If you are going to start your website on WordPress or any other platform, then the first problem you are facing is hosting. If you search on Google and YouTube everyone will refer you to the popular one with an affiliate link so that they can also earn a commission from your purchase. If you are starting a site you should kind of hosting for the website. Shared hosting, VPS, and Dedicated Server. If you are starting your website then you only need to be shared or VPS for now. Shared hosting means you will share your server resources with other clients like you. VPS stands for a virtual private server where you will get almost a separate server of your own. It is not completely a separate server, a small piece of a server. Shared hosting will cost you less than VPS. But in a shared environment, you will see your site getting slower with few visitors. But VPS can manage a big amount of visitors and your site will remain fast.
When we calculate costs, many popular companies like (Hostinger, Hostgator, and Bluehost) will try to attract you with their low cost. Like Bluehost costs 3$/month for their basic WordPress plan. This big company will try to attract with their so-called extra features. Like 1 year-free domain, free SSL, and free CDN. You might think this is a good deal. But this is not. They will make their profit from your long-term payments. After one year when you try to renew your domain, they will charge you extra. But there if you buy a domain from Namecheap and buy hosting at a cheap price from somewhere you can save so much money. For SSL and CDN you can get free SSL and CDN from LetsEncrypt and Cloudflare. If you work on your site for 1 year then you will get a good amount of visitors. At that time you’ll need a better server to manage those hosting. Then those companies will offer you a bigger plan with a high price. If you start with these companies and get that free domain then you cant leave their platform unless you transfer the domain. This is how big companies will trap you and force you to keep using their service even if you don’t want.
At starting time it is OK to get shared hosting. Because that is cheap compared to VPS and on the time you don’t have enough visitors that can go to VPS. You can get any company just compare them with each other and buy the basic plans. One of the cheapest recommended shared hosting providers is HostMyCode. You can get their hosting for the cheapest rate. Their service and support are quite good. But don’t fall for that free domain trap, just go to Namecheap and buy a domain at the cheapest price. In Namecheap, the renewal price is also cheap. After a few months when you get visitors to your site you will feel that your site is kinda slow on shared hosting. That’s the moment you know you have to move to VPS. Don’t fall for their trap to upgrade to the next plan on your shared hosting platform. In Bluehost, their next plan of shared hosting comes with 5-6$/month which again cannot handle a large amount of visitor maybe they can only handle 20-30K visitor/ month. Whereas Contabo (a cheap VPS provider) provides VPS 4CPU,8Gb Ram, and 50Gb SSD for Just 7$/month. Which is enough to handle 200-300K visitors per month. Here you can see the difference. So-called popular hosting companies will always try to pump money out of you. Contabo also provides a dedicated server at a cheap cost. If your website gets millions of visitors per month you should consider getting their dedicated plan at a cheap cost.
Hosting Support
Support is another thing that you will have to consider while buying hosting. How fast their support is, do they have a live support system or ticket system support. You will have to test it by yourself as well as check their review on some hosting review platform. Another option is to buy one of their plan for 1 month and see their support and service. That is the way you can get the actual user experience and have a clear idea of their service.
Managed Hosting:
Obviously shared hosting is managed. They buy a VPS or server and create many user panel accounts and sell them to a single user. This is how shared hosting works. If you are buying VPS there is also managed plan. They will cost extra money and give you a managed environment where they will do all the configuration and management according to your need.
Unmanaged Hosting:
Usually, VPS, Dedicated Server, and Cloud Hosting come with unmanaged plans. Where they will provide you with your server information and you will have to do all the work by yourself. From installing server application to server configuration. At first, It might look very difficult. But believe me, it is quite easy. It will save you much money if you go with unmanaged plans rather than getting a managed one. There are so many videos and articles available on how to configure the server for free. You can use a free panel like aaPanel which is the best available for Free. Read my post on How to set up aapanel on your server. If you used cpanel and think it will be hard for you to use aapanel, you are wrong. Aapanel is quite friendly and within a few days you will get used to it. You can easily install WordPress and set up a database and all the things you could do on Cpanel. You can also use Google Drive Auto Backup for your website or server. If you are going for an unmanaged plan I recommend you connect your domain with Cloudflare. Using Cloudflare you can take action against DDoS and random attacks. You can also set up a firewall using Cloudflare. There is also Under Attack mode on Cloudflare. Using this feature you can protect your site from an ongoing DDoS attack instantly. Aapanel has its own system firewall to keep your server safe from attacks. Make sure to set it up correctly. You can learn from their official Forum. View how to Configure a webserver for Hosting a Website.
Downtime Measures:
Downtime is crucial for websites. If you are working on your website regularly and investing your time to grow it. Then Downtime will definitely harm your website’s growth. Google will also decrease your rank if downtime keeps happening. This is why you must test hosting for at least 1 month and see if there is any downtime. There are many websites where you can put your website and they will keep checking your site 24/7 and see if there is any downtime or not. Later on, you can see the result. If you see 99.9%-100% uptime then you are good to go with that hosting.
My above-mentioned hosting service providers is legitimate and supportive. You can test for 1 month and see their service. If you see they are good for you then go for it. But be careful with every decision you take. Make sure to follow all my advice while buying. This will save you a lot of money and time.