WordPress Hosting

An often overlooked but essential component of running a successful business and website is web hosting, specifically WordPress hosting. Choosing the best WordPress hosting service for your WordPress website’s needs can improve your site in a number of ways, all of which will directly lead to a better SEO score, allowing your website to outperform your competitors.

There are various different types of WordPress hosting options available such as free, shared, VPS, dedicated, and managed WordPress hosting. Before we dive into those specifics, it would be best to explore the basics around what exactly WordPress Hosting and Web hosting is.

What is Hosting?

Web hosting comes in many forms

Web hosting comes in many forms, but the main purpose of the service is to allow businesses, organisations, and individuals to make their websites or apps visible on the internet. Whether they’re using a dedicated server, or sharing resources, every website is hosted on a server which is either run by the site owner or by a host. In order to find a website, you must type its domain name or URL into your browser and then your computer will connect to the server where the website is hosted, with the webpage delivered onto your screen, via the web host.

This host is usually a larger company

This host is usually a larger company which acts as a web hosting service provider, and are known simply as web hosts. Essentially, hosting is similar to hiring a book publisher to print your book and place it in bookstores where customers can buy it. Without a hosting account of some sort, having your website seen by customers would be as difficult as trying to get someone to buy a manuscript right off your desk.

“Without a hosting account of some sort, getting your website seen by customers would be as difficult as trying to get someone to buy a manuscript right off your desk.”

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is a free

WordPress is a free, open source content management system that requires a hosting environment with a MySQL database and PHP language, provided by a web host, in order to function and make your WordPress-powered website available on the net. These elements are the basic requirements needed to host and display a WordPress website on the internet.

Basic Requirements

Once these basic requirements have been met, the next step is to consider additional WordPress-specific services that are included in WordPress hosting plans, as these will give you maximum convenience and peace of mind when it comes to the running of your website. These WordPress-specific services include security features, performance boosters and other managed solutions that can be essential to the success of your website.

WordPress Hosting

Web Hosting Versus WordPress Hosting for WordPress Websites

Due to the large number of website creators using WordPress, several web hosting providers have chosen to offer managed WordPress hosting. A web hosting account with one of these providers would allow you to get your WordPress websites hosted through the provider’s servers. When we say “WordPress hosting” we refer to a web hosting service that supports WordPress specifically.

The differentiating factor between hosts focused on WordPress and other, regular ones is in their expertise and dedication to WordPress, usually offering superior support and features. The main benefit of managed WordPress hosting is that you have very little to worry about. Managed WordPress hosts optimise your site for performance, making sure that your site is secure, performing at its best and receiving regular back ups.

Essentially, the bottom line is that managed WordPress hosting is hassle free, fast, and high-quality hosting that can come with support from staff with lots of WordPress experience. Non-specialised web hosts on the other hand, can’t offer the same access that a WordPress host has to numerous WordPress hosting features.

“it is easy to see why many website owners are hesitant about handing over their sites to web hosts that could be squeezing them for every penny they have.”

Grow your client base with the right wordpress hosting

Why You Shouldn't Host With a Regular Web Host for Your WordPress Website

Hidden Costs

While it may seem like a cheaper option on the surface, it’s often the case that a non-WordPress specific hosting service will charge their clients numerous additional fees in order to make hosting profitable.

Shared hosts makes a lot of their money by upselling on items like migrations, domain registrations, renewal fees and SSL certificates, all of which come with their own raft of hidden fees that make their services ultimately more expensive than a WordPress Specific web host.

Resource Scarcity

However, the biggest issue of all when it comes to untrustworthy web hosting is the inherent drop in quality of service. With cheap plans bringing in a large number of customers, web hosts usually overcrowd their servers to consolidate resources, which can see your website hosted on the same server as 500+ other people.

Overcrowded servers cause slow speeds, packet loss, and a whole host of issues that can ultimately harm your Word website and your users’ experience. As such, it is imperative that you find a host that has a large amount of server resources to host your site on, or better yet, opt for a WordPress hosting plan provided by dedicated WordPress hosts.

A WordPress specific hosting plan comes without any of the risks mentioned above, as the specificity of the web host means you will be paying a slightly higher price for a much greater service. So what exactly does managed WordPress hosting provide?

Hidden Throttling

When it comes to web hosting, it’s all about volume. More often than not, web hosts will attempt to get your business by offering their “unlimited resource” plan at a cheaper price than their WordPress competitors.

However, in the web world there is no such concept as unlimited resources. Untrustworthy hosts will throttle the clients who use up the majority of their resources, and then demand they pay more in order to ‘fix’ their speeds. This is a commonly used, but ultimately disingenuous business tactic put in place by web hosts who offer cheap services, so they can make back their money.

In the end, you have a vicious cycle of the hosting company pushing cheap plans, signing up customers who they hope won’t use a lot of resources. They will then demand they purchase upsells when they require more resources than the host is willing to lend, again, raising the costs much higher than those of reliable, WordPress specific, hosting services.

Don't get fooled with Hidden Costs

Why You Should Choose Managed WordPress Hosting

Web development and web design are fields that are jam-packed with “experts”. Despite this, finding a team that genuinely cares about your business and works hard to build you an exceptional website is not always easy. To ensure you are going to be happy with the results of your investment in web development and design, you should:

Superior Support

The number one reason you should choose managed WordPress hosting for your website is the superior support provided by its hosts. As managed WordPress hosting providers only deal with the WordPress platform they don’t have to split their priorities and cater to other hosting platforms such as Drupal, Magento, or any other type of software.

Typically, these WordPress support teams that focus on the one area will become experts in that area as they don’t have to learn multiple support platforms, which almost always guarantees a higher quality service from WordPress specialised hosts.

Higher Performance

The second reason to choose a managed WordPress hosting provider is that their environments are fine-tuned to work with WordPress. If you choose a shared host or DIY hosting option, your website will typically be forced to run on more bare-bone machines, and you will need to spend time installing software and optimising to obtain the same speeds that a managed WordPress host offers out of the box. In fact, more often than not when dealing with a shared host, there won’t be anything you can do to achieve the speeds you require as their systems simply can’t handle the strain.

Many managed WordPress specific hosts implement server-level caching and/or full page caching. What that means is that with managed WordPress specific hosts there’s no hassle in figuring out the fastest caching plugin because you won’t need one. This alone can save you a lot of frustration, as caching plugins are never fun to deal with, and in most scenarios, server-level caching is much faster than any plugin.

Guaranteed Safety

What would you do if you suddenly lost everything? You should always be prepared for the worst-case scenario, by having backups of your WordPress site. A quality managed WordPress hosting provider will always include automatic backups for no additional charge, making them the obvious choice for keeping your website files safe and secure.

With shared hosts, backups are generally only included in higher-cost plans, and if you go down the DIY route with a VPS, you’ll usually have to set up your backup system, as well as VPS snapshots. This all adds up to much more than you’d be saving by choosing a DIY route.

Secure WordPress Hosting

The other aspect of security that is just, if not more important than consistent back ups, is constant protection from malicious software. Typically, shared hosts don’t provide any assistance in their shared hosting environments if you’re hacked or encounter malware. This goes for the DIY VPS route as well, as you would have to manage your own security.

However, many managed WordPress hosting providers include support if your site is hacked, and they have systems in place to protect you from different types of malware. Beyond the server-level security, your account security is also critical. Luckily, WordPress hosting providers usually ensure that they offer two factor authentication making it extremely difficult to access your account. If someone does manage to, the host will be able to cut all forms of access and save your website before any damage is done.

Built With Scalability in Mind

Another critical aspect for any host is scalability. When it comes to shared hosting, your only option is to upgrade to a more expensive plan when you outgrow your resources, hoping that the host doesn’t suspend your account in the meantime until you can pay. Eventually, with a shared host, you will reach a point where they will force you to migrate to a dedicated server, a time-consuming process that will have you constantly worrying about watching your limits.

The DIY VPS route is much easier to scale, but sometimes this requires a little more server knowledge to expand disks, etc. However, managed WordPress hosting providers handle all of this for you. If you’re going over their pre-defined limits, they will simply notify you, and if required, an upgrade is just a click away, usually free of charge and without any interruption in service.

Managed Service Benefits

Another very useful advantage is the inclusion of managed services benefits, which are at the core of what you’re paying for when you choose a ‘managed’ hosting plan. This means that the WordPress hosting team will deal with all your website maintenance tasks and needs. Without managed services, you, as the website owner, are responsible for taking care of the WordPress maintenance. This requires resources, technical know-how, and additional purchases of supporting software.

Consequently, when you choose managed WordPress services, they will include a wide range of services such as scaling of hosting resources such as CPU, RAM and storage space. As your website grows, you will need more hosting resources to handle the incoming traffic load, and when you’re managed by a dedicated WordPress host, this can be easily facilitated by the managing team without you having to worry about the specifics or technical factors.

Another example of managed services is optimisation of the WordPress Database. The WordPress database holds all the important information for your website such as pages, posts, form entries, cookies, plugin settings, theme settings etc. As your website grows, this database becomes bulky, and bulky WordPress databases are usually slow and require optimisation so as to not affect the overall speed of the website. The managed hosting team takes care of this independently without you having to intervene.

Additionally you’ll enjoy a plethora of smaller benefits such as, free domain delegation or a free SSL certificate, automatic WordPress updates and WordPress installation that comes with the expertise and experienced customer support from WordPress web hosts.
Managed WordPress hosting is the perfect option for people who do not have the time to deal with the technical side of running, optimising and maintaining a WordPress site, but have enough technical understanding to know that their website is safe in the hands of a WordPress hosting specialist.

Some of the results you can expect

IT Services Brisbane

PRODUCTS
NEW WEBSITE
GROWTH ACCELERATE PLUS

Brisbane

24 months ago, IT Services Brisbane had one part time employee with Director Hollie O’Byrne working full time. After 18 months working with EFOUR they are a 10 man team and looking to expand through Australia.

500%

Increase in revenue

20x

Return on marketing investment

80%

Increase in visibility

Enable Exercise

PRODUCTS
GBP LOCAL EXPANSION

Sydney

Enable Exercise engaged EFOUR Digital marketing to provide Managed Google Business Profile services. Within 2 months of starting Enable Exercise had an increase of 300% in Leads and have recently had to change business locations to accomodate their growth in their team.

325%

Increase in Leads

7x

Return on marketing investment

210%

Increase in Google Maps Visibility

Critical Care

PRODUCTS
GBP LOCAL ACTIVATION
NEW WEBSITE

Brisbane

Critical Care initially engaged EFOUR to provide Google Business Profile management. This turned into a new website build and Google Profile management. This has resulted in 400% increase in leads.

410%

Increase in leads

15x

Return on marketing investment

230%

Increase in Google Maps Visibility

Some recent websites we’ve built

Russell's Garage Doors

IT Services Brisbane

Direct Focus Solutions

Locations we service

Digital Marketing Australia

Testimonials

Our awards & accreditation

2018

2019

2019 & 2020

2019

2020

Frequently Asked Questions

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