Hosting. We’ve all heard about that, yet people are rarely interested in what precisely excellent hosting means. There are so many websites popping up, and their owners usually focus on the contents of it. When it comes to hosting, many chose the cheapest option, which will save them a couple of bucks even though their developers are begging for good WordPress hosting, which is a bit more expensive.
While what your users see is indeed crucial, the question of hosting is equally as important. Developers know that. You should also know that relying on a poor-performing hosting will, in the end, cost you an arm and a leg.
Let’s get on the same page here: if you don’t have the right hosting provider, all of your efforts on the content are futile. Why? If your visitors cannot see your website, there is no reason for you to have content on it whatsoever. With poor hosting, your website is likely to experience downtime more often than it would be available to your users.
There is a bunch of reasons which could cause your site to be down. It could be that hosting service is updating their software, or struggling with DDoS attacks, unfortunately, a quite common occurrence. Or, it could be only due to the low quality of service provided, meaning that they have crammed an incredible amount of resource-draining clients onto a single server set up on the low-quality hardware.
Why is any of this important?
What do you do when you search for something on the website, and the page you found is unavailable, or cannot be found? You head out to the next result. If the website that seems to have relevant content takes ages to load? You will likely press back, and head on to the next search result.
Your customers are the same. Meaning that this will be the same actions your visitors will take if you don’t pay attention to your hosting provider. If your hosting provider doesn’t have a reduced number of websites per server or quick loading time due to inadequate equipment, you are losing customers. The customers won’t wait, and you sure do not want them to because you need them spending money on your website. You could take a guess what happens if your website is offline.
Just another, rather quick FYI: if your website is slow, or often offline, there is a high chance this will impact search results, too. With that, your new visitors will not be able to find you in the first place. Whatever you have saved on hosting, triple it for SEO experts and copywriters you are going to need instead, without any success.
So how can you tell the difference between a good and bad hosting service?
Here are five things you should look out for if you want to be able to distinguish the good guys.
Minimal server downtime
This is the basics. You don’t want your website to be down more than it is absolutely necessary. Yes, updating their hosting software is a legit reason for your website to be offline for a short time. Yet, if your website is offline more than it is online, something is not right: whatever reason or issue they might have, it shouldn’t be affecting your website.
Incredible customer service
Help should be available at all times. While you might not find it essential, when the time comes that you need it, you will find responsive customer service priceless.
Reduced number of websites per server
The resources allocated to each site should be plenty. It is pretty much like when riding in public transportation. If there are fewer people, the experience could be pleasant. Yet, if all the seats are taken, and people are hitting you in the head with their elbows while you are trying to breathe under your seatmate’s luggage, you are likely to feel down. The same goes for your website!
Timely Website backups
Always go with the provider that promises you timely backups of your website. You don’t want to risk having your website down for maintenance every now and then. It is undoubtedly better to have a backup than to take your site offline for far longer than it should have.
High-quality hardware
If you head on and pick the cheapest option out there, you might end up with a provider that has quite low-quality equipment. This could result in many inconveniences, bringing both the server and your website down more often than not.
Any recommendations?
Well, if you have a WordPress website, you want to go with Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting service.
Not only do they cover all of the points above, but they also cover it with style. So, here is our eight reasons why Kinsta is the best hosting you could get.
1. Speed obsessive infrastructure
As said before, being fast to load is a crucial aspect of your website. The first thing that draws attention to Kinsta is the fact that the websites they host load before you even know it.
They are using the newest and exceptional technology stack to make that happen. Nginx, PHP 7, and MariaDB are some of the words you might have seen while searching for the best hosting for your website.
There is also the question of resources allocation, which is rather important. Thanks to their LXD software containers and resource isolation that it provides guarantees that your site’s loading speed is exceptional. Hardware resources are dedicated to site containers so that each website has its own container. To these, resources are assigned on an as-needed basis.
Unlike with other options, if your server’s neighbor site has a traffic spike that drains all the resources allocated to all of the websites, none of you will experience any downtime. Resources will be automatically assigned according to the needs of the site, and regardless of any unexpected demands from either you or anyone else on the server, everything will still work impeccably.
2. High-security network
DDoS attacks are unfortunately prevalent already, and still, they keep growing in numbers each day. Your website will be the target, sooner or later. So why shouldn’t you go with a hosting service that acknowledges this threat and is capable of handling it professionally?
Your website should be able to withstand these attacks without experiencing any downtime. Not many hosting providers can say that this doable. Kinsta is continuously monitoring your uptime and is capable of detecting these attacks. It also provides you with a system to get your website unharmed through the storm.
It’s called multiple DNS providers, or, for the laymen, it is multiple domain name system providers, which allow you to switch to a different provider under the same name in case one of them is under attack.
There are also software-based restrictions set in place, and all the hardware has top-notch firewalls. While with other providers in case of an attack your website is down and your cash flow is interrupted, with Kinsta, you will be safe from any malicious activity.
3. Next-generation infrastructure
Low-quality server hardware is not something you should worry with if you decide to take Kinsta as your hosting partner. By now, you can see that they take their job rather seriously, and it also stands true for their software, as well as hardware.
While to a layman it doesn’t really matter which software is used, if you have serious developers working on your website, they will be rather grateful for Kinsta’s modern infrastructure. From software to hardware, you can rest assured that everything is up to date and working correctly to provide you with the best hosting experience ever.
4. Google Cloud Platform
Another pro-Kinsta argument is that Kinsta team also utilizes the power of Google Cloud Platform. This platform consists of 20 data centers, which are located around the world, and are covering all the highly populated areas in the world.
The newest two, in Switzerland and Japan, are adding additional hundreds of GB of RAM to the already incredibly robust infrastructure.
In short, this means that each website has enough space, and will never fall victim to overcrowding. Unlike other providers, these 20 centers have your site covered even in the biggest traffic jams.
It also affects the speed of your website. Since you probably already know where most of your visitors are located, you can then pick one of the data centers which are the closest to them. This will make for shorter data travel, and therefore, an incredible speed that your customers will highly appreciate. Google is very likely to notice the improvement of speed, and will reward you with a better ranking in their search results, too!
5. Free site migrations
If you have realized the mistake of choosing the wrong hosting service, Kinsta will help you out with that one, too. They provide free site migrations, which means that you can change your hosting service to Kinsta without lifting a finger.
You made a mistake once, but upgrading to Kinsta will be a rather pleasant experience. Their expert team will have you onboard in no time, without having your website suffer any downtime, and yourself no troubles. Your website is safe in the support’s excellent hands, which will handle this transfer, free of charge. Considering that migrations are usually a frustrating mess, it is good to know that they took that into account when contemplating their plans, all of which include free migration.
6. Peace of mind
If you are thinking of moving to Kinsta from another service, this is something that you will truly appreciate. One problem or many, getting your peace of mind because your hosting service is impeccable, rids you of unnecessary worries.
Timely website backup is something that distinguishes excellent service from a bad one. With Kinsta, you will be backed up at least once a day, and if for whatever reasons something goes south, it will take the push of a button to get everything back. As if nothing happened! If you have a highly dynamic site, or if you are creating changes at all times, you can increase the backup frequency to every hour.
Another service that will make developers quite happy is the offer for separate backups on all environments, both live and staging. So, when comparing all the development efforts lost within an hour to who knows when they did the last backup, you are very much better off with Kinsta.
When it comes to timely stuff, it is good to know that apart from being protected at all times and safe and sound when it comes to resources needed, Kinsta performs about 720 checks of your website daily. That translates to every two minutes. So, if something is wrong or off about your site, you can react quickly and put down the fire before everything is gone. This also helps them to be proactive when it comes to their excellent support – offering help even when you do not know you need it.
7. Support that cares
Kinsta is very proud of the support they offer to its customers, and for a good reason. Unlike with other support systems where, when you ask for help, you have to pass several tiers of support to get the help you need. It seems to take ages for your question to reach the right person who can actually handle it properly, without receiving the good old “Have you tried turning it off and on again.”
They are very likely familiar with your issue and will help you in the way that fits your website best. They are proud to present their 100% solve rate. This is quite an improvement when you compare it with other hosting services, which leave your site down and let you wait for days before getting back to you.
When it comes to their Resource Center, it is also a spot where you will be able to find the answers to your questions. It has recently been updated to present all the solutions instead of just the new ones. With Kinsta, your feedback is important, and developers will consider it when updating and adding new features.
8. User-Friendly
All the tools your developers would need are also a click away. From WP-CLI to Git, together with every latest PHP version, is supported and they can start working on the website the minute you sign up with Kinsta.
What’s more, each installation of WordPress can have its own staging environment. This would be separate from your live website, and you can play with it for as long as you would like without worrying about it. If you do want to keep some of the changes you have made on staging, all you have to do is push changes to the live site in a matter of seconds.
Kinsta comes with an incredibly user and developer friendly interface, which your developers will love, called MyKinsta. Through it, you can clone a WordPress site, request a migration, add a new site or deploy a staging server. With new updates coming each day, you can do even more with your MyKinsta account.
Good hosting, Great hosting, Kinsta hosting
All in all, after ignoring all those developers’ cries and thinking that saving a couple of bucks because “what difference does it make” turned out to be a bad idea, don’t worry. There was no way of knowing how bad hosting could impact your website, and that hosting service dedicated to WordPress websites actually exists.
Make sure that you provide your visitors with a fast and available website so that they will keep coming instead of going to the competition. Going with just any hosting service has probably already cost you too many of them. Now that you know about Kinsta, there is no reason for that to keep happening.
So, if you are in any way unhappy with your current provider, take Kinsta up on their free migration offer, and give your business and website the hosting it deserves!