Many people only look at the price of the hosting and overlook all the critical areas that affect the performance of the WordPress website. Remember that the wrong choice in this regard can cause slow website speed, security-related issues, loss of data and server crashes.
The choice of WordPress hosting ultimately depends on the current and future resource requirements and growth plans. This is why different types of hosting solutions are available for catering to different hosting needs. Even when all the solutions appear to be similar, each has its own set of pros and cons.
Shared Hosting vs. Cloud Hosting
Dedicated Hosting vs. Cloud Hosting
Choosing the best fit in terms of hosting solution requires you to think carefully about the following points:
Your monthly budget
The daily traffic on your website
Expected traffic spikes
Your technical support needs
Security requirements
Performance
For the purpose of this article, I will present the comparison of three popular types of WordPress hosting: Shared, Dedicated and Cloud hosting.
Shared Hosting vs. Cloud Hosting
WordPress Shared Hosting vs Cloud Hosting
In shared hosting, several websites, including yours, share the same server and its resources. This type of hosting is ideal for projects that do not receive much traffic and do not consume a lot of resources.
The hosting spaces for individual websites are delimited and can accommodate websites with very different characteristics. In terms of prices, Shared hosting is the most affordable because you are renting just a portion of the server space. There are severe limitations in terms of performance of the hosting solution.
The most important issue is the slow speed of shared servers that translates into slow performance. Moreover, if you foresee growth in traffic, shared hosting solutions do not scale well with the increasing traffic.
Shared Hosting Cloud Hosting
Server Deployment and Management No Yes
Server Sharing Model Shared Server Dedicated Cloud Server
Scalability (auto/manual) No Yes
Low Cost Yes Yes
Pay As You Go No Yes
Flexibility No Yes
Customization Depends on vendor Yes
Security Depends on vendor Yes
Instant Provisioning No Yes (in managed hosting)
Performance Slow Fast
Reliability Somehow Yes
Multiple Data Centers No Yes
On the other hand, Cloud hosting servers provide you a secure and scalable solution for your website(s). You have total freedom in the choice of resources (RAM, processor, bandwidth, and storage) for your WordPress website(s).
For medium to high (or even unexpected) volumes of traffic, Cloud hosting is a good choice. Since the performance of your WordPress website depends on the server resources of the cloud hosting, the sudden increasing volume of traffic is accommodated easily because of the higher availability of resources.
Dedicated Hosting vs. Cloud Hosting
WordPress Dedicated Hosting vs Cloud Hosting
The major drawback of dedicated hosting is it can underperform during sudden traffic spikes since the resources are fixed and do not scale up as the traffic increases. Once the resource consumption hits the upper limit, the visitors start to see severe degradation in their user experience and “404 Page Not Found” error.
Although dedicated hosting is still seen as a much better solution than shared hosting, it is not the ideal choice for high traffic websites that need to offer a higher degree of user experience to the visitors. In many cases, experts suggest that websites using dedicated hosting should consider cloud-based hosting solutions.
Dedicated Hosting Cloud Hosting
Server Deployment and Management Yes Yes
Server Sharing Model Dedicated Server Dedicated Cloud Server
Scalability (auto/manual) No Yes
Low Cost No Yes
Pay As You Go No Yes
Flexibility No Yes
Customization Yes Yes
Security Depends on user Yes
Instant Provisioning No Yes (in managed hosting)
Performance Better than shared Fast
Reliability Somehow Yes
Multiple Data Centers Depends on vendor Yes
Cloud hosting is very practical in terms of sudden traffic spikes and in situations where the demands for the website resources could go up as the traffic increases. As your website grows, the cloud server adapts and provides the necessary resources to ensure quality service without interruption, all the while guaranteeing the security of the data.
A cloud server is not limited by the physical capacity of a single server (dedicated server) or proximity to neighbors (shared hosting). In addition, cloud hosting allows you to adapt the resources within a few clicks without interrupting the service.
Now Ask Yourself…
1. How many visits will my website receive per month?
If your website does not have many visitors, you can get by shared hosting. If this is not the case and you have no idea how many visits you could expect, managed cloud hosting is probably the best solution.
2. What is my budget?
If you are running a blog with low traffic and a tight budget, the shared hosting solution could save you a lot of money. However, you should also consider possible expansion and plan for either dedicated or cloud-based hosting.
3. Can I afford to go offline from time to time?
Sharing your server means that your website could go down any minute. If one of your neighbors on the server begins to receive a lot of traffic, your website might not be left with enough resources to remain operational. Similarly, dedicated hosting cannot tackle the sudden spikes in traffic since the resources are predetermined and preset and cannot be scaled up in real time.
Final Thoughts
The choice of WordPress hosting is not trivial. When deciding upon a hosting solution, make sure that your choice is able to handle the current and projected traffic without reducing the quality of user experience.
If you opt for the wrong type of hosting, you might have to migrate your WordPress website several times to discover the right solution. In short:
If you have a site with low or medium traffic, opt for shared hosting.
If you have a high-traffic website and that requires significant resources, choose cloud hosting, since it allows you to scale up the resources whenever required.
Of course, the budget is very important, the needs of the website must first be taken into account. If you still have doubts about the type of hosting you should choose, do not hesitate to post your queries in the comment section below.
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