How to choose a Hosting? Part 1

WordPress now powers over 43 % of all the websites on the internet and holds 64.3% of CMS’s market share a remarkable feat. However, this widespread usage brings with it a multitude of themes, plugins, and technologies, creating a complex ecosystem. For the average WordPress user, navigating this complexity can become a daunting challenge, especially when their website experiences bottlenecks, and they are unsure where to begin troubleshooting.

Static WordPress sites generally include blogs, small business websites, low-traffic news sites, personal pages, photography portfolios, and comparable entities. When we label a site as static, we are indicating that the content on these WordPress sites experiences rare updates, usually occurring only a couple of times a day.

The significance of this distinction lies in the fact that many requests for these sites can be swiftly fulfilled directly from the server’s cache, resulting in exceptional speed. As we delve deeper into the topic of caching below, you’ll discover that static sites entail fewer database calls, requiring fewer resources to achieve optimal performance.

For highly dynamic sites, the landscape is quite different. This category encompasses eCommerce platforms (such as WooCommerce ), community forums, membership-based portals, and learning management systems (LMS). When we refer to these sites as dynamic, we mean that the data undergoes frequent changes, with server transactions occurring every few minutes or even every second. Consequently, not all requests to the server can be fulfilled directly from the cache, necessitating additional server resources and database queries.

In addition to the dynamic nature of the content, these sites typically experience a substantial influx of concurrent visitors and sessions. In contrast to informational or corporate WordPress sites, where visitors might stay for a relatively short duration, dynamic sites witness prolonged engagement. For instance, visitors engaged in an online course may spend hours on the site.

The challenge arises from the rapid accumulation of concurrent visitors connected to your WordPress host, exacerbated by the presence of “uncacheable content.” This combination amplifies the demands on server resources and poses a unique set of challenges for optimal performance.

It involves choosing a company that houses all your website’s data. When you subscribe to a hosting plan, your images, content, videos, and more are stored on a server situated in the host’s data center. The WordPress host facilitates easy access, management, and routing of this data to your website visitors. While this might sound straightforward, the reality is a bit more complex.

Across the web, you’ll encounter three distinct types of WordPress hosts, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Understanding the characteristics of each is crucial, as making the right choice from the outset is essential to avoid future headaches and wasted time.

The first and widely adopted type of WordPress hosting is termed “shared hosting.” This category includes industry giants like Bluehost and HostGator, as well as providers such as Siteground, GoDaddy, Media Temple, OVH, GreenGeeks, and InMotion Hosting. Typically leveraging cPanel, these hosts offer plans ranging from $3 to $25 per month on average.

However, users opting for shared hosting will likely encounter performance issues at some point—it’s just a matter of time. The underlying reason is that shared hosts tend to overload their servers, affecting the overall performance of hosted websites. Instances of site slowdowns, frequent 500 errors, or even suspensions are common occurrences, as these hosts impose limits and consolidate resources to manage server loads. Additionally, there’s the risk of website downtime, as your WordPress site is often sharing server space with over 200 other crammed sites. Any problems arising with those other sites can potentially impact the performance and stability of your own.

Many of these hosting providers promote what they label as an “unlimited website” plan, a familiar term to most. However, in the real world, the concept of unlimited resources doesn’t exist. What hosts do behind the scenes is implement throttling measures on clients consuming significant resources. Consequently, this practice often leads to frustrated clients departing, creating space for new clients who are expected to use fewer resources. This sets off a cycle where hosting companies aggressively market cheap plans, aiming to attract customers who won’t heavily utilize resources, all while hoping to encourage additional purchases through upsells. It becomes a continuous loop of acquiring and cycling through customers to maintain a delicate balance in resource consumption.

The second category of WordPress hosting is DIY hosting, standing for “Do it yourself on a virtual private server.” This group typically comprises bootstrap startups and users with a slightly higher level of development, server management, and WordPress expertise. While still cost-conscious, they are DIY enthusiasts who prioritize performance and recognize its significance in their business’s success. Common setups involve utilizing third-party VPS providers like Digital Ocean, Linode, or Vultr.

For instance, a small VPS from DigitalOcean starts at $5 a month, and the popular plan at ServerPilot begins at $10 a month. Depending on your configuration, you may incur costs ranging from $5 to $15 or more per month. The DIY approach can be a cost-effective solution, but it also places the responsibility on you for troubleshooting if something breaks and for optimizing your server’s performance.

While the DIY approach has its merits, it can also pose challenges if undertaken without due diligence. It’s not advisable for those lacking technical expertise or simply looking to experiment. The lack of important components such as a security firewall,  WAF, and anti-malware makes your setup very unsafe to host important data or files. 

In the real world, your server will be attacked thousands of times a day. Also, Your time holds value, and it’s essential to invest wisely in growing your business rather than grappling with intricate technicalities.

The third hosting category, which POPACLOUDHOST offers, is managed WordPress hosting. Hosts in this category take care of all the back-end server-related tasks on your behalf and provide support as needed. These hosts are specifically optimized to work seamlessly with WordPress and often come with features like one-click staging environments and automated backups. Their support teams are highly knowledgeable about navigating the CMS since they focus on a single platform daily.

If time-saving and security is a priority, managed WordPress hosting is the best choice! 

Managed WordPress hosting plans generally fall within the range of $25 to $150 per month or more, contingent on your site’s size and requirements. 

We elevate WordPress hosting to different heights.  Our entire infrastructure is woven into the fabric of the Akamai Cloud Platform, setting it apart from conventional shared, VPS, or dedicated infrastructures. This distinction positions our hosting solution as one of the fastest in the realm of WordPress hosting.

On our platform, each WordPress site operates within an isolated software container that encapsulates all essential software resources needed for site functionality (Linux, Litespeed, PHP, MySQL). Significantly, this ensures absolute privacy for the software running each site, with no sharing even among your own site’s processes. 

Every site container operates on virtual machines strategically located in one of several Akamai centers, harnessing the power of Akamai’s global network to facilitate optimized, low-latency data transfer. Each machine boasts impressive specifications.

In essence, this ensures that your website consistently benefits from a dedicated and reserved memory allocation. Unlike in shared hosting environments, where resources can be shared among multiple websites, our approach ensures that other websites cannot consume or affect the resources allocated specifically to your site. Furthermore, if other sites encounter issues, these problems won’t have any adverse impact or “trickle over” into the performance of your site. This isolation of resources contributes to a more stable and secure hosting environment for your WordPress website.

“Also, Check out our other posts on how much Web Hosting Costs “