WordPress users often have a story to tell about the hosting plan they’re on. Some talk about the lack of customer support, while others point to poor page loading times amongst other issues.
The list of complaints when it comes to website hosting is seemingly endless.
The reason behind a general dissatisfaction with hosting partners is obvious. WordPress site owners depend on their hosting partners for most of their maintenance and management challenges.
Read: Five WordPress management tips to run your website efficiently
Performance, security, uptime, and more come under the purview of website hosts. Only a few website hosts can fulfill all these requirements.
If you’re starting a new website, your choice of host thus matters a lot. By knowing the type of hosting issues website owners generally face, you can make an informed decision.
This article covers five main hosting issues that WordPress site owners face.
#1: Poor server response times
Server response times are a measure of how well your website host can manage requests. Generally, site owners put page load times and response times in the same basket. Both metrics are actually different and signal different attributes about your website performance.
Page loading time refers to the time it takes for a browser to download and load a webpage. It can be affected by factors like page weight, front-end HTML, CSS, and JS scripts, web browser, and more.
Page response time simply refers to the time it takes for a server to respond to a request. It is more reflective of your website’s hosting qualities.
Read: Page load time vs Response time: Which is the more useful website speed metric?
A server with a good response time makes a big dent in your website speed. It allows you to deliver better website speed despite the presence of heavy page elements. Additionally, if you happen to use AppMySite to make your own app, good response times will make your app fast as well.
Website owners often face speed issues because of poor server response times. This is generally because most site owners choose shared hosting plans because they’re cheaper.
The easy way to resolve this issue is to choose a dedicated WordPress host. These hosts are designed to perform well in a WordPress environment and deliver quality response times.
#2: Email service issues
Many site owners configure their business emails directly through their hosting provider. Online businesses often need email services to connect with customers and prospects. This is why most website hosts provide additional email services.
Here’s the issue: email services provided by website hosts are not often reliable.
If your business depends on generating regular business leads through contact forms, you need dependable email services. Unfortunately, business emails configured through a website host can run into issues because of changes in server settings.
To resolve this issue, you would need to contact your hosting provider. Another solution is routing website emails through a third-party service like Gmail. There are a number of WordPress plugins that allow you to configure custom SMTP settings for your website emails. This basically ensures all your website emails are delivered to you.
Additionally, you can speak to your website host about issues related to your email server.
#3: Website security
A large part of your website’s security is controlled by your host. You can certainly take a few steps of your own to manage the security of your site. This includes smart password practices, vetting the plugins you install, and more.
For security against common vulnerabilities and external threats, your website host provides a security infrastructure. Reliable hosts generally map out all the vulnerabilities your website may face. This includes creating custom firewalls, adding new rules for third-party integrations, blocking cyberattacks, and more.
Read: How to choose a secure WordPress host?
Not all website hosts have a reliable security infrastructure. This can mean that despite you taking all the precautions to safeguard your website, something may go wrong on your host’s end.
The solution is to consider security an important factor while choosing a website host. Too many site owners focus blindly on affordability and website speed as the sole deciding factors while selecting a hosting provider.
Making security a deciding factor will also incentivize hosting companies to invest more in cybersecurity.
#4: Common website errors
WordPress errors like internal 500 and WSOD often plague website owners. These issues can arise because of a myriad of issues. From faulty plugins and themes to issues related to your host, WordPress errors can cause serious downtime if you don’t how to deal with them.
In most cases, website errors are caused by badly coded plugins. While a host cannot stop you from installing a bad plugin, it can help you in case something goes wrong.
Reliable hosting companies take regular backups of your website. These backups are essentially meant as a safeguard in case something goes wrong with your website, like a website error.
Some hosts also provide safeguards against website errors through safe mode website login URLs. These safeguards essentially allow you to access your admin panel in case of a website error.
Website errors can be frustrating for WordPress users because of the damage they cause to a website’s user experience. Furthermore, most site owners don’t have the technical experience needed to troubleshoot these errors through an FTP client like Filezilla.
If you’re unfamiliar with troubleshooting these errors, select a website host with a decent record for customer service. You should also ask your hosting provider if they provide assistance with website errors.
While most managed WordPress hosts do provide assistance for website errors, shared hosts may not. You should check with your provider nonetheless.
#5: Server downtime
When you visit a hosting provider’s website, you will probably find the words uptime and downtime mentioned often.
Uptime refers to the fraction of time your website is live. If your uptime for a given period of time was 100%, it means your website was never down.
Generally, most hosts say that their servers have an uptime of 99%. These claims are generally overblown. In reality, your host may have a much lower uptime. This depends on the quality of the server your host uses to run your website.
Server downtime is a common reality. Reliable hosts are good at anticipating and minimizing downtime, while bad hosts are unable to do so. You can address this problem by talking to your host about downtime issues. Your provider may be able to advise you on the plan you should choose to get zero downtime.
These plans are expensive but promise zero downtime for your website.
Siteground: The ultimate hosting solution for your WordPress site
SiteGround is a managed WordPress hosting service that makes your website fast and secure.
Choosing a website host is a big challenge. It can be difficult to grow your website when you’re straddled with hosting issues.
Here’s where SiteGround helps. It hosts your website in a hosting environment dedicated to WordPress websites. You also get a ton of freebies with each hosting plan such as free SSLs, CDNs, and more.
If you’re already hosted with another platform, SiteGround offers seamless migration with a simple plugin. Here’s what a SiteGround plan typically includes:
- Managed WordPress updates to make sure your site is updated with the latest tech specs.
- Advanced caching to ensure your page loading times are low and efficient.
- Free CDNs to make your website load fast anywhere in the world. Additionally, you get an SSL certificate to make your website secure.
- Top-notch security with regular updates to custom WAF based on prevailing cybersecurity on trends.
In conclusion
Hosting is a key component in creating a successful website. Over the course of time, you will run into hosting issues while managing your site.
In this article, we discuss some of the common hosting issues site owners face while running their websites. Choosing a good website host can help you overcome these problems. Additionally, if you’re using the AppMySite free online app maker, choosing a reliable host can also make your app faster and more secure.
