10 Essential Hosting Features To Look For In A WordPress Hosting Provider

How do you choose a WordPress host when you’re not sure how to even compare features? We say go with someone serious about raising the bar.

Your business is up and running. Maybe you even started it in your garage, basement, or from your 9-5 job (oops). That’s okay. Now you’re growing so fast that you wish you had a good website like last week. Rushing to catch up, you went with a website host from a friend, freelancer, or from NASCAR sponsorships. We get it. You needed to make a choice. 

Now it’s time to really take a look at the essential hosting features that your business needs in a managed WordPress host – and why they matter.

What Features Do I Need From My Managed WordPress Host?

CMS Junkie lists a nearly exhaustive list of essential features to look for in a WordPress host. These features include:

• Uptime and Reliability. …
• Speed and Performance. …
• Server Location and CDN
• Security Features and Backups.

They’re not wrong. However, we feel that many people don’t fully understand why these features are important. 

Ten Essential Hosting Features From The Rocket.net Platform

Essential Hosting Feature 1 – Automatic Updates

One of the challenges of the WordPress ecosystem is the asynchronous updates that come from Core, Themes, and Plugins. You won’t have to worry about this with automatic updates turned on. Nightmares of clients finally looking at their business website after a year and the platform is out of date will be over. You won’t have to worry about automatic updates. Again.

From bug patches to new features, your business relies on your website being at its best.

With Rocket.net’s automatic WordPress updates, we have these updates enabled by default. Any time WordPress makes a release not to be considered major, we will automatically update your WordPress installation for you.

Essential Hosting Feature 2 – Enterprise CDN

A CDN isn’t just for fancy photography sites and large eCommerce stores; it’s for everyone. A Content Delivery Network ensures your site is secure – and fast. The browser won’t have to ping your server so many times just to see those photos of your new cocktail: a beetroot bloody mary.

With our fine-tuned Enterprise Edge CDN, the Rocket.net platform delivers an equally awesome experience to your website visitors all over the world. No configuration is required, and there are no hidden costs since this is included in all of our plans.

Essential Hosting Feature 3 – Enterprise Network

Our WordPress servers are strategically placed around the world in large cities allowing you to get closer than ever to your website visitors. Our worldwide network has over 275+ edge locations around for caching and security services.

This means that your visitors ping the Edge closest to them. When it comes to eCommerce, this means a truly seamless experience.

Essential Hosting Feature 4 – Complimentary Migrations

Okay, so you’re in on moving your site elsewhere. But what a headache. How will that happen? You have more to worry about than changing your host. This is what keeps commodity hosts net positive. We think that’s disingenuous at best. And giving white-glove service certainly hasn’t hurt our bottom line.

“Beyond what the spreadsheets say as we blew past $3.1mm ARR in Q2, I’m most proud about the values we collectively stand for as a company.”

Ben Gabler, CEO

Every Rocket.net Our team of experts will move your WordPress site(s) from your existing host at no charge! Whether you have 1 or 1,000 websites, we provide unlimited free WordPress migrations with every package.

Essential Hosting Feature 5 – Website Firewall (WAF)

Not every WordPress host includes WAF (web application firewall) security to its customers. We think this is sad. It’s like building hundreds of homes in a new subdivision and then not installing locks on the doors. 

With Rocket.net’s always-on WordPress Website Firewall (WAF), your website is always protected from attackers. Spend more time managing and building your website content and less time worrying about safety and security.

Essential Hosting Feature 6 – Malware Protection

Things happen. We get it. You’re working hard on your business, not the infrastructure of your business. Sometimes plugins and themes are vulnerable. Code always is – for the right hacker determined to get in the code – just because they can.

That’s why Malware Protection shouldn’t be an upcharge to your WordPress hosting. We believe Malware Protection should be included by default. At Rocket.net it is.

Powered by Imunify360, every WordPress install on our platform benefits from real-time malware protection, scanning, and patching. The Rocket.net Platforms’ defense intercepts all activity in real time, analyzes the behavior of PHP scripts, and stops any known or unknown malicious codes from being executed. That’s protection you can count on.

Essential Hosting Feature 7 – 24×7 Expert Support

There’s no bigger bummer than encountering an unforeseen problem, calling your tech company, and they’re closed. It even happens in the remote-working world we seem to be living in. Access to support isn’t just a nice feature – we think it should be the industry standard. Your fans don’t care that hosting support is closed when they want to buy tickets to your band’s show at 10 PM.

From white-glove migrations to advanced DNS help, our support is truly available around the clock. Rocket is here for you when you really need it, our support team always has your back. We’ll help with migrations and fixing your website when the need arises.

Essential Hosting Feature 8 – Streamlined Control Panel

Even though updates to the UI of the WordPress Admin Panel have been on the books for years, they’re finally getting an update – sometime soon.

No worries. We have a streamlined Control Panel for you that’s easy to read and use.  With just a few clicks, you can conveniently get full insights into how your site is performing at any given time without delays. This essential hosting feature is available to every plan on the Rocket.net platform.

Essential Hosting Feature 9 – WordPress Activity Logging

When something does go wrong, when did it happen? Was it Col Mustard in the Library with the Candlestick? We need to know what went wrong to diagnose the problem. Likely, it’s a disgruntled former employee who hijacked your home page. Oops, let’s get some user management in place.

With WordPress activity logging enabled on your site, you are always in the know when it comes to all WordPress changes. We support tracking of all activities across your WordPress website including:

• Users
• Plugins
• Themes
• Core
• WooCommerce
• Posts
• Pages
• Products

Essential Hosting Feature 10 – Daily Backups

You never need a backup – until you do. Backups are the un-sexy part of running your WordPress website. If you talk to security and database experts, they believe that you should have a local backup, an off-site backup, and a cloud backup.

Maybe you’re using Apple’s iCloud, also syncing your iPhone shots to Photos, Google Photos, and Dropbox. That’s essentially a great backup strategy. Even better, have the best photos printed at Costco or Walmart.

Essential Hosting Feature 11 – *Friendly Staff

Yes, we know that friendly staff doesn’t seem like a big deal, but we think it is. We’ve spent the last three years recruiting the best people. Not just the best techs or engineers. We’ve spent time looking for the best people. Why? Because we believe that customer service is everything.

Just ask someone who worked with Ryan Flowers, our Customer Success Manager.

“I’ve worked with Ryan Flowers across a couple of different web hosting companies and have ALWAYS come out better after our conversations. The DNS Master, has probably forgotten more about how DNS does DNS things than I will ever know. His guidance made ME look good.”

Scott White

Choose The Future of Website Hosting for the Future of Your Business

You don’t have time to worry about your site being fast and performant. We have plans for businesses of all sizes, and – more importantly – we can scale when you do. Regardless of the plan you choose, we help you move your existing website to our servers.