What is WordPress Hosting?

What is WordPress Hosting title image

Are you launching your first blog, setting up an online store, or looking to enhance an existing website? You might be asking yourself, “What is WordPress Hosting?”

In this article, we will define WordPress hosting, distinguish it from other forms of web hosting, and discuss its advantages. This guide aims to inform you about the critical aspects of WordPress hosting to help you make an informed decision for your website’s hosting needs.

WordPress Hosting Definition

WordPress hosting is a specialized type of web hosting service that is specifically optimized for websites powered by the WordPress content management system. It caters to the unique requirements of WordPress websites, offering optimized environments and tailored features to ensure seamless performance, security, and ease of use.

A non-specialized hosting service optimizes its servers for general use and is not specific to a CMS such as WordPress.

At its core, WordPress hosting provides the foundation for your WordPress website to thrive. It goes beyond basic web hosting by offering additional benefits and optimizations specific to the WordPress platform.

WordPress Hosting offers pre-installed software, specialized support, performance optimizations, and enhanced security measures.

Types of WordPress Hosting

When it comes to WordPress Hosting, your website’s performance, security, and scalability take center stage. In this section, we’ll take a closer look at the three main types of WordPress Hosting: Shared WordPress Hosting, WordPress VPS Hosting, and Dedicated WordPress Hosting. Discover the differences to find out which solution is best for you.

Shared WordPress Hosting

Shared WordPress Hosting is a popular choice for those starting their digital journey. With this option, multiple websites share resources on a single server, making it a cost-effective solution. It offers an excellent balance between affordability and convenience, making it an ideal choice for small businesses, bloggers, and personal websites.

Shared WordPress Hosting providers manage server maintenance, security updates, and technical aspects, allowing you to focus on content creation and website management. Although resources are shared, reputable providers ensure that your website enjoys reliable performance and essential security measures.

WordPress VPS Hosting

For websites that require more resources, reliability, and control, WordPress VPS Hosting is the way to go. VPS stands for Virtual Private Server, providing a dedicated portion of a physical server with allocated resources solely for your website.

With WordPress VPS Hosting, you have greater control over server configurations, increased storage and bandwidth, and improved scalability. This solution is suitable for growing businesses, high-traffic websites, and those seeking enhanced performance and security. Enjoy the benefits of a dedicated environment while staying within a reasonable budget.

Dedicated WordPress Hosting

When it comes to unrivaled performance and ultimate control, Dedicated WordPress Hosting is the pinnacle. With this option, you have an entire server exclusively dedicated to your website, offering unmatched performance, security, and customization possibilities.

Dedicated WordPress Hosting provides ample resources to handle high traffic and complex websites. It is the preferred choice for large enterprises, resource-intensive applications, and mission-critical websites. Enjoy lightning-fast loading times, robust security measures, and the ability to optimize the server environment to meet your specific needs.

What is Included in WordPress Hosting?

We will now go over some of the features that should be included in a quality WordPress Hosting plan. Keep in mind that all of InMotion’s WordPress Hosting plans automatically include these options.

WordPress Pre-Installed

WordPress Hosting typically includes pre-installed WordPress software, allowing you to skip the manual installation process and start building your website right away. This convenience saves time and simplifies the setup process, especially for users who may not be familiar with technical aspects.

Free Domain

Along with hosting you will also need a domain name, also known as a URL. A good WordPress Hosting plan will often include a domain name registration for free. This means that you will have a website up and running faster without having to register a domain separately.

Free SSL Certificate

A free SSL certificate is provided with all InMotion WordPress Hosting plans and allows visitors to be assured that your website is secure. It means that the padlock will show up in the browser when people visit your website. This is especially important if you are running an online eCommerce store.

Automatic WordPress Updates

As your WordPress site matures, dealing with updates of both the WordPress version and the plugins that you have loaded on your site will be a constant and common issue. Automated updates help save your sanity, but equally important is having the ability to rollback an update. Your site may have theme or plugin requirements that can be affected by an update.

Having the ability to roll back an update can give you the time to make the required adjustments. It can also give you the time to prepare an alternate solution for a necessary function of your WordPress site that may have been affected by an update.

Automatic Backups and Site Restoration

Sites get hacked, websites break with updates, and sometimes catastrophic events can bring down our websites. The best WordPress hosting providers offer automated backups and site restorations to combat these problems. You will want to choose a company which offers these services.

Free Website Migration

WordPress site owners moving to a WordPress specific host will commonly have the task of moving their site from another server. Having the option for a website migration to be done for you is an enormous time-saver. We offer free website transfers so you won’t have to worry about moving your existing site to us! We work hard to make sure you don’t have any downtime or loss of information.

WordPress Security 

Hackers and spammers are everywhere. You want the security and comfort of extra protection. WordPress hosts tend to be more vigilant about platform security with malware scans, firewalls, DDoS prevention, and regular backups. Additionally, managed services monitor their hosted sites 24/7 to help with site uptime while protecting it from possible data breaches.

Performance and Reliability

WordPress hosting should deliver speed and reliability without the sudden need to upgrade when you get a spike in traffic. WordPress specific hosts optimize their servers specifically for the WordPress database-centric nature of the application. They also help you to understand and optimize your site to improve performance and efficiency when needed.

InMotion uses NVMe SSD (solid-state drive) storage, which allows data to be read 20-40 times faster than a traditional hard disk drive. This also means your data is accessible quickly for all of your visitors.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Every hosting plan has bandwidth but how much is the key difference. Bandwidth allows data to be transferred between your site and customers, and the Internet in general.

Some companies offer limits on plans, in turn limiting the amount of traffic you can have. The best WordPress hosts offer unlimited bandwidth.

Advanced Caching

A good WordPress host should also include server-side caching. This allows your site to be delivered faster to visitors. You get even more control if you are able to customize the caching setup for your specific WordPress site.

InMotion Hosting uses UltraStack on our WordPress servers to deliver increased site speeds and faster page loading to both our customers and their end users. Our UltraStack infrastructure uses servers optimized for WordPress, Apache and NGINX Reverse Proxy, PHP Workers, advanced caching layers, and Dedicated OpCode Cache Pools for the best hosting experience possible.

Money-Back Guarantee

Most web hosting companies offer 30- and 45-day guarantees, but we go the extra mile to make sure you’re happy. We offer a 90-day money-back guarantee because we’re so confident that you’ll be pleased with our hosting and expert service.

WordPress Hosting Benefits

Full Control

With all of the available website builder tools out there, you might be wondering why WordPress Hosting is so popular and how it can work for you.

Sure, many of those hosted builder sites make it simple to get started, but down the road, when you want to do something more advanced, you have to pay more money.

Whether you use a builder like Wix, Weebly, or a social media business page, you don’t own the site itself, and you would be forever locked into that provider’s network.

Speed

If you have a standard shared server, it will be running dozens of content management systems (CMSs) to power hundreds of websites. Having all of these different systems loaded can slow down the performance of the server.

However, if you’re running your site on a WordPress-specific server, then WordPress is the only CMS loaded on the server. That means that the server can be configured specifically to handle WordPress and to use its resources properly. This can result in faster speeds, meaning that your website will load quicker and updates will be installed faster.

Security

This is another area that allows WordPress web hosting to excel. With WordPress, you have a CMS that is secure. By focusing on WordPress, your hosting company can ensure that all of the WordPress-specific threats are taken into consideration. They can then protect you from these specific threats.

Uptime

Another thing that you want in a web host is a good reputation for uptime. Uptime is the percentage of time that a host’s servers are online and working. InMotion offers a 99.9% guaranteed uptime and they offer a free month of service if they do not meet that uptime goal.

Is WordPress Hosting Right for You?

Traditional hosting plans are simply just for hosting your data. You are responsible for updating your site, security, management, and other technical oversight.

With a WordPress hosting plan, that is changed. Here are some focus points on how they differ from traditional hosting plans.

  • Managed – Hosting plans centered around WordPress are managed. This means the hosting company will pre-install WordPress and manage all the updates, security, backups, etc. All you need to worry about is your content.
     
  • Support – Building a website can be tough, and doing it without support or guidance can be even tougher. Then you have hosting, which can be another stress level on top of managing the website. Any good WordPress hosting plan will have support to help you along with whatever you need, and it should be available at all times.

    Another thing you should look for is guides. Does the hosting company have tutorials you can read or follow for building a website or answering hosting questions? Sure you can Google answers, but wouldn’t you rather have answers coming directly from the company you’re using?
     
  • Security – All hosting plans have security and if not, don’t dare use them. However, with a managed plan, your host is always improving the security of your data and website. Hosting companies need to stay up to date with new security issues or threats, as well as with the best ways to stop those threats or fix those issues. Due to this, the companies will be updating the security of your site as soon as there is a new update available. This again allows you to focus on your content and stress a little less.
     
  • Performance – When choosing a traditional hosting plan, you will be responsible for optimizing the server you are on and ensuring that the performance isn’t suffering. With a managed hosting plan there is no need to worry about those things. The hosting company will utilize its resources and enable your site to remain speedy when traffic is high. Who doesn’t love a speedy website?

Is a WordPress hosting plan right for you? If less stress, a better-functioning site, world-class support, and up-to-date security are right for you, then yes. We offer a variety of options when it comes to hosting WordPress sites, and we can assist and host sites of all sizes.

Choose InMotion Hosting as the best web host for WordPress and you’ll find a company that cares for your continued success in your ventures on the internet.

If you need a new home for your WordPress site, look no further than InMotion’s WordPress Hosting solutions for secure, optimized, budget-friendly servers.

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Carrie Smaha
Carrie Smaha Senior Manager Marketing Operations

Carrie enjoys working on demand generation and product marketing projects that tap into multi-touch campaign design, technical SEO, content marketing, software design, and business operations.

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