If you look at the code of some of your favorite websites, chances are you’ll find many of them utilize WordPress. That’s less than surprising — we are talking about a content management system covering nearly 60% of the Web and powering over 456 million websites.
The open-source software is famous for its versatility and ease of use, allowing you to build everything — blogs, portfolios, online shops, business websites — nothing is out of the question with the right theme and plugins.
If you’re looking to build a WordPress website of your own, partnering with a reliable web hosting provider will be one of your first steps.
Why Do You Need to Find the Right WordPress Hosting?
WordPress is not a resource-demanding application in general. The CMS is based on PHP and MySQL, available in any standard Linux server configuration. Yet, some providers go out of their way to fine-tune their servers to be best optimized for WordPress websites. That often includes:
- WP-optimized server environment
- Preinstalled essential plugins
- Website staging area
- Automatic core and plugin upgrades
- Expert WordPress support
It’s good to note there are two types of WordPress hosting services on the market — some simply rebrand their shared accounts while other solutions focus on the smooth running of WP websites alone.
At the end of the day, the more important thing is determining which type of web hosting best suits your particular project.
Shared Hosting for WordPress
Shared services are the most affordable way to host a website, regardless of how it’s built. The majority of online pages are very lightweight and don’t take a lot of system resources to perform well. Hence why the average shared hosting plan is more than enough to handle them. WP website owners can find other lucrative benefits as well:
– It’s inexpensive — shared hosting is the cheapest type of service, considering its setup. The host splits each server into many accounts (sometimes more than 100), and each user gets a fraction of its resources.
Of course, that means clients are also splitting the service costs, so you can easily find reliable shared solutions in the $2-$5/mo range.
– It’s easy to use — this is the perfect choice for complete beginners. You don’t need to have any coding knowledge or previous experience in WordPress website building. The provider can either take care of the WP installation or offer an easy one-click installer for the job.
Most of the time, you get an intuitive user area and control panel to manage all aspects of your account and website.
– It’s well-supported — even if you encounter technical difficulties, shared solutions often come with 24/7 support from the host. There are a variety of communication methods as well — live chat, phone, email, help desk tickets, some even offer assistance in social media. Video tutorials and knowledgebase articles are usually part of the deal.
VPS Hosting for WordPress
Shared clients often suffer from something called the “bad neighbor effect.” Be it excessive resource consumption or security vulnerabilities — every user on the same server can cause damages to your WordPress website as well.
VPS hosting eliminates the risks associated with bad neighbors and offers a completely isolated environment with dedicated CPU/RAM just for you. But that’s not all:
It’s performance-optimized — each VPS account is completely isolated from other clients on the same server through a process called virtualization. The users get a dedicated share of the available processing power, RAM, disk space, and bandwidth.
Even if they start taking more than the allocated resources — that would not harm the performance of your website. Furthermore, you get much more customization control, something vital for an evolving WordPress project.
It’s scalable — one of the best advantages of VPS hosting is its scalability. If your website starts reaching any of the resource limits, you can just add more and continue running smoothly. Respectively, you can ask your host to remove some disk space or RAM if you feel you are overkilling it.
It’s secure — the advanced account isolation helps improve your security as well. No longer do you have to worry about high-risk neighbors and vulnerabilities in their websites. Even better, if you know your way around server management, you can apply additional security measures, plugins, and other safety enhancements.
To summarize, WordPress hosting is best suited for WordPress blogs and small-scale business projects in need of affordable service.
On the other hand, growing enterprises, online shops, and media-heavy websites that utilize WP would find VPS hosting much more fitting.
How to Find the Right WordPress Hosting?
Now that you’ve find the right hosting, it’s time to find an appropriate provider to host our project. There are thousands of web hosts competing on the market, so you need to do a little research to see which one checks all your boxes.
Features — Outline the most essential features you would need — be it an SSL certificate, CDN, free domain, or daily backups. Look at the whole package as there might be unexpected bonuses you might not have considered.
Ease of Use — If possible, get a demo or free trial of your prospective hosting service. Use the time to test everything — user area, control panel, navigation, management options.
Support — Engage in sales conversations with your hosting support. Ask them all kinds of questions to get a general idea of their usefulness. Check out the additional written and video tutorials as well.
Price — There is a fine balance between Features and Price, and you want to find the most cost-effective solution out there. Set up a starting budget and look only for solutions within that range.
User Reviews — The company reputation is just as important. Online hosting reviews are often written by affiliates and offer a biased opinion. User testimonials might not be 100% genuine as well, but reveal valuable insights that only an existing client can experience.
Conclusion
Every WordPress website needs find the right hosting, and this guide should be able to aid you in your search. All of your available choices — app-specific deals, shared, and VPS servers — carry different benefits, but hides some risks as well. That’s why it’s so important to do your homework, shortlist some providers, and carefully research their WP offerings.
Related Post: Why You Should Never Cut Corners with Website Hosting for Your WordPress Website?
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