How to Choose the Right Host for Your WordPress Site
If you want a website that loads quickly with consistently fast page speeds, you can’t skip over how vital hosting is when considering your site’s performance. There are always things you can do to increase the speed of your website, but you can’t expect low-end “value” servers to perform the same as high-quality servers.
Cheap hosting can be appealing, we get it, but it will limit your website’s opportunity and cause any number of performance and security issues that will cost you way more in the long run, trust us!
Thankfully, you don’t have to break the bank to get incredible performance and quality hosting. But you do have to choose quality over the claims of “value” and pay more than the low-end host’s charge.
Pro Tip: Pay a little more for quality over “value.”
How to Choose the Right WordPress Hosting Service
You can categorize hosting into three different types based on how the servers are set up and handled. To be able to make the best decision for you it’s important that you have an understanding of these three types…
1. Shared WordPress Hosting
Shared hosting is the most common and cheapest hosting option available. Many hosting companies offer shared hosting plans and while the plan “features” seem great (things like unlimited sites, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited storage), the actual server configuration is not ideal. The important metrics like RAM and CPU are shared with all the sites hosted on the server. Which can be hundreds and hundreds. This means that performance can fluctuate greatly based on the traffic or issues of sites that have nothing to do with your site.
Shared Hosting Pros:
Shared Hosting Cons:
I would never “recommend” using shared hosting if you can afford better hosting. Furthermore, I suggest seriously revisiting your hosting budget if shared is all you can “afford”. Between lost opportunities to unreliability, there is a “cost” to getting the value option.
However, if managed hosting is more than you can spend and you don’t have the expertise or need for more dedicated options, it may be necessary to choose shared hosting because of their lower cost. If you find yourself in this position I suggest looking at Blue Host or Siteground for hosting providers. I also suggest not choosing the cheapest plan available.
2. Traditional Dedicated/VPS WordPress Hosting
Controlling or having the ability to control the server is a good way to explain this hosting option. Basically, unlike shared hosting, you purchase your own server space and it’s completely designated for your site or sites. You are not sharing resources and you are not as limited in what options you have concerning how you want the server to run.
While this alleviates some of the performance, reliability, and security issues with shared hosting, it comes at a higher price. Plus, shared servers can be bad when it comes to performance because of throttling or other sites on that server using resources, but the servers themselves are quite powerful in terms of CPU and RAM. To get close to the raw computing power of a very large shared server you have to choose higher than the basic entry-level VPS or dedicated server. Otherwise, your site may actually be slower than a shared server.
Dedicated/VPS Hosting Pros:
Dedicated/VPS Hosting Cons:
I would never “recommend” using traditional dedicated/VPS hosting unless you have the technical expertise or have a desire to learn. If you do have the expertise or want to learn, I suggest going one small step further and managing your own cloud server on Digital Ocean or Google Cloud rather than purchasing a dedicated or VPS from a traditional hosting company (note that this means you won’t have an email server and you will get almost zero support).
3. Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting provides a level up from traditional hosting because the server environment is designed specifically for WordPress and bundles extra services into the hosting price that specifically makes WordPress faster and more secure. Plus, managed hosting provides a level up with specific support for WordPress users, proper backups, and staging sites.
Managed WordPress Hosting Pros:
Managed WordPress Hosting Cons:
I suggest Managed WordPress hosting for everyone. The price is not much more then what you will end up paying for even the cheapest hosts, and the difference it will have on your site is enormous.
Some good managed WordPress hosting options are: Cloudways, Kinsta and Liquid Web.