WordPress Hosting: Building your Website with the most popular CMS

WordPress is the most popular open source content management system out there today. According to statistics, 75+ million websites run on WordPress, which makes up 18.9% of all websites on the internet. About every fourth website is built with it, which amounts to an astonishing success. WordPress actually gets more unique visitors than Amazon, which is saying a lot.

You’ll be advised to build your site with this CMS, as just about every second blog you visit it created with it and for good reasons. One being that it is completely free to use and another being that it’s incredibly flexible and allows you to build just about any kind of website with it. From the simplest portfolio websites and blogs, to very complex social media sites and online stores. Whatever kind of site you have imagined, there’s a very good chance that you can create and manage it with WordPress. It is very user friendly and easy to learn through the wealth of materials that are available online.

You can freely design your website even if you don’t have much knowledge in coding, although you’ll definitely have to know CSS if you want your site to look exactly the way you imagined it. Adding custom functions to it is also incredibly easy thanks to WordPress’ plugin system and the insane amount of plugins that are available. So if you’re a complete beginner or just looking for a much more efficient way to build websites WordPress will prove to be an outstanding tool for you. Here are the reasons why.

Top Reasons To Use WordPress

There is an ocean filled with reasons to use the world’s most popular content management system, so let’s bathe in it. Here are the main reasons why it’s extremely beneficial to use WordPress to build your website.

It’s Free!

Being an open-source platform, it is completely free. If you want to start a blog or a new website for your company, you can do it without paying a dime. It will take only a few minutes to install WordPress on your hosting server and you can start a website from there. WordPress offers plenty of free themes and plugins to choose from, so you can start up an awesome looking site free of charge.

Saves You a Lot of Money

Using WordPress for free isn’t the only area where you’ll be saving money. The fact that you don’t have to hire designers, coders or any other specialists to get your site up and running is also a great money saver. But even if you do need help, the work will be done much quicker which will also make it cheaper.

Extremely Easy To Use

You don’t have to be a techie or a coder to use WordPress. You just need to understand how to use a computer and software like text editors. Just head over to WordPress.com, create your free account and download the software. You’ll have a website up and running in a few minutes.

WordPress is the perfect starting point for a blogger or a small business. It makes it easy to launch your website and make it the way you want it to be.

Powerful and Full of Features Out of The Box

In the case of Drupal and many other content management systems, you won’t get far without downloading a few additional plugins. But WordPress has things right in this regard, because you don’t have much configuring to do if all you want is a simple website. There’s no need to spend too much time hunting down plugins and themes. If you do need something more, than you can find and install it from WordPress’ dashboard.

It’s Incredibly Flexible

The amount of options you have when it comes to developing a website is truly insane. No other content management system can top the flexibility of WordPress. It’s capable of creating any kind of website from blogs to large eCommerce sites. This CMS will meet all of your needs with numerous features and extensions.

Has Thousands of Available Plugins and Themes

WordPress has an insane amount of customization options when it comes to design and functionality. Its community is very active and they’re constantly developing new themes and functions. With a vast array of multipurpose and specialized single purpose themes, you can make any look come to life on your website. Of course, the best of them are paid themes that cost about $60, but they are very much worth it. These themes are all professionally designed and will make your site look top notch after installing them with a few clicks. Also, most of the plugins you would use come for free, with paid premium versions, while others cost anywhere from $5-$100. Whatever you want to achieve, you can do it pretty cheaply and easily. They can add complex business features without you having to write a line of code or hire a coder.

It’s SEO Friendly

It took a huge amount of time even for coders to learn to code SEO friendly websites, but that’s no longer a concern. With WordPress, you don’t have to know much about SEO or anything else to run your website and the search engine robots will love it. One of Google’s employees, Matt Cutts embraced WordPress’ SEO friendliness during his WordCamp presentation.

So you can rest assured that your site will have no problem getting noticed by search engines, especially if you use a SEO plugin too. YOAST SEO for example, is the most popular SEO plugin that makes it infinitely easier to create search engine friendly content for your site. I can highly recommend using it!

Has a Massive Community

WordPress is used by millions of people who support the system and each other. They will answer just about any question you have and post solutions to your problems. Just about any problem you would have with this system has been solved by someone else. It’s easy to get support from people who are more knowledgeable than you and even to find a developer that will help you out.

But if you’re more into learning by yourself, you can find just about everything in FAQ pages, blogs and YouTube videos. So many people are using it that there are thousands of content pieces covering the same topics and functionalities, so it’s hard to miss anything.

It’s Mobile Friendly

If your website doesn’t look good on mobile, than you shouldn’t even launch it. About half of the traffic on web comes from mobile devices, so your website should look just as amazing on them as well. Lucky for you, just about every theme that has been developed in the past 5 years is fully responsive. No matter what screen size you throw at them, they will look awesome. This really means that you just have to install a theme and your site will look good on all platforms.

Makes It Easy to Use Multimedia

Posts published on a WordPress site can feature just about any kind of multimedia content. You can easily add images or videos from multiple sources without any clutter. You can drag and drop images from your PC or add their links. You can do the same with video or add YouTube links, Facebook Video links and more. It’s as easy as counting to ten.

It’s Safe

Because WordPress is so popular, it is also one of hackers #1 targets. Numerous WordPress sites have been hacked in the past and the platforms developers have learnt from all of their experiences. WordPress takes security very seriously, preventing attacks and adding security patches with frequent updates. It also integrates with numerous security add-ons that will make your site nearly impenetrable.

Easy Integrations

WordPress can integrate with the most popular platforms like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, MailChimp and more. Thanks to this, it’s easy to give your site an additional boots when it comes to marketing. WordPress also works well with the most popular payment gateways such as PayPal, Payoneer, and Skrill among others. So it’s pretty easy to launch a paid product or service.

Easy To Publish New Content

Besides launching your site, one of the simplest things you can do with WordPress is posting content. The post editor is similar to Word and other text editors you’re already used to. All you have to do is write your post, add your media and maybe tinker with your SEO settings a little and it’s done. You just click publish and the post will show up on your website with a SEO friendly link.

If you have to write content and run a business at the same time, WordPress will help you by letting you schedule your posts in advance. You can set every post to be published at the perfect time, so that no time is wasted.

It Always Gets Better

Thanks to such an engaged community and WordPress’ outstanding employees, there’s always something new coming to the system. Someone is constantly working on a new theme, a new plugin or the core system’s updates. Which is why there’s always some new features to look forward to.

Multi-User Support

If there are others working on your site and creating content for it, you can assign different roles to everyone through the system. The primary roles are: Super Admin, Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. All of these individuals have varying levels of access to your website, so you can always rest assured that none of them will mess up its design or anything else.

Choosing a Hosting Provider for Your WordPress Site

Another good thing about WordPress is that it doesn’t require you to commit yourself to their hosting service. You can freely choose from the hundreds of companies online and ensure that you get the optimal speed out of your website, which is incredibly important.

With more and more people using high-speed internet connections, the bar is raised much higher when it comes to page loading times. On average the eCommerce industry loses about 500 billion dollars each year, because of fast loading times. The users won’t wait more than 2 seconds for a site to load, some of them will get frustrated with waiting a much shorter time. This is why page loading speeds have been proven to directly affect conversion rates, so it’s best to keep your site as fast as possible.

Here are our favorite hosting providers that deliver much more than the speed and reliability your website deserves! I’ll start with the best and move on to the ones that you’re likely to come across. Our goal here is to make sure that you don’t choose a less than satisfactory service. Also, you shouldn’t fall a victim to any pesky upsells either.

BlueHost

BlueHost is among the three recommended hosting providers on WordPress.org’s website. It is one of the go-to hosting providers for those who are starting a WordPress website. It’s the best for beginners because of their easy to use control panel and their low prices. BlueHost is one of the most inexpensive hosts that still dish out a decent service.

They also provide plenty of hand-holding for WordPress users, through their customer support. You can also choose to have your WordPress website fully managed through their managed hosting plan, which takes all the work off your shoulders. BlueHost’s team of experts will take full responsibility for your website and make sure that it performs as it supposed to. Their starting shared hosting plan costs $2.95 per month, which almost anyone who’s starting a website can afford. They also provide cloud hosting services and numerous other types of plans that you can upgrade to. BlueHost’s reliability has already attracted millions of users, so go ahead and check out what they have to offer.

HostGator

HostGator is one of the whales of web hosting. They are among the biggest fishes in the sea, because they have been around for about 20 years now. You probably heard of them many times, due to their strong marketing efforts. It’s hard to come across a YouTube video that doesn’t show you a HostGator commercial before starting. That is, if you have already searched for hosting services.

HostGator also provides some awesome hosting services that are great for anyone who’s starting a WordPress site. The best one is their cloud plan, which costs $2.99 per month. It far outweighs BlueHost’s shared services. By boasting a 99.99% uptime and a 520 millisecond average loading speed, there’s no WordPress site this cloud service couldn’t handle. Your site won’t be down for a second and it will load in less than 1 second if it is set up properly.

This hosting plan is also the #1 hosting plan on many review sites, so it’s definitely worth taking a look at it. A $2.99 per month price seems more than a fair deal when you’re faced with such a solid service. HostGator’s cloud hosting plan is fast and reliable all the way.

InMotion Hosting

I can’t help but admire InMotion for the pure awesomeness they provide. They aren’t as popular as HostGator and host about 350,000 domains, but they are the most awesome anyway. Even though HostGator’s Cloud hosting service is one of the best deals, InMotion is better than any other hosting provider in many regards. One of which is their award winning customer service. If you use one of their plans, you’ll also do business with some of the most awesome humans in the hosting industry. They’ll take less than 2 minutes to respond and get right down to solving whatever the problem is. This is a trait that very few hosting companies can call their own. Bad or not good enough customer service is also the number one turnoff for a lot of people using hosting services. So it really is something to appreciate.

But that’s not the end of all the goodies. InMotion also offers plenty of freebies such as free site migration, free automated backups, free SSD storage and free security features. Most companies charge for automated daily backups and SSD storage, some even demand money for security services, but not InMotion. They go out of their way to provide the best deal you can possibly get. Their Launch Plan costs $5.99 per month, which is a lot more than the others I’ve enlisted, but it’s very much worth it. You can rest assured that you’ll have your money’s worth and more. But if you’re not confident enough in using their services, no need to worry. You can use it for 90 days straight and get your money back if you don’t like it. Needless to say InMotion is confident that they can give you the best experience there is to find.

WP Engine

With WordPress supporting millions of websites and more non-tech-savvy people building websites, there’s an increasing need for managed WordPress hosting. That is exactly what WP Engine provides. A trustworthy and fast managed hosting service and other goodies. People give them positive reviews for their excellent uptime and great customer service. They also provide unlimited bandwidth and free security features. You basically have everything your website will ever need, including WP Engines team of experts making sure it runs well. It is important to mention that there are visitor caps with each site, so it’s important that you do your research and take a good look at each plan before subscribing.

Though it isn’t as cheap a shared hosting plan, if you really don’t have the time to manage your website, it’s very much worth it. Their lowest price is $29.00, which is pretty decent for a managed hosting service.

If you want to register a domain name, you’ll have to do it at a separate domain registrar, because you can’t buy it at WP Engine. There’s also no phone support for those who subscribe for a personal plan. But there are plenty of features that make WP Engine a hosting service that’s definitely worth a look if you’re a beginner.

iPage

If you want to start with the cheapest option, go with iPage. I doubt you’ll find a plan that’s cheaper than $1.99 per month and doesn’t accidentally lose your website or something. There’s a good chance that you never heard of this company, even though the web is littered with their ads. The fact is that all the other plans that I’ve listed above, are way better. iPage is only cheaper and offers half as good a service as InMotion or HostGator does. Their servers aren’t too fast. It takes about 1000 milliseconds to load, which isn’t bad, but it’s not the best. Uptime is decent though, and their customer support team does a good enough job as well. They take about 20 minutes to respond and help you out with your problems or answer any question you have.

Even though it’s extremely cheap to launch a website on iPage’s servers, that cheap price won’t last for long. IPage is filled with upsells and you’ll notice that right when you sign up. You can only have the $1.99 price if you sign up with a 12 month subscription. Once you’ve been with them for a year, they’ll surprise you with the renewal costs. Because the plan you’ve paid $1.99 for at the beginning, will jump up to $8 per month! That’s a 350% jump! Ouch.

Conclusion

Few platforms make building a website as easy and as efficient as WordPress does. It allows you to seamlessly create an outstanding website with the tools and resources that are available and lets you add the necessary functions as well. You have plenty of solid options when it comes to hosting your website too. You can easily get away with a $150 annual price if you play your cards wisely. The first three providers are great for those who are on a budget and still want to have a quality hosting service.

I hope you have enjoyed reading through this article and we helped you learn something new today!