Website hosting is a critical element of any B2B website. While it may be tempting to go with a cheap, recognizable name like GoDaddy or Network Solutions, experience has taught us that’s rarely the best solution for B2B companies.
While web hosting may seem like an afterthought once you have sorted out the web design and content for your B2B website, it should be considered of equal importance to the design and content. Why? Because the difference between a quality web hosting provider and a sub-par hosting provider is the difference between a quick loading website that has maximum uptime and a website that loads slowly, glitches, and goes down regularly. Enlisting the services of a solid web hosting provider is critical to ensuring your website is up and running smoothly so that your prospects and clients can get the information they need from you.
Learn more about how page speed impacts your website.
Our Top Picks for WordPress Websites
While WordPress is lightweight enough to run on most hosting platforms, that certainly doesn’t mean it will run optimally. Hosting on a server that’s specifically tuned for WordPress can make a huge difference in how quickly your B2B website loads. Server-level caching also helps speed up your website by storing files that are used frequently.
The two hosts we typically recommend to our web design clients are WP Engine and Pantheon. (Please note, this is accurate as of the publication of this post. Things can shift rapidly in the hosting world, so we encourage you to do your own research as well.)
WP Engine
WP Engine is a WordPress-exclusive host. Their platform is fast—we’ve seen website load times drop by 50% after moving to WPE from one of the bigger, more well-known hosts. WP Engine also offers excellent, easily-accessible support. A lot of managed WordPress hosts offer a staging environment, but WPE’s is one of the easiest to manage for B2B websites.
Why do we like WP Engine? WP Engine is a great solution for B2B companies that don’t have a robust technical team. If you don’t have internal resources that are well-versed in managing website hosting, this can be your best bet for your B2B website hosting.
Pantheon
Pantheon is unusual in the managed WordPress hosting world in that they also host Drupal sites. The focus on WordPress and Drupal allows them to finely tune their servers for speed and performance. We find that websites on Pantheon often run faster than they would on WP Engine.
Why do we like Pantheon? Pantheon’s platform is built around version control. Every hosting package comes with a development, test, and live server, all of which connect to Git. If that sounds like Greek to you, then Pantheon may not be the best fit. While their support is very helpful, they usually expect a level of understanding of hosting and code that most marketing directors don’t have.
Get a quick overview of B2B website development.
If you’re really concerned about speed and you’re comfortable with a slightly more technical hosting platform, Pantheon is the host for you! It’s the ideal solution for B2B companies that have knowledgeable internal technical staff or companies that are working with an experienced B2B web design firm for managing their website.
