Once I made the decision to start running my own business online I also had to make peace with certain compromises to control. I was going to have start looking at different WordPress hosting prices and make a determination about which hosting service I wanted to go with. This meant that I was giving up control hosting my website and leaving this in the hands of someone else.
Of course, in digital terms, what I and many other people do when we make this decision isn’t as big a loss of control as you might think. Although it means that we are now relying on someone else to maintain the accessibility of our website, this isn’t actually that different from the real world decision to rent a retail or office space, and get your electricity and water from a company, rather than trying to construct your own building and generate water and electricity on your own.
But WordPress hosting prices differ when you decide to take your WordPress site and start looking at the different services. Is this just a matter of different companies offering differing rates in a competitive environment? Or is there something more to it for WordPress hosting prices? I’ll show what’s going on.
WordPress Hosting Prices Are A Matter Of Scale
As with anything in a free market, WordPress hosting prices vary depending on a lot of different factors, but the scope and scale of your website and the technology for hosting it are going to be big factors. The more resources you or your website require, the higher the WordPress hosting prices will be. If you encounter any hosting service that offers incredible prices with unbelievable service, I wouldn’t recommend going with such a service. Things that seem too good to be true usually are.
Instead, what you should be doing when comparing WordPress hosting prices is looking at what you need for your WordPress website, and comparing that with the different packages that are offered by the services. Higher prices are usually set that way because they offer a higher volume of support, services or technology, and you may not need all those things. So one price differentiator I want to look at first is the type of server that you’ll be getting.
Shared Servers
In one sense, your website doesn’t exist anywhere, since anyone with a computing device and an Internet connection can visit it from anywhere on Earth. In another sense, however, your website does have a physical space and location and this is on a server provided by your host. That server space, for the purposes of web hosting, comes in two different varieties; shared and dedicated.
A shared server means that “you are not alone.” It’s much like an apartment building, where you are just one tenant in the building, sharing that same structure with other tenants who are all doing their own thing. As a result of all of you paying rent, the overall cost in a tenanted apartment building is much lower than if you wanted the building to yourself.
In other words, a shared server has lower WordPress hosting prices, because you are sharing that server space with others who are also paying to be there. For people who are looking strictly at budgetary constrictions, the shared server space is definitely the more cost-effective solution. However, keep in mind that one possible downside to this is that you have no control over the other websites that are all shared on this server. If anything objectionable should appear on one of those websites, resulting in a ban of that server address, you will be affected too.
Dedicated WordPress Hosting Servers
On the opposite end, sporting higher WordPress hosting prices are the dedicated spaces. As I implied earlier, this is a higher cost alternative, but that’s for a very good reason. That server space and subsequent address is yours and yours alone. You will never have to worry about what others are doing on the server that could indirectly affect you.
For people that want the isolation and the added security that comes with it, dedicated servers are a better proposition. You’re paying more on your WordPress hosting prices, but you’re also getting a bit more control of your website, and fewer external factors that you have to worry about. Now whatever bad scripts or spikes in server activity that might have been affecting you on a shared server, are things of the past.
Unsupported & Supported WordPress Hosting
Another big factor that can influence your WordPress hosting prices is whether your host will be providing support or not. For people with a lot of website creation and maintenance experience, a host with little support is actually a very smart, cost-effective solution. What you may lose in time maintaining your own website and its hosting requirements, you make up for with money you don’t need to pay.
On the other hand, if you don’t have a lot of technical knowledge, and the extent of your WordPress management skills is maybe integrating a few new plug ins, trying to tackle every possible website or server host problem yourself may be more trouble than it is worth. You may even end up having to hire an expert anyway to handle any really big problems and restore your website to the server if you try to fix the issue yourself and only make it worse.
Making The Safe WordPress Hosting Choice
These and other reasons are why I like to recommend WPengine as a server host for WordPress. They don’t necessarily have the rock bottom, cheapest WordPress hosting prices on the Internet. However, they make up for it by having a nice range of different WordPress hosting prices available depending on your needs. For people that are just starting out, with a single, personal website, there are lower tiers. For medium-sized business ventures that may need to handle more traffic and need a higher level of technical support there are plans for that too. Whether it’s just you blogging, or a big company that needs professional technical support and top grade security, WPengine has the plan and the pricing.
