Depending on the size, traffic and needs of your website you may be interested in one type of hosting or another, but I have already told you that the vast majority of people who start an online project need a shared hosting.
Anyway, here are the available options:
Free hosting: Unless you only use it to test, I do not recommend it. It only has the advantage of the price, in practice they are not a viable option for a serious project.
Shared hosting: Several websites are hosted on the same server, resources are shared by the different hosted sites, so the performance of your page can be affected by the behavior of others.
If this service is provided by a good provider you can receive a relatively high number of visits without you noticing any problems. You should not suffer a drop in performance until over 1000 visits a day, in some cases the traffic supported is even higher, so to begin I assure you that you have plenty of this type of accommodation.
Again, I recommend you to be careful with companies of dubious reputation. Some overload servers to improve their profit margins and the performance of your website may be damaged.
The quality / price ratio offered by this option is excellent, hence it is the option chosen in the vast majority of cases. As I said before the good quality move at 5-7 €.
VPS Hosting: It is a virtual server with benefits far superior to shared hosting. If your website grows a lot, it is likely that one day you will consider this option. The price goes up a lot with respect to shared hosting (usually starting at € 15 a month) and its management is more complex.
For starters I do not recommend it, although later you may be interested.
Dedicated server: You have an entire server for you alone. It is the most powerful option, although here prices skyrocket (from € 120 per month) and you need advanced technical knowledge.
You will have time to consider it when you have thousands of visits a day.
In short, my advice is that you look for a shared hosting in a reputable company.
You already know what a hosting is, how important it is to choose a good one and the type of hosting that I recommend for your first online project.
Now let's see what you must take into account to get the right supplier. I'm not going to get you dizzy with many technical aspects, I'll go straight to the aspects that I consider most important and that I think can make the difference.
Make it easy to manage
There are accommodations with a very good performance, but they have not got everything related to the management of the server by the user. I show you a couple of points that you should consider in this regard.
Installation in one click. Why are you going to do the whole process of installing WordPress by hand and can do it in a click automatically? The good quality accommodations have this option, so make sure that the hosting you are considering has it. It will save you time and will save you work.
Control Panel. Having a simple and intuitive control panel is paramount. Keep in mind that from there you will create email accounts, manage your access via FTP, expand or reduce the contracted resources, access your databases, create redirects and subdomains, you will have access to statistics, etc.
The standard and reference right now is the cPanel panel. If you hire a hosting with this system you will be right.
There are also hostings with their own panels. Some are terrible, others excellent. If you have the opportunity to try them before hiring the accommodation do it, so you will see if your operations center is easy to use or not.
Good speed
What good is it to install the best template and the lightest plugins if the server you're hosted on is slow? The loading speed of your website is very important and all the elements that influence it must be optimized, starting with the hosting.
To find out if a hosting is fast or you can not request that they give you temporary access to test your service. If granted, you can upload a WordPress installation as standard and analyze load times with Pingdom, GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights.
Write down the average results after doing several tests and repeat the operation in other hostings that may interest you.
Some providers do not give you a trial access, in these cases assess whether you are interested in paying a month of accommodation to be able to prove it. You will not be paying a month for each hosting you want to try, but maybe it's worth it if you're hesitant between two finalists.
In any case you should have optimized your website so that loading times are kept to a minimum and the server works as smoothly as possible.
In this post I tell you how to improve the loading speed of your website and in this other how to know what plugins are damaging the performance of your site.
Confidence that generates and reputation acquired
Call your customer service and ask them for information about their services, assess if they are transparent, if they advise you correctly, if they give you any reason to distrust, etc.
It raises all the doubts that you have, it is a good test to see how they respond.
It is also important that you do a Google search with terms like "Hosting xxxxx reviews". You will quickly see the reputation of such hosting and if users complain about a specific aspect.
You can also rate the opinions of bloggers that you trust. Almost all of us who dedicate ourselves to this have some input on the hosting that we recommend. You will see that many of us agree on the hosting we use.
By the way, if you want to know in which hosting a web page or blog in particular you can help with this tool.
Security of your servers
Many people think that having a security plugin installed on their WordPress will free them from hacking. I'm sorry to tell you that this is not true.
If your page is in a shared hosting and another page of it is infected the problem may affect you.
If a virus enters your server that causes an error in it you can already have installed all the security plugins you want.
Find out how important they are at this point and find out if they have an automatic backup system, so you can restore your website to an earlier state in the event of a disaster.
Some hosts even have the possibility to restore a backup in one click. You simply choose the point you want to return to, press the button and the system takes care of everything.
Easier impossible.
Technical support and customer service
For me this is the most important point of all, without a doubt. Pay attention to me, when you have a problem you will want to be treated quickly and well.
I like to deal with this type of problems by phone, if my website is down I do not want to be sending tickets and waiting for them to answer me, one? two hours later? The next day?
That is why I value the hostings that have telephone attention 24 hours a day / 7 days a week. And if it is a national fixed number better than better.
Another important issue is that you do not have to wait 20 minutes until you get the phone. If you have an emergency, there is nothing more exasperating than listening to the music on the turn over and over again.
Obviously you will not know how is the quality of such support until you have an impact, but by reading their ratings and reputation you can get an idea of whether they meet in this regard.
Other considerations when choosing the best hosting
The 5 points above are the ones I consider most important when choosing a good hosting for your website, but I also want to give you my point of view about some doubts that may arise, although I will not develop them in depth.
Other considerations when choosing the best hosting
The 5 points above are the ones I consider most important when choosing a good hosting for your website, but I also want to give you my point of view about some doubts that may arise, although I will not develop them in depth.
Limited and unlimited space and transfer?
The unlimited in hostings does not exist, so inform yourself of what your limitations are. They may not tell you because it is a simple communication strategy or because they have something to hide. Inquire and clarify this point before hiring.
With money back guarantee?
Man, if you offer it better than better, but I do not consider it a determining factor.
Is the price an important factor?
Not for me. I'm not telling you that you spend € 100 a month on your hosting, for about € 5 or a little more you have perfectly valid solutions to start, what I will not do is choose such an important tool based on the price to save me 10 or € 20 a year.
What if I already have a hosting and I want to change?
In that case I recommend that you go to someone who has a free migration service, they will be responsible for moving your entire website without having to do anything. A real respite if your technical knowledge is rather scarce.
summarizing
My advice is that you take a shared hosting in a company with good reputation, to start will be more than enough and have a very tight price.
Make sure your management panel is easy to use, that they take care of security and speed of loading and especially that they have excellent technical support, in your language and with 24/7 telephone support.
And nothing else, I hope that after login you already know how to choose the best hosting for your WordPress.