Cloud computing is the fastest-growing tech service. Last year alone, the public cloud market grew by a massive 17.6%. In this digital world, enhancing technologies have enabled businesses to leverage Content Management Systems [CMS] to quickly build their website without having to code for that matter. One of the most popular, widely used CMS platforms today is WordPress. WordPress is an open-source CMS platform that is currently powering more than a third of the web industry. This means every 3/10 websites you visit could be built on a WordPress platform. It started in 2005 and is now empowering more than 32% of the entire web industry. Overall, the WordPress network has more than 409 million viewers and more than 15.5 billion pages each month.
If your business is being developed on a web development platform like WordPress, you will still need hosting for your website to be operating online. The most important decision you’ll have to make when building a website is the hosting type you need to purchase. Two of the most popular choices for website developers are Shared Hosting and WordPress Hosting.
In this post, we’ll take you through these two hosting options and explain how WordPress Hosting plans suit your website needs better. So Let’s begin!
What Is WordPress Hosting?
As the name implies, WordPress hosting is one of the web hosting types that has been optimized for the specific needs of a website established on the WordPress platform. It is a kind of web hosting that is specially optimized to operate with websites created via WordPress. Websites developed on the WordPress platform have some unique functionality and characteristics requirements that can cause issues if not maintained and optimized correctly. This could result in certain elements not loading correctly, or increasing the load time or making the website unreachable altogether. If this happens, it is usual for customers or readers to exit your site, costing you valuable potential sales and traffic.
What is Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting is one of the most popular and traditional forms of hosting service. It allows multiple websites to operate on a shared physical web server. And also share its resources among the sites hosted. It is a type of web hosting service that logically distributes a web server to process, operate, serve, and accommodate more than one website. Shared hosting is suggested for businesses that are smaller in size, don’t have massive web traffic, have considerably fewer security concerns, and have a specified budget for website hosting solutions
Advantages of using WordPress Hosting over Shared Hosting
- Faster loading website
According to a report, a 1-second delay in loading times can cost companies like Amazon $1.6 billion every year! The success of your website largely depends upon its loading speed. In shared hosting, your website could take as long as other sites to load, as there is no provision for it to load faster as WP site. However, on the other hand, a website loads quickly on viewers’ systems if the SSD of the WordPress hosting powers it. WordPress hosting can help make your site load faster because every configuration is specifically set up to be optimized for WordPress websites. As WordPress hosting only houses WordPress websites, its server can be optimized for advanced server caching. In short, a website running on WordPress hosting can often reduce a page-load speed by 1-2 seconds or more. - More reliable website security
Security is one of the major concerns for every website owner. In shared web hosting, there’s no guarantee of strong site security. In fact, on a shared server, websites only have as much protection as the weakest secured site. However, you can better secure your WordPress website with security features and mechanisms that are specifically built for WordPress. WordPress-specific security tweaks such as firewalls, login hardening, and malware scans ensure regular scanning of your sites and take proper measures to block suspicious activities and files. Daily malware scans, increased security protocols, and the ability to ward off DDoS attacks and all other kinds of cyber threats are pretty much the standard features you’ll find on WordPress hosting plans. Many hosting providers offer tier 1-level security mechanisms for WordPress Hosting to eliminate the risk of a data breach. - Automated backups
With server architecture that’s designed specifically for WordPress sites, WordPress hosting offers automatic backups to ensure your WordPress site’s data is safe. Regular backup of your site gives you peace of mind, knowing that at any time, you can restore your site and bring back the lost data and functionalities. Your website will be automatically backed up daily if it is hosted on a WordPress server. This feature may not be available with all shared hosting plans by shared hosting providers. If some failure occurs on your website, then WordPress hosting generally provides free automatic backups. These easy and worry-free features of WordPress hosting make it stand out from other hosting packages. - Always updated to the latest version
WordPress sites get compromised mainly because their plugins and core files get outdated frequently. But WordPress hosting takes care of the need to constantly update the WordPress site as per the latest versions of plugins and files. Keeping your website up to date is an integral part of maintaining and running a successful online business. Automatic WordPress updates keep your site secure and functioning. WordPress hosting offers auto-updates, ensuring better security while giving you one less thing to worry about. Automatic updates not only cover the operating system but also cover everything on the server, such as the control panel, PHP, MySQL, Apache, and WordPress itself. With built-in server-level caching, WordPress also offers better performance and a more convenient website management dashboard. - Top-notch customer support
It is well recognized that customer support is an essential backbone of any hosting service. A WordPress hosting plan by an established hosting provider comes with support service by the WordPress support team that are experts to efficiently manages all your website queries. WordPress hosting provider knows precisely what version of WordPress you’re running and what plugins you have installed since they themselves are the ones managing it. They are more likely to be able to solve your problem much more quickly and usually will also be able to resolve issues that shared hosting support won’t even get into.
How to Decide over WordPress Hosting and Shared Hosting?
Both WordPress hosting and traditional shared hosting can be viable options for your website. However, it can be challenging to choose the right one because, eventually, the ‘perfect’ hosting for every website varies and depends on the specific needs of the business and website.
On WordPress hosting, everything from software to hardware is built for WordPress websites. They have server-level caching in place and will be running the most optimal version of MySQL, PHP, and Apache. All of these will be individually configured to give the user the best performance possible.
WordPress hosting expertly satisfies the security and performance needs of websites built on the WordPress platform. Users get access to WordPress-specific features such as automatic updates, pre-installed sites, and dedicated customer support. WordPress hosting also provides tools that make it simple to install and manage WordPress sites, as well as tools like staging sites to help you safely make changes to your website.
If your business is new, pricing and budgets are one of the primary measures to consider. Though shared hosting is an affordable option for those setting up new websites, WordPress hosting plans can be almost the same price or just as affordable as a more platform-oriented option. Therefore it can be well worth in the long run to look into WordPress hosting plans.
If you have enough budget for it, then you should consider looking into managed WordPress hosting plans. Though these plans are often costly, you’ll have a more efficient and secure site that’s taken care of by WordPress experts. This is an exceptionally strong option for those completely new to WordPress, as well as business owners who don’t have the time or expertise to handle performance and security concerns personally.
Are you convinced to switch to WordPress hosting solution? Consider RedSwitches as it is one of the best WordPress hosting providers in the cloud market and can help you build the business website of your dreams.
To learn more about hosting services, get in touch with our experts today!
