How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting Option for Your Site
Your WordPress website. Is it ready to go live? Is it up and running already? Your words, photos, and videos are all beautifully displayed on a digital page, but how is the site stored? How big is it? How much does it cost to run? These are just some of the questions you need answered before you hit the “publish” button and reveal your online newspaper, blog, or corporate website to the world.
With all the options available, how do you choose the best one? Let’s dive into the world of wordpress hosting and see how to choose the right type of hosting for your needs.
What is WordPress Hosting?
WordPress hosting is simply hosting a WordPress website. You’ll find lots of different types of hosting available, so you’ll need to decide what’s important to you. More and more businesses are turning to WordPress as an easy way to create a fully functioning website with just a few clicks of the mouse.
WordPress hosting offers many advantages. You get a free WordPress installation with every plan, and you don’t need to worry about upgrading or installing the software yourself. Just make sure you know how to use it! A blog-owner’s nightmare is getting stuck with a piece of software they aren’t familiar with. The last thing you need is to hire someone new to set things right.
Secure WordPress Hosting
One of the biggest concerns any business, blogger, or individual website owner has is security. You don’t want hackers breaking into your website and stealing your valuable information. That’s why we’re always looking for the safest and most secure way to do things. Fortunately, there is a solution for this. You can get WordPress hosting from a company that provides a lockable storage room, full disk encryption, and a kill switch.
The best part is you don’t need to do anything special to get it. When you order WordPress hosting from a reputable provider, you’ll get all of that and more. You won’t have to worry about losing your website content because of a hack or security breach. When you order secure WordPress hosting, you’re giving your website the best chance of survival.
Deciding between expensive, proprietary solutions and free and open source options isn’t always easy. However, when it comes to security, nothing and no one is more important than your site. The last thing you need is for your domain name and login credentials to be stolen and used by hackers to access and damage your online presence.
If you’re looking for a safe and secure way to store and display your content, WordPress is the best solution out there. Not only does it provide a robust CMS that’s easy to use, but it also has a large and active community.
What Type of WordPress Hosting?
There are two main types of WordPress hosting: managed and unmanaged. A managed WordPress hosting plan offers a one-click installation for WordPress along with guaranteed uptime and support from a trained technical support team.
An unmanaged WordPress hosting plan gives you complete control over your website’s software and security settings. This is great if you’re a developer or technical person and want to be able to install and configure apps on the website. Otherwise, you can leave everything to the experts and just focus on growing your business.
It’s important to note here that not all unmanaged hosting is created equal. Some providers go to great lengths to hide their awful performance and lack of resources under the guise of “security”. Keep your eyes open for these types of providers as you browse through the hosting options. You’ll have better luck finding a reputable and secure option if you filter by reviews.
Managed vs. Unmanaged WordPress Hosting
The main difference between the two is how they handle hosting requests. With a managed WordPress hosting plan, your website will be seated on a dedicated server and will only ever have one IP address. This means that if someone clicks on a link to your website or goes to your domain name, they will always reach the same server, regardless of whether it’s manned or unmanaged.
Unmanaged WordPress hosting doesn’t have this restriction. While this may seem like a luxury extra for you as the site owner, it can be a pain in the neck for the man behind the scenes. Imagine if you have a large fan base and multiple websites that you’re managing all of a sudden. Every time you make a configuration change, you’ll need to wait for the DNS propagation to complete before you can access your website again. This can be extremely frustrating for the technical person who is responsible for managing the website, not to mention the impact on the customer’s experience.
The upside to an unmanaged WordPress hosting plan is that you can have multiple websites on the same server, meaning that if one of the sites goes down, the rest of the websites will still function normally. The downside is that you’re responsible for keeping the website updated and secure on your own.
Cloud vs. On-Premise WordPress Hosting
Nowadays, we’re all data guzzlers. Whether it’s on our phones or our laptops, we love to store, access, and share data. Stored data is no longer a thing of the past, and with the explosive growth of things like Google Docs and Dropbox, it’s easy to see why. Storing data remotely is simply preferable because you don’t need to worry about the hardware being up to date or plugged in. The data is stored and processed on large server farms, meaning that even if an attacker did get access to your hard drive – which is highly unlikely – they’d still be at a disadvantage when compared to a well-informed user who has all the right keys and has installed all the right security tools.
The advantage of cloud Wordpress hosting is that you don’t need to worry about the availability of the hardware or its uptime. All you need is an Internet connection and you can launch your website with the click of a button.
This is one of the reasons why Wordpress is such a popular choice among bloggers. Even if you have a working website, you can always install Wordpress on a new hosting plan and start blogging without any further delay.
Cost Comparison
All things considered, cost is always a major factor when choosing a web host. The amount you spend depends on what type of features you need and how much you’re willing to spend. Fortunately, there are many reputable hosting providers available and, for the most part, you’ll find that the more you pay, the more you get. Here are some rough comparisons: