Here at Clockpunk Studios, we often get asked questions like, “Where should I host my website?” Or, “What are your preferred hosting solutions?” And while we can design a site that will work with just about any host you want to use, our current recommended solutions are Siteground Managed WordPress and DreamPress from DreamHost.
Why do we prefer these webhosts? There are lots of reasons, but simply put, we’ve found that they offer the things that our clients need in a hosting solution, from security and functionality to reliability and speed. Let’s take a look at a few of the key elements offered by these services:
Free SSL Certificates – What is an SSL certificate and why do you need one? The short answer is that SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s a type of security protocol that helps to protect not only secure transactions but also user data on your site. Besides just being a good idea, these days SSL certificates are basically a must for any website, especially since Google began classifying any site without them as “insecure” starting in 2017. Fortunately, both DreamPress and Siteground offer free SSL certificates for all sites hosted through their service, helping you to keep your site accessible and your visitors’ data secure.
Plenty of Disk Space – Regardless of how big or small your site is right now, you’ll want to plan for room to grow. The last thing you want is for the success or growth of your business to be restricted by the limitations of your website hosting service. For Siteground, we recommend their affordable GrowBig plan, which offers 20GB of space and allows for unlimited websites, geared toward around 100,000 monthly visits. At DreamPress, the basic package is suitable for most of our clients, as it is already built to accommodate around 100,000 monthly visits and offers 30GB of space.
Resources to Keep Your Site Online – Your site is no good if people can’t go to it, and a hosting service that doesn’t have the reliability that you need to keep your site online is no good to you. That’s why we only recommend hosting options that offer the kinds of resources that will ensure that your site is always active, online, and accessible. Both Siteground and DreamHost not only offer robust hosting resources, they also provide 24/7 accessible support—not to mention on-demand backups of your site.
Server-side Caching – What is server-side caching? It’s definitely a good thing. It means that the origin server stores a temporary copy of your website. What does that mean? In practical terms, it means that your site will load a whole lot faster than it otherwise would. And in a world where we’re all accustomed to blazing-fast speeds when it comes to browsing the ‘net, if your site loads too slowly, the odds of someone navigating away from it early become incredibly high.
Those are just a few of the most important pieces of functionality to look for when it comes to choosing a webhosting service, and we recommend Siteground and DreamPress because they both offer all these and many more besides. For more information or if you have questions about how to choose the hosting service that’s right for your website, feel free to contact us anytime!