When you shop for WordPress hosting, you quickly run into two big families: shared hosting, which is very affordable, and the virtual private server (VPS), which costs more. The price difference is real. So is the difference in service.
Shared hosting: an apartment building
On shared hosting, your site shares one server with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of other sites. The processor, memory and disk are shared.
- The upside: price, often a few dollars a month, and simple management.
- The noisy neighbour: if another site on the server gets a lot of traffic or comes under attack, yours slows down.
- Strict limits: number of PHP processes, memory, execution time. A WooCommerce store in a busy period hits them fast.
- Little control: server configuration, PHP version and caching are imposed.
Shared hosting works well for a small, low-traffic brochure site, especially when you’re just starting out.
A VPS: a house of your own
A VPS is a slice of a server reserved for your sites. Resources are guaranteed, and the server can be tuned specifically for WordPress.
- Steady performance: nobody else uses your resources.
- Custom configuration: Redis caching, a recent PHP version, a database tuned for your sites.
- Better-isolated security: a hole in a stranger’s site doesn’t affect yours.
The catch: an unmanaged VPS takes server administration skills. System updates, firewall, backups, monitoring: if nobody handles them, a VPS can be less safe than good shared hosting.
Managed VPS: the best of both
That’s the model I chose at cabana.dev: all my hosting runs on VPS, and I take care of the server. In practice:
- Frequent backups: a daily backup on the server, and external backups as often as every hour. For an online store, an hour of lost orders is already a lot.
- Monitoring every minute: each site is checked continuously. If a site goes down, I know within a minute, often before the client does.
- Caching and performance: Redis page and object caching, Cloudflare CDN and up-to-date PHP.
- Security: web application firewall, brute-force protection and properly configured SSL.
- Uptime: 99.95% guaranteed, with a failover option for critical sites.
How to choose
- Shared hosting is enough if your site is a simple, low-traffic brochure site that can live with a few hours of downtime.
- Move to a managed VPS if you sell online, if your site brings in customer inquiries, if you’ve already had slowdowns or a hack, or if you simply don’t want to think about it anymore.
Ask yourself one simple question: what would a day without your website cost you? If the answer is more than a few dollars, the price difference with a managed VPS pays for itself quickly.
Not sure? Tell me about your site and I’ll tell you honestly whether you need a VPS.
Your WordPress site deserves better?
Fast, secure, closely managed hosting.