In this blog, I talk about the different types of WordPress hosting that are suitable for beginners who are starting a blog or website using WordPress
For WordPress hosting, you can get plans for a few dollars per month to more than seven hundred dollars per month for massive business websites.
This vastness of WordPress confounds and confuses new entrants to WordPress as they don’t know where to begin. But fear not, we have something here for you.
What are the Different Types of WordPress Hosting?
In this guide, we are going to compare five different types of WordPress services based on three important points.
- Pricing
- Ease Of Use
- Website Loading Time
1. Shared WordPress Hosting For Beginners
I recommend shared hosting for beginners starting a blog or a website as you get a free domain name with the hosting plan.
Are you just starting out blogging? or want to start a new blog?
WordPress shared web hosting is for you.
You don’t have to shell out a lot of money for shared hosting plans. Bluehost offers a shared hosting plan for just $3.45 per month. I started my blogging journey with Bluehost and I was pretty satisfied with the hosting.
For beginners, primarily for blogs or less complex websites, WordPress management becomes easy if you go for a shared plan in cases. These plans are crafted especially for those who are looking for a very basic plan, devoid of any high payment structure.
So why is it called shared hosting?
It’s because the user shares the server resources with another user, given that his own WordPress hosting needs are not very high since the requirements are not high-volume. Such hosting costs a couple of dollars for a user.
However, once your website starts receiving more users, you can upgrade to the next level.
Following are my recommendations for shared WordPress hosting as I have personally used them for my blogs. The pricing starts as low as $2.75 per month with a free domain name.
2. Managed WordPress Hosting
If you are starting out large and if you want features such as auto-updates, security, backups, and WordPress support, then you can certainly go for this option.
In this case, you just have to worry about your content. Everything related to WordPress will be taken care of by the hosting provider. As compared to other hosting, websites running in managed WordPress hosting are faster and more secure.
A managed WordPress plan comes with:
- Free Domain
- Free SSL Certificate
- 24/7 global support.
- Optimized for speed.
- WordPress security updates.
- Easy backup and Restore
- WordPress protection with firewalls and anti-malware.
- Performance boosters such as server-side caching and other add-ons.
Following are my recommendations for managed WordPress hosting.
4. Managed Cloud Hosting
WordPress cloud hosting is the one that fits all sizes. So whether you are an owner of a small website or if you are running a big website on WordPress, a cloud hosting plan will fit any type of web hosting requirement. Cloud services have been making waves for the past several years and have proven themselves to be cost-effective and competent.
In a cloud hosting service, you can scale up and scale down the services as per your requirement. You can scale the server vertically and horizontally.
So even if you are planning to scale your plan to a higher degree, you don’t need to go for another type of hosting altogether. All you have to do is to scale up your plan to a higher level.
The best feature of a cloud platform-based WordPress hosting is that you have to pay only for what you are using. This is in stark contrast to other hosting services where you have to pay for loads of other services only because you are sharing the plan with others.
Following are my recommendations for Cloud WordPress hosting.
If you want to know more about cloud hosting, check out my detailed guide on the best WordPress cloud hosting.
3. Virtual Private Server
A virtual private server (VPS) provides you with all the benefits of a dedicated server. However, they still differ from them in a significant manner. Here is how.
When you host your website on a Virtual Private Server, you get special position reserved for you on their server. So even if you are sharing the server space with other users, you will still be able to have a separate space for your own website.
So any plans and customizations in the plan that you choose, will not apply to others and will remain exclusively only on your website.
The benefits that you get from a VPS are:
- No sharing of resources- all the resources that you use are exclusive to your plan and your website.
- Managed plan- your host manages your plans, and there is no need for you to have any technical knowledge of the plan.
Following are my recommendations for managed WordPress hosting.
You can also read about VPS vs Cloud Hosting.
5. Dedicated Hosting Plans
If you are running a massive web application on WordPress that requires high processing power and cannot afford to share the resource with any other user, this is the type of plan that will benefit you.
A dedicated hosting plan helps you to have complete control of a server, as the name suggests, it is dedicated only to your website and no other application. So you don’t need to think anymore about sharing the server resource with any other web application at all.
Also, managing your website is an easy job now, since you don’t have to worry about errors and troubleshooting as the whole server is dedicated to your website. In addition, you also get support from the hosting provider for the various problems that you may face.
Following are my recommendations for dedicated WordPress hosting.
Conclusion
These were the five main types of WordPress website hosting methods to choose from when you have begun your WordPress journey. However, it is mostly the lower-end plans that you are going to need when you are a beginner since most of the other plans are meant for those who already have a scaled-up website.
WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for hosting websites, especially blogs, since the website owner doesn’t have to design and develop the website right from scratch, but rather get it crafted according to their individual needs by WordPress.
As WordPress grows, more and more ambitious people on the internet have begun opting for it to get started with their online presence. However, beginners have always found it difficult on deciding the hosting specifics of their WordPress website.
WordPress has become so enormous since its conception because of its huge open source community. Apart from core WordPress core development, people from all over the world contribute to various free plugins.
Also, you can always scale up, whenever your website gets more and more visitors.
If you want to learn about WordPress cloud hosting, read my detailed guide on WordPress Cloud Hosting Tutorial For Beginners.
