Choosing a Hosting Provider: The 10-Point Checklist

22/07/2026

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Every hosting provider's homepage promises the same things: speed, reliability, 24/7 support. The differences live in the details — and you discover those details either by reading carefully before you buy, or the hard way afterwards. Here is a 10-point checklist to run through before you hand over your card.

The technical foundation

1. Disk type. NVMe drives are 5–10 times faster than SATA SSDs and dozens of times faster than spinning disks. If a provider does not state the disk type, there is usually a reason for the silence.
2. PHP and database versions. Support for current PHP (8.2/8.3) and a recent MySQL/MariaDB. A provider still capped at PHP 7.x is not maintaining its infrastructure.
3. Uptime with an SLA. "99.9% uptime" allows at most ~43 minutes of downtime per month. What matters is that the guarantee is in the contract, not just the ad — and check independent monitors, not the provider's own dashboard.
4. Server location and CDN. A server near the bulk of your audience, and a CDN for visitors from everywhere else. Some charge for it separately — with us the global CDN is free on every plan.

The safety net

5. Backups: how often, and who restores. Daily automatic backups are the minimum. The key questions: how many days of copies are kept, can you restore them yourself with one click, and is restoring charged. Some large providers bill €15–30 per restore.
6. SSL certificate. Free SSL (Let's Encrypt) is the standard today. A provider charging €30–50 a year for basic SSL is charging you for something you get free elsewhere.
7. WAF and DDoS protection. A server-level firewall that blocks attacks before they reach your site. Without it, every bot wave spills directly onto your WordPress.

What you only see later

8. Renewal pricing. The industry's favorite trick: year one at €1–2 a month, renewal at €10–12. Find the renewal price list before buying — if it is not public, that is your answer. Our plans cost the same in year one and year five.
9. Support: test it before buying. Send a technical question before you become a customer. The speed and quality of the pre-sales answer is the ceiling of what you will get as a customer. Support in your own language is a real advantage when something breaks at 3 a.m.
10. Money-back guarantee. A serious provider gives you at least 30 days to test risk-free. It signals that customers stay because they want to, not because they cannot leave.

How to use this list

Do not hunt for a perfect score — look for a provider with zero red flags on the items critical to you. For a brochure site, backups, SSL and support matter most; for a store, add NVMe, WAF and the uptime SLA; for an audience spread across countries, the CDN becomes mandatory. And finally: check the cost of leaving. A provider that charges for site exports or obstructs migration is betting you will stay out of helplessness — the worst possible reason to stay.