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Why is hosting so important for WordPress?

Categorised: WordPress hosting advice
Written by . Last updated: August 13, 2025

Hosting is hosting, right? Wrong. The answer to why hosting is so important for WordPress is simple: if you cut corners or try to save a few quid, your site will suffer.

If your WordPress site were a car, hosting would be the engine.

Just like with cars, you can have the shiniest paintwork, leather seats and a fancy steering wheel, but if the engine is a knackered old diesel from 1987, you’re not going anywhere fast.

Over the years, I’ve worked on hundreds of WordPress sites – fixing poor hosting, building them from scratch, and bringing them back from the brink after hacks, bad development, or being built on a page-builder nightmare.

Many of those problems could have been avoided if the client had been on expertly managed WordPress hosting.

Contents.

So why is great WordPress hosting so important?

  • Website performance is critical because faster websites improve user retention and increase conversion rates – put, the faster your website, the more conversions you’ll get (assuming your content is up to scratch).
  • The reliability of your web hosting service influences the uptime of your website, which is crucial for maintaining customer access – you will not get any conversions if your website is not working.
  • Quality WordPress hosting providers streamline management tasks like updates and backups, allowing users to focus on content creation – having this looked after is one less headache.
  • Suggestions from hosting providers on security measures can enhance a site’s protection against hacks – a proactive hosting provider will keep you informed, so if a plugin is a problem, they will let you know.

These really are the basics, but if you do want your site to be successful, you need to have these covered.

Cheap Hosting Costs You More in the End

Part of the problem with WordPress hosting is that when you Google ‘best WordPress hosting,’ you are not presented with the best hosting provider; you are shown the companies that pay the most money to be there. This is a search engine rankings issue, not an accurate representation of what constitutes the best WordPress hosting service.

WordPress hosting services that are the best are not the cheapest – just like everything else in life – the more affordable your hosting service, the worse it probably is.

The problem with bargain-basement hosting that many hosting providers offer is that it’s slow, overloaded and often uses outdated server software.

This means:

  • Poor site speed – Google’s not a fan, and neither are your visitors.
  • Frequent downtime – your site disappears more often than the office tea spoons.
  • Security holes – old software and shared hosting setups make you an easy target for hacks.

By the time you’ve paid someone like me to fix the fallout from that £1.99/month decision, you could have funded five years of decent hosting.

This is a stark reality when comparing hosting platforms – as WordPress hosts are not a site owner’s area of expertise; they rely on their WordPress developer to recommend a hosting provider.

This can mean that they choose a hosting package that costs them a couple of quid a month, but they they charge you ten times that – so you are effectively paying for what seem, in cost, to be great hosting packages, but in reality, you are not paying for decent managed wordpress hosting, you are lining the pockets of your developer.

David Foreman

Talk to Dave about WordPress hosting.

I am the MD at Toast and have worked with nearly every hosting company you can think of over the last 15 years. If you think your hosting might be holding your website back, get in touch and we can have a chat about getting that sorted for you.

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What are the different types of hosting?

  • Managed WordPress hosting provides automatic updates and backups, optimising the environment for WordPress sites. Managed hosting is typically more expensive than shared hosting but offers additional features and support.
  • Shared hosting involves multiple websites sharing a single server’s resources.
  • Cloud hosting uses a network of servers to host a site, ensuring high uptime and the ability to handle traffic spikes. Cloud hosting offers flexible resource scaling, which is beneficial for sites with fluctuating traffic.
  • Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting provides dedicated resources without the cost of a dedicated server, isolating each user’s environment. Price and resource allocation vary significantly between shared, managed, VPS, and cloud hosting options.

Security features are often more robust in managed and cloud hosting environments compared to shared hosting.

Managed hosting can reduce the number of plugins needed, as the host handles many basic optimisations.

These all come with different price tags, but you do get what you pay for.

How can you tell if you are using a cheap web hosting service?

The easiest tool to use is Google’s Page Speed Insights tool, which will give you some important metrics about your WordPress site.

You should first look for the Time To First Byte report (you may not see this if your site is new). This report is the first metric to show you how good your WordPress host is.

Now there is a caveat: if your WordPress site is not optimised properly, then even the best web hosting may struggle to serve it up quickly. WordPress sites that have not been optimised can slow down even the fastest hosting provider, so you do need to make sure your WordPress site has been optimised as part of running this test, but the results will give you insight.

Graph showing important speed metrics in regard to hosting wordpress sites

The data above gives several essential insights into the quality of the hosting provider (this site has been optimised and scores 99/100 in the Performance Issues test).

We’ll only touch on some of these in this blog, as Page Speed results are an entirely different post.

Largest Contentful Paint. This means something on your page is taking a long time to render – it might be a large image or some other code – this could be a performance issue with your site rather than your web hosting.

Time to First Byte This is how long the server takes to serve up the data (basically) and is more related to your web server than your site’s performance.

These two metrics alone can help give you some insight into the quality of your hosting provider.

Good Hosting Makes WordPress Easier to Run

Your site is more than just your WordPress theme and WordPress plugins; it’s a database, PHP code, server configuration, DNS records, caching, SSL certificates (site security) … the works.

A good web hosting provider does a lot of this for you. With the right hosting, you get:

  • Fast load times – which means better SEO and happier visitors.
  • Automatic backups – so you can roll back when you (or your developer) break something.
  • Better WordPress security – firewalls, malware scanning, and hardened server settings.
  • Support that understands WordPress – not a script-reading chatbot that tells you to “clear your cookies.”

When hosting is solid, your developer can spend time improving your WordPress websites, not firefighting problems that aren’t WordPress’s fault at all.

With so many WordPress hosting issues that I work on being a direct result of poor WordPress hosting, better web hosting services do actually save you money in the long-run, even if they seem more expensive at the outset.

Hosting and Updates Go Hand-in-Hand

One of the most common WordPress disasters I see is a site that breaks after an update. Often, the root cause is that the hosting runs old versions of PHP or MySQL, so when WordPress updates, it’s like asking a VHS player to stream Netflix.

Managed WordPress hosting plans, invested in their tech stack, and ensured your site performance was not hindered by older versions of PHP and broken free SSL certificates or some overloaded Virtual Private server that is not up to the task.

The right host keeps its software stack up to date, meaning updates go smoothly and you’re not stuck on ancient, insecure versions because “the server won’t support it”.

Not All Hosting Providers are Created Equal.

There’s a massive difference between:

  1. Shared hosting – cheap, but you’re crammed onto a server with hundreds of other sites, and if any one of those other WordPress sites starts to misbehave, it can cause issues for your WordPress site.
  2. Managed WordPress hosting – more expensive, but tuned for speed, security and WordPress-specific needs. WordPress hosting providers that offer managed hosting for your WordPress site do need to be carefully compared – it’s easy to stick the word managed WordPress hosting in the name of the hosting plan, but does it really mean you are going to get it?
  3. Dedicated servers or VPS – complete control, but you need to know what you’re doing (or have someone like me on call). Whilst VPS hosting sounds like a great idea, you will be responsible for the server resources, so if things need fixing, this can take a lot of time (which then does away with the ‘savings’ you thought you were getting in the first place.

If your site is business-critical, managed WordPress hosting is usually the sweet spot. You get all the performance benefits without having to learn server admin.

There are two main things you want from your hosting provider.

  1. Great technical expertise in regard to server resources and issues.
  2. Fast load times for your site and not having your site sit on a server with multiple sites that drain the server resources and slow your site down.

The best WordPress hosting provider will have a support team that takes issues with your site personally and is responsible for getting the issue fixed quickly.

WordPress hosting support.

This is often overlooked regarding hosting providers, specifically WordPress hosting.

I judge a hosting provider very accurately based on the quality of their customer support, ability to provide working automatic updates, and whether they have a web application firewall and basic security measures to protect my WordPress sites (also if they offer enhanced security measures at additional cost).

Most hosting companies say they cover these things off. Still, when the sh*t hits the fan, often the support person you are talking to knows less than you about the issue as you’ve Googled the hell out of it to try and fix it, but they lack the basic knowledge as they are sitting on the end of a chat app for your hosting plan and are not experienced.

WordPress hosting support and WordPress development support are two completely different things:

  1. Hosting support requires deep knowledge about how hosting works, not just about how WordPress themes and plugins work.
  2. WordPress support requires, you guessed it, a deep knowledge of how the WordPress software works.

These are two completely different things.

Expert WordPress developers do have sound knowledge of your WordPress installation, how to work with a dedicated server and other aspects of the WordPress platform, but they are not often server experts too.

This is another reason you need to ensure your managed WordPress host has a support team that can support the managed hosting environment.

Fast load times.

This is the other bare minimum you require from managed hosting services.

If you have done everything you can to optimise your WordPress website fully, then you can be confident that there is indeed an issue with your WordPress hosting.

Another thing about cheap hosting providers: support ping-pong.

You may have experienced this already – there’s a problem with your WordPress website, so you contact the WordPress host, and they tell you, before looking into anything properly, that you need to contact your website developer to fix what you consider a WordPress hosting issue.

When you then manage to contact your website developer, they tell you it’s a hosting problem, and the whole process starts over again.

This can take hours if not days, and can get expensive, especially if you have to ask your website developer to drop everything and fix something the web hosting company should have sorted.

This is a favourite tactic of cheap hosting providers – in fact, here at Toast, I get calls from WordPress site owners telling me that Hosting Provider X (I won’t name and shame here) recommended they call me to fix the problem!

This can get infuriating, but I’m sorry. That’s what you get for going with a pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap service.

Hosting is the foundation of your website’s Success.

As you will well know, your website should be your best marketing tool – what else in terms of marketing can deliver a feed of qualified leads daily?

Even if you are a bootstrapped micro-business with a tight marketing budget (if any), working with the best hosting provider you can afford is an absolute must.

I always suggest that web hosting should be seen in the same light as that other business necessity: the mobile phone. Most people don’t think twice about spending £50-£60 per month on a shiny new Apple or Android phone and would never be without it, so apply the same thinking to your WordPress site’s web hosting.

Decide where your time is best spent.

This is a commercial decision. Do you want to be messing around with your hosting provider when your site goes down, or would you be better off with a managed WordPress hosting service like we offer here at Toast?

We manage your website hosting, automatic updates, problems and everything.

As an official hosting partner of some of the best hosting providers on the planet, we can get the best hosting, priority support, and work with teams that know us – We also get direct access to the best hosting technical support as we host lots of websites, not just one.

Hosting yourself to save a few quid versus using a managed WordPress hosting service?

‘Managed WordPress hosting plans’ directly with hosting companies do not mean you have a developer at hand for any issues; the ‘managed’ aspect generally only covers things like PHP and plugin updates.

You can still be responsible for asking the right questions, describing the exact issue, and basically pointing people in the right direction.

This is where having a developer in the middle does make everything easier.

When we talk about managed WordPress hosting here at Toast, it means that we look after everything for you and let you get on with running and marketing your business.

Our hosting charges are generally in line with what you’d pay if you went direct, which is something you can also do. However, if you then ask a developer to look at the hosting, it’s usually chargeable, whereas our hosting service covers all the costs for any work needed regarding hosting.

So what’s next?

If you’re serious about your site:

  • Don’t cheap out on hosting – you’ll pay more later.
  • Ask your developer which hosting they recommend – and why – this is important.
  • Check what the hosting company charges versus what your developer charges – another crucial thing – don’t pay a wildly marked-up cost.
  • Look for hosting with proper WordPress support – not just generic web hosting – your website development and hosting are two different things – you used an expert to build your site, so host it with an expert.
  • Make sure it’s easy to scale – if your traffic spikes, you want your site to stay up.

Your hosting choice is as important as your design, copy, and SEO.

In fact, it underpins all three. Get it wrong, and all that work you put into your site is like fitting a Ferrari body onto a go-kart chassis.

If you want straight advice on hosting, I’ll give you my two pennies’ worth.

WordPress Hosting FAQs

What is the difference between managed and shared WordPress hosting?

Shared hosting means your site shares server resources with hundreds of other websites. Managed WordPress hosting is optimised for WordPress, offers better speed, security, and backups, and usually comes with WordPress-savvy support. Shared hosting is cheaper but far less reliable.

Is cheap hosting really that bad?

Yes – in most cases. Bargain hosting often means slower load times, more downtime, and weaker security. Any savings are usually lost when you have to pay a developer to fix the problems caused by poor hosting.

How much should I budget for quality WordPress hosting?

For a business-critical site, expect to pay £50 – £300 per month for decent managed WordPress hosting. This is a fraction of the potential revenue you could lose if your site is slow, offline, or hacked.

How do I know if my current hosting is good enough?

Run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights and look at the Time to First Byte (TTFB) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) scores. If they’re poor despite a well-optimised site, your hosting may hold you back.

Can I move my WordPress site to better hosting without downtime?

Yes – a competent developer or managed hosting provider can migrate your site with minimal or no downtime. This is usually done by setting up the new server, transferring the site, and only switching the DNS once everything is working perfectly.

Why should I host my site with my developer instead of directly with a hosting company?

If your developer offers managed hosting, they can deal with issues directly, often faster than you could with generic hosting support. You also avoid the “support ping-pong” between host and developer when something goes wrong.

Does good hosting help with SEO?

Absolutely. Google factors site speed and uptime into rankings. Good hosting means faster load times, higher uptime, and better overall user experience – all of which can improve your search visibility.

David Foreman
David Foreman

Managing DIrector

Dave is the MD at Toast and has been working on branding, creative and web development projects for over 25 years. He's a founding member of Toast and enjoys a good rant.

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