Sorry but the host isn't meeting our minimum requirements.

We require at least MySQL 5.5.3, which was released in 2010.

Often webhosts don't upgrade their software for very long periods, which is also a security risk.

The reason we need utf8mb4 is because it is required to save emojis. Without it, pasting in an emoji would cause query errors, as the database would not recognise the character.

Basically utf8mb4 is as close to real utf-8 that MySQL can do. MySQL's utf8 is very much not proper utf-8.