If you want to have a party on the Internet, who are you going to get to Host it?

In this video, I’ll share my two favorite Hosts for your WordPress website.

Click to Tweet – “Now that you’ve decided that to use WordPress as the platform for your website, you need to choose a hosting company.”

And you thought you were done with the decision making. Not yet! You’ve got to choose a hosting company.

But what does hosting even do?

A hosting company takes all of the things that make up your site:

• The WordPress files (which consists of lots of code to make it work and look the way it does),
• Plus any files that you upload (like pictures, graphics, your blog posts and other written things for other pages),
• And more bits of code that go along with your chosen theme and plugins to make the files work the way you want them to)…
• And it puts these files up on a server so people all over the world are able to find them, using your unique address (the domain name that you’ve chosen).

The files still belong to you and you can move from one hosting company to another if you decide that you like the features of another host over your current one. You retain the rights to your content; the company just makes your content available to the world for you, at the address you own.

So which hosting company do you go with?

The common and cheaper hosting options are GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Hostgator.
These aren’t terrible options which you should avoid at all costs. They just don’t offer the bells and whistles that “managed” WordPress hosting does.

Hosting packages with GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Hostgator could cost you anywhere from $3-7 a month and they do have some more expensive packages or add-ons to do some of the things that you might need for your WordPress site, but I personally love the rolled-into-one service/fee options that my top two favorites already have.

If you go with the cheaper hosting options, you may have to find other solutions (mostly likely with plugins) to take care of things like security, backups, sandbox/test sites.

Click to Tweet – “WordPress managed hosting takes care of the things you need when just starting out in the online business world with your new WP website.”

There are two options two options I recommend for managed WordPress hosting and you can make a decision from there of what works best for you.

First up: FLYWHEEL! Here are my favorite reasons why I recommend Flywheel:

1. Easy back-ups for you, in your hosting account.
2. Low-cost SSL Certificates – which are important if you are going to sell products from your WordPress website using Woo Commerce or if you have a membership or protected content on your site.
3. Security monitoring.

I use Flywheel for most of my websites and for many of my client sites.

You can find more info at www.getflywheel.com.

It’s actually built for designers, but you can get a hosting package without being a designer. You can even sign up for a free trial and start making your WordPress website with no commitment to go with the company, but I think you’ll find that it’s an awesome company and decide to stay with them anyway.

My top 3 reasons for going with Flywheel are that your website is backed up overnight for you, that they offer SSL certificates for your website for a really low cost (they’re free with the package I use), they migrate an existing site for you for FREE, and they constantly monitor your website for hackers and malware for free. Safety! Bonus.

What this means is that you won’t need extra plugins for your WordPress site just to keep your site backed up and secure. And you don’t need to hire anyone to transfer your website from your current host (if you already are on WordPress, and want to change hosts).

You can get a tiny plan at Flywheel for only $15 a month too! So they aren’t really that much more expensive.

Number two on the slightly fancier & trusted by me hosting companies is WP ENGINE!

1. Allows you to have staging sites: Where you can make changes without affecting live site.
2. Backups!

WP Engine is a host that I’ve used with clients in the past and it has most of the same features as Flywheel. You’ll have to check out their plans to see the differences, but you can’t go wrong either way.

With WP Engine, you can have staging sites (where you can make changes to your WordPress website without affecting the live site, which means that you have more of an opportunity to play and make mistakes). Plus, any time you decide you’d like to update a plugin (which should happen more frequently than most of you probably do if you already have WordPress) you can create a restore point by pressing a simple button from your WordPress dashboard. For those with little experience with WordPress, what this means is that you only have to click a few buttons to make a backup of your website and know that it’s secure before you do any real updates!
WP Engine’s smallest plan is more pricey than Flywheel- it costs $30/month.

I recommend either of these options to clients who want a self-hosted WordPress site – even if you’re just starting out.

You don’t need to be intimidated by the fact that they are made for designers/pros; they’re totally accessible for beginners (and in my opinion a great choice for beginners), and if you have any questions about how to use them, they have support staff to help you too.

Now that you’ve heard several choices for hosting, choose the one that works best for you and your business goals.

Then if you still need help with setting up WordPress you can sign up for my WordPress course that’s inside my monthly membership program, Creative Biz U, and have your site up and running in just a few short hours.