There are a lot of options available when trying to decide on the best hosting option for your WordPress website. One of the options I am most frequently asked about is shared hosting. Most website hosting services offer shared hosting for WordPress. If you’ve never hosted a website before or are just trying to learn more about shared hosting for WordPress, here is everything you need to know about so you can decide if this option is right for your business.
Why Choose WordPress?
Before I get into the details about shared hosting, I want to talk a little bit about why you should choose WordPress as your content management system software (CMS). There are a ton of benefits for using WordPress as an affiliate marketer. First, the platform is free to use. There are even many free design templates you can customize to meet the needs of your business. Secondly, the control panel is very easy to use, even for people who have never run a website before. Next, WordPress it is the ideal CMS for affiliate marketers. They have thousands of high-quality plugins to help you build your audience, create conversions, and track your sales. Finally, they have tools specifically for affiliate link management that can cut down your workload and help better manage your time. With so many features I recommend always using WordPress to anyone starting out in affiliate marketing.
What Is Shared Hosting For WordPress?
Once you’ve built your WordPress site, you’ll need to find a WordPress host. A quick google search will show there are thousands of companies with a variety of different hosting plans. One that you will see most commonly is shared hosting. Basically, shared hosting is when a hosting company uses one server for multiple websites. The hosting company offers this option for two primary reasons. The first is that not every website needs an entire server. Servers can hold a lot of data, so if a website is smaller and doesn’t have a lot of traffic, it won’t need an entire server. Secondly, by having multiple websites share one server they can keep both their costs and the costs for their customers down.
Without a doubt, this is the best shared hosting service that exists for WordPress.
The Key Benefits Of Shared Hosting For WordPress
There are several benefits for choosing shared hosting for WordPress. These benefits include:
- Cost: The biggest benefit of choosing shared hosting is the cost. Shared hosting is extremely affordable. Since you are sharing a server with sometimes hundreds of other websites, they can split the price of server hosting among all of you. This is great for people just starting out in affiliate marketing because it keeps their overhead low.
- Convenience: With shared hosting, your web hosting will be managed by a team of IT experts. So it’s a great option for people who don’t have an IT team nor the technical skills to manage a server themselves.
- Customization: Shared hosting companies offer a lot customization options. They usually have a cPanel, email hosting, and storage plans. It’s good for business just starting out that are looking for scalability.
The Key Downsides Of Shared Hosting For WordPress
Though there are some great benefits to shared hosting for WordPress, there are also a lot of downsides:
- Performance: Since you are sharing the server with multiple websites, the performance can be hit or miss depending on how much traffic those sites are getting at the time. Shared servers also crash more frequently because they are heavily taxed. So your site may experience a lot of lags in load time and some downtimes.
- Security: Security is a big problem with shared hosting. If one of the sites that you are sharing a server with is hacked, they can target all the sites on the server. Hackers specifically target shared servers because they can attack multiple sites at once.
- Upcharges: If you use more resources than allocated, need more features than what’s available in the standard plan, or have an uptick in traffic volume, you may end up paying unexpected fees. These fees can often end up costing more than if you chose managed hosting or a dedicated server.
What Is The Difference Between Managed And Shared Hosting For WordPress?
With so many downsides, shared hosting may not be right for everyone. I personally believe that a better option is managed hosting for WordPress. Managed hosting is a very comprehensive hosting plan that is specifically dedicated to hosting WordPress. It is a little more expensive than shared hosting, but not as costly as dedicated hosting. Managed hosting offers a full team of experts that manage all of the technical aspects of your website. The benefits of managed hosting include:
- Speed: Managed WordPress hosting is incredibly fast because the servers are specifically configured for hosting WordPress.
- Security: Managed hosting has tighter security and a dedicated team of IT security experts that protect your site from hackers.
- Support: The customer support staff is specifically knowledgeable in WordPress, so they offer incredible expertise.
- Backups: Your site is backed up through redundancies every day, so if the server ever goes down, your data is still protected and your website will still be accessible. As a result, you’ll also experience faster load times and no downtime.
- Customization: You’ll have access to website development tools that are specific to WordPress. So the customization options are truly unlimited.
The Best Managed Hosting For WordPress
Ultimately, I don’t believe that the benefits of shared hosting for WordPress outweigh the downsides. I believe instead, that anyone looking for WordPress hosting should choose a managed hosting option. The best managed WordPress hosting company I’ve found is WPEngine. They are extremely cost competitive with even shared hosting, but offer way more features. All of my websites hosted on WPEngine’s managed hosting load quickly and don’t experience periods of downtime. I’ve also never had any issues with security. Plus, the 24/7, 365 customer support with a WordPress expert has been incredibly helpful for me since I’m not particularly tech-savvy. So I personally say skip the limited and unsecure shared hosting for WordPress plans and go with the experts at WPEngine.
