WordPress is a content management system (CMS) with a dominant market share of 60%.
WordPress is not just an ordinary CMS, but a dynamic and extensible platform. Because of its flexibility, it can be transformed into any type of website, e.g. B. in an e-commerce website, blog, community or portal.
However, the strength and reliability of your WordPress site largely depends on the server or hosting that supports it.
The extensive and diverse hosting landscape offers a wide range of options including shared and VPS hosting, dedicated servers, cloud and managed WordPress hosting services.
In this guide, we examine the available hosting types and companies, which you can use as a starting point in your research to find the best hosting companies for your use case.
We dig deeper into the hosting types as they determine the quality and performance of the website and list well-established hosting companies that are available in the market.
The different types of hosting are available:
Now let’s understand each hosting type and detail their unique characteristics and benefits.
(Note that our list of services is arranged alphabetically and the order does not imply ranking or suggest that one service is superior to another.)
Shared hosting is a type of web hosting service where multiple websites reside on a single web server.
In a shared hosting environment, each user gets a portion of a server’s total resources (e.g. disk space, bandwidth, CPU time, etc.) to use for their websites.
Since all users share resources, this can sometimes result in slower website performance, especially when a website has a lot of traffic or is consuming a lot of resources.
While shared hosting is great for small and low-traffic websites, it may not be enough for complex projects like e-commerce, high-traffic blogs, or those that need complete control over their server environment.
Below is the list of the most famous shared hostings:
What is a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?
A virtual private server (VPS) is a type of web hosting that uses virtualization technology to provide you with dedicated (private) resources on a powerful multi-user server.
VPS hosting replicates the functions of a dedicated server while technically still sharing the physical server with other users.
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Image by the author, June 2023
A VPS is partitioned so that each user has their own operating system, bandwidth, and storage space without affecting other users on the same server.
As your website grows, you can easily upgrade your resources (like memory and disk space) without having to migrate to a new server.
However, the physical resources of the server (such as CPU, RAM and disk space) are shared between the different VPS.
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Image by the author, June 2023
This type of hosting is usually suitable for e-commerce or blogs with moderate traffic (a few thousand visitors per day).
What is a Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS)?
As the name suggests, a virtual dedicated server (VDS) uses a level of virtualization that makes it appear as if the operating system is running on dedicated hardware, even when it isn’t.
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Image by the author, June 2023
The difference to the VPS is how the partitioning is done.
The main difference is that each virtual server is allocated a dedicated portion of server resources.
For example, if a VDS has three virtual machines, each uses one-third of the allocated resources, regardless of whether they are running or not.
This level of resource guarantee can be important for more resource-intensive applications or for situations where resource usage can vary widely.
VDS services are often more expensive than VPS services. This is largely due to the dedicated resources and enhanced control they offer over your server environment.
In most cases, companies that offer VPS also offer a VDS.
Below is a list of the most famous companies offering VPS hosting:
What is dedicated hosting?
Dedicated hosting is (as the name suggests) a type of hosting where you have your own server and full access to its resources.
It offers maximum performance and control for high-traffic websites, resource-intensive applications or those that require extensive customization.
Below are the hosting companies that offer dedicated hosting (server) services:
In addition, dedicated hosting offers enhanced security measures; As the sole user of the server, you have complete control over its security settings.
It offers a unique level of customization. Since you have root access to the server, you can install and configure any software or application that your website or business needs.
Please note that dedicated hosting is more expensive than shared hosting or VPS hosting options and requires technical knowledge and skills to set up, configure and manage the server.
What is cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting is a type of hosting service that uses a network of servers to allocate resources and host websites or applications.
This means that websites hosted on a cloud hosting platform can scale up or down their resources as needed and easily handle traffic spikes.
One of the advantages of cloud hosting is cost efficiency.
Rather than investing in and maintaining dedicated servers that may not be busy during periods of low traffic, cloud hosting allows you to scale resources as needed and only pay for the resources you actually used.
Here are some established cloud hosting providers:
Please note that setting up a website in the cloud requires advanced technical knowledge of cloud infrastructure management to deploy and maintain your website or application.
Because of this, I would recommend going for managed WordPress hosting providers that are cloud based and will save you time managing your installation instance.
What is managed WordPress hosting?
Managed WordPress Hosting is a specialized hosting service designed specifically for WordPress websites.
With managed WordPress hosting, the hosting provider takes care of all the technical aspects of running a WordPress site.
While installing and maintaining WordPress in the cloud itself can be a more cost-effective option, you’ll spend time maintaining your presence in the cloud, which can take you away from focusing on growing your site — and you end up having to possibly hire a cloud specialist to do that.
Managed WordPress hosting relieves you of maintenance tasks related to:
- server configurations.
- WordPress updates.
- Security.
- staging environments.
- scalability.
- resource optimizations.
- hosting support.
This allows you to focus on content creation and business growth.
Below is not a complete list, but a shortlist of well-known companies that offer managed WordPress hosting in the cloud. These often have a built-in CDN:
If you choose a managed solution, you can forget about server management and focus on growing your online business.
Diploma
In this guide, we’ve explored the different types of hosting and provided a list of well-established hosting companies.
It’s important to do more research and evaluate your specific needs based on factors like budget, site size, and complexity.
As we have already discussed, the hosting landscape offers various options including shared bosing and VPS, dedicated servers and managed WordPress hosting services. Shared hosting is suitable for small websites, while VPS and VDS hosting offer more resources and control.
Dedicated hosting offers maximum performance and customization options, but requires technical expertise. Cloud hosting allows for scalability and cost-efficiency, but requires knowledge of cloud infrastructure management or hiring a cloud specialist.
Among these options, Managed WordPress Hosting stands out as a specialized service built specifically for WordPress websites that I would recommend.
In the next article, we will delve deeper into the characteristics of each managed hosting provider. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when the new guide is out.
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