Many web hosts can provide you with a great experience for your businesses’ website, but not all will have the same performance and cost. Since no two hosting providers are the same, performance and cost also tend to vary between them. Even if you’re feeling quite satisfied with your current host, you might not necessarily be getting the best service possible. That might also be why you’re reading this.
Read through to find out if it’s time to switch to a WordPress hosting provider. Thankfully, moving to a new hosting service is seamless. All business owners are encouraged to assess their hosting provider and find alternative solutions that can improve their site’s hosting situation.
Uptime and page load times are vital for a site’s success, so every bit of improvement counts. Let’s get started! Here are a couple of reasons you should move to WordPress hosting.
Your site loads slowly. If your site loads in less than a second, then you’re well ahead of your competition. Websites that need more than two seconds to load are abandoned by around 40% of the audience. 30% of eCommerce shoppers want sites to load in under one second and a majority of users say they won’t consider shopping at a site again if it’s too slow.
A second is fast, so you might not notice that your current host isn’t performing correctly. This is why you must look for potential issues that slow your site, including poor server configuration, and server overload, which is often caused by shared hosting.
Another reason is data centres. The physical distance between visitors and your servers can cause your site to load more slowly. The easiest way to assess if this is an issue for your site is by running multiple speed tests and averaging their results. Constant two-second loading times mean a necessity for optimizing site speed or switching to WordPress hosting providers.
Constant downtimes. Downtimes mean that your site is unavailable. If you’re unreachable, your visitors will simply go elsewhere. Time is money for websites, especially eCommerce ones. Every minute your site is out of commission is a loss. Repercussions include loss of traffic, missing out on potential customers and conversions, and risk of looking unprofessional.
Thankfully, most web hosts these days are great at minimizing downtime. Websites shouldn’t spend about nine hours total in a year. This can be reduced even further. Good hosts can reach a 99.00% uptime, but the best ones can guarantee even further and hit 99.90% uptime.
You can use free tools like UpDown.io or Uptime Robot to gauge your site’s actual uptime percentage.
Expensive hosting. High hosting costs can hurt a start-up or impede a growing business. On the other hand, it’s easy to find affordable WordPress hosting plans that offer great performance. Many web hosts offer robust WordPress-optimized plans at low prices. You can of course choose other plans with more features for even better performance (especially as your site’s traffic increases), but you must only ever pay for what you need.
Even a few dollars each month adds up over the long term. More expensive doesn’t always mean better. In some cases, you’ll need more than a basic plan, and upgrading anytime is possible with WordPress hosting. Your next move is to choose a provider with a good cost-to-performance ratio, and upgrade when necessary for added performance or extra features.
Ease of migration. These days, migrating websites are a breeze, especially through migration services, which can help you move your site painlessly and quickly.
The top reason why most people don’t consider switching hosting providers is believing that it will be too difficult. However, there are migration plugins that allow you to do handle the process yourself.
Migrating your site during off-hours ensures that your downtime is minimal. Plus, a lot of hosting providers will assist in migrating your site for FREE. Web hosts will usually be happy to handle your site’s migration at no cost after signing up with them. This ensures a happy new customer, and you save time on your end. Truly a win-win situation.
A reliable web host you can rely on is A MUST if you want your website to succeed. Even if you’re quite okay with your current host, that doesn’t mean a new host can’t get you better value. This is because WordPress hosting is a very competitive field, and multiple providers will meet and even exceed all your criteria. So, did this article convince you to switch to WordPress? Have other WordPress tips? Share it with us in the comments below.