Thinking about your own WordPress blog hosting? One of the first decisions to make when you want to self-host WordPress blog is which hosting service to use. There are a lot of options to choose from too, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. To help you get started with WordPress blog hosting, we are going to take a closer look at the web hosting options for WP blogs in this article.
Best Web Hosting Options for WordPress Blogs
WordPress.com
Although the idea is to self-host a WordPress blog, you should never discount WordPress.com as an option. This web page has a plan for those who want to make their WP blogs appear more professional, with a custom domain name, no advertisements and the same flexibility as conventional self-hosted WordPress blogs (wordpress.org).
The upgrade costs $99 per year and includes everything you need. It even supports custom themes, CSS edits and custom plugins. Performance-wise, you can benefit from WordPress.com’s worldwide CDN and high quality servers. This may not be the most affordable option out there, but it is an option worth considering nonetheless.
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is the next WordPress blog hosting option to look into. As the name suggests, Shared Hosting shares a web hosting server among multiple users. The main goal is to keep the cost of hosting your blog at minimum.
There are a lot of shared web hosting plans to choose from. You can start a blog for as little as £1 a month. There are, however, a few things to look for:
- Make sure you have enough storage space for your blog. A basic shared hosting plan can come with anything from 500MB to unlimited storage space.
- The same goes for monthly bandwidth. The amount of traffic that your hosting account can handle depending on the allocated monthly bandwidth. Unlimited bandwidth is always the way to go, but be sure to check if there are hidden limitations before deciding to make a purchase.
- At least 1 MySQL database is needed to run a WordPress blog. Support for PHP is also essential. Most shared hosting plans come with these features included. The best ones even offer unlimited MySQL databases, allowing you to set up multiple WordPress blogs with ease.
- If you are planning on hosting multiple WordPress blogs, be sure to select a shared hosting plan that supports multiple add-on domain names. Similar to the previous features, there are shared hosting services that offer unlimited add-on domains.
The obvious disadvantage of using a shared hosting plan is its performance. Since the server is shared with hundreds – even thousands – of other websites, you can’t expect the full performance of the server to be at your disposal.
Reseller Hosting
Reseller Hosting is very similar to shared hosting, with one main different: you can set up multiple shared hosting accounts with a single reseller account. The amount of space, monthly bandwidth and features you get with reseller hosting is usually higher as well.
Reseller Hosting is useful when you are hosting a large number of WordPress blogs. You can set up a separate account for each blog, have multiple server and blog administrators working on certain sites and keep everything separated from each other.
You can expect to get better performance from your Reseller Hosting Account. The server is shared among fewer users, allowing your websites to perform better under heavy load.
VPS Hosting
VPS or Virtual Private Server is another very good WordPress blog hosting option for you. It is a bridge between shared or reseller hosting and a fully dedicated server. A physical server is still shared among several users, although the ratio is much, MUCH smaller than shared or reseller hosting. On top of that, server resources are virtually allocated to each account.
If you get a VPS hosting with 2GB of RAM, for example, you are actually getting 2GB of RAM allocated to your account. Other users can’t use that allocated amount of RAM. As a result, VPS hosting offers the best balance between performance and cost.
Sounds good? Don’t get too excited just yet. Most VPS hosting services are marketed as unmanaged. This means you have to set up your own VPS account before you can start hosting WP blogs. Fortunately, there are easy ways to do this.
Digital Ocean, for instance, offers ready-made images for WP bloggers. The virtual server, known as Droplets, can be set up with WordPress ready for use. You still need to update the server, do routine maintenance and perform other administrative tasks yourself to keep the site running at maximum performance.
Dedicated Servers
For a site that has a large number of visitors or run custom codes that require maximum server performance, a dedicated server is the (only) way to go. Dedicated servers are servers that you can rent out from hosting companies. There are multiple server specifications to choose from, giving you limitless possibilities. With dedicated servers, no WordPress blog is too large or too complicated.
The technology behind dedicated servers now enables site owners to choose from a large number of options. You can opt for SSD storage to harness maximum performance. For sites that need a large number of storage, there are cheaper RAID HDD options as well. The same can be said for processors, the amount of RAM and even network cards and options.
The downside? Dedicated servers are usually expensive. You are renting out an entire server after all.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is a little bit different than conventional hosting. Instead of using a single server, your site is hosted on a cluster of servers. Amazon has a very good cloud hosting service that is designed to work with a wide variety of web applications, including WordPress.
Cloud hosting offers maximum reliability. Since the site is not hosted on a single server, uptime can be maintained at a significantly higher level. Cloud hosting services are also considered better in terms of performance, especially when compared to shared hosting services. Even better, you can expect to get more storage space for less with cloud hosting.
On the other hand, certain cloud hosting services are not easy to set up or maintain. You need to know your way around connecting multiple cloud services before you can have your own WordPress blog hosting.
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