Choosing a hosting for your WordPress site is not as simple as it seems, because there is a wide range of possible solutions.
On the one hand, there are generalist hosts like Yogeta and on the other, there are specialized WordPress hosts, like WP Engine. And this is not the only arbitration to be made, since you must also choose whether you want to be shared, dedicated, cloud, or VPS hosting.
It’s not just neophytes who find themselves lost. In this comparative guide, we wanted to answer all the questions a person has when looking for a hosting solution for their WordPress site.
WP Engine, The High-End WordPress Hosting Solution
WP Engine specializes in hosting WordPress sites. With a top-of-the-range positioning, it offers high-level site performance and customer service. Domain name management, almost unlimited space, performance test, SSL protocol… Offers a service very suitable for business sites with a strong need for performance and for e-commerce web hosting.
- WP Engine offers to host your websites in secure mode according to your needs and the offer you choose.
- The Managed WordPress plan starts from €21/month, and the top plan, “eCommerce Solution” is available for €53/month.
The 5 WordPress Hosting Options: Shared, Dedicated, VPS, Cloud, 100% WordPress
To help you know which hosting for WordPress is right for you, let’s start by presenting the main solutions for hosting a site in WordPress.
There are 5 possible solutions for hosting a WordPress site: shared server, dedicated server, VPS, cloud, and finally WordPress offers.
Option #1 – Shared Server: an inexpensive solution to host a WordPress site, but limited
Shared server hosting offers are the cheapest paid offers, but also the most limited.
This is a server that is used by several sites and is shared between several customers of the host. By opting for this option, your WordPress site will be stored in a server compartment.
In other words: your site does not have a server all to itself. This option is a kind of roommate. This has several disadvantages:
- The server cannot be configured with small onions. The host takes care of the configuration. The same configuration is imposed on all the sites hosted on it.
- You also have no control over the maintenance of the server. This is also the host who takes care of maintenance from A to Z. Note: this disadvantage can turn into an advantage if you don’t want to take care of maintenance.
- The performances are very average and above all very variable. For a simple reason: server resources are shared between several websites. Which: 1/ Reduces the number of resources allocated to you and 2/ Causes random slowdowns or even bugs when other “roommates” have traffic peaks (Noisy neighbours).
- By opting for a shared server, you will quickly be limited if your site gains an audience. Nevertheless, this option should not be rejected a priori. It may be relevant at the start of the site’s launch and if you expect a fairly slow ramp-up. This option is the most interesting price level.
In summary, shared hosting is the most economical option. If your site is a blog or a small showcase site, it may do the trick to start.
Option #2 – Dedicated Server: The “classic” hosting solution for a WordPress site
With a dedicated server, as the name suggests, you have your own server for your domains. To use the “real estate” metaphor, a dedicated server offer is equivalent to a classic individual rental, a physical disk stored somewhere.
You benefit from all disk resources. The number of server resources available may vary from one server to another (the apartments do not all have the same surface area). Ideal for managing corporate site content.
By choosing a dedicated server offer, you are completely free to configure it according to your needs.
The host provides you with access allowing you to install the software (at your own risk, etc.) and manage maintenance yourself.
As you can imagine, the offers are more expensive (from 5.99 euros/month) but remain on average reasonable.
These offers have disadvantages their advantages: you are the one who must take care of the configuration and maintenance like a grown-up. Which presupposes technical skills on different topics … or calling on a service provider.
In summary, dedicated hosting is the preferred solution if you have a high-traffic site and/or need advanced control over hosting configuration & data security.
Which Option to Choose for WordPress Hosting: Shared Vs Dedicated
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Option #3 – Virtual server (VPS): interesting for medium-sized WordPress sites
The virtual server VPS (Virtual Private Server) is in a way a mix between shared and dedicated server.
The virtual server is similar to the shared one in that you only rent part of it. But in the VPS, the physical resources are distributed among several individually configurable virtual servers.
Clearly, it’s “as if” you had a server all to yourself. In this, VPS hosting is similar to dedicated hosting: you have control over the configuration of your virtual server and modules. Which requires a little more technical skills than shared hosting.
Note that some hosts offer preconfigured virtual servers, which make things easier for novices.
With a VPS, you can modulate the number of resources allocated to you to match your actual needs. VPS hosting offers good flexibility.
In summary, the VPS server is recommended for sites that have (become) too big to be hosted on a shared server, but whose size does not (yet) justify the use of a dedicated server.
Option #4 – Cloud Server: an “agile” solution, but not always relevant for a WordPress site
Cloud hosting offers are multiplying: Amazon, Google, and Azure have invested in the market in recent years.
Cloud hosting offers great freedom: you have full access to the cloud server, you can configure it according to your needs, install the software you want, scale up very flexibly (in the event of an increase in traffic to your site).
Cloud hosting has two significant drawbacks, however:
- Cloud hosting offers are generally quite expensive.
- Cloud hosting requires fairly advanced technical skills and is not easy to learn.
In summary, cloud hosting is rarely an attractive option for small or medium-sized WordPress sites. Cloud hosting is generally to be avoided, except for very specific cases that probably don’t concern you.
Option #5 – Choose a specialized WordPress host
Last possibility: opt for an offer specifically designed for sites under WordPress. Concretely, you rent all or part of a fully configured physical disk for WordPress sites, domain included.
This is the case for example of the Yogeta WordPress hosting package.
It can also be, and it is even the most common, cloud server with an environment completely designed for WordPress sites. Specific hosting for WordPress sites is generally very qualitative and very flexible if you want to scale up (Example: Yogeta)
With specific offers, you generally have nothing to do: it is the host who takes care of the management and maintenance. It is therefore an ideal solution for those who do not have computer skills.
On the other hand, the price is significantly higher than conventional solutions on dedicated server hosting. Count around thirty euros per month at least to have quality accommodation.
Here are the possible solutions to host a WordPress site:
We did not mention hosting for free WordPress, which can be the sixth solution, but a solution to frankly avoids. Nothing is ever free: if you choose this option, your free web hosting risks polluting your site with unwanted advertisements.
Not to mention that the quality is often very limited. From all points of view, the offers of free WordPress hosts are to be avoided.
It is better to compare WordPress hosts with different market players and choose the one you really need. To help you know which WordPress hosting to choose for your website, here are two questions you should ask yourself…
In summary: some players specialize in hosting WordPress sites. For example Yogeta. This is the solution that offers the best performance and the customer service is generally at the top.
2 questions to ask yourself before choosing your WordPress host
A “good” hosting is above all a hosting that meets your needs. Here are two questions you should ask yourself before choosing.
Question #1: Who will take care of the maintenance of the WordPress site?
We have seen that some offers require technical skills and others do not. To summarize :
- You must have technical skills if you opt for a dedicated server or in the cloud.
- You do not need technical skills with a shared server and, to a lesser extent, with a VPS. Even if a good web culture is often useful in case of problems (change of DNS, backup of the database, etc.).
The answer to the question of who takes care of the maintenance already makes it possible to rule out certain solutions. If you are interested, find out how to anticipate the maintenance costs of your e-commerce site.
This article, despite its title, does not only concern e-commerce sites but addresses the issue of maintenance in general.
Question #2: What are your (real) performance/scalability needs?
The better the hosting, the higher the price. It’s quite logical. Of course, everyone would like to have a well-optimized site, with a server response time of fewer than 0.1 seconds and the ability to grow from 1,000 to 100,000 visitors in a day.
But is it really useful to have high-performance hosting to host a small blog or a showcase site of 15 pages? It’s not about finding the best performer with the best value for money.
The main thing is to find the one that best suits your site and its expected medium-term development, and of course with the best quality/price ratio.
For a WordPress site of the “showcase site” type or for a small/medium-sized blog, the two most suitable solutions in terms of hosting are the WordPress servers on the one hand and the shared servers on the other.
The Advantages of Web Hosts Specializing in WordPress
Hosting offers and plans designed specifically for WordPress sites have several undeniable advantages: generally higher performance, very practical specific features for WordPress, automatic updates, quality support service, etc.
The main downside is the price. WordPress hosting costs more than a classic one. On this subject.
The global benchmark is WP Engine. But there are others, such as Yogeta in particular.
Focus on WP Engine
WP Engine, launched in 2010, is a premium WordPress host. Lots of positive points for this reference solution:
- Very high uptime. In other words, it is extremely rare for the server to be unavailable due to maintenance, for example (or breakdown).
- A very efficient CDN (cache system) included. The CDN is a technique that reduces the loading time of the pages of your site.
- Powerful disks that allow you to receive heavy traffic on your site without bugs (HTTP 503 error type) and without slowdowns AND to adapt to strong variations in traffic.
- Daily backups of your site. SSL protocol.
- Optimal security of your data.
- Responsive support 24/7.
WP Engine is not without flaws. We will note in particular some oddities in terms of SEO (very easily repairable), some unauthorized plugins (often for security reasons), and some bugs concerning the cache when you use front-end cookies (with WooCommerce for example which works well, you can go with Yogeta.
WPEngine provides its users with a “Staging Area” which allows them to test plugin updates before deploying them. Ideal to avoid failures!
WP Engine offers 5 different offers:
- Personal: at $29 per month: 1 site, 25,000 visits per month, 10 GB of storage.
- Professional, at $99 per month: 10 sites, 100,000 visits per month, 20 GB of storage.
- Business: at $249 per month: 25 sites, 400,000 visits per month, 30 GB of storage.
- Premium (tailor-made price): 150 sites, more than one million visits per month, between 100 and 300 GB of storage.
- Enterprise Grade (custom price for enterprise): 150 sites, more than 5 million visits, 400 – 1000 GB of storage.
For a showcase site or a small/medium-sized blog, the Personal plan is more than enough.
Hosting your WordPress site on a shared hosting offer = is the cheapest option
For a showcase site or a small or medium-sized blog, the “shared server” option should also be considered. This basic solution may be sufficient if you have a small site and are not expecting rapid traffic growth.
Advantages and disadvantages of choosing a specific WordPress Host
Specific WordPress offers are the most qualitative, whether in terms of performance or technical assistance. These are in addition to offers specially designed for the “WordPress” niche and intended for WordPress sites.
Despite everything, the disadvantages of this type of solution do exist at a relatively high price and the need to have some technical skills (even if you can count on reactive technical assistance for your domain).
If you have no technical skills, a small budget, and a site that is not destined to cross the 100,000 visits/month milestone anytime soon, shared hosting can largely do the trick. In this niche, Yogeta is the leader.
Focus on Yogeta
Its positioning is clearly low-cost. The quality/price ratio is generally satisfactory. On the other hand, the level of service is generally very low. Technical assistance is one of the strongest points of Yogeta.
