Step Up Your Hosting

Hosting is sort of like the neighborhood where your website lives on the internet. You can take good care of your website, but it will still be affected by things going on in your neighborhood. In this article, we’ll look at options for improving your hosting or switching web hosts completely.

Switch to Managed WordPress Hosting

One of the best ways to keep your website running smoothly is to switch to a web host that specializes in WordPress. This is also known as managed WordPress hosting. There are so many benefits of high-quality, premium WordPress hosting:

• Automatic and rock-solid backups
• Firewalls
• Automated monitoring
• Malware removal / hack fix
• Staging website to test updates
• Websites don’t share resources with other websites on your account
• Knowledgeable staff who can help you when problems arise

As a bonus, your website will load more quickly than on cheaper web hosts too. If you are operating an online store, it’s a no-brainer to use premium WordPress hosting. You can’t afford lost sales from when your site is broken.

Saves You Money

I can’t afford a premium web host

It’s understandable to think twice about upgrading your hosting because of cost. But actually premium web hosting saves you money.

Replaces the need for backup plugins and services. UpdraftPlus and BlogVault, our recommended backup solutions, costs $70 and $149 respectively. And that doesn’t include security and malware removal services.

Saves you time if the worst happens. With premium web hosting, their backups are much more integrated and therefore easier to restore. If time is money, premium web hosting saves you money.

Less need for freelancers. Usually when something goes wrong and you can’t figure it out, you’ll need someone else ASAP. But premium web hosting have support staff available via chat that can replace that need. This alone is worth the extra cost.

More than just hosting. To grow your website, you’ll eventually want to invest in extras like a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and WAF (Web Application Firewall). Premium web hosts frequently bundle in these features at no extra cost, so you save money in the long run.

Recommended managed WordPress hosts

The options below are web hosts that we’ve worked with extensively.

Visit Kinsta

Direct link to Kinsta

Kinsta

We talk about Kinsta all the time, but that’s cause we absolutely love them since they check all of the boxes above. They are the best web host that we have ever used. Starts from $30/mo.

Visit Flywheel

Direct link to Flywheel

Flywheel

Flywheel is a super user-friendly web host. They may not have as many features as Kinsta, but they are delightful to work with, and they start at just $15/mo.

Visit WPMUDEV

Direct link to WPMUDEV

WPMUDEV Hosting

This hybrid managed hosting plan comes with WPMUDEV Pro plugins (including Smush Pro), live chat support, and even 10 free @yourdomain email accounts per site. All this starting at $15/mo.

Important note: Managed WordPress hosts only host WordPress sites. Unfortunately that means they will discourage you from hosting non-WordPress sites. Many WordPress hosts also don’t offer email accounts, although you can easily find other options for email hosting.

Improve Your Hosting Environment

If you’re not ready to upgrade to a managed WordPress host, here are several things you can do to improve your hosting environment instead.

Upgrade PHP

Upgrading PHP to the latest versions will result in a faster and more secure WordPress website. PHP is the programming language that WordPress is built on. New versions are released regularly with improvements and more importantly, security enhancements.

The steps for upgrading PHP differs on each web host, so if you are unsure, please consult your web host’s knowledgebase or contact their support team.

Avoid sub-directory hosting

Many web hosts with older hosting control panels tend to put add-on sites into the public_html root directory together with the main site. Here’s a visual explanation:

In the situation above, all the sites share the same public_html directory. If one of these sites were to get infected with malware, the infection could easily jump to the other sites.

You don’t have to worry about this with managed WordPress hosts — each site is completely isolated from others.

A better arrangement would be to put each site in the home directory e.g.

To switch to this layout, you will need to:

1. Move the add-on site files to its own directory
2. Update the document root of the add-on domain

This process is beyond the scope of this guide so you’ll have to contact your web host support to implement this for you.