Choose the right hosting for WordPress

WordPress is a very popular content management system which is used to power millions of websites around the world. Blogs, business websites, eCommerce stores, forums, helpdesks, pretty much any type of website you can think of, you can use WordPress to build and manage it!

A site powered by WordPress is only as good as the hosting solution that powers it. So how do you choose the right hosting for your WordPress site? Is shared hosting okay or would a cloud or dedicated server be better suited to your needs? There are several factors that need to be considered in order to answer this fully, which we’ll explore below.

How much traffic will/does your site get

Traffic, i.e. the number of users visiting your site, has a large part to play in dictating what hosting solution is appropriate for your website.If you are just starting a new website and/or you are not expecting much traffic, shared hosting offers a cost effective way to host a website.

If you are likely to be running marketing campaigns, or expect social media traction where you can get sudden spikes in traffic, it would be wise to consider a cloud or dedicated server.

Does your site have any seasonal peaks and troughs

If you have a seasonal business and expect your site to be busy one month and then quiet the next, it can be difficult to make a decision as to what hosting you need.

If you opt for shared hosting, your site may not be able to handle the traffic effectively, whilst if you opt for a dedicated server you are likely to be paying for resources that are not being fully utilised. In this scenario, a cloud server makes perfect sense. During your quiet months, you can decrease the resource and during your busier months, you can increase the resource, making your server much more cost effective.

Are you running an e-commerce store

E-commerce stores require more processing power than a brochure-style website, in order process database heavy commands such as keeping stock levels up to date. It’s unlikely an ecommerce store will run smoothly on basic shared hosting, you should consider alternative options including cloud and dedicated hosting if you want to avoid hitting hosting package resource limits.

Will you run marketing campaigns to push traffic to your site?

If you are running marketing campaigns in order to push traffic to your site, you need to consider whether your hosting package will be able to cope with the demand. The last thing you want is to have paid for traffic, only for your website to fail to load due to the demand. Shared hosting typically isn’t well suited to marketing campaigns, you should consider a dedicated or cloud server.

Is ranking on the first page of Google critical to your business

If your business relies mainly on organic search engine traffic, it’s important you understand the implications of using shared hosting versus a dedicated or cloud server.

Google have confirmed that one of the metrics they use to assess where a website should rank is how quickly a page loads. Whilst you can get a website to load quickly on shared hosting, the TTFB (Time To First Byte) can be slower on shared hosting due to package resource limits being in place. So if it is absolutely imperative that you rank highly in search engines, you should, if budget allows, be using a cloud or a dedicated server.

Do you anticipate rapid growth?

If you anticipate rapid growth in your business, your server will also need to grow quickly, in order to keep up with the traffic demand. Whilst you can do this to some degree on shared packages, a cloud server is likely to be the best option and offers much more flexibility.