Cheap Alternatives to Managed WordPress Hosting

Recently, I wrote about the growing number of web hosts offering managed WordPress hosting plans. Although WordPress is probably the most popular website content management system, not everyone needs a managed hosting plan. Web hosting companies such as WP Engine and DreamHost have excellent managed hosting plans for WordPress sites. However, they do cost substantially more than most web hosting packages.

If you can’t afford a managed WordPress hosting plan but still want to get some of the advantages, there are some steps you can take. While you can’t totally duplicate what you get with a managed WordPress hosting plan, the good news is that there are many plugins which give you added functionality that managed hosting plans provide—and they won’t cost you extra money. You just need a shared web hosting account with one of the better rated hosting companies. Since WordPress has become immensely popular, it is readily available from these web hosts.

Improving Speed and Load Times
It’s imperative today that your website speed or load times are as fast as possible. A managed WP hosting plan may implement some type of custom technology or caching system to speed up your performance. But you can reduce your page load times and improve your site’s speed by installing a caching plugin. The two most popular cache plugins for WordPress are W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. Both can be found in the WordPress plugin repository. It is highly recommended that you install a caching plugin for your WordPress site to improve performance.

Security
Everyone agrees that security is a major concern with websites. And while managed WordPress hosting plans will include some type of security to try and protect your site, there are options you can implement yourself on your non-managed site such as installing software like SiteLock Security (iPage provides this free with their shared hosting plan). Additionally, there are a number of security plugins available for your WordPress site. At a minimum, I’d suggest you install a plugin like Limit Login Attempts which discourages attacks from malicious programs that try to repeatedly guess your password and login to your WP site.

Top Quality Hardware
One of the big selling points of some managed WordPress hosting plans is the inclusion of optimized or scalable servers. That may be true, but my experience has been that if you choose an established, highly rated web hosting company, you’re going to get great quality hardware—certainly more than capable of handling your WordPress website. The key here is to do a little research at the time you choose your hosting plan (even a Shared Hosting Plan) and you should be able to find a web host that employs top end hardware that is fine for WP sites.

Support and Search Engine Optimization
Customer support is definitely a big selling point of managed hosting plans. If you think you’re going to need extra special attention devoted to you and your site, then a managed WP plan may be the way to go. However, again it has been my experience (and I’ve had many WordPress sites over the years) that a quality web hosting company will provide excellent support (including WordPress) to even their shared hosting customers. Even for less experienced website owners, this tech support is more than enough to help you keep your site running smoothly.

The purpose of this article isn’t to suggest that the above steps are a substitute or replacement for managed WordPress web hosting. Clearly, there are situations that may require a premium hosting plan. And a managed WordPress hosting plan will take care of many tasks so you can focus more on creating your website content. However, many WordPress site owners really don’t require a managed hosting package. And by implementing the above functionality via plugins, you can improve the performance of your site without having to shell out more money.