Is VPS or Shared Hosting Better For Your WordPress Blog?
You shouldn’t have to be a technical wizard in order to run a blog. However, as your blog grows you’ll have to make decisions regarding where it’s hosted and what kind of a hosting plan is the best for your WordPress site. There are many sites that offer lengthy reviews of WordPress hosting plans. In this article, will focus briefly on demystifying two of the most common types of hosting for WordPress sites, VPS and shared hosting.
Contents
Bloggers who don’t get a huge amount of traffic often choose shared hosting. In other words, you’ll share hard drive space, bandwidth, and CPU with other people’s websites.
PROS
- Cheap. Shared hosting is the cheapest type of hosting.
- Easy. Shared hosting is also very easy to get started with. Some of the best WordPress Hosting plans have excellent management software that you can use to work with your website. You’ll get features like one-click WordPress installs, easy file managers, and more.
- Simple. Shared hosting providers handle all of the technical aspects of your server for you. This means that everything stays secure and up-to-date. They also are more than willing to help you move your site to a VPS or dedicated host when you’ve outgrown your shared server.
CONS
- No control. Shared hosting doesn’t offer you as much control over your website as VPS hosting. This means your server won’t be optimized for WordPress specifically. Most shared hosting plans do not include any concierge services such as WordPress backups, and security updates. If you want more peace of mind you may want to consider a Managed WordPress plan instead of an ordinary shared hosting plan.
- Limited. While shared hosting is cheap, you’re not buying a lot of power, bandwidth, or storage for that money.
- Not flexible. Shared hosting doesn’t really scale upwards. When your site gets too big, you’ll have to move it to a different hosting plan. This is usually pretty easy, but it’s a lot harder than upgrading the limits on a VPS hosting plan.
VPS Hosting
VPS stands for “virtual private server.” When you purchase VPS hosting, you are buying a small section of a server that you can use however you want.
PROS
- Value for money. VPS hosting is difficult to beat on a value-per-dollar basis. You’re getting a lot more server resources dedicated to your website for each dollar you spend than when you choose a shared hosting plan. This makes it very economical for bigger websites.
- Performance. VPS hosting offers very good performance, especially compared to shared hosting. Your website will load faster and be able to run more scripts and databases.
- Scalable. If you need more bandwidth, storage, or CPU, you can simply call your provider and get near instant results.
CONS
- Costly. VPS hosting costs more than shared hosting overall. Again, it’s usually cheaper on a value basis, but it’s still more money out of your pocket.
- Requires technical knowledge. Bloggers who choose VPS hosts get to make more decisions. For some people, this complexity is a bad thing. If you don’t want to spend time learning how to configure your server a shared host may be a better choice. Shared hosting providers keep your server up to date for you. Your VPS is your responsibility. This means that you’ll have to spend a little bit of time doing maintenance on it every once in a while.
So what is the best plan for your WordPress site?
It really depends on your site. It’s important to match your hosting plan to the needs of your website. Choosing a cheap shared hosting plan for a big WordPress site may cost you a lot of money in the long run; You may suffer downtime and loss of revenue.
Or buying a VPS plan, when all you have is a few pages and just a few visitors a day may end up costing you too much to keep your website online.
The good news is, there are lots of options available. By choosing the hosting for WordPress sites setup that best fits your needs and technical expertise, you can avoid these issues and keep your website online without spending a lot of money. Now that you know more about VPS and shared hosting plans, you can navigate the complicated world of web hosting and choose the most suitable WordPress Hosting plan for your website.
