Having a website for your business has become an essential part of all businesses online presence and this will not be possible without the use of website hosting services. Whether you run a personal brand, a small business, or a multi-national business, owning a website is very essential for your business success.
Web hosting is the foundation, upon which all websites are built. According to Internal live stats, there are more than 1.9 billion websites online right now, and these are all powered by various hosting services.
Before diving into the shared vs managed WordPress hosting discussion, it’s important we have a clear understanding of what web hosting actually is and how it works. This brings us to ask the question, what is web hosting?
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What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting is an online service that offers the facilities and technical know-how required to create, maintain, and publish a website or web app, in order to make it accessible on the Word Wide Web.
Generally, for a website to be live and accessible on the internet, some infrastructure must be in place. This is where web hosting comes in. A typical web hosting service must provide some facilities or features such as servers to serve as hosts for the website, electricity to power the server, memory space to store the website files, software credentials, and many more.
This facility serves as the house in which websites live and breathe. Without web hosting, a website or domain name is actually pretty useless for it will be totally inaccessible to anyone on the internet.
Web hosting is of various types, and the suitability largely depends on the functionality or purpose of the website or web app to be hosted. The common types of hosting we have are shared hosting, cloud hosting, virtual private server (VPS) hosting, managed hosting, colocation, and dedicated hosting.
Only two of these will be properly discussed within the context of this article, and these are shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting.
What is shared Hosting?
Shared hosting is a type of web hosting where multiple websites are housed (hosted) on a single web server. This implies the various websites hosted on share the same facilities and resources such as storage space, web server, software credentials, and many more. Shared hosting is the most economical type of hosting, for it allows facilities and resources to be shared among multiple websites which bring down the cost of keeping the individual websites live.
Examples of shared hosting service providers are Bluehost, host gator, and the like.
According to Thrive My Way, shared hosting costs range between $2 to $8 per month on average. This makes it the most economical or cheapest form of web hosting
Pros of Shared Hosting
- It is economical and very cost-effective
- Shared web hosting is very easy to manage with little to no technical know-how
- Shared hosting allows you to host multiple domains for multiple businesses or brands
- It’s very flexible
- It’s easy to manage and scale
Cons of Shared Web Hosting
- Low performance compared to other hosting solutions
- Less secure
- Uptime guarantee
- Limited resources to share among the hosted websites
- No dedicated SSL
- Slow response time
What is Managed WordPress Hosting?
Managed WordPress hosting is a specialized type of hosting for WordPress that provides powerful and technologies and infrastructure for WordPress websites to ensure the website is fast, secure, and scalable to accommodate your website or traffic needs.
As the name suggests, the managed hosting provider is responsible for the routine management and maintenance of the website to ensure the website speed, security, back-ups, and other important factors are optimal.
According to Thrive My Way, the US economy loses approximately $500 million every year as a result of slow websites. This is one of the biggest selling points of managed hosting as the offer great speed and security for your WordPress website.
Managed WordPress hosting service providers are Convesio, Pagely, Site Ground, and many more.
Pros of Managed Hosting
What are the benefits managed WordPress hosting has over the other types of hosting?
- Topnotch performance
- High reliability
- High-end Security
- Greater website Speed
- Guaranteed Uptime
- Less technical expertise required
- Automatic backup and updates
- Experts support
- Premium DNS
- Developer friendly interface
Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting
- Very high and expensive in terms of cost
- Limited to WordPress websites only
- Minimal flexibility with Plugins limitations
- No .ht access compatibility
- Ideal for only websites with high traffic
Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting
Now it’s time to compare shared and managed WordPress hosting. To do this, we will have to look into their similarities and differences before diving further into the direct comparison between the two types of hosting.
Similarities of Shared and Managed Hosting
The major similarities between these two types of hosting are;
- They are both meant to host websites
- They are both suitable for WordPress websites
Differences Between Shared and Managed Hosting
There are a number of differences between shared and managed WordPress hosting, and these will be summarized in the table below
