When searching for the best WordPress hosting options, you may have come across two different types of hosting: shared WordPress hosting and managed WordPress hosting solutions.
Since they both have WordPress in their name, you may be wondering which is the best option for your business.
In this article, we’ll cover the similarities and differences between shared and managed WordPress hosting, as well as provide some helpful tips to narrow down what would be the best hosting solution for your needs.
What is shared hosting?
Shared hosting is a traditional type of hosting that requires a physical server where the server rack is divided into different shared accounts.
Think of it like an apartment building, where each account is an apartment.
Therefore, users share all resources like bandwidth, RAM, I/O, etc., similar to air conditioning units and water in an apartment building. If a water pipe breaks or something goes wrong, it affects multiple tenants in the building.
Hosting plans often have a control panel (like cPanel) that allows you to adjust your website’s DNS, PHP version, manage your files, and much more. Allowing certain levels of modification to better suit the needs of your website.
With traditional hosting plans, you can also host other types of CMS, such as Drupal, Joomla, or Moodle sites.
However, shared hosting is quite affordable and is a great place to start if you are launching your site for the first time as a small business or blogger. You can easily measure your viewers, resources, and more with a shared hosting plan.
What is shared WordPress hosting?
Shared WordPress hosting is regular shared hosting optimized for WordPress websites. This includes access to optimization tools like NGINX or the inclusion of premium plugins with your plan.
Users can still change settings in the control panel and often have methods to make WordPress easier to manage. From one-click installations to easy ways to create backups and restores.
Shared WordPress Hosting plans are a great way to start your WordPress journey with a streamlined traditional shared environment that is affordable and
What is managed WordPress hosting?
Managed WordPress hosting can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. It’s the next level to hosting a WordPress site that evolved from shared WordPress plans and VPS WordPress plans.
Managed WordPress hosting takes place in an isolated environment created specifically for hosting WordPress websites.
Since your hosting provider takes care of handling server settings like updates, PHP versions, NGINX, and more, which we discussed earlier, you don’t have to worry about tuning them for WordPress.
This can come in the form of a fully featured, WordPress-centric user-friendly interface. For example, easy access to plugins, backups, theme management, caching and more without having to access your WordPress dashboard.
Other Features of Managed WordPress Hosting
In addition to server setup, managed WordPress hosting will have other features that will make it easier to manage your WordPress sites.
Teams – One of the most important aspects of WordPress is collaboration, with features that allow you to easily add team members to your projects and change their level of management. Playgrounds (exclusive feature): Updating or making changes to your live WordPress site can be stressful. With Playgrounds, you can be sure that the changes you make will work for your site and that updates won’t cause any problems. Snaps (exclusive feature): Snaps is a hosting solution from InMotion to easily build WordPress websites with all the plugins you need. Choosing a plugin will seamlessly start a fresh installation with the theme and any plugins you choose. Site Health Status – Easily monitor your website’s health, viewers, and more from an easy-to-read interface.
Where does Cloud WordPress fit into the mix?
Cloud Hosting, unlike traditional hosting, hosts a virtual VPS on multiple remote servers instead of a single physical server. Therefore, your website will not go down if a server has a problem.
This type of plan also has the advantage of scalability, which means that you can easily increase your resources as your website needs changes.
InMotion Hosting’s Managed WordPress plans use highly available cloud VPSs that provide 100% dedicated resources for your projects. You never have to live in fear of your client’s site going down due to server issues.
Shared vs. Shared WordPress Hosting administered
While this might explain the difference between traditional and managed WordPress hosting, how can you tell what works best for you?
Business Size – Your needs will vary depending on whether you are a small business or a large corporation. Budget – Similar to the size of your business, your hosting plan options may change with allotted finances. If you currently have a small budget, we recommend shared hosting, which is generally on the lower end. Management Level – As discussed above, managed WordPress hosting will have the hands-off experience of the two. Shared hosting has some level of management due to being in a contained environment, but it may not be as well tuned for WordPress and may require more management. Audience: Viewers need resources, so it’s important to have a hosting plan that caters to a demanding audience.
If you’re a small business or just starting out, and your budget or company size is smaller, shared WordPress hosting is a great place to test your website and its capabilities.
If you already have a WordPress website that you want to transfer from shared hosting, plan to manage multiple WordPress sites, or are a freelancer with multiple clients, managed WordPress hosting will help take the stress out of server administration so you can focus better on your business.
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final thoughts
In simplified terms, shared vs. managed WordPress hosting comes down to the levels of administration, resources, and optimization of your WordPress website.
Shared WordPress hosting plans have a light level of administration, your website will be hosted on a server shared with other users that has been optimized for WordPress installations. It’s usually the cheapest option, which is ideal for first-time users, bloggers, or small businesses.
Hosted on a highly available VPS with dedicated resources, Managed WordPress Hosting offers a user-friendly interface focused solely on WordPress websites while ensuring full optimization.
Offering a premium experience, Managed WordPress plans are best suited for users managing multiple WordPress websites, freelancers and agencies, or businesses that require dedicated resources for their projects.
In conclusion, by researching plans designed specifically for the best WordPress hosting experience, you are taking the right step towards finding the optimal way to host your WordPress websites.