Just a few years of existence, and WordPress already conquered the CMS market, even when 70% of the sites around the globe do not use CMS.
Shocker? Here is another fact:
More than 74 million sites rely on WordPress. Apart from about 37 million sites hosted by WordPress.com, WordPress is also responsible for about 19 million (approximately) websites in the domain of self-hosted sites.
WordPress is clearly a big deal, and that’s one of the reasons why people find it confusing to choose the right hosting solution for the WordPress website or blog.
In such scenarios, they’ll have to choose from either shared hosting or managed WordPress hosting. To those of you who are assessing every factor that counts before making a choice, WordPress hosting is your best bet.
Why? Let me explain.
If you have a WordPress website that needs hosting, you don’t have to even consider shared hosting.
WordPress hosting is optimized for WordPress websites, in addition to giving you a lot more benefits.
The 3 critical factors you should focus on while choosing a hosting solution should be
- Website loading speed
- Security
- Updates & backups
With enough research and a bit of Googling, you will be easily able to find a good shared hosting solution. But such a solution cannot guarantee reliable loading speeds and regular updates.
On the other hand, here is what a WordPress hosting solution can do.
Great Loading Speed Thanks to Caching Mechanisms
WordPress hosting features caching mechanisms that ensure fast loading WordPress websites. That’s good news as it will also be appreciated by search engines like Google – meaning higher search engine rank for your website. The loading speed also increases the likelihood of a visitor surfing your website for longer.
People generally don’t want to spend too much time exploring a slow loading website.
Better Security Compared to Shared Hosting
Website owners will obviously be worried about security, especially if they own an eCommerce website. Many web hosting providers deliver great security features. However, when the options are down to either WordPress hosting or shared hosting, you’d better not go for the latter.
You are sharing a server and its resources in a shared hosting environment. You don’t get any additional security than the one received by a poor website in that server. There will be security mechanisms, but with the server resources being shared, you can’t rely on the security mechanisms to always come through for you. Malware attacks are quite common in a shared hosting platform.
Even with some sort of security mechanism present, the risk is still too high in a shared environment. WordPress hosting on the other hand will have better security compared to standard shared hosting.
Depending on the provider, the security and anti-breach protocols will vary. Rest assured, you will be provided with enough security to keep your website safe from both internal and external threats, especially malware. The best providers will do regular security audits and updates to identify potential vulnerabilities and fix them.
Updates and Backups
WordPress websites rely on various plugins and core files, and new updates are occasionally released. When you are working in a shared hosting environment, the updates will usually be your responsibility. You have to keep track of new updates, and then manually install them.
But certain WordPress hosting providers offer auto updates. They automatically install the latest updates to the WordPress website as soon as the updates are released.
Backups are equally important, as you never when catastrophe strikes – in a website’s case, threats are many. Losing necessary files, say after a crash, can take a long time to fix or sometimes even can’t be fixed. But creating backups can be a pain. You can find web hosting solutions that do automatic backups periodically as well, in addition to executing auto-updates.
Technical Support
A good hosting platform will always offer reliable technical support. You want them to answer from the other end any time you call in case of an emergency. 24×7 support is quite common these days, even more so in most WordPress hosting solutions. There will be experts waiting to help you sort out the issues whenever you need them.
That’s pretty much why WordPress hosting is a better idea than shared hosting. However, there are still alternatives. A good WordPress hosting might cost you a bit more than it would for a shared hosting platform. However, the benefits can do a lot of good for your blog or business.
Or…
You could make use of a VPS. You can manage it yourself, and get pretty much all the benefits you would get from WordPress hosting. However, you will have to account for the security and server management. Install updates yourself, do security audits yourself, check for security vulnerabilities yourself and a few other ‘yourselves’. Takes a lot of time and effort, meaning less focus on the website itself.
