What is the Difference Between Hosting and WordPress Hosting?

When browsing for new web hosting providers you oftentimes will see specialized hosting plans such as WordPress Hosting. Furthermore, seeing options for Shared, VPS, and Dedicated Hosting, can all be confusing for some users. 

In this article, we will simplify the difference between traditional and WordPress plans for better clarity when researching hosting companies.

Understanding Web Hosting

In the simplest terms, web hosting is a type of internet service that allows you to put your website online for a price. 

Think of it as renting an apartment, condo, or house, all of your belongings are the assets and code of your website. Friends and family know where to find you when you invite them over to dinner, and the mailman knows where to deliver your physical mail. 

With a web hosting plan, your users can find your website, interact with your products, and, in plans that have email services included, email servers know where to send your email. 

Without web hosting providers, site owners would need their own server infrastructure to get their website online, or host it directly from their computer at home. However, this would mean if there was a power outage or other issues happened at home, their website would go down as well. 

Web hosting is an efficient, affordable, and secure way to get your website online and stay online for your end users to interact with it.

A Short Introduction to Different Types of Hosting Services

Within the realm of web hosting, there are three main types of traditional hosting plans. Shared, VPS, Dedicated, and Cloud hosting.

Shared Hosting – This type of hosting that allows multiple users with individual website accounts to utilize one hosting server. This is usually the most affordable hosting option as resources and server space are shared amongst accounts. VPS Hosting – In a Virtual Private Server Hosting plan, a physical server is also shared among a smaller number of user accounts. These virtual servers are separate from each other and give users dedicated resources, thus providing them with more power and control over their server. Dedicated Hosting – With Dedicated hosting, you have an entire server dedicated to your account. This means full access to the entirety of its resources, space, and the added perk of Root Access. Cloud Hosting – These types of plans host your account and website(s) on multiple servers. This network of virtual and physical servers provides further flexibility and power over your account, but these plans are sometimes less managed than others. 

What is WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) currently available. Nearly 43% of websites created worldwide are built using WordPress.

One thing that draws a lot of users to WordPress is that it is an open source software and easy to use.

WordPress also has a large number of themes and plugins, allowing you to create a completely personalized website experience for your customers.

Because of its wide availability and usage, WordPress is also updated often and has different plugins that can help you with security, backups, performance, and website management.

What is WordPress Hosting?

Now that you know the different types of hosting plans, and what WordPress is, let’s dive into what makes WordPress Hosting plans great. As a majority of servers are set up for a variety of CMS types such as Drupal, Joomla, and Moodle, WordPress hosting needs to be set up differently, no matter what type of traditional hosting the plan is built on.

Types of WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting plans are traditional hosting plans that are specifically designed and optimized to host websites built on WordPress. 

As covered above, you can find WordPress hosting plans in Shared hosting environments, as well as in WordPress optimized VPS plans. 

These plans will share similar settings general Shared and VPS hosting plans have; however they will have the added features such as the ones detailed below. 

WordPress One-Click Installation or Pre-Installed – This is to ensure that you can get started on your website the moment you purchase your plan. Premium Themes and Plugins – Oftentimes a perk that attracts freelancers and web designers, being able to access or purchase premium plugins and tools are popular features to offer. Advanced Caching and Optimization Tools – Website speed is one of the main concerns users have with WordPress, as having the ability to edit and modify your site with plugins and more can slow it. WordPress hosting plans, therefore, offer optimized servers with features such as Redis Caching, NVME SSDs, and more. 

Similarly, Managed WordPress hosting plans have risen in popularity recently.

These plans are Cloud Hosting plans made specifically for WordPress. They oftentimes will have a simple-to-use interface with easy access to your WordPress management and building tools.

As its name suggests, Managed WordPress hosting plans will have a certain level of management by your hosting provider. 

This might come in the form of server updates and maintenance tools, among other things. These will vary depending on your hosting provider, so we recommend reviewing their features and FAQ pages to fully understand what you are going to be getting on a hosting plan.

InMotion Central 

InMotion Central is InMotion Hosting’s newest Managed WordPress hosting plan. 

Host your website on fully-isolated VPS servers with NVMe SSD drives that are optimized with our UltraStack Technology and Redis Persistent Object Caching for the fastest WordPress experience.

InMotion Hosting’s servers are 100% owned by the company, not leased from Google Cloud or AWS. Because of this, we offer more resources to customers at a reasonable price.

How to know if WordPress Hosting is for You

If you already have a website built in WordPress, great! WordPress hosting would be a good option for you. 

If you have not built your site yet, have worked with a different type of CMS, and are thinking about switching it up for your next venture, or even redesigning your current website, WordPress hosting is a great option regardless. 

WordPress is easy to use, simple to modify and is actively getting updates every year. We highly recommend WordPress to beginners or current site owners who want to try something new, and WordPress Hosting is a good place to start. 

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