This story is geared more toward web developers, but we felt a lot could be learned about WordPress Hosting for business owners. Here you will find tips for hosting that apply to many platforms. Here you will see a lot of comparisons that will help you s you plan to build your next website. Destination Tampa Bay is proud to be an affiliate sponsor of elegant themes. Check out there site for all sorts of plug-ins and web managing plug-ins and tools. Elegant Themes has many helpful blogs to learn just about anything you would need to know for using WordPress.
The single most asked question I see around the internet is some variation of What’s the best company for WordPress hosting? It’s nuts how often this comes up, but it shouldn’t be that surprising–there are so many options and choices out there, it’s almost impossible to not get bogged down.
In many ways, the hosting companies are similar. They can offer one-click installations, cPanel admin dashboards, add-on domains, and that sort of thing. But in many other ways, the hosts can be quite different, and those differences are what you should look into when choosing where your WordPress site lives.
Traditional vs Managed WP Hosting
One of the biggest choices you’ll have to make when deciding on a WordPress host is whether or not you want to go for an all-in-one managed hosting package, or if you want to go for the more traditional, shared/VPS/cloud option. Both options have their merits and pitfalls, so it will be entirely dependent on what you need.
Traditional Hosting
Traditional hosts (or shared hosts) are set up to give you a section of a server. They partition off your area, and you can do what you want to with it, but like a subdivision in the real world, you have no choice of who your neighbors are, so if they’re doing shady things, your property value goes down (and becomes potentially damaged).
The trade-offs for that come in having bunches of control of your own area, often with hosting as many WP sites as you want for the same monthly cost, which is typically much lower than managed hosting. Because you handle the daily tasks and upkeep yourself.
The most well-known of these shared hosts are GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator, and Siteground.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed hosting, on the other hand, offers you a single place where your WordPress install lives. It is reserved for you and yours alone. Your neighbors are off living in their own gated communities, and you’re off living in yours. You get security, updates, support, and fantastically optimized speeds (often far faster and more reliable than shared hosts) all handled for you.
But you pay for it. Again like in the real world, living in a walled-off mansion by yourself comes with a cost. You don’t get to control things yourself, as updates are handled automatically, the number of WP installs can be limited–so can the particular plugins you’re allowed to use–and the price-tag is much, much higher on average than shared hosting (especially when looking at price vs number of installs).
While many hosting companies are moving into managed hosting these days, the old standbys are WPEngine, Flywheel, Kinsta, and Cloudways.
But that’s all top-down generalization. Each host has its own quirks, benefits, and solutions that may make all the difference for you. And that’s what I want to talk about. Because while you may read the above and realize you definitely need managed hosting (or vice versa), there’s still a big decision to be made when you look at which WordPress hosting company to go with.
I’ll be looking into some of the old standbys and newcomers to the WordPress hosting scene.
For a comparison on pricing and more option visit: A Deeper Dive into Some Hosts
Story written by B.J. Keeton for elegant themes as an affiliate partner of Destination Tampa Bay. Check out more business stories here.