When it comes to your new website project, there is one important decision to start with. Even before looking into design, development and content, you should consider where will your website reside, i.e. web hosting.
Website building process starts with installing WordPress on a server, so you are going to need that early on. And while it is possible to change or upgrade it after the website is published, this might create delays, additional costs or other issues so it’s better to plan well beforehand.
For business websites hosting options basically come down to two: shared web hosting or dedicated web hosting. If you already have some experience, most probably it is with shared hosting, which is the more popular option mainly due to the lower cost. But, like with just about anything else in life, there’s more to consider than just cost.
Shared hosting
Shared hosting is basically what it says on the label – you share your hosting space with other websites. One server powers multiple sites, so resources are shared between them. The main benefit of shared hosting is reduced cost. You share the burden of the server maintenance with other site owners, which means you can get some pretty cheap deals.
But, with a reduction in cost, comes an increase in risk.
As you’re sharing resources, one site’s surge in traffic could be your site’s bad day. An influx of visitors to your neighbor’s site means that the server could crash or restart, resulting in downtime for your own site.
A small business or a beginner to WordPress would usually suit a shared hosting plan, but if you have big ideas for your business, be prepared to outgrow it.
Biggest advantage of shared hosting is the lower cost. Now let’s have a look at the disadvantages.
1. Vulnerability
Shared hosting can be the most vulnerable type of hosting due to the fact hackers can use one domain to access the whole server – along with all of the other sites hosted on it. Web hosts want the maximum number of domains hosted on a single server and often overlook security measures.
2. Slow speed
One of the major issues of shared hosting is speed. It’s due to many users sharing the server resources, RAM, and CPU – which can slow things down. Plus, if there’s a popular website on the server, it will affect all of the other sites due to the server resources and singular IP address. This will vary with web hosts but be prepared for a slower site. This may not be a huge factor if you don’t get a lot of visitors or have a personal website where you don’t care much about speed. But for any business websites it should be a deal breaker.
3. Unplanned downtimes
A common issue with shared hosting is server crashes, which get your website down. This occurs when sites use excessive CPU and RAM. The more significant point is that hosting companies often aren’t quick to resolve the issue. It’s a common occurrence for them and not a high priority.
4. Slow support
This corresponds with server crashes because problems sometimes aren’t quick to be determined, making it frustrating for anyone that cares about uptime. Things can take a while to settle, even if a hosting company has the staff to fix downtime or any issues.
Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting offers dedicated server and resources for each website. There is a variety of options out there, incl. Dedicated Server Hosting, Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting, Cloud WordPress Hosting, Colocation Hosting, Managed WordPress Hosting and Serverless (Headless) WordPress Hosting. We won’t bother you with too much details, but if you are interested in acquiring in-debt knowledge about all types of web hosting, you can check out the article here. Main point is that dedicated hosting makes possible for faster, more secure and scalable websites, but it comes at a higher price point compared to shared hosting offerings.
Which one is right for you?
For the last 7 years we have tested all of the above with our website clients and can help you to find the best solution for your project.
If your business needs are covered by a simple company website like an online business card with product/service presentation and contact details, and you do not plan for SEO work and Google/social media ads, then shared hosting should be good enough for you. Best thing you can do is to research the offerings of the reliable hosting providers on the market where your expected website visitors will be based, since it’s faster if you put your website near them.
If the majority of your audience is based in Finland or in the other Nordic countries, we can highly recommend our partners at XetNet. And if the audience is mostly in Bulgaria, France, Germany or UK, then Jump.bg is a great option. We have been working with these shared hosting providers for long time already and both offer high quality, reliable and affordable services. And of course we can help you choose the right plan, select a good domain and set your account from the ground up, including mailboxes.
Then, if you are going to sell anything through your website, like products, services, tickets, courses, etc., if you plan to put the work necessary to get your website discoverable on search engines, if you expect to have more and more visitors, if your business will rely in any way upon the website, then you should definitely consider dedicated hosting. And luckily we can help you even more with that!
As members of WPMU DEV community we are able to resell their unique web hosting offerings which combine the best of all other options at a still affordable price point. Every single site they host sits in its own fully compartmentalized, isolated, dedicated, and managed ‘droplet’. Your site gets allocated resources that are not shared or dependent on anyone else’s site. Each site is set up inside its own secure, virtualized machine that sits atop secure, virtualized hardware, in a hosting environment that has been expertly configured and is being managed and supported 24/7 to make sure that your site performs at optimal levels, operates at blazing fast speeds, and is fully backed up in a globally distributed network of servers should anything ever happen. Different packages cover the needs of anything from a small company website to a large e-commerce multisite in different languages for different countries.
Share or dare?
WPMU DEV dedicated hosting is so good and websites work so well with it, that we have decided to not charge separately for it, but to include it into our monthly website maintenance service, which comes with every website we build. This means that if you choose another hosting provider, you will have to pay them plus our monthly website maintenance fee. And if you choose this web hosting, which will be much better in terms of quality, security and speed, you will only pay the monthly maintenance fee. Why would we do such a thing and lose money? Well, things are so well put together there on these servers, that our monthly website maintenance work is so much easier (and much more pleasant!). And hey, we just want the best for our clients 🙂
