If you are into online business, you would already know the importance of hosting. A fast and secure website is essential for success. For this, you need to choose a hosting plan that is most suited for you, since it has a direct bearing on your earnings.

If you are a newbie in the field of online business and are looking for a suitable hosting plan, the first thing you will be confronted with is a choice between shared hosting or managed WordPress hosting. Both have their pros and cons, and of course the price differential. Let us have a look at both.

Shared hosting

If you are looking for something inexpensive, shared hosting offers the cheapest way to host a website. Not only does it cater to all the major needs of your website, it also doesn’t cost a bomb, irrespective whether it is powered by WordPress or not.

Although low hosting prices are a major attraction for opting for shared hosting, it suffers from several disadvantages:

• By putting hundreds of users on the same server, it puts a big strain on the limited memory. If one site draws more memory, other websites suffer.
• Limited memory shared by hundreds or thousands of websites means slow loading and in certain cases no loading at all. In many instances shared hosts become powerless to do anything about the problems experienced by the websites.
• All the websites on the same server share not only limited memory, but also the bandwidth, processing, storage and the like, causing problems.
• It becomes difficult for the shared hosts to handle sudden traffic surge from the social media.
• Due to the resource restrictions and slow speeds, it becomes almost impossible to run a large variety of applications, other than WordPress.

Managed WordPress hosting

Managed WordPress hosting not only offers highly-tuned and WordPress optimized servers, but also caters to numerous advanced services. So, as compared to shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting is technically superior and does not suffer from its disadvantages. In fact, it offers some outstanding advantages:

?          Optimized for running WordPress: Whereas shared hosting is meant to run all kinds of applications, managed WordPress hosting is specially optimized to run WordPress. Thus, shared hosting is unable to undertake WordPress-specific tweaking and fine-tuning that is within the capability of managed WordPress hosts.

?          Server-level caching: Since managed WordPress hosting is built for WordPress websites, it is not only able to run the most optimal version of Apache, MySQL, and PHP but is also configured to give the best performance.

?          Speed: For any online business page-load speed is critical for success. Even Google (News - Alert) takes webpage’s speed into consideration to determine the ranking. Just sample this, a delay of one second in page-load time may translate into a loss of $1.6 billion per year for big companies like Amazon. Although WordPress does reduce the page-load speed by one or two seconds, managed hosting still offers the fastest speeds.

?          Security: It is an onerous task for shared hosts to counter all sorts of threats facing their hundreds of users. Managed WP hosting offers increased security protocols that include malware scans on a daily basis. The managed hosts are geared up to repel all kinds of cyber threats, including DDoS attacks. Even if in the event of hacking or malware attack, managed WordPress hosts will be in a better position to tackle the issue, as compared to shared hosts.

?          Backups: Making regular backups of your site is important. Managed WordPress service provides automated daily backups, which is not there in shared hosting.

?          Updates: Similarly, managed WordPress hosting provides automatic updates that ensure things perform at peak efficiency. These updates include the operating system on the server, PHP, MySQL, etc. and WordPress itself.

There are many more advantages of managed WordPress hosting, such as better support, better uptime, etc. However, managed hosting also suffers from some disadvantages, such as a higher price tag (News - Alert), limited plugins, inflexible structure, and some more.

Conclusion

It is evident that managed WordPress hosting is far more advantageous for the success of your online business. However, if finances are a constraint, start with shared hosting and then graduate to managed WordPress hosting. This shift will certainly prove your money’s worth.

Author Bio:

Merin Mathew is an expert in Content Marketing and Link Building consultant. She handles lead generation, PR, and the marketing strategy of the clients and drive traffic and boosts conversion for the clients.