Shared Hosting vs WordPress Hosting

Shared hosting is a type of a low-cost web hosting plan, where you share the same physical server with other sites. These servers are optimized for good performance, but sharing the same server with other websites sometimes might cause performance and security problems.

In contrast to Dedicated hosting where a single site has a server that works only for itself, the shared hosting shares its resources with many other websites and this is why shared hostings are one of the cheapest available hosting solutions.

In a simple sense, WordPress hosting is a hosting plan, which is optimized to serve WordPress’s needs and enhance its performance and security.

It also includes one-click installs for WordPress, which makes it very easy to set up and install your website. Some hosting providers also offer automatic updates. The two main types of WordPress hosting are shared WordPress hosting and managed WordPress hosting.

Just like the Shared Hosting, the shared WordPress hosting your site shares the resources of the server with the sites of other users.
However, the shared WordPress hosting offers more tools and useful features, that can help you enhance your website and run it much easier.
Such features include the one-click installation, automatic updates, free speed optimization plugins, backups, and many others.

Managed WordPress Hosting is a more advanced and better hosting solution for WordPress websites. “Managed” means that the hosting provider offers its services and help to take care of the processes that occur behind the scene of your website. This means monitoring of the sites, monitoring of the servers, updates, and many more.

Speed
On top of that, the managed WordPress hosting plans typically offer faster speeds, because of better hardware;

Caching
More advanced server-side caching, which is one of the most important things when it comes to the speed of your WordPress website. WordPress users tend to improve caching with plugins, but they can’t compare to the optimization that could be provided by the hosting company.

Enhanced Security
With a managed plan you usually get some advanced security measurements, including specific WordPress firewalls as well as regular scans, which are very important for the health of any WordPress website.

Staging
Many hosting providers offer a staging environment for their managed plans, where you can easily test your site and functionalities before publishing it alive.

Deciding which hosting plan to use could still be a hard choice for you. However, if you make the comparison directly, you can easily make the decision. Especially if you are just starting with WordPress and your main criteria is the price. As we already mentioned, shared hosting is very cheap. This makes it a perfect option for beginners and people who are new in the world of WordPress and want to learn how to work with it.

However, WordPress hosting plans are usually better and more carefully designed to face the needs of a WordPress site, and their overall price is not much bigger than the average shared hosting plans.