Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting: Pros & Cons
Once you want to have your own WordPress website, you will see all kinds of industry jargon. The two most common terms you see include managed and shared hosting. this blog is going to help you find the differences and choose one that fits your needs.
Understanding Shared WordPress Hosting
As the term suggests, you and other webmasters will share a web server in shared hosting. Depending on who is hosting your website, the shared server might have hundreds of accounts. It comes with its benefits and downsides.
Shared hosting is suitable for starting websites because of its limiting features. You also will not get most of the support you might need as you grow. But with technology improvement, we foresee increased server space, bandwidth, and administrative options. With it, you can grow gradually until you see the need to upgrade.
One of the major cons of shared hosting is that your site might experience issues in case other accounts increase their activities. Depending on who hosts your shared host, they can mitigate this issue by reducing the number of accounts per web server, but most hosts ignore this help.
One of the attractive sides of shared hosting is their budget-friendly nature. You will be sharing the hosting costs with multiple other accounts and therefore can get competitive pricing from the vendors. The affordable pricing explains why shared hosting is popular among those starting sites or blogs.
Shared hosting is great for those with a limited budget and doesn't expect or need high web traffic.
Understanding Managed Hosting
Managed hosting is a package of specific Wordpress optimization and services that you can add on your regular plan to upgrade it. Whichever the hosting, even shared hosting, you can get managed set of particular services for it.
The good thing about a managed hosting plan is that there is no overloading and therefore performs better.
Managed Wordpress usually comes with special security regulations to make your website secure, optimizations that improve the performance of the site, automatic update of software, plugins, and themes, and a backup site every day. In addition, you can access special Wordpress support from experts, and have a staging site for the purpose of testing features, updates, and changes.
It is worth mentioning that you will have a custom dashboard that is way better than the generic control panel that shared hosting uses.
Why Shared Hosting Could be the Alternative for You?
As mentioned before, shared hosting comes at an affordable price. Besides the price tag, there is no good reason to keep you from using the managed hosting. But most of us lack the means to get a managed hosting.
Even though shared hosting is cheap, its performance works fine for most businesses, particularly for budding bloggers. So, until you have started getting money out of your site, there is no need to pay for a managed hosting.
But even as you might decide to settle for shared hosting, you will be in charge of the optimization processes, security, backups, and the rest.
Why Managed Hosting Could be the Alternative for You?
The top benefits of managed hosting are convenience and better performance. Because of these benefits, you must pay through your nose. Any extra coin you pay in the managed hosting is worth the cost. You will enjoy time-saving, get rid of the need for WordPress knowledge, and be effective from the first day.
Because they come with built-in security, you limit the chances of hacking, your data is also safe because of the automatic backups, and you will enjoy high optimization without requiring manual involvement.
Besides, you will also get assistance from professionals when you run into difficulties. Your operations on the site will be smooth and time-saving.
The Drawbacks of Managed Wordpress Hosting
The elephant in the room is the pricing that managed Wordpress hosting brings!
In an effort to bring the costs down, you can choose less performing plugins that are cheaper or free.
Besides the huge price tag, some managed hosts prohibit some plugins. In this case, you should be keen on your plugin selection before you make a purchase.
In Conclusion
A big number of websites begin with shared hosting. It gives you the opportunity to reassess your alternatives as you proceed along the way. However, managed hosting comes with numerous benefits that you need to look into fast before settling on a decision.
In brief, shared hosting comes at a low price because you will be sharing it with multiple other users. With an increase in your traffic, you will need to make upgrades to accommodate the visitors. On the other hand, managed WordPress hosting comes with a sundry of resources that will enable you to perform better. But you will have to pay for the convenience it provides.