Guide to Picking WordPress Web Hosting That is Best for Your Site
Several years ago, choosing a web hosting company has never been easier. But nowadays, you have so many options to choose from and thus, choosing the best company can be a bit frustrating sometimes. If you are looking for a web hosting for your WordPress site, then keep in mind that there are lots of factors that you need to consider. You have to also decide on whether you will get the shared hosting plans, dedicated server, and other types of web hosting solutions. So to help you with, here are four of the different types of web hosting solutions that you may want to consider for your WordPress site. Treat this as your guide to picking WordPress web hosting that is best for your site.
Shared Hosting
First on the list is shared hosting. If you look around, you will find various web hosting companies that offer shared hosting packages for as low as $1.99 each. These are considered the public transportation of the world of hosting and they are among the most affordable of all.
However, this option has little flexibility and comes with a lot of overcrowding. When your website begins to grow, you might encounter a lot of problems like bandwidth limiting and slow response times. Another downside is that it might take a while before you get the much needed support for your shared hosting services since there are absolutely lots of users of shared hosting out there. In addition, most of the hosts will only provide the most basic support which might not be helpful for you.
The main advantage of shared hosting plans is the price. If you are still new in the world of ecommerce, then this is the most cost effective solution. With this plan, you will be able to run various scripts and you will not only be limited to WordPress. You can also make use of the space in testing various projects.
Shared hosting is ideal for those who do not depend much on their website revenue, such as those people who are writing blogs for the mere purpose of leisure and not for earning money.
Managed Hosting
Before, managed hosting would mean one thing and these are the hardware as well as the operating system management for the separate boxes. With this hosting plan, you will hire an expert to check on your server and they will then install an operating system on it. They also will need to add security patches on the server and change the hard drives if they get broken.
The newcomers to the managed hosting plans are those application level managed hosts. You will find several companies these days that deal with hosting applications and one of these applications is WordPress. As you know, WordPress has become the most preferred CMS or content management system nowadays for both bloggers and entrepreneurs. Basically, managed hosting has almost the same concept as that of the shared hosting, although you may think of this as the new generation of the shared hosting plans. This is pretty much like the local grocery store which specializes in only a few but excellent quality products, the kind that knows you really well.
Managed hosting is ideal for those who manage a small business through their WordPress sites. These hosts are guaranteed to deliver excellent performance with fine tuned servers and several exclusive services that are tailored to the needs of every WordPress users.
Virtual Private Servers
If you are someone who is well adept with Unix-based operating systems, then the Virtual Private Servers or VPS might be ideal for you. This is affordable as well and an entry level VPS that can serve a couple of low traffic sites could cost $5 per month only. Since cloud computing has become the trend these days, these VPS have become so popular, too. As a matter of fact, for just a fraction of a cost of a dedicated server, you will already be able to get your own VPS machine and then tune it in to meet your needs.
The disadvantage of Virtual Private Servers is that you may not be able to get the much needed support and you may be left to do almost everything on your own. You will also have to be the one to install the web server and database software and keep all things updated. Moreover, you must also configure all applications within the Linux based environment by yourself.
VPS is basically a cheap way to get started in WordPress, that is, if you are a techie. It allows you to get that much flexibility that you need and you will also be given an option to deploy a lot of popular software packages in just one click and this includes WordPress.
Dedicated or Bare Metal Servers
Getting your own dedicated server is pretty much the same with VPS, but instead of having to share the massive pool of resources with others, you will have the opportunity to make use of “all metals” of the computers for your own site only. The price usually starts at $100 per month, although the sky’s often the limit. The packages could cost up to thousands of dollars in one month but these types of machines are well capable of serving very large applications which are capable of drawing millions of visitors each month.
The disadvantage for this option, aside from the expensive price, is that you might have to be faced with hardware failures occasionally. This is not the same with the other categories that were already mentioned. For instance, if a hard drive fails and you do not have any backup, then it could take several hours and even days before you can get back on track. Having a faulty RAM or CPU can become such a hassle as well for this type of hosting solution.
The Dedicated or Bare Metal servers are not for those everyday website owners. This type of hosting solution is getting into the enterprise end of the hosting solutions. But just think of it this way – if you can afford to drive a Ferrari because you want a faster speed, then go ahead.
