Does your hosting provider affect SEO?
The short answer
Yes, indirectly. Google rewards fast and stable websites, and your hosting determines part of the load time and uptime. A slow or often unreachable host costs you positions. Between good providers the SEO difference is small, and optimizing your own site matters more.
In detail
Google uses site speed and user experience (the Core Web Vitals) as ranking factors. The server is the first link in that chain. How fast it responds matters before your site even starts loading. Slow budget servers and overcrowded shared hosting show up there. Modern providers with NVMe storage and good caching do fine.
Server location plays a minor role. A server near your audience responds faster. For a US audience, hosting in the US makes sense. A CDN largely evens out the rest. Consistency matters more. A host that slows down every day at peak time drags your metrics down without you noticing.
What you do yourself matters more than the choice between two good hosts. Optimize your images and use caching. Pick a light theme and keep plugins to a minimum. A well-built site on a mid-tier host beats a sluggish site on premium hosting every time. Pick a solid provider and put your energy into the site.