If you want to start a WordPress website, or already have one running, you’ll know that you need somewhere to host your website. While there are many types of hosting, VPS hosting is most likely the best option for your current and/or next website. Here’s why.
What Is WordPress VPS Hosting?
One way to understand VPS hosting is to think of an apartment building. Every family that lives in the apartment building benefits from the building as a whole (such as a high-quality internet connection), while also enjoying their own address, their own set of keys, etc. This analogy can be easily adapted to VPS hosting. Each VPS is an apartment unit that enjoys its own IP address, it’s own security measures, etc. However, each VPS also benefits from sharing the underlying server; for example, each VPS benefits from having a fast internet connection, modern hardware, and good cooling.
The alternative to the apartment is having a house that multiple families share the keys to. While having a house may sound nicer, all of the benefits are negated by the sharing. For example, if one family loses their keys, everyone who lives in the house has their security compromised. Additionally, without separated units like in an apartment, one family can use up more space than what’s agreed upon. This analogy is a good explanation of shared hosting, a common alternative to VPS hosting. Instead of everyone having clearly separated resources, one website on a shared hosting server can use up too much resources, compromise the security of other websites on the same server, and more.
Performance
One of the primary advantages of using a VPS over shared hosting is the added boost to performance. Similar to shared hosting, VPS hosting divides the resources of a single physical server across multiple websites. However, there is an important difference between the two in terms of how well the resources allocated to you are isolated.
With shared hosting, often the only resources that are limited are disk space and bandwidth, not RAM or CPU usage. This means that if one website gets a surge of traffic, it may use up all of the available resources, which can significantly slow down your website, or even take it down completely.
Another common issue with shared hosting is overselling of resources. Overselling occurs when a web host allocates more resources to websites than what’s available on the underlying server. This allows for the web host to make a higher profit for each server, but may result in your website not getting the resources it needs. VPS hosting, on the other hand, allows you to actually make full use of the resources you’re paying for. As a result, your site will load faster and be able to handle more visitors at once.
Security
Another major advantage VPS hosting has over shared hosting is security. As previously mentioned, shared hosting has fairly poor isolation between websites. Poor isolation not only negatively affects performance, but also poses a significant security risk. If just one website on a shared hosting server gets compromised, yours may get compromised as well. Even if you follow all of the best security practices, your website could still become jeopardized with shared hosting. Having your website compromised is a very serious situation. Google may penalize your site for hosting malware, your users could lose trust in your website, and browsers may even prevent people from visiting your site altogether.
Luckily, that mess can be easily avoided by just sticking with VPS hosting instead. VPS’s have significantly better isolation from one another than shared hosting. It’s just about impossible for one compromised VPS to compromise another, even when on the same physical server. When using VPS hosting, you’re completely in control of its security. As long as you follow some basic security measures like using a strong password, it’s very unlikely your website will be hacked when on VPS hosting. Things get even more secure if you purchase specialized WordPress VPS hosting. This specialized hosting has security features crafted exclusively for WordPress, giving your website’s security a major boost. With more and more privacy laws being made around the world (e.g. the GDPR in the EU), that added security will be worth more and more.
Control
The next defining feature of VPS hosting is the additional features and control you gain over using shared hosting. Since you get to use all of the resources you pay for, you can get more than just a place to host your website with VPS hosting. For example, you can also have your email hosted on the same VPS, which allows you to have a professional email address like “[email protected]” instead of “[email protected]” or some other generic email service.
VPS hosting also gives you more control over how your website is hosted. Shared hosting providers need to use software that works well enough for most people, which may not be the best solution for your website. Since you don’t have full access to the underlying server for shared hosting, there’s not much you can do. However, with a VPS, you can finely tune all of the software to fit your needs best, which can further increase your website’s performance.
Price
While VPS hosting may seem more expensive at first, it’s important to look at the big picture. For example, if your website gets compromised because it was on shared hosting, that’ll cost you a lot of time and potentially money to fix. The same goes for having your website’s emails blocked because of a blacklisted IP. Another huge benefit of a VPS is that you don’t need to spend a large amount of money upfront to buy the server; not to mention replacing failing hardware, upgrading components, and other ongoing costs such as electricity and adequate cooling. Overall, VPS hosting is an excellent option for websites of all sizes. It’s miles ahead of shared hosting in every possible way while costing not too much more. Plus, better security, faster load times, and more control and access to features is more than worth any price difference. If these any of these features sound good to you, be sure to purchase our specially crafted WordPress VPS hosting.
