For a small company website
Choose a plan that reliably handles the website, domain e-mail, SSL, backups and contact forms. Simple tools also matter: cPanel, Site.Pro, Installatron, WP Toolkit and PHP version control.
For WordPress, shops and applications
Storage is not enough. Check PHP-FPM, OPcache, Redis or Memcached, resource limits, MariaDB/MySQL databases, backups, malware protection and support for diagnosing slow queries or plugins.
For business e-mail
Hosting with e-mail should include stable webmail, anti-spam and antivirus protection, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, reports, SpamBox, mail-client support and technical delivery confirmations to the recipient server.
When not to choose the cheapest plan
Avoid the smallest option if you run a shop, heavy e-mail, many domains, API integrations, more traffic, custom cron jobs or a website that must recover quickly after an incident. Affordable but good hosting means reasonable total cost, not only the lowest advertised price.
Pre-purchase checklist
- Check the initial price and annual renewal reference.
- Decide whether you need website, e-mail and domain migration.
- Compare backups, SSL, DNS, e-mail and malware protection.
- Check application requirements: PHP, databases, cache, cron and resource limits.
- Ask support if the current hosting has performance or e-mail problems.