1. How do you choose the right WordPress hosting solution
for your websites?
BuildSite.Us
Check out how to get $25 off the first three months of service for
Thanksgiving Weekend 2012!
Google“WordPress Hosting” and you’ll see results that span all sorts of price ranges and
technical specs. You need a document to cut through the noise and help you choose the right
hosting for your sites.
I’m going to go through and detail out the choices that you have when you
chooseWordPress hosting.
At the end, we’ll get you set up with hosting that is well-suited to the site you’re building, the
blog you write at, or the app you’ve created.
Let’s start with the 4 basic types of hosting accounts to choose from:
• Shared Hosting
• VPS (Virtual Private Server)
• Dedicated Hosting
1/4

2. • Managed Hosting
And that there are 6 major factors to consider when you’re choosing a host:
• Speed
• Security
• Scalability
• Support
• Tools
• Price
Knowing those various features, we can quickly cut through the noise to prioritize which type of
hosting suits your needs best.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is a common hosting solution. It’s most compelling feature is price.
Shared hosting is cheap. For $5/ month you share a single server’s resources with a few
hundred other small sites. If price is the most important factor, shared hosting is the way to go.
The downsides are that pages will take several seconds to load, and you’ll be responsible for
keeping your site secure and updated from hackers and malware. And if you get a spike in
traffic because your blog goes viral, there is a high risk that the site may crash.
Virtual Private Server
A VPS gives you more control over your site for development, along with more server
resources, since you’re only sharing the server with a few other sites and not hundreds.
A VPS account can handle higher loads of traffic than a shared hosting account.
Choosing the right hosting for YOUR WordPress!
You’ll pay a bit more money for a VPS, $20-$100+ (depending on the storage) for the extra
control and resources. And the server will be pretty beefy, so it can handle some significant
traffic. However, scalability is limited to that server. Once the server runs out of processing
power, either because of your traffic load, or maybe your neighbor suddenly got an influx of
traffic, your site’s performance will drop as a result.
If you’re running a VPS, because you’ve got more control over the server, please make sure
2/4

3. you are performing your own security measures to prevent hacking. You’ll receive pretty good
support, but the folks you call or email won’t be able to offer much help if you get hacked, or if
your site goes down.
Dedicated Server
This is the solution you’ll want if you need absolute control over all the technical aspects of
hosting your sites. But you, or your SysAdmin better know the difference between Apache and
Nginx, and being familiar with object caching. And someone on your team needs to know their
way around a MySQL database, as well as how to maintain your own security protocol and
firewall.
Dedicated servers give you a whole server, or several, for you to work with. Depending on how
you set things up, your site will be extremely scalable under high traffic loads, and you’ll be
able to hand-tune the performance and scalability. Dedicated servers are more expensive than
a VPS: right at $250-$300 to start. It’s a bit more expensive, but it’s a good solution for
websites that you want complete control over.
Managed WordPress Hosting
This elite breed of hosting is the top of the line for speed and scalability, and it also assumes
that your site is running on WordPress. That’s a safe assumption, since about 20% of the
Internet is built on WordPress. Managed WordPress Hosting means that a company like WP
Engine takes care of all the technical details of the hosting and makes sure that your
WordPress site is served quickly, usually under a second, and that speed scales with high traffic
loads. So if (and when!) you get featured on the New York Times, you’ll be able to handle all
the traffic.
WP Engine will also manage the security for you, and automatically update WordPress when
the latest version is released. Knowing that your site is being cared for by WordPress hosting
specialist means that you don’t have to worry about hackers or security. WP Engine even
3/4

4. guarantees their security. No other Managed Host has the guarantee.
One of the biggest benefits is having expert support when it matters most. Managed hosts have
support staff who know not only hosting, but they know WordPress as well, and can offer help in
troubleshooting issues with plugins or themes.
Choosing the right hosting for YOUR WordPress!
WP Engine also provides tools like a staging area and automatic nightly backups of your site in
case you ever need to restore your site. We also have git for version control.
WP Engine starts at just $29 a month. Visit wpengine.com to learn more and sign up
today!BuildSite.Us
How do you choose the right WordPress hosting solution for your websites?
4/4
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)