Where you choose to host your website is a very important decision. There are many things to think about before selecting your hosting provider.
Consider the following questions:
- How important is your website to your overall business strategy (branding, marketing, sales, client service, product delivery, etc.)?
- Does your website need to be secure? (If you are processing credit card transactions, it has to be.)
- Do website visitors expect your website to be available when they visit it (uptime) and fast?
- Is it important to you that your website is backed up daily in case something unexpectedly breaks your website?
- Do you want to make it easy for your web design team to update and maintain your website?
If you answered YES to most of these questions, you need more than a low cost shared hostingsolution.
About a year ago, we made a strategic decision to partner with WP Engine to host our clients' WordPress websites.
We have a dedicated server with WP Engine where only our clients' WordPress websites are hosted. This provides our development team many advantages over off-the-shelf shared hosting including:
- Enhanced security features like multiple firewalls, redundant global server co-locations, andSucuri malware scanning.
- Speed! WordPress websites can be a drain on a web server if it is not configured properly. WP Engine servers are set up and optimized specifically for WordPress website functionality. Additionally, WP Engine offers a built-in CDN that makes delivering web page content super fast.
- The robust set of tools available to our development team streamlines WordPress website development and maintenance.
- WP Engine provides amazing customer support. If I have an issue or need help with something, their support team is fast, knowledgeable, and very easy to work with.
Your website is one of the most important components of your marketing strategy. It is important that it is secure, functions properly, and loads quickly. While it might be tempting to choose a low cost shared hosting solution, this is taking an unnecessary risk that could cost your business in the long run.
