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As we’ve said previously a bunch of times, when it comes to starting a WordPress website (especially for business), you need to get your hosting RIGHT! The wrong kind of hosting will leave your site unstable, slow and require constant fussing over. When it comes to making money via a business website, you need to get your hosting foundations spot on. And if you’re not yet familiar with the differences between shared, VPS, dedicated and managed WordPress hosting, this is the first place to start…
Here are all the essentials/basics you need to know:
– (note: video credits to Topher DeRosia – creator of HeroPress)
Video Transcript:
Hi! This is Topher with WinningWP. In this video we’re going to take a look at several different kinds of WordPress hosting; shared, VPS, dedicated, and managed hosting. I’m going to be using a number of analogies in this video, mostly revolving around buildings. When you say hosting it’s a lot like saying “building”. What kind of building? Is it a large building or a small building? Is it expensive or simple? How many people live inside that building? Just one, or a hundred, or a thousand? Let’s take a look at how we can use that analogy to explain different kinds of WordPress hosting. This is a large apartment complex. Many, many people live here. Shared hosting is like a large apartment complex. There’s one machine but many different people can have an account on that machine. In a large apartment complex often there are shared resources like hot water and parking. It’s possible for one or maybe even ten people to use up all the hot water on a busy work morning, and the rest of the apartments don’t have any. And it’s possible for someone to have all their friends come and park and fill up the parking lot. It’s also possible that the building could get overcrowded. This is true of shared hosting. With shared hosting, everybody uses the same hard drive. Now, it gets partitioned so there are permissions and you can’t walk right in to your neighbors website or apartment, but it’s still one big drive and if one person uploaded a hundred movies it would fill up the hard drive and no one else could use it. Sometimes shared hosts will put too many websites on one machine. When that happens all of the websites run slow and it can be difficult. This is also the least expensive type of web hosting and when you first put up your brand new website often this is the best way to do it. iIt’s very inexpensive, it’s easy to put up and it gets your site out there for people to see. However as your traffic goes up and you start using more and more resources it’s time to get a nicer place. This is a condominium building. Similar to apartments but there are far fewer in a building and each apartment gets its own resources. A Virtual Private Server, or VPS, is like a small expensive apartment complex. It’s still a shared building but you have reserved resources like a private hot water system and your own parking garage. When it comes to servers you get your own server resources like your own hard drive space and server power. It’s not possible for your neighbor on the same machine to fill up your drive space, and it’s not possible for your neighbor on the server to get so popular that it stops the server and also brings down your site. Your site will always stay up no matter what your neighbor does. A VPS is the next step up logically from shared hosting. It’s a little bit more expensive, it’s a lot more reliable, but it’s not as crazy expensive as getting your very own server which is our next option; owning your own home where you can do anything. A dedicated server is like owning your own home. It’s completely custom with every other kind of hosting we’ve talked about the host builds the computer for you, and then gives you space. A dedicated server is where an engineer builds the hardware to your specifications based on your custom needs then installs the software to meet your specific needs and no one else’s and that might involve weird quirky things just like with a home. You may need an elevator you may need a special kind of electricity. You may want to sink in your closet. Who knows? It doesn’t matter it’s your place you can do anything you want. Because of this it is the most expensive. It’s also the most secure. No one else has access to this but you with shared or VPS other people are actually accessing the machine but when you have your own dedicated server you are the only one that has access to your machine. A dedicated server is typically for sites that get lots and lots of traffic. Because they can be fine-tuned they can support higher traffic than a VPS or shared hosting. I’d also like to look at managed hosting. Managed WordPress hosting is like hiring staff to care for things. And this service is available at all levels of hosting and the prices are reflected in that. So if you get managed WordPress hosting on shared it’s much cheaper than managed WordPress hosting on a dedicated server. Managed WordPress hosting is a service; it’s not a machine or server resources. So imagine if you had a home and you had a live-in plumber and a live-in electrician and a live-in gardener. Obviously that would be very expensive but with managed WordPress hosting it’s not that expensive to have all that expertise available /. Somebody to look after your machine to make sure it’s up to make sure it’s updated to make sure everything is taken care of. This is excellent for not having to worry about things. It’s also the quickest path to getting things done right. No matter what level hosting you have if it’s your first time you’re going to have to take some time to learn things. If you hire some managed WordPress hosting people they can simply take care of things. They’re experts they know what they’re doing, they’re going to get it done very quickly, and they’re going to get it done right. So let’s review real quick. Shared hosting is like a busy apartment complex. Lots and lots of people, lots of shared resources, probably the least secure. A virtual private server it’s like a smaller more expensive apartment complex. A few shared resources, like a roof, but far more reserved resources like parking and hot water and hard drive space and server power. A dedicated server is like owning your own home; you get to make all the choices, can be completely custom to your needs and desires, but it’s also the most expensive. And then managed WordPress hosting is like hiring staff to care for things. They make it so you don’t have to think about it. They just take care of problems, they make sure things run well, and they bring you peace of mind. If you’re interested in more information about hosting like this, check out our article on WinningWP. You can see the link down below in the information about this video. If you’d like to learn more about WordPress check out WinningWP.com.
Anything to add?
