Cheap WordPress Hosting
In 2017, I think it’s fair to say that every business, from sole proprietor to large enterprises needs an online presence. Namely, a website. But here’s the problem. Not everyone needs a fully developed e-commerce platform because we don’t offer thousands of products and we don’t have tens of thousands of visitors every week.
Most of us need a site of 5-10 pages explaining what we do and why we’re the company you should choose. And for a lot of us, a budget is a consideration, $10 or less would be ideal. We all know, the statement “you get what you pay for” is as true for hosting as it is for everything else in life. But servers have got so good; the bar is so high, it’s raised the game for all hosts, even those that offer more budget packages can offer great performance at a good price.
Do we all know what a web host is?
In laymen’s terms, a web host is a company that have servers in a data centre, often in different places around the world, that stores the files of your website. If you’re a large business, with a lot of visitors and thousands of pages to your site, you’re likely to need one of these servers dedicated to your business. Or what’s called a virtual private server (VPS).
But if you have a standard business website you don’t need all that server; you just need part of it. It’s called shared hosting, and because you’re sharing the server, you’re sharing the cost which makes your hosting much more affordable.
And in this article, that’s where we are going to focus on. The hosting providers that offer affordable packages that are perfect for small information-based websites, like a business website or a small blog.
We’re going to looking at the best host that fall into the “affordable”. With that, we mean less than $100 per year. And we’re going to take into account the provider’s starter package. We’re also going to keep it straight up, and simple.
What’s exciting is that we started putting the list together, we have some of our favourite hosting providers and packages, including what we’re using on this site. Choose one of the hosts on our list, and you won’t be disappointed. They’re all excellent and have hundreds of thousands of happy customers. It’s now just a matter of picking the best host for your needs.
Before you go through our best cheap hosting providers and pick the one that speaks to you most. It’s important to know what features you should be looking. What’s important and what features are just frills.
The Features You’ll Need To Consider
Setting up a website on your own domain, from a technical perspective, can be pretty easy and it certainly shouldn’t be expensive. Do you need email accounts(office@yourdomain.com)? How about some blogging software, connection to email marketing tools, e-commerce setup or file sharing capability?
Customer support is essential
It’s great to have FAQ’s and forums, which most do, but if you’re new to hosting, there’s a lot of technical jargon you might be unfamiliar with, so it really helps to have a proactive customer support team. It’s not a lot to ask for chat support or phone support either. These are reasonable expectations to make. In some cases, you’ll have methods to connect instantly 24/7. Then you know they’re taking customer support as seriously as they should.
What to expect from a cheap host
You’re not going to get an all singing all dancing dedicated server or VPS. But you can expect a shared hosting plan or a WordPress hosting plan. With shared hosting, your website is set up on a server with other websites, and the hosting provider manages the usage to ensure you have the hosting you need during your spikes of traffic. Even though the server is shared, each user’s data is segmented so no other website owner will have access to your data. It’s safe.
The downside is, if the other sites on your server are using up the extra resources on the server, your website’s performance may be affected. With the right hosting, they can really limit this, depending on how they have the server setup. It’s just matter of using the right provider.
Another option at this price point is Managed WordPress hosting. WordPress is traditionally a blog platform but as most sites have a blog. With all the front end editor, WordPress is the simplest and most effective way to create and manage a website. With making it managed, you’ll have expertise at hand to help you set up and run your site, keeping it optimized.
Keep an eye on the small print
Some hosts have several tiers of service, which if you’re not careful will make costs spiral. You should be looking for hosting that offers a tonne of features as standard. Don’t let your head be turned by “large font” pricing. Also, the same goes for annual plans. They’ll show you the average monthly cost if you took advantage of the offer and paid for the full 12 months.
It makes sense for them because of human nature. If we’ve paid 12 months for it, we’re much less likely to change; we’ll get used to its failings over time. It also looks so much more appealing as a price point. But you don’t know if this hosting is going to deliver exactly what you need, and even though you’re not paying a lot, don’t settle for mediocrity. Take the monthly option, and you grow into the hosting and ensure it has everything you need.
Uptime matters
Does the host offer cPanel and is the server LAMP/WAMP? These are the two big questions for any potential WordPress user.
Why page load speed is important
Your visitors are impatient. If they need to wait for a page to load, they’re prone to click off and go to your competitor’s website instead. But it’s easily fixed You need page load speeds that are quicker than 3 seconds. That’s the slowest you should expect. And many in this list are quicker than 2 seconds.
Understanding what “unlimited” means
You’ll find that hosting providers like to WOW you with throwaway phrases like Unlimited Bandwidth. It’s both the truth and an utter lie. You can use all the bandwidth you need. They don’t put any limitations on your usage. But that’s not in relation to your package. Your package has limitations. When you reach those limits, you’ll be expected to pay more, as you use more.
It has benefits; it means that when you reach the capacity of your package, you can just continue without needing to migrate to another host or another server. But, it gives the impression that it means you get all the bandwidth you need at that price, which is just not true.