For your business to succeed online today you have to juggle all sorts of things; everything from marketing, hosting, social media, advertising, content creation, etc. This can all become quickly overwhelming and very stressful. Today we want to explore why choosing a managed WordPress hosting service, as opposed to a shared host or small VPS, can be one of the most important decisions you can make as it pertains to your website.
Your business deserves the best and a managed WordPress host gives you that competitive edge. 💪
What is Managed WordPress Hosting?
So first off, what exactly do we mean when we say managed WordPress hosting and how is it different than shared or do it yourself (DIY) hosting? To best explain this let’s first break down the general online population into the three WordPress hosting scenarios we typically see:
1. Shared WordPress Hosting
The first crowd is typically people just starting out who choose to go with low-cost shared WordPress hosting. These include hosts like GoDaddy, Bluehost, Hostgator, SiteGround, Media Temple, OVH, GreenGeeks, etc. Usually, these are people who are:
- 1. Building their first website.
- 2. Migrating away from WordPress.com.
- 3. On a strict budget and need to keep things as cheap as possible.
- 4. Someone that doesn’t understand the differences between the different types of hosting, and therefore is simply making a decision based on price (hint: this is not good!).
Shared WordPress hosting plans usually range anywhere from $3 to $25 a month. There is nothing wrong with starting like this, but there are a few things people should be aware of:
You combine everything mentioned above together and what do you get? You get slow performance and bad support. Shared hosts have to spread their teams way too thin, which results in long ticket times and subpar customer service.
Make sure to check out our in-depth article from our CBO on the shocking truths about how cheap WordPress hosting really works. Some of it might shock you.
2. DIY VPS WordPress Hosting
The second crowd of people is typically bootstrap startups and people with a little more development or WordPress experience. They are the DIY crowd. These folks are typically still trying to save money, but they are also usually concerned with performance and realize its importance in the success of their business. Common setups might include using Digital Ocean, Linode, or Vultr VPS, along with a tool like ServerPilot to manage it more easily.
A small VPS from DigitalOcean starts at $5 a month and the popular plan at ServerPilot starts at $10 a month. So depending on your setup you could be looking at a cost of between $5 to $15 or more a month. The DIY approach can definitely cut costs, but it also means that you are responsible if something breaks, and for optimizing your server for performance.
The DIY approach can be great, but it can also backfire on you if you aren’t careful. Don’t go this route just because you want to tinker! Your time is worth money and you should be spending it on growing your business. Take advantage of more than a decade of experience the Kinsta team has fixing WordPress issues on a daily basis.
