Shared Web Hosting vs Managed: Ideal Option for WordPress Website

The decision of choosing a right web hosting provider for your WordPress site needs to be taken very cautiously. There are lots of factors that can influence your decision and affect the growth of your business. So, it is essential to do thorough research before approaching towards a particular hosting type.

It is equally important to choose a plan that has the potential to serve your specific needs – be it a bandwidth or a disk space. Apart from this, it should serve fast, secure and reliable website for your potential web visitors. Selecting such a hosting provider can reduce a lot of burden on your shoulders.

When it comes to the most popular web hosting types, Shared and Managed hosting comes first to our mind. Most of the WordPress website owners opt for these two options because of the reliability and WordPress-driven features they offered to run a website. But, still, there is a huge difference between these two types of web hosting.

Here, in this blog post, we will compare shared and managed web hosting to let you decide which one is better for your WordPress site. Being a website owner, it is imperative for you to know the benefits, limitations, and other key features of the two web hosting plans. So, let’s get started!

1. Basic Information

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is an ideal solution for startups, beginners and small scale businesses. If you are looking for an affordable hosting environment for your WordPress site, then shared hosting is best for you. Since you are sharing the same server with multiple other websites, it gives less security, reliability and disk space as compared managed hosting plan.

Managed Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is more secure, reliable and scalable option that serves the plethora of advanced features, unlimited disk space, secure hosting environment and the best part is that it has WordPress-optimized servers that help you run a website smoothly.

It is an ideal solution for small business with limited IT members, websites with heavy web traffic, online stores and other websites that have huge back-end requirements.

2. Cost

Shared Hosting

It is one of the most economical web hosting plans for WordPress site owners. Since the server is shared by hundreds and thousands of websites, it will charge low cost, which would be around $3.9 -$9.90 per month. Apart from this, you will get unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited resources, unlimited domains and much more at the most reasonable plan.

Tip: It won’t be a wise decision to take a chance of risking your website just to save some bucks. That’s because you have to share the space and resources of the server with other websites, and this could sabotage the security and scalability of your site to a great extent.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is quite expensive as compared to the shared one. If your website drive the huge number of traffic or you are running a large web business, then paying extra will be justified. But if you just started up your business, then it may be too expensive for you.

In fact, the starting plans in managed hosting would be around $30/month. Under this plan, you will get a managed WP server in a shared environment. Although it is an affordable plan, this won’t protect you from “bad neighbor” issues.

If you are looking for a more secure plan, then you need to spend more money. The more expensive plan will help you host a secure, scalable and flexible website that helps you manage higher levels of traffic at ease. However, these plans start from $150-$250/per month.

3. Hosting control

Shared Hosting

Most of the shared hosting companies offer their customers a lighter version of cPanel, Direct Admin, and Plesk to let them manage the hosting panel of their WordPress site at ease. However, it may cost you some extra amount of money, but it will be worth if you get a complete control over the hosting capabilities of your site.  From the cPanel, you can control your database, WordPress files, check statistics, manage security, install new apps, configure emails and a lot more.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting, on the other hand, offers limited control over the hosting features as compared to the shared one. Instead of offering the web hosting control panel, most of the companies provide a custom control panel that includes a user-friendly interface with limited options.

In short, Managed WP hosting companies set the boundaries when it comes to controlling the different aspects of their hosting options.

4. Secure server environment

Shared Hosting

Security is one of the biggest reasons for WordPress migration and this happens mostly when you are hosting your site in a shared environment. As you don’t know with whom you are sharing the server, you are risking your website from being compromised or attacked by hackers or any other security threat.

If one of your server neighbor’s websites got hacked, it could lead to compromise the entire server, including your site. In fact, you won’t get advanced features that can improve the security of your WordPress site. In that case, it would be better for you to migrate your WP site to the managed host.

Managed Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting companies offer sturdy features to enhance the security of WordPress sites. They keep a close eye on security vulnerabilities and perform improved security protocols and malware scan to protect your site from hackers and spammers.

It only secures your server but also assists you, and provides you a reliable solution to fix the issue if your website is vulnerable to security attacks.

You can also further secure your WordPress instance with a VPN. This protects any connections you make to your own site from a public or private Wi-Fi and prevents anyone from intercepting your personal data.

5. Automatic Backups and Updates

Shared Hosting

Only a few shared hosting providers offer automatic backups through cPanel. But these backups are stored on the same server – which means they are not safe at all from the security attacks. They are as insecure as your original data.

When it comes to automated updates, then there is a chance that you will get less support – that will include only the control panel, operation system, MySQL, Apache, and PHP. It won’t include WordPress updates – you will need to manage it manually.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting providers take care of your website fully. They make regular backups and even allows you to restore it whenever you want to.

Apart from automatic backups, they will also check whether your WordPress website and its installed themes and plugins are running on the latest version or not. They will provide you automatic updates, ranging from operating systems, My SQL to WordPress.

6. Speed/Performance

Shared Hosting

You always have to compromise with the page loading speed while hosting your WordPress website on a shared server. It is one of the biggest disadvantages of shared hosting plan.

Since your website is located with thousands of other accounts, the server may get bloated with the tons of database and system files, which in turn, reduces the speed of your website. So, if you are really concerned about the site’s speed, it would be better to opt for Managed hosting.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is a more reliable plan that offers server-level caching, use the best version of PHP, Apache, and MySQL that can improve the overall performance of your website.

In simple words, hosting a website on managed WP server can reduce the loading speed of your web pages and increases the chances of getting higher web traffic and maximum revenues.

Conclusion:  Which is an Ideal Solution for WordPress Site?

Well, both the shared and managed hosting have their own benefits and limitations. But when it comes to hosting a WordPress site, Managed hosting wins this battle clearly. The servers under managed hosting are well-optimized for WordPress websites, offer enhanced security, support automatic backups and updates to keep you running in this competitive digital world.

However, the cost is too high. So, if you have a small business, you can opt for the shared one. But if you are generating a heavy amount of web traffic, you should go for the managed hosting plan.