When you begin to do your research, you realize that there is a profusion of hosting providers and especially a multitude of offers. In short, it is not easy to find your way around when you are just starting out.

The worst part is that we find dozens of different feedbacks on any given hosting provider…

It is a bit like for Internet service providers and telephone operators. We still have this uncle’s friend who had problems with someone while that someone’s sister never had a problem.

With this article, I will try to clear the ground to help you choose the web hosting corresponding to your needs.

Before we get into all this, I want to give you a little reminder.

Which hosting offer to choose for your site?

Reading the previous section, you learned that the services offered by hosting providers offer two things:

– Storage space to place files from your site
– A database to save your content as well as your site options
– Generally, hosting offers are coupled with a domain name offer. The domain name corresponds to the address of your website.

This article is not intended to give you advice on how to choose a domain name but take one that is readable, memorable and powerful.

Another essential point before going on: do not choose a TLD or domain name with funky accents or extensions. Stick to .com,.net, etc.

What are your WordPress hosting needs?

As a content management system, WordPress needs its hosting to have specific features to function correctly.

To be more precise, hosting providers use the software on their servers and databases. WordPress needs these programs to be at some version to work. This software is:

– PHP: the language in which WordPress is written. The server must be able to read it to display your site.
– PHP recommended version: 5.4 (or higher)
– MySQL: the WordPress database language.
– Recommended version for MySQL: 5.5 (or higher)
If you notice that a web host offers these versions, it means that it is possible to install WordPress at home.

Classification of web hosting offers

Although each hosting provider has its specificities, the offers they offer can be grouped into several categories.

I do not recommend a particular offer at this time because everything depends on your project. Finally, a small associative site does not have the same needs as a blog visited by 35000 people per day.

So let’s review the different hosting offers that you can find on the internet.

Free hosting

Yes, it is possible to host your site for free, but I do not recommend you to choose such an offer.

First of all, if it is free, there is a good chance that the host will display unwanted ads on your site. Whatever the purpose of your site, displaying ads to your visitors is not very friendly and will damage your reputation more than anything else.

Even if advertisements are not displayed, free offers are generally restricted compared to paid offers. So you’ll have to invest at some point.

It is also possible that the host may communicate your data to third parties, so be careful.

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