*This post documents my experience launching my WordPress site and I am no expert in the field. I strive to present accurate information to my readers and fact-check before posting. However, if you spot any mistakes or misconstrued / unclear information, please do let me know! Thank you (: *I update the post periodically as I progressively learn more about the topic
The first thing I learned whilst researching was that WordPress.com is not the same as WordPress.org. It was pretty confusing initially but just take WordPress.com as one of many hosting options available for websites powered by the same WordPress software. So what is “hosting”? When you want to launch a website on the World Wide Web, your site has to be hosted on a server, either cloud-based or physical. Websites can be self-hosted on private web servers (i.e. you own and manage the physical servers yourself) or outsourced to web hosting providers.
Outsourcing to web hosting providers was an easy choice given the price, support, and convenience. However, the type, variety, and number of plans and providers available will leave you spoilt for choices.
I have listed down some functional and technical features I considered when evaluating the various providers. Some of the well-known hosting providers that came up in my research include Hostinger, Bluehost, Dreamhost, GoDaddy, and Namecheap.
Type of web hosting
One consideration is whether to go for fully managed WordPress hosting or self-managed WordPress hosting. The difference is whether you wish to handle the technicalities of managing the website yourself e.g., software updates, backups, security monitoring, performance, speed, etc, or engage a service provider to do it on your behalf so you can focus on your core work. I was excited about exploring the nitty-gritty behind the functioning of a website so did not opt for plans with the service.
Next up will be whether to go for shared hosting, Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting, or dedicated hosting. Check out this blog for a brief overview of the pros and cons. For my intent and scale, I went for shared hosting.
Functional features to consider
My must-have
| Functional Features | Description |
| Domain | Whether you need/want a custom domain name e.g. xxx.com instead of xxx.wordpress.com or xxx.wix.com. I considered this a necessary feature for the branding of my site. Must-have. This can be free or paid separately, and your domain name registrar need not be the same company as your hosting provider. To keep things simple, I treated this as a feature when evaluating the different plans. |
| Plug-in | I cannot overstate the usefulness of plug-ins, especially in a self-managed WordPress site. These are great no-code tools assisting with website security, performance, functionality, etc. Must have. |
| Earn with Ads | Whether you can monetize your site with advertisements. I deemed this necessary, and this was the reason why wordpress.com fell out of the race – their plan that offered this feature was significantly pricier than the competitors. Must-have. |
| SEO Tools | Whether search engine optimization tools are available to enable your posts to rank higher. Initially, I wasn’t quite aware of what SEO was and how the tools helped. But a few months into this venture, I’d say this is very important for widening your site’s outreach and gaining more audiences. Must-have, but can be separately installed via a plug-in. |
My good-to-have
| Functional Features | Description |
| Email Account | Whether you need/want a custom email domain e.g. [email protected]. I was fine with having an email with a gmail domain i.e. [email protected] so this was not an important factor for me to consider. Good-to-have. |
| Number of websites | The number of websites you wish to host. Varies from 1 to unlimited depending on provider and plans. It was nice to have the option of having multiple sites but one was fine by me too. Good-to-have. |
| Payment | If you intend to collect payment through your site or build an e-commerce site, it will be helpful to find out more about payment security and the options available. Some providers also charge a commission fee on payments so that will be a consideration when deciding on the provider and plan. I intended to create a travel blog so this item was low on my priority. |
Technical features to consider
| Technical Features | Description |
| Backups | Whether and how often your hosting provider backs up your website’s data – the frequency matters. It is also possible to locate third-party tools, such as plugins, or schedule a cron job yourself, but having the hosting provider do it makes things simpler. Good-to-have. |
| Uptime | Typically as a percentage guarantee on the amount of time your website will be ‘live’. My website isn’t a mission-critical one nor is it an essential revenue generator so a close-to-100% uptime was not necessary. However, it does get disappointing when your website is down due to the host’s issues. |
| Disk Space | The amount of storage space available from your hosting provider. Depends on the amount of content your website is anticipated to have. |
| Staging Site | The staging site is where you can test your changes before pushing them to the live site. I’m guilty of breaking my site when doing configuration changes and having a staging site will mitigate such downtime on the live site. But given the scale and intent of my site, this is a good-to-have for sure. |
| Free SSL | Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a security protocol that authenticates a website’s identity and allows for encrypted connection. It is a must-have and is either free or paid separately. |
| CDN | Content Delivery Network (CDN) speeds up the delivery of web content via a group of geographically distributed servers. This can be free or paid. It is possible to get free CDN on Cloudflare but having this from your hosting provider is good-to-have. |
| Server Geo Locations | It is better to choose a hosting provider with servers closer to your audience’s location for better performance. This can in part be mitigated with CDN. However, do consider the server maintenance window as well (see below). |
Other considerations
| Others | Description |
| Customer support & Reputation | Whether readily available customer support through live chat or support ticket |
| Customer satisfaction | Whether readily available customer support through live chat or support ticket |
| Renewal fees | Most providers offer huge discounts on their standard pricing for new customers – they show you the price you’ll pay for the initial term. Take note of the price on renewal as these can be much steeper. Especially if you prefer not to deal with the hassle of changing your provider late on. Check the renewal fees, if any, on the ‘free’ items as well e.g. SSL and domain name. |
| Server maintenance window | Typically, scheduled maintenance is carried out during non-peak hours, such as after midnight. Timezone matters and you will want that to coincide with your audience’s timezone to reduce the impact of the scheduled maintenance. As shown in the screen capture of the DreamHost Security Maintenance notice below, there was scheduled maintenance from 10 pm to 2 am on 14 March 2024. However, DreamHost servers are in the United States and use Pacific Time – so that means the maintenance was from 1 pm to 5 pm Singapore Time and my website was down during the window as a result. In contrast, a search on Hostinger’s status page showed that SG prefixed servers’ maintenance windows were all from 7 pm UTC to 11 pm UTC, which is between 3 am to 7 am SGT. So it does make sense to choose a server that matches your audience’s timezone after all. |
| Server status information | Hosting providers typically have a page dedicated to informing about the server statuses. On the status page, you will get information such as scheduled maintenance, whether the servers are operational, etc. So you will normally check this page first if your website is down. However, some providers provide greater details than others. Compare Hostinger’s status page to that of DreamHost’s – Hostinger provides timestamps of the completion of maintenance but DreamHost doesn’t. |
A look at WordPress.com plans and pricing
Take a look at the WordPress.com plans and pricing as an example. Their plan which allows monetisation via WordAds starts from SGD$11 per month whilst their plan with plugin and theme installation is priced at S$35 per month. This is much more pricey than the promotional 3-year rate of USD$93.24 I paid for the Dreamhost Shared Starter plan.
However, if you are not fussed about having your domain, being able to install plugins, and potentially monetizing with advertisements, their free plan might just be a quick, easy, and no-cost way to get started on your blog!
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Thanks for this! Very informative 😁, all info in one place.
Keep it coming Zouba❤️!!