If you’re starting an online business, hosting is one of the key elements in building a successful website.
While searching online for a web host, you must have come across terms like web hosting and WordPress hosting. For beginners, these terms can be really confusing and can make it difficult to choose what’s best for them.
In this post, we’ll explain the main difference between the two and help you choose which one is better for your site.
WordPress Hosting vs Web Hosting: The Overview
To make your website live on the internet, you need two things – a domain name and a web host.
A domain name is a unique address of your website that users type in the browser’s address bar to get to your website.
On the other hand, a web host is a place where you store the website files. When a user visits your website, files are fetched and your website is shown in the browser.
Hosting Definitions
There are different types of hosting such as shared hosting, WordPress hosting, dedicated hosting, etc.
Web hosting is a general term that implies all forms of hosting.
WordPress hosting on the other is a niche, targeted, managed hosting with features dedicated to the WordPress platform. It is faster and more secure than a normal web host.
Managed hosting has WordPress-specific features like automatic backups, advanced security, and WordPress automatic updates that make it less likely to run into any issue. Everything on the server-side is managed by the hosting provider so that you can have peace of mind and focus on improving your business.
Shared hosting, on the other hand, shares the resources with hundreds of other websites. This results in a slow and poor experience. Resources are limited and you will have to manage everything on the server-side if something breaks.
Now that we know the basic difference, let’s see why WordPress hosting is better than shared hosting.
The Advantages of Using WordPress Hosting
Some of the benefits of using managed WordPress hosting are:
- Ease of Use: The server is configured for WordPress installation and comes with dedicated features such as one-click WordPress installs. WordPress hosting providers also have beginner-friendly dashboards and server-side operations are managed by WordPress experts.
- Daily Backups: Every other month we have major updates from WordPress. Plugins and themes also keep getting updates every other day. Some updates might break your website. With managed WordPress hosting, you get automatic daily backups so that if something breaks, you can restore the latest backup without any hassle.
- Fast and Secure: Servers are optimized for WordPress, so your website will load faster than most websites. They also come with enhanced security to protect against malware, spam, or brute-force attack.
- Better Support: Customer support representatives are trained to offer support for WordPress products. This is really helpful if you are a beginner looking for someone to solve WordPress-related issues.
- Bonus Features: To attract customers, most hosting providers bundle bonus features such as free SSL certificates, free premium plugins, free CDN, staging support, etc.
It is clear that managed WordPress hosting is better than regular web hosting. Now, let’s see what to look out for when choosing WordPress hosting.
How to Choose the Right WordPress Hosting?
With so many options available on the internet, choosing the right hosting can be a challenging task.
- Web Storage: Your website needs space to store all the content you create. Unlike shared hosting, WordPress hosting comes with limited storage. While deciding on hosting, you should look for the amount of storage provided. The more storage you get, the better it is for you.
- Number of Sites: The number of sites you can host is limited. If you have plans to run multiple websites in the future, you should opt for a plan that offers more than 1 website per account.
- Scalability: At the start, your website might be small with a limited number of visitors. But as the site grows, visitors will increase. The hosting package should offer easy upgrades to allow for sudden spikes in traffic.
- Support: If you are stuck with a problem at any time, you look for support. A good hosting company should provide multiple ways to reach out to support representatives such as phone, live chat, and email.
To make it easy for you, here are the best managed WordPress hosting we recommend.
Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers
BlueHost
One of the recommended hosting providers by WordPress.org, BlueHost has become a household name in the WordPress community. They have outstanding server performance so you don’t have to worry about your site being slow, even during spikes.
They have 24/7 expert support via phone, live chat, and emails to help you fix any of your problems. If you opt for the 3-year plan, they come out as one of the cheapest managed WordPress hosting plans starting at $14.95/month.
BlueHost Managed hosting is best suited for small businesses, personal sites, and bloggers that are just starting out.
Kinsta
Kinsta has made its name as one of the best-managed WordPress hosting providers due to its excellent performance and customer support. Kinsta is a performance-obsessive hosting provider that uses Google cloud platform as its servers.
The entry-level plan starts at $30/month which is excellent pricing for those who would like to get a taste of powerful managed hosting. With an extensive knowledge base and a state of the art 24/7 customer support, Kinsta has answers for every issue you might face. Popular brands like Buffer, TripAdvisor, and Ubisoft use Kinsta to host their website.
Kinsta is best suited for someone who doesn’t want to compromise on performance and has traffic spikes regularly.
WP Engine
WP Engine is another well-known managed hosting provider with affordable plans starting at $25/month. It is known for its blazing fast website performance, 24/7 support, and advanced security.
What’s unique about this hosting provider is that you get 30+ free premium StudioPress themes included with all plans. This saves you a lot of money that you’d invest in themes. No matter what plan you choose, you get free features such as free migration, daily backups, staging environment, free CDN, etc. Popular brands like Yelp, Etsy, and Pandora use WP Engine to host their website.
WP Engine is best suited for someone who is looking for a mix of everything – fast, reliable, and secure hosting, and best-in-class support.
4 months offWP EngineGet 4 months free on annual Startup, Growth, & Scale plans (or 20% off your first…Show More Get 4 months free on annual Startup, Growth, & Scale plans (or 20% off your first month on monthly plans). Show Less
Servebolt
Servebolt is a fast, secure, and reliable managed WordPress hosting service that guarantees 99.9% uptime. Their main focus is on speed, security, reliability, and scalability. The Pro plan starts at $99 which is a bit on the higher side.
However, with every plan, you get daily automatic backups that are retained for 30 days. Servebolt has also partnered with Cloudflare to provide features that include APO, Web Application Firewall, WebP, and CDN.
They also have experts that you can reach out to through phone, chat, and email to help you with any issues you might face.
Servebolt is recommended for those who don’t mind spending money in return for world-class performance.
Final Thoughts
Hosting is one of the most important elements to consider when planning to launch a website. When starting out, you might want to work with a tight budget and opt for shared plans. There is nothing wrong with that. But as your site grows, together with your traffic, having managed hosting with WordPress-specific features can save you a lot of hassle.
Managed WordPress hosting is incredibly fast, secure and reliable. It is configured to run WordPress websites smoothly and without any hassle to the end-user.
This means that the maintenance is done by your hosting expert while you can concentrate on scaling your business.
Keep reading the article at WP Mayor. The article was originally written by Ahmed Chougle on 2021-03-15 07:00:00.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.