Blogging is beautiful & wordpress makes it even more beautiful. With over 29% of all the websites hosted on wordpress, it becomes evident that what’s worth using. However, for beginners who are totally new to this space has a lot to deal with. To choose between web hosting & wordpress hosting, is one of the biggest confusion for beginners.
Sure, there are ways to avoid the hassle of web hosting, like using WordPress.com, Blogspot, Medium or Quora for blogging. But when it comes to professional blogging, better control & customization, self-hosted wordpress is the king.
In this post, I will be discussing the following:
- What is web hosting?
- What are the types of web hosting
- WordPress hosting vs Web hosting? Which one should you use?
- Who needs WordPress hosting?
Table of Contents
What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting is a service/practice that allows users to publish & manage websites on a remote server. Web hosting is the residence of all the content that you put on the internet. The web hosting or web servers are accessed whenever there is a request from the end user for exact or similar content from your website.
Consider this example to better understand this concept. Say you have a health and fitness website and you’ve got a lot of details on health and fitness for both men and women. Now, you’ve got this post where you have talked about ‘love handles’ in detail. This article is stored on the server in form of an HTML file.
Enter end-user.
The end user is a fitness freak and wants to get rid of love handles and get that perfect 6 pack abs. He makes a quick Google search and since your post is more relevant, it appears on top of SERP.
Now, when that end-user clicks on the URL in the SERPs, the search engine connects to your web server, requests for that particular file and serves it to the end-user.
This happens every time, without exceptions.
There’s more.
Alternatively, when the end user directly types in the URL of your website, or domain URL, the browser establishes a connection with your server & requests for the home page HTML file.
Once the end-user lands on the homepage, every time he/she clicks a link or any entity for that matter, a request is made to the server to access it. Web servers are nothing but special computers with a powerful capacity to hold files, respond to a ton of requests, and maintain the file’s security.
Many companies like Bluehost, Hostgator, Dreamhost, Siteground, InMotion provide these hosting services. Furthermore, Bluehost, Dreamhost& Siteground are recommended by the wordpress community.
Therefore, if you are a WordPress user, or are looking to switch to a self-hosted wordpress website, you can opt for any of these hosting providers. If you are just starting out, you can start your own blog in next 30 minutes.
Read Also: Bluehost review: Why Bluehost is the best for beginners & small businesses?
Types of web hosting
Just like there are many companies serving web hosting service, each of them server different type of web hosting. However, each business needs a different type of web hosting. Therefore, depending on your need, type of web hosting varies as follows:
- Shared Web Hosting
- Reseller Web Hosting
- Cloud-Based Web Hosting
- Virtual Private Server (VPS)
- Dedicated Web Server
- Colocation Web Hosting
- Self Service Web Hosting
- Managed WordPress Hosting (Premium👑)
Explaining each of these types of web hosting is not within the scope of this post. I will be creating a separate post for it. For now, we will focus on regular web hosting & wordpress hosting.
WordPress hosting vs Web hosting? Which one should you use?
To understand this, you will need to know each of them individually. Let’s directly jump in.
Features of regular web hosting plans
There are hundreds of web hosting service providers out there. Each of them, more or less provide same services. The difference lies in price, performance & security.
The most common and most used type of web hosting is the shared web hosting. In shared web hosting plan, multiple sites share space on the same server. On the advantage side, shared hosting is as cheap as $5-$10 a month. Furthermore, all hosting providers have this plan for everyone.
On the other hand, one of the biggest disadvantages of using shared web hosting plan is that your website is in a constant competition with many other sites. Since there are multiple websites on same space on the server, the performance is at stake. Sure, there will be some really good performing website in that bunch. These sites consume a lot of resources of the server and hence newer websites face a lower performance grade.
Unless you have a single page website to promote your app on play store or sign up for any event or any such minimal purposes, I don’t think shared hosting is something you should avoid. That is, if you are planning to have a website with a lot of content then shared hosting is going to hurt you at the beginning.
On a broader perspective, all types of web hosting except wordpress hosting comes under regular web hosting. Which takes us to the next segment of this post.
Features of WordPress hosting & why should you use it
WordPress hosting is no different than the regular hosting. Everything is same as the regular web hosting, it’s just that servers are optimized to host WordPress only. The difference between WordPress hosting and Web hosting is
- In a WordPress hosting plan, a server has certain requirements for WordPress script to perform well.
- The service providers know prior that what is running on the server, hence they optimize it accordingly
- The server side is tailored to perform well under high traffic conditions, as WordPress is SEO friendly and brings a ton of traffic from search engine. Above this, the best SEO plugin by Yoast, helps you get even more traffic to your site.
- Web hosting can have wordpress website function equally well, but wordpress hosting plan may not host other than wordpress websites.
It’s just these settings that make servers reliable for WordPress hosting. Since the requirements are version specific, not satisfying it will not let WordPress function well. However, almost all the web hosting service provider has the mentioned server requirements by default so it doesn’t really matter if you opt for web hosting or wordpress hosting.
You’d ask why do hosting companies have dedicated wordpress hosting plan?
This is where things get interesting.
Hosting companies have dedicated wordpress hosting plan to better support the script. Imagine, 29% of all the website is running on wordpress. This is not a small number for the companies to neglect.
Therefore, if you want to have technical support and tailored server end settings exclusively for wordpress, you should opt for WordPress Hosting. As mentioned earlier, almost all web hosting service providers have wordpress hosting plans to serve you.
However, I recommend Bluehost, to begin with. You have wordpress hosting plans as cheap as around $4 a month, quality can’t get cheaper than this. Furthermore, Bluehost is giving the following if you sign up right away:
- 1 free domain name
- 1 click wordpress install
- Free SSL certificate &
- 24/7 priority support
Note: Even Siteground gives a free SSL certificate & it hosts all the blogs/websites on Google Cloud platform.
As you grow in number, you would need a better server & Dreamhost is what I’d recommend. The reason why Dreamhost is better than Bluehost is that it is a non-EIG company. It’s fast, reliable, secure and 100% uptime(else you get the refund) It has over 400,000 active users and it hosts over 1.5 million active websites.
That’s a ton of experience.
EIG company is a child to another parent company. It’s under one umbrella of a bigger company. One goes down, everything else follows.
If you are being backed by a budget, you can opt for managed wordpress solutions like Kinsta or WPEngine. It’s expensive, but you don’t have to worry about the investment. The ROI is much more than the investment. Furthermore, Kinsta is a recommended Managed WordPress solution by Google Cloud. When Google recommends something, you know it’s reliable.
Who needs WordPress hosting?
As you all know, by now, that wordpress is one of the most used content management platforms. A beginner would blindly opt for WordPress by default. WordPress is smartly designed for all types of users, be it developers, beginners, or anyone with little to no experience.
The installation is so easy, that it just takes a few clicks. Once installed, it’s on the go learning experience. Slowly, as your blog grows in number, you will learn from the easy control panel.
Now, who needs WordPress?
The fact that WordPress provides highly customizable experience and extending features with help of wordpress plugins, WordPress hosting becomes an unavoidable system for beginners. It is applicable for all type of users, any level of expertise & irrespective of what niche you are in.
WordPress is an amazing thing, to begin with, imagine how amazing it would be for a developer. There’s practically nothing that cannot be done on WordPress. WordPress hosting plans are a little more expensive than regular web hosting plans. Furthermore, with managed wordpress plans, you get dedicated support and an advanced wordpress website without any level of expertise.
TL;DR: Final words on Web hosting vs WordPress hosting
Sure, you are more likely to opt for WordPress hosting. Pricing doesn’t differ much, all it differs is the performance of your server. A dedicates wordpress hosting server makes sure that you a personalized experience with wordpress and the hosting provider.
Should you face any issues with the plan or wordpress, you have the support backing you always. The reason why I strongly recommend wordpress hosting over regular web hosting is the fact that I have used both, regular web hosting plan and wordpress hosting plan. The optimized server that wordpress hosting plan users get is truly amazing.
Again, there are highly optimized, secure and reliable server purely for WordPress websites by Kinsta & WPEngine. These services do nothing other than hosting wordpress website, they’re hard-core wordpress lovers. If you have a little deeper pocket, I would direct you to these services.
Lastly, it’s you who have to decide what are you looking for. If you are sure of using WordPress, then simply opt for WordPress hosting. You will not regret it.
Over to you, what do you think of wordpress hosting? Which one are you using right now? Are you needing any assistance setting WordPress? Let me know in the comments below.
Do you know someone who’s confused between Web hosting vs WordPress hosting? Share this with them, also share this on the social network.