fortunately, there are plenty of hosting providers that  understand clients require robust security measures. These hosts will build in a number of server-level protections to keep your site secure.To identify whether a WordPress web hosting company can be considered secure, you should keep an eye out for the following tells:Do they offer firewall or Distributed Denial of Service  (DDoS)  protection systems?Do they offer to help you set up SSL certificates?Do they provide automated backup solutions for your site?Have they ever exposed customer information during security breaches?While you can easily determine the first three points by taking a good look at a hosts feature list for each plan, the final suggestion does require you to do a little googling on your own. If one of the companies that youre eyeing has been careless with their security in the past, its a good sign you should be looking elsewhere.3. SupportIdeally, every WordPress web hosting company should provide their customers with top-notch timely support while serving them a nice cup of coffee. Sadly, thats not always the case.To avoid lots of frustrating nights spent troubleshooting, youll want to find a host that employs support staff who are knowledgeable with WordPress. Experienced support staff should have no problem identifying (and helping you fix) common WordPress errors such as the white screen of death, internal server errors, compatibility issues, and  a whole host of others when they arise.To  identify whether a host can provide you with WordPress-specific troubleshooting, first look for a  hosting provider marketing itself specifically towards WordPress users – that way, its more likely they will offer related support services. However, its not always the case, so another good way to gauge a hosts WordPress-specific support is to look through their help documentation:An example of a decent WordPress support section.If the WordPress web hosting company youre considering provides its users with substantial documentation and WordPress-specific advice, youre probably in safe  hands.If youre looking for a shortcut to great WordPress support, our recent hosting survey showed that Flywheel, Kinsta, SiteGround, and WP Engine have the most WordPress-proficient support teams. Here are the full survey results.4. ReputationAny hosting company thats been around long enough will have made a reputation for itself – either good or bad. This is fantastic news for anyone looking  for a WordPress web hosting company, since nearly any option you might consider will have a trail of customer reviews.While you can glean a lot about a service from its  website and the kinds of plans on  offer, theres no better way to measure a company than by having the chance to see whether its  customers are satisfied.  The best kinds of reviews will often discuss  the quality of the different services on offer, what a particular host is  doing right, and where theyre dropping the ball.Instead of looking for review sections directly on company sites – which will naturally  be biased towards positive reviews – we recommend checking recent comparison articles or diving into the results of our recent WordPress hosting survey. It turns out that peoples experiences differ a lot based on the specific hosting company they use ( for example, the top-rated company in the survey got 4.9/5, while the lowest rating was only 3.0).ConclusionWhile choosing a bad WordPress web hosting company could be  the stuff of nightmares, you have more information  than ever available  to help you make the right decision. There are online reviews, host comparisons, helpful videos, and hundreds of articles devoted to distilling the process down to its core steps.All you need to do is keep these simple criteria in mind when looking for a host, and youll pick a winner every time:Scalability: Your WordPress site needs room to grow.Security:  A potential hosting provider must take every reasonable step to protect your data.Support: Your chosen host should provide you with top-notch support at every turn.Reputation:  A WordPress web host should have  a solid reputation within  the WordPress community.And if you want to get a headstart on finding hosts that match those criteria, make sure to check out our take on the be st WordPress hosting providers.Do you have your own criteria for choosing a potential WordPress web hosting company? Share them with us  in the comments section below! How to choose #WordPress #hosting? 4 key factors explained