Shared or Managed WordPress Hosting: Which One Is Better

What is WordPress Hosting?

WordPress hosting depicts an optimized shared web hosting that runs WordPress sites only. It is favored by a large number of users as it has an overall high performance which includes the loading speed, reliability, and security. Besides this, it also supports a large number of its inbuilt characteristics.

Types of WordPress Hosting

1. Free WordPress Hosting

A free WordPress hosting may look attractive but may not be beneficial for someone who is looking for a real online presence because of the large number of shortcomings that Free WordPress hosting has. Some of the shortcomings include- users need to put up the pop-up banners and ads, there are always frequent shutdowns of the systems, the users are not permitted to place their ads or even accessing their files isn’t permitted. The users are not even allowed to have their domains also.

2. Shared WordPress Hosting

Shared WordPress hosting depicts that many users have hosted their websites on a single server and this server is administered by the hosting provider. The benefit of using shared hosting is that it has a low cost as all the users are sharing the total cost of the server. Shared hosting plans often tend to be offering unlimited bandwidth and space. The underlying fact is that the resources for each account are limited and unevenly distributed.

Shared WordPress hosting can be beneficial for those who’ve just begun their career in the hosting and it works better with those websites that have low traffic and are owned by the bloggers and start-up companies as an average plan can near about handle 300 visits per day.

3. VPS WordPress Hosting

VPS hosting tends to provide more dedicated resources to all users by defining a fixed portion of server resources for each account. With respect to the shared hosting, it is a bit expensive as the physical server is shared by a few users only.

This type of hosting offers more benefits that allows the users to run more number of WordPress sites and make profits. The performance of VPS hosting is faster and is more stable considering it has a number of advanced technologies and better monitoring methods. This hosting method can even be used to host those WordPress websites that are traffic extensive like the popular blogs and medium-sized enterprises that have thousands of visitors hitting the website daily.

4. Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting can be beneficial as the users don’t need to worry about anything as the hosting provider deals with all the technical kinds of stuff including server activation, backup of websites, security, etc. With respect to other hosting services present in the same hosting level, managed hosting is a more expensive option. Managed hosting is recommended to those who can devote their time or those who don’t have the required skills for managing their websites.

The Never-Ending Debate

The choice between shared and managed WordPress hosting has always been a topic for debate in the WordPress community. As an author, I’ll be discussing what exactly does it mean for both- developer and users whenever there is a discussion about the shared v/s managed WordPress hosting. This never-ending debate on the versions of WordPress hosting can be concluded to the point when WordPress specific services are added and performance tweaks are included with the managed WordPress hosting.

Nutshell Meaning of Shared WordPress Hosting

Shared WordPress hosting can be a type of hosting plan when the website “shares” the resources with other websites present on the same server. Shared hosting can be a popular hosting solution for newer websites and blogs. It is budget-friendly. Though, one may not expect many resources out of it.

Pros of Shared WordPress Hosting

• The user only pays a significant amount of lower monthly fees
• Many shared hosts allow you to host unlimited websites at one flat cost
• Most of the shared hosts advertise unlimited and don’t define a hard cap for the number of visitors hitting the site

Cons of Shared WordPress Hosting

• As the focus lies on cutting down the costs rather performance boosts, there is a chance that websites might load a bit slower
• Due to the sharing of resources, the load time of the website can also be hampered based on the activities happening on other websites present on the same server
• There is an absence of value-added features such as- automatic updates and automatic backups
• There might not always be WordPress-specific performance as well as security tweaks

Nutshell Definition of Managed WordPress Hosting

The Managed WordPress Hosting includes a set of services, performance optimizations, and other value-added features. These value-added features benefit the user in the following ways-

• Helps in making the site to load faster, as every configuration is specially set up for optimization under WordPress
• Gives the user the tools needed that make it simple to install and manage WordPress along with other staging tools in order to make safe changes to the WordPress website
• Helps in maintaining the website with a number of features including- automated backups and updates
• Better security of WordPress website keeping in mind the security rules and features that focus especially on WordPress only
• One can even manage a website by using a custom-designed dashboard

Pros of Managed WordPress Hosting

• In managed WordPress hosting, the server architecture is designed specifically for WordPress, thus giving a better performance
• Automatic updates of WordPress keeps the user’s website secure and functioning
• Automatic backups can ensure that the user data at the WordPress website is safe
• It is a more convenient website management dashboard
• Supports a large number of helpful features such as staging sites in order to manage the user website easier
• The customer support agents are dedicated WordPress experts

Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting

• Managed WordPress hosting is often expensive than the shared hosting
• The services of managed hosting focuses purely on making the WordPress website well-optimized for speed. This is due to the managed hosting don’t give the usage to certain plugins that can slow down the website
• The managed WordPress hosting providers allow only WordPress websites to be hosted on the servers