Downtime is an integral part of having a website. Your business website, online store, or even a WordPress blog, will not be up and running one hundred percent of the time – periods of downtime are bound to happen for one reason or another.

Still, you shouldn’t let that dissuade you from doing whatever you can to prevent your WordPress website downtime. There’s a difference between a website that’s down a couple of hours a year and one that’s only up a couple of hours a year.

Before we share our tips, let’s go through some common causes of website downtime and explain why downtime matters.

What Causes Website Downtime?

The fact that your website is down doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something wrong with it. Server maintenance is a perfectly normal occurrence that can cause website downtime. Website maintenance is another cause of website downtime, and you can perform it even when nothing is wrong with the website.

Still, even these benign reasons for downtime can become an issue if they happen too often. A server that goes down for maintenance for more than a couple of hours a year isn’t good. A website that requires lots of maintenance might benefit from a serious looking into and troubleshooting.

Then, there are bad things that can happen to your website and cause it to be unreachable. It can undergo a DDoS attack. It can experience a crippling plugin incompatibility issue. You can put a piece of code on your website that just – breaks it.

Sometimes, the things you do to prevent some causes of website downtime might become causes of downtime, too. You can use a CDN to prevent DDoS attacks or lighten the server load. Then again, using a CDN can sometimes lead to a 504 gateway timeout error. Plugins are incredibly useful for optimizing your website, but they’re among the more common causes of the 503 service temporarily unavailable error. It takes skill, patience, and sometimes trial-and-error to run a website well. Downtimes can happen, and you can cause them.

Why Does Website Downtime Matter?

The simple and most obvious reason why website downtime matters is because a website that’s down can’t perform the function you gave it when you built it. A business website that’s down does nothing for your business. An online store can’t sell when it’s not online. People can’t read your blog if they can’t reach it.

But even if you’re confident that your website visitors will come back later after they found that your website is down – which you most likely shouldn’t be – you still want your website to be up and running as much as possible.

A website that doesn’t work well also doesn’t speak well of the person or entity that’s running it. If you can’t be bothered to ensure the proper running of your website, you will look unprofessional, uncommitted, and you’ll start losing your visitors’ goodwill to stick with you through any issues your website might be experiencing.

Now that you know that some website downtime is fine, but lots of website downtime is awfully bad, let’s see what you can do to minimize it. Some of the steps might be obvious but even they bear repeating because there’s nothing as easy – or as embarrassing – as overlooking something very obvious. Here’s what to do:

Use a Good Hosting Provider and an Appropriate Service Packagee

Every hosting provider worth their salt will offer some kind of a server uptime guarantee. Usually, it’s 99.9% – the golden standard which means that, in a year, they guarantee the downtime won’t surpass the eight-and-a-half-hours threshold.

One of the ways to spot a sketchy hosting provider is by looking at what they promise – if they don’t offer any guarantees, or if they guarantee absolutes. The chances of not having a single minute of downtime during a year are slim, so no provider should be able to offer a 100% server uptime guarantee.

A hosting provider shouldn’t be able to offer incredibly good packages at ridiculously low prices. That’s another red flag and one that you should take very seriously because your service package can affect downtime.

If your website doesn’t have the resources it needs to run properly with the load it usually operates under, it will go down. You should pick a hosting provider that will let you switch to better, more expensive packages as easily as possible. When more visitors start coming in, it would be best to have the option to upgrade – the alternative is migrating to another hosting provider, and that can be a hassle.

Monitor Your Website’s Uptime

Here’s one of those obvious pieces of advice we mentioned before: you need to know that your website is down to stop it from going down in the future. You have to know the problem exists to try and solve it, right? With a website, this means monitoring its uptime.

There are several monitoring options you can choose from. Some options, such as the popular UptimeRobot, are freemium. Other options, such as Pingdom, are fee-only. While pricing is an important thing to consider, as these services with small fees tend to pile up after a time and present a sizeable expense, it’s much more important that you get the type of service you need.

For example, a free service might check your website a couple of times a day and send you an email if something is wrong, or a report stating your website’s status for the day. If that’s fine with you, great. But if that doesn’t suffice, and you need things like push notifications or SMS alerts and a more frequent check, then you should make sure you get those services even if it means spending a couple of bucks more on your website every month.

Be Careful with Plugins and Themes

Plugins and themes are a huge part of what makes using WordPress great. They can transform your website from a bland, featureless collection of pages on the web to a powerful tool for growing a business, making money, or finding new ways of self-expression.

That being said, plugins and themes are a common culprit for website downtime. Why? Because they have code, and some code doesn’t play well with other code. Incompatibility issues happen all the time. You should catch them before they do some real damage.

There are a couple of things you can do to avoid issues with plugins and themes. The easiest one would be to go through the plugin’s or theme’s documentation, reviews, or support tickets – if you can access them – and see if there are known issues.

You can also create a staging site – a copy of your website that’s not available to the public – and test any plugin or theme or even a setting before you implement it on your live website. Finally, choosing premium plugins and themes will sometimes give you access to support personnel, so you can have help when troubleshooting issues.

Keep Your Website Fully Optimized…

Your website might be up and running, but people still might have trouble accessing it. Slow loading times can cause people to think the website isn’t up. Bad internal links might cause some people to think that parts of the website don’t work. Badly optimized websites might contribute to some client-side errors that can cause people to not be able to access the website.

In general, if you’re running a WordPress website or any other kind of website, speed should be a major concern. You want your website to load as quickly and easily as possible because visitors might not be too keen on waiting for a slow website to load.

There are other reasons to optimize the website, too. But the bottom line is that this part of the work contributes to your website’s proper functioning and it will, either directly or indirectly, contribute to reducing downtime – actual as well as perceived.

…And Safe

Finally, you should do your best to keep your website safe, not only for your benefit but also for the benefit of all the people who use it. If you store sensitive data or process payments on your website, any neglect in the safety department might lead to real, palpable, damage to the people who’ve put their trust in you to keep their information safe.

It shouldn’t be pointed out that having a malware-free website is a good thing, and that using security plugins is a very good allocation of your resources. If you find your website is often under DDoS attacks, using services that offer DDoS protection – as some CDNs do – can help your website stay online despite the attacks.

You should also follow some safety and security best practices. You can, for example, limit login attempts as a measure against brute force attacks. You can also backup your website regularly – if something does happen, you’ll have a much easier time restoring your website to normal if there’s a backup you can use. Putting up a firewall can prevent suspicious traffic. There’s plenty you could do, and you should do whatever you can to keep your website safe.

Perform Regular Maintenance

Regular monitoring is a must, but these things can easily slip through the cracks especially in peak times when there’s a lot of other work to be done. That’s why it’s handy to come up with some sort of maintenance routine to be performed regularly, perhaps with a calendar alert to remind you. A lot of tasks can be scheduled and even automated, but you definitely want to be on top of things and creating a maintenance routine schedule can be very helpful.

The schedule can be weekly, monthly, or even daily. That’s really up to you and your website’s needs. Complex websites that get a lot of traffic and are prone to sudden spikes, such as eCommerce websites, probably need to perform maintenance checks more frequently. Smaller websites, like personal blogs, as well as portfolios, can even do it quarterly.

The maintenance routine should contain the following steps:

Distribute the Traffic Load

One of the most common reasons for website downtime is traffic overload. Traffic spikes are common for all sorts of websites, perhaps most notably for news and eCommerce ones, as they are prone to seasonal or circumstantial spikes when the traffic becomes much heavier than usual.

When this happens, the server can’t handle all the requests coming in at the same time, which may result in your website going temporarily down.

The fix for this problem is not something you can do with your website as such, and actually depends on your hosting plan. If you want to make sure your website can handle increased traffic load and to successfully scale up and down as needed, you need a hosting provider that has a global network of servers. With servers located strategically all across the globe, the content of the website is distributed to the users from the server that is nearest to them. Plus, if one data center experiences an issue or becomes overloaded, the content can still be served from another location. Combined with CDN, this guarantees excellent uptime and ensures your website can be accessed at all times, despite the traffic and server circumstances.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

While WordPress website downtime is something you can count on, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything you can to ensure your website is online as much as it can be. People usually create websites to put them online, and if yours isn’t an exception to the rule – you’ll have to take steps to prevent and reduce downtime.

Keep in mind, however, that running a website well is a balancing act, and there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Going overboard with safety plugins – installing too many of them – might become a cause of downtime in its own right. So, make sure that you’ve covered all the corners and spread around the downtime-combating measures evenly.

There are billions upon billions of possible domain names. The number of existing domain names is in the hundreds of millions. What are the chances to have your preferred domain name taken when you go to the registrar? Math would say slim.

Experience, however, proves otherwise. Coming up with a combination of letters and numbers is one thing. Making sure the combination produces a good domain name is a completely different process. There are simply not that many good ones to choose from.

This is exactly why it’s possible that, when checking domain names, you’ll find that someone has already registered your top picks. These things happen. We’ll show you, however, what your options are if it happens to you.

You’ll read about:

How to Check If a Domain Name Is Available

When you want to create a website and you’re trying to figure out that perfect name for it, you’d be smart to come up with a couple of ideas in case one of them is already taken. You can figure out the name is taken during the brainstorming or research process if you simply type the domain name into your browser’s address bar and press enter.

Three things can happen. You can visit a website, which means that your domain name is taken. You can be directed to an error page, which likely means your domain name is free for you to grab. Finally, you can be served a sales page asking you to contact whoever owns the domain name and has put it up for sale.

If you worry that visiting an unknown website poses a security risk, you can check website availability at websites such as Whois.com, a tool you might want to remember because we’ll come back to it in a moment or two. Also, some hosting providers that work as registrars might offer you to look up the domain name of your choosing online without going to the website.

In the case of bad news, which can be any news except that your preferred domain name is free to use, you can continue further in two ways. You can either do whatever you can to keep the name, or you can find hacks or alternatives that might work. Let’s explore both options a little bit.

What to Do If You Want to Keep the Name?

When you want to use a domain name that is already taken, your first course of action would be to figure out who owns it. Head back over to Whois.com and type in the address. If the contact information of the owner is available – if it’s not made private – you’ll be able to see it and contact the owner directly. If not, maybe the website itself will have some contact information about the seller.

How to Handle the Purchase of a Second-Hand Domain Name

If they’re willing to sell – great, you only have to navigate buying a domain name from a person or company you’ve only ever met online. Usually, this means using services that will help you make the exchange.

A service like Escrow can help. You and the seller agree on the terms and then you put your money in escrow at Escrow. The seller then transfers the domain name to you – something every registrar has a procedure for, you check and approve the domain name, and they get the money.

What to Do if You Can’t Purchase the Website?

Things get more complicated if they’re not willing to sell. In that case, you might try to get your lawyers involved and sue the owner for cybersquatting. Depending on how it’s handled legally in your country, you might be able to win the suit, but only if you prove that they’ve infringed on your trademark, or are generally sitting on the domain name with bad intent.

If you don’t want to get your lawyers involved, or if you simply can’t find out who the owner is, you can try purchasing the domain name with an alternative TLD. So instead of .com – we’ll suppose you went straight for it, as you always should – you can try buying the .org or .net version of the website. Keep in mind, however, that this can lead to some confusion and maybe even brand dilution.

Also keep in mind that people trust .com domains more than any other. A lot of country code TLDs are perceived as spammy (this is particularly the case with .cn and .ru). But then, there are country codes like .me that can be perfect for certain brands. TLDs like .tv are great for businesses from the entertainment, video or gaming industry. Extensions like .net, .tech and .store are also popular, trusted and can make a great fit for a variety of businesses.

In some cases, you might even manage to split your domain name into two and use the second half as the top-level domain. So, for example, you can get examp.le instead of example.com. Again, this might cause some confusion and it might work better if the domain name is made up of two words.

No Luck? Pick an Alternative

For one reason or another, you can also decide to avoid the hustle of figuring out how to get the perfect name and choose an alternative. This can be an exceedingly difficult decision if the domain name you wanted is your brand name, too, but these things happen often, and brands find ways to work around them.

You don’t want to use a name that has absolutely nothing to do with your business, blog, or whatever you tried to register. There still has to be some kind of connection to the original idea.

Expand the Original Domain Name

There are certain words you can add to the original domain name that wouldn’t distract from its meaning – they might even serve to amplify it. The exact thing you can add will vary based on the domain name, the type of business, the industry, and a whole lot of other factors.

But let’s say your domain name of choice was “something.” You can expand the domain name by adding an appropriate verb, such as “dosomething” or “buysomething” or “readsomething” and “makesomething.”

Use Related Words

There are also several kinds of related words that might work as a domain name instead of your brand or business name. Again, these will work better for some brands and businesses than others, but they still might be worth a shot.

You can, for example, use a keyword instead of the brand name. So instead of “something” you can use “beststoreinlondon,” for example, or “orlandoplumber.” In this case, the name of your business doesn’t have to match the name of the domain.

If there’s a way to make a word out of the original domain name that’s similar and brandable, you might also try to do that. So, for a magazine that’s called “something,” the website can have the domain name “somethingians.” You can let your imagination run wild, but you should always make sure that it ties somehow to the brand, business, product, or industry.

Add Location to Name

This is not a solution that can fit all brands or businesses, but it can work great for many. If you’re looking for a domain name to start a website related to a business with physical locations, like a shop, a bar, a restaurant or a cafe, a local output of a big company or franchise, you can only benefit from adding the name of the city, country or neighborhood to the name. It is good for SEO and it is good for user experience since it provides more complete information than just the name.

For instance, if you have a pet store named Paws, and it’s located in Prague, and paws dot com is, as expected, taken, you can go for pawsprague dot com, or even pawsinprague.

It’s even easier if you’re operating in an entire country or region – pawseurope or pawsgreece dot com are quite solid domain names.

Look Into Domain Hacking Options

Although it sounds like something not quite lawful or right (and it shouldn’t be confused with domain hijacking), domain hacking is actually a legitimate practice. It consists of creating a domain name that’s a combination of a word, phrase or name, and the extension, ie. of the adjacent levels of the domain name, to create a name that suggests a word. An example will explain it better – for instance, the WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has a blog with the domain name www.ma.tt. The .tt extension is the official ccTLD of Trinidad and Tobago. Clever, right?

The Montenegro ccTLD .me is a particularly productive one, and a lot of brands already use it: even Facebook has an URL version fb.me, then there’s WordPress with wp.me that redirects to wordpress.com, and a particularly smart one is ti.me, used by the famous news magazine.

Another good one is the top level country code TLD for Lybia: .ly. It’s particularly popular with lifestyle, fashion and cosmetics brands, but in a lot of other industries, too – just think of bit.ly. If you’re based in the US, but even if you’re not, you could also look into .us, to create a domain nam consisting of an adjective ending in -ous, like delicious, righteous, gorgeous, etc.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

Domain names are important, and you needn’t look further than the reseller industry for proof. When you’re choosing yours, make sure you have a couple of alternatives. If you go to the registrar determined to get one name and it turns out to be taken, you can end up signing yourself up for an unpleasant and maybe even expensive ride. It might be much better to show some flexibility – something that even big brands had to do when faced with a domain sitter who wouldn’t budge.

One of the first questions to address when starting a new WordPress website is what kind of server you need and how to pick a hosting provider based on server features. One of the many great things about WordPress is that it can work in almost any sort of environment. It’s not resource-heavy by itself, it’s easy to install even manually, and if you don’t expect much traffic right from the beginning, it doesn’t require a lot of hosting bandwidth. However, if you really want things to run smoothly and not have to upgrade your plan every once in a while, there are some WordPress server requirements to keep in mind.

All websites need a server to run on. A server is where all the files are stored, which includes media files, databases, content, and everything else. Some users have their own servers and host their own websites, while others (which is actually a majority of WordPress users) buy a hosting plan with a provider that has a number of shared or managed servers.

The sort of plan you will pick depends to a great extent on server performance. Servers that run on outdated software, have limited hardware specifications or don’t support HTTPS will still allow you to run a website, but it definitely won’t run smoothly. So, to help you avoid these situations, we’ve compiled a list of the basic WordPress server requirements that should help you pick the right specifications for your next WordPress website:

Recommended Disk Space for WordPress

Just like a computer, a server has a hard disk that has a certain amount of space on it. The WordPress installation itself is very lightweight (1GB, which is way less than what an average smartphone has) but disk space is required for additional resources, most notably for themes, plugins, media files, and especially videos. This storage affects the processing speed, which is one of the most important requirements in a web server. So in addition to looking for high processing performance, you should also look for a server that has considerable disk space, especially if your website is going to be media-heavy.

You should also consider the type of hardware used: HDD or hard disk drive is an older solution used for lower speed requirements and for data that’s not frequently used, while SSD or solid-state drive is a modern high-speed solution that’s less susceptible to physical damage.

Some providers use a combination of the two – SSD for databases and HDD for other, less sensitive resources. You will find some cheap providers that use HDD only, and it will work okay for WordPress, but for fast processing and reliable data delivery it’s probably a better idea to opt for ones that use SSD, or at least the combination of the two.

As for the size, you will find hosting anywhere from 10GB to 250GB. The lower end will work just fine for small to medium websites, online shops and personal blogs. Larger hard disks are more suitable for big websites with a lot of heavy media and a lot of traffic, massive portals or forums, as well as enterprise websites.

Recommended RAM for WordPress

RAM (Random Access Memory) plays an important role in server performance for WordPress websites. As WordPress sites handle dynamic content and user interactions, sufficient RAM ensures smooth operation and faster response times.

The WordPress software itself requires at least 512MB. However, typically, servers for WordPress require a minimum of 1GB RAM for basic functionality, and for optimal performance, 2GB or more is recommended.

RAM speed and type also impact performance, with DDR4 being a common choice for its efficiency. Higher RAM capacity allows for handling multiple concurrent requests and caching, enhancing user experience and site reliability. Ultimately, adequate RAM ensures that WordPress sites can handle traffic spikes and complex tasks efficiently.

Processing Power (CPU)

The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is something like the brain of a server, crucial for handling WordPress websites efficiently. It processes instructions, executes code, and manages tasks. A powerful CPU enhances performance, especially during high-traffic periods or when running resource-intensive plugins.

Fortunately, WordPress doesn’t demand excessive CPU power by default. Still, factors like website complexity, the amount of users accessing the site at the same time, and plugin usage impact CPU requirements. Common server CPUs include Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC series, offering varying core counts and clock speeds.

When it comes to actual values, WordPress will function on just 1.0 GHz. However, these days, instead of the GHz values, hosts focus more on the number of processing cores. Two cores perform the tasks twice as quickly as just one, and servers with five or six cores will be that much more efficient. For small WordPress sites, a server with at least a dual-core CPU suffices, but larger sites benefit from quad-core or higher CPUs to ensure smooth operation and responsiveness.

PHP Version

When you are about to install WordPress, the application itself will tell you which version of PHP is required. Right now, it’s version 8.0, or higher. Each version receives updates for up to two years. It’s always recommended to use hosting that includes the latest PHP version – but, fortunately, most of them do. If you already have WordPress installed, you should regularly check for the latest versions and update.

PHP is an open-source programming language used for dynamic interactive websites. WordPress itself is written using PHP. Using the latest version assures proper performance, faster running of processes and reduction of memory usage. In addition, it protects the website from bugs and malware.

Server Location and CDN

These days, with cloud hosting and virtual private servers, one would think that server location doesn’t matter. However, the server is still physically located somewhere, and the closer it is to your visitors, the better the website will perform for them. If your website is focused on users from a specific country or region, then you’ll obviously choose a server located in that country or region. But most WordPress websites count on international visitors, from all over the world, which is why you should opt for a hosting service with access to a global server network. Then, if the majority of your visitors is, say, from US, you will find a US-based server. Of course, your website will work fine even for visitors outside of that area, but it will perhaps be slower.

If you want to ensure the best possible performance of your WordPress website regardless of where it’s accessed from, we strongly suggest you find a host that offers access to CDN.

CDN or Content Delivery Network is a network of servers located all across the globe, storing static versions of your website. When a visitor accesses the website, it is served from the nearest possible server, assuring optimal performance and speed.

Database Management

Database management systems (DBMS) play a crucial role in WordPress websites by storing and organizing site data, including posts, pages, user information, and settings. WordPress relies heavily on its underlying database for content retrieval and management. Efficient database management can significantly impact website performance, influencing factors like page load times and overall responsiveness.

When choosing a server to host your WordPress website, the performance and compatibility of the server’s database management system are essential considerations. WordPress uses MySQL and MariaDB to store and retrieve data. You don’t need both – just one of these systems. When considering a hosting service’s server requirements, make sure that either MySQL or MariaDB are stored on the server, ideally on SSD.

Also ideally, the service should offer automatic database optimization and a multi-user environment.

Recommended Web Server Software for WordPress

When selecting a web server for your WordPress website, looking into available web server software applications is an important consideration. For WordPress, Apache and Nginx are two popular choices. In fact, WordPress itself recommends using one of the two. The website will function without them, as you can technically use any server to run WordPress, but Apache and Nginx have certain significant advantages.

Apache is known for its flexibility, rich documentation, and compatibility with various modules. It is a good choice both for seasoned WordPress users and for beginners. On the other hand, Nginx is newer and faster and excels in handling concurrent connections efficiently, making it ideal for high-traffic sites.

The choice between them depends on factors like site traffic, server resources, and configuration preferences. Apache’s .htaccess file provides easy per-directory configuration, while Nginx’s configuration syntax is somewhat more straightforward and excellent under heavy loads.

To learn more, check out our article on how to choose between Nginx and Apache.

HTTPS Support

HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is an internet communication protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of data exchanged between users and websites. It is an extension of HTTP and uses encryption to secure the data transmission.

HTTPS uses SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security) protocols to encrypt data. This ensures that even in the case of unauthorized data interceptions, the data cannot be deciphered easily.

When choosing a server for WordPress, it’s important to look for HTTPS and SSL among the server features. These days most renowned hosting providers include HTTPS and SSL in their plans, especially the more advanced ones, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

If you already use a server that doesn’t include these security features, check out our article on how to add HTTPS and SSL to your WordPress website and also our list of the best SSL plugins for WordPress.

Wrapping It Up

Summing it up, there are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a server for your WordPress website. As we said, WordPress is not resource-heavy and most basic servers will probably do the job. However, if you want to ensure speed, reliability and performance, we recommend you follow the guidelines we laid out in this article and check for the requirements we mentioned – from disk space, RAM and CPU to PHP and web server software, as well as CDN, HTTPS and SSL availability.

Most hosting companies list the features clearly in their plans, so picking one that meets these requirements shouldn’t be hard, and shouldn’t put too much strain on your website budget. Good luck with your new website, and let us know how it goes!

The open-source e-commerce arena has always been an exciting one, with WooCommerce and Shopify as the main players. Right now, WooCommerce is leading the game with a 23% share in the top one million e-commerce websites. With a rich, albeit a bit scattered ecosystem of extensions, plugins and themes, WooCommerce has been steadily providing the users with basically any e-commerce functionality they could need – except for managed hosting. But now, that’s changed too, with the launch of Automattic’s new hosted e-commerce platform, Woo Express. Read on about:

What is Woo Express?

With the launch of the new platform, Automattic sets out to create the one-stop-shop for WooCommerce-based online stores. Woo Express essentially has everything that’s required for quickly and easily building a fully functional online shop. Users get everything they need – from managed hosting to frontend solutions, and everything in between.

Until now, if you wanted to use WooCommerce for your store, you had to take care of the hosting yourself, via a third-party provider. WooCommerce is a WordPress e-commerce plugin, and it needs a hosted website to build upon.

Woo Express uses the WordPress.com infrastructure (remember that WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two very different things) and since it is a platform that comes with hosting, the new e-commerce solution comes with hosting, too.

In addition to hosting and the e-commerce functionalities, WooExpress users also get a block-based site editor and default theme. WooCommerce has been making efforts to switch to block editing for a while and making the block-based theme a default, they’re taking ultimate steps in that direction.

Block Editing Out of the Box

Tsubaki default Woo Express theme

Block editing, generally perceived as a better, more progressive way of building websites, allows users to set up an online shop faster and with more ease, as all the elements they need can be stacked, mixed and matched to fit the branding and the purpose of the site.

Woo Express aims to deliver all the functionalities and features in form of blocks – for instance cart and checkout blocks – building upon the already extensive range of WooCommerce blocks for various purposes. Many of them will come out of the box, which will reduce the need for adding extensions and plugins.

As for the themes, in addition to the default one, Automattic has already released several other block-based themes for Woo Express specifically. However, the users will not be limited to these themes alone, since users will also be able to install any WooCommerce theme around, not just the ones designed for the hosting plan.

Managed Hosting Options and Pricing

The main idea behind Woo Express is to provide merchants with a turnkey solution that comes with hosting already taken care of, much like the websites built on WordPress.com.

However, while WordPress.com is the first partner to the newly launched product, it appears it won’t remain the only one. The WordPress and WooCommerce hosting ecosystem is a rich one and there are plenty of providers that will surely like to get on board. For now, however, WordPress.com hosting is the only available option.

The issue that probably interests potential users the most is the pricing, affordability and how Woo Express compares to other hosting solutions.

Currently, Woo Express comes in two plans:

The Essential plan should be enough to get a small online shop up and running. It includes, of course, the WooCommerce platform, unlimited staff accounts, live chat and email support, built-in payment processing, themes, Google and social media advertising tools, automatic backups, advanced security scans, order tracking, live shipping rates, automated tax calculation, custom domain, SSL certificate and 50GB storage for product media.

The Performance plan includes all that plus automated cart recovery, discounted shipping rates, upselling and cross-selling functionalities, event-based email marketing, personalized product bundles, automated back-in-stock notifications, min/max quantities per order, customizable product kits, and 200GB storage for product media.

Compared to GoDaddy’s cheapest plans, Woo Express is a bit more expensive, but on the other hand it’s cheaper than mid and premium plans. Bluehost definitely has cheaper plans, but they are just hosting plans, while Woo Express comes with everything we mentioned above, making it a better choice for those looking for an all-around e-commerce solution.

Wrapping It Up

The new WooCommerce managed hosting product, Woo Express, is still in its early days (it was launched in March 2023) so it’s hard to say how it’ll do and how it’ll fare against other e-commerce solutions, hosted or not.

If you’re yet to start your very first online shop, you might as well give it a go. You will have hosting taken care of, and you will obviously have the powerful WooCommerce solutions for setting up and managing an online shop. Early adopters, make sure to let us know how you feel about Woo Express!

Whether you’re about to start a website or you already have one but you don’t quite understand all there is about hosting, you could be wondering about a little thing called web hosting bandwidth.

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data you’re able to transfer to your visitors in a specific unit of time. It is expressed in gigabytes (GB) or megabytes (MB) per second, and it typically varies depending on the type of hosting package. Many hosting providers offer unlimited bandwidth, but that’s a feature that usually reflects in the package price, as well, and is an important factor in choosing a hosting provider. Because big or unlimited bandwidth is generally pricey, you may be having questions about whether you need it or not. In this article, we’re going to explain all there is about bandwidth and hopefully help you pick a package that fits your needs the best. Here’s what we’ll talk about:

What Is Web Hosting Bandwidth?

As we mentioned in the introduction, web hosting bandwidth represents the amount of data that can be transferred in a unit of time. In web hosting, we’re talking about the transfer between a website, a user and a server. It is expressed as MB/s or GB/s.

It’s important to understand the distinction between bandwidth and data transfer. With bandwidth, we’re talking about the rate of transfer – the amount per unit of time, usually MB per second or GB per second. With transfer, we’re only referring to the actual amount of data alone.

Web hosting bandwidth can be compared to a pipe or a hose. With a small hose, it will take longer for an amount of water to be poured out. If you have a larger hose, you are able to pour out more water faster.

It’s the same with web traffic. Lower bandwidth means slower transfer and, logically, higher bandwidth means faster transfer, faster page loading, file uploading and downloading.

You may have noticed that some websites take longer to load compared to the others that you’re visiting with the same internet connection. This is because some websites have hosting plans with lower bandwidth and are therefore not able to serve the data to the visitors as fast as other websites, with higher bandwidth.

Why Does Bandwidth Matter?

There are several reasons why you’d want to make sure your website has enough bandwidth for its needs:

It all boils down to this – you need to have an appropriate amount of bandwidth in order to successfully run a rich and frequently visited website.

It’s clear that bandwidth is among the most important features of a hosting package. Bandwidth is usually capped in free hosting plans, while managed hosting plans often offer several tiers, including plans with unlimited bandwidth.

What Is Unlimited Bandwidth?

Here’s the deal: there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. There’s also no such thing as unlimited storage, but that’s not our subject here. No provider can offer zero cap on bandwidth, but that doesn’t stop them from advertising their plans “with unlimited bandwidth.” We see it quite often and it’s a completely normal thing among hosting providers.

This is because for most of them it’s simpler to say it’s “unlimited” than to explain the actual caps to unsavvy customers in plans that do offer bandwidth so high it’s limit can’t really be exceeded by most normal websites.

In short, unlimited bandwidth may be a misnomer, but it does mean you will get so much bandwidth it will appear to be limitless.

How to Check My Web Hosting Bandwidth?

To see how much bandwidth your website has, you need to log into your hosting account’s dashboard. Each provider has its own dashboard interface so there’s no single path to follow, but in the case of our WordPress managed hosting, the dashboard looks something like this:

After logging in, we clicked on WordPress Hosting, which took us to a screen where we can check out disk space and monthly bandwidth usage, as well as bandwidth details.

The path will probably be quite similar in your dashboard – simply look for Bandwidth in the menu and that’s where you’ll find all the deets.

You can also check your bandwidth (and in great detail, too) by logging into your server’s cPanel. Scroll down to Metrics, and then click on Bandwidth.

Here, you can check the bandwidth in the past 24 hours, in the past week and the past year.

How Much Bandwidth Does My Website Need?

Obviously, the answer to this question will depend on the type and size of your website, and the amount of traffic you expect. Small personal blogs without much media can do with less, while big, media-heavy websites that have a huge daily traffic with expected sudden peaks will need more.

When buying a hosting plan, it’s not a good idea to buy more than you need. More bandwidth usually comes in packages that offer more of everything – more disk space, for instance. If you don’t need more, simply don’t get more. Instead, try to find a provider that offers scalable solutions. As for buying packages with bandwidth that is too low, well, that one is simple – don’t do it. You wouldn’t buy size 7 shoes if you’re a size 9, would you? Your needs simply won’t fit.

But how to tell how much bandwidth you need if you’re only just starting and have no previous experience? There’s a formula you could use.

Take the average page size in KB and multiply it by the average monthly number of users (or your expected number of users, if you don’t have the metrics yet). Now multiply that by the average number of pageviews per visitor.

You can get these numbers by using an online tool like Pingdom.

As for the traffic (the number of visitors and pageviews) you should always consult Google Analytics, on which we have an extensive tutorial.

Let’s try with an example. If your website has an average of 7,000 visits per month, each visitor opens three pages on average and your pages are approximately 1.5 MB in size, then:

7,000 x 3 x 1.5 = 31.5 MB/month (you can round it up to 32.)

This formula should give you a solid idea on the bandwidth range you should be aiming for. Also make sure to leave some extra room for traffic spikes – about 50% will probably do.

How to Reduce Your Bandwidth Usage?

If you already have a hosting plan that you can’t or don’t want to change right now, and the plan doesn’t cover your bandwidth needs, there are things you can do to reduce your need for high bandwidth.

You can start by optimizing your images. Image and video files require more bandwidth than plain text pages, and by compressing them you can make them smaller and easier to load. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do it manually – there are many great image compression plugins you can use for this purpose.

Also, enabling compression from JavaScript, CSS and HTML can help significantly. For this, you will need a caching plugin.

Serving the content to your visitors from a server that is nearest to them could also help. You can store your static content on a Content Delivery Network (CDN), a solution that can help with a number of performance and speed issues. If you’re unsure where to start, check out our guide to the best CDN services for WordPress.

Wrapping It Up

Web hosting bandwidth is an important factor to consider when choosing a hosting provider. If you’re only just starting and don’t have hosting yet, try to estimate the amount of traffic you can expect in the beginning but don’t forget about scaling. You need hosting that is scalable, i.e. hosting that leaves enough room for your website to grow.

If you already have a package that doesn’t fit your bandwidth needs, if your website is slow to load and your traffic is starting to suffer, then it’s probably time to change the plan, perhaps even the provider.

Be wary of “unlimited bandwidth,” though. As we explained, bandwidth cannot possibly be unlimited and there’s always a cap. Talk to the hosting provider and ask them what the cap actually is, and then compare it to your website’s bandwidth needs. For most “regular” websites with moderate traffic, no sharp spikes and a reasonable number of pages, the cap will provide enough bandwidth.

Elementor is one of the most popular and highly recommended site builders for WordPress. You don’t have to be a veteran fan to understand why – even someone making their first steps with the site builder using our beginners’ guide can see just how great Elementor is and how many options it gives you. It’s also incredibly extendible, with plugins like Qi Addons for Elementor letting you easily create even more awesome elements for your website. And just when you were about to think that it doesn’t get any better than that, Elementor offers up its very own site hosting service – Elementor Cloud Website.

If this is the first time that you’re hearing of the Elementor Cloud Website, or if you just heard about it and you’re wondering what’s all the fuss about, don’t worry. We’ll tell you all the important stuff about Elementor Cloud Website, and hopefully, help you decide whether to entrust your WordPress website to Elementor’s (kind of) hosting service or maybe go with one of the more established players on the market.

The topics we’ll cover include:

What Is Elementor Cloud Website?

Elementor Cloud Website is Elementor’s “all-in-one website creation solution” that brings together the content management of WordPress, the no-code site building experience of Elementor, and merges them with a hosting service that was specifically designed and optimized to work with the site builder. The seamless integration between Elementor and WordPress, backed by statistics showing that WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet, makes it a powerful and popular choice for website creation.

Elementor Cloud Website relies on the Google Cloud Platform to take care of the hosting. For caching and content delivery, the service relies on Cloudflare and its CDN services. WordPress is in charge of content management, of course, and it comes pre-installed so there’s no need to worry about that.

Elementor Cloud Website users can rely on the full gamut of Elementor features – including the ones only available with Elementor Pro. They also get access to the Hello Elementor theme, although nothing will prevent you from installing any WordPress theme that’s compatible with the hosting service.

What Are Some Benefits to Using Elementor Cloud Website?

Right off the bat, Elementor Cloud Website will come at you with some great features that might make your work at least a little bit easier. For example, your website will have a backup of it performed automatically once a day, but you’ll also be able to perform manual backups when needed. You’ll also get a free SSL certificate bundled with your package, although you’ll be free to install any other certificate you want. Site lock is another very useful feature that prevents people from stumbling upon your website while it’s still in the process of being created.

Your website will also have a generous allotment of resources at its disposal. The hosting will allow for up to a hundred thousand monthly visits, 20 GB of storage for your content, and 100 GB in bandwidth for traffic. Even though the folks at Elementor don’t see most websites go over these limits and haven’t included any packages with more resources, they have stated their commitment to working things out with the websites that might need more resources.

If you have an existing website you want to transfer to the Elementor Cloud service, don’t worry – they’ve made it easy with a site import kit. Similarly, if you ever get tired of Elementor Cloud, or if you just want to give your website a different home, you’ll be free to do so. Elementor will give you a hand with its site export kit. So in case you were wondering whether using Elementor Cloud Website locks your website in with Elementor’s hosting, the answer is – no.

Not for nothing, but the fact that Elementor offers all this at a single pricing point, without any additional costs or hidden fees, is a major boon. You get everything Elementor Cloud Website has to offer for $99 per year, and you won’t be asked to pay for anything else in between two payment cycles.

What Are Some Drawbacks to Using Elementor Cloud Website?

Even though Elementor Cloud Website provides plenty of useful services, there are still reasons why you might choose to use a different website host. The obvious is that you’re not interested in Elementor and want to use other site builders for your website – the majority of them, if not all, aren’t supported. You get to play only with Elementor when you use it for hosting.

You won’t be able to register a domain name with Elementor. This doesn’t have to be a big drawback at all, as you’re more than welcome to connect a custom domain to your Elementor Cloud website after purchasing it at any registrar. However, if you wanted to finish absolutely everything involved with launching a website with Elementor Cloud Website, you won’t be able to.

A possibly bigger problem is that Elementor Cloud doesn’t provide email hosting services. Your website will be able to send up to a hundred emails per day – that includes transactional emails – but for anything above that, you’ll have to rely on a third-party service. Again, this doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker if email is important to your business, as that might have prompted you to seek out separate email hosting services either way.

An even bigger limitation is that you won’t be able to use FTP with Elementor Cloud Website. Any file management you’d perform with FTP won’t be available to you. And neither will some of the most popular plugins – while it supports the vast majority of WordPress plugins, Elementor Cloud Website won’t let you use plugins such WP Total Cache, Jetpack, UpdraftPlus, or Slider Revolution, as well as most site builders.

Elementor Cloud Website – Who Is It For?

Elementor has partnered with some of the biggest names in cloud hosting and content delivery to ensure that its users get the best possible performance from their website and the best possible experience when working with Elementor. If you’re a fan of Elementor and you’re in the market for a hosting plan that won’t burden you with too many choices, the Elementor Cloud Website might be for you. It will allow you to focus on designing your website while it takes care of everything else.

You should keep in mind, however, that Elementor Cloud Website isn’t a replacement for regular WordPress hosting. If you want the variety and freedom of choices you’d get with regular hosting, you should steer clear of Elementor Cloud Website. There are plenty of other web hosting providers that would be happy to have you as a customer.

Gauge it by the sheer amount of video content posted on platforms such as YouTube, the traffic video hosting platforms manage to pull, or the interest marketers and businesses have been showing for video for the last five or six years, it doesn’t matter. Whichever way you slice it, there’s no denying that video is the most popular form of content today.

Still, even though it’s popular and relatively inexpensive to make, video can be difficult to host. Quality standards are rising, which are in turn increasing the average video size, as well as the bandwidth requirements for smooth replay with minimum buffering. That’s why, for many of the users who’d be interested in video content production, self-hosting isn’t a viable option.

That’s where video hosting solutions come in! There’s plenty to choose from – video hosting platforms are some of the most popular websites of today, and some of the most popular websites of today have video hosting capabilities besides their original purpose.

In this article, we’ll shine a light on ten of the best ones. You’re likely to know at least a couple on the list that includes:

YouTube

The undisputed king of video hosting solutions, YouTube is also one of the most visited websites in the world. The platform, launched in 2005 and bought by Google a year-and-a-half after its founding, has been integral to the rise of video content’s popularity. Today, it’s the go-to place where everyone from big productions to bedroom musicians, from Ivy-league colleges to mom-and-pop stores, and from traditional media to citizen journalists, can find a place for their content.

And what a place it is. The off the charts brand recognition of YouTube and the viewers pool and reach it provides is only the surface appeal of YouTube. It’s a real platform for video content hosting, with tools that can help creators better hone their content-making skills if they choose to do so. YouTube allows its users to upload video files of up to twelve hours of content or a maximum file size of 128 GB. It supports resolutions up to 4K and can serve as a live streaming platform.

YouTube is not only free to use, but it’s a platform that lets content creators monetize their content. Monetization options on YouTube include display ads, channel memberships, donations via Super Chat, and merchandise sales.

Besides making it easy to start a channel, YouTube is also a very WordPress-friendly video hosting platform. You can easily embed YouTube videos on your website. You can display your latest videos, fine-tune the related videos that appear after your video has finished playing, and add a YouTube subscribe button to your website. There are many YouTube-specific WordPress plugins you can use, including YouTube gallery plugins. If you have a WordPress website, you can’t go wrong with YouTube.

Vimeo

YouTube might be one of the biggest websites in the world, but it’s not the only video hosting platform you could use for your video content. There are plenty of alternatives to YouTube. The leading alternative to YouTube is Vimeo, and it will give you more than enough reasons to give it a go – as long as you fit within its core market.

Vimeo doesn’t seem to be casting as wide a net as YouTube does. The video platform is mostly aimed towards creatives, people who value the integrity of their artistic vision and want to present it in the most technically advanced way. Vimeo supports video resolutions up to 8K, offers great collaboration tools, and doesn’t use ads to monetize your content. It does, however, allow you to sell video directly to users.

The basic Vimeo plan is free for everyone to use. As your needs grow, however, you might start looking into the paid plans. They start at €6 per month when billed annually, and come with more resources, advanced creation tools, and even the possibility to use Vimeo’s live streaming platform.

Facebook

Facebook is a social network that, at this point, needs no introduction. Known as the platform that propelled the boom of social networks and media by some, and as their parents’ favorite website by others, Facebook has always tried to follow the trends that it wasn’t able to outright dictate. Its use of video content is a great example.

Facebook lets you upload video files that are up to 10 GB in size. It supports 1080p video and lower and has a 240-minute limit on the length of the video. The social network also allows you to set the title and the description of the video, which is where you can tag a person or a product, check-in a place, or use targeting options to narrow your audience. It also gives you control over the thumbnail, video distribution, subtitles, and captions. It does all of that for free.

If you have a WordPress website, you might already be aware of how well Facebook integrates with sites. You can set it up so that your WordPress posts are posted automatically to Facebook, and embed things like Facebook group feeds, page reviews, and your Facebook status on your website. There’s also a variety of Facebook WordPress plugins you can use and you can easily add the Facebook like button, or even the Facebook Event Calendar, to your site. The bottom line is that there are plenty of ways people might be using Facebook with their website, so using it as a video host might come naturally.

Instagram

For all its fame and reach, Facebook is a social network that’s marred with problems, causing many to adopt a more cautious approach to it. If this describes you, or if you’re willing to explore a social network that has video capabilities and also caters to a slightly younger crowd, you could do much worse than Instagram.

Instagram might not be an obvious choice for an outright video hosting solution. However, what it lacks in hosting options, it more than makes up for by the sheer scope of video products it offers. Instagram has not one, not two, but four different types of video content you can post on it. You can use the ephemeral Stories, capture events as they happen using Live, create TikTok-like Reels, or use the good old Video format for a mix of IGTV and in-feed video.

For WordPress website owners, some integrations with Instagram might already showcase the full value of the platform. Whether they’ve done it by setting up Instagram shopping for WooCommerce, or by doing something as simple as including their Instagram feed on their website, website owners are well aware of how many options this platform offers – and how big of a draw video plays on it.

Spotlightr

Using social networks and free platforms is awesome for people who just want a place where they can host their content and eventually find an audience for it. When it comes to enterprise usage, even if it’s for small businesses, the demands change, and different solutions come into play. Solutions such as Spotlightr.

Spotlightr is a video hosting platform that caters to the more business-minded section of the market. The platform offers cloud and hybrid video hosting, as well as a video player that works across browsers and devices and has built-in social sharing. Spotlightr has marketing capabilities, too, and offers security and analytics features to boot.

The platform offers a free two-week trial. After it, you can continue using it for as low as $7 per month, which gets you 25 videos, a monthly bandwidth allotment of 50 GB, and as much space in storage. Choosing pricier plans gets you more resources and features.

Dacast

Video streaming is a phenomenon that’s taken the world by storm, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. If you want to get on the trend using a solution that’s geared more towards businesses than gaming streamers, Dacast is as solid a choice as any.

With Dacast, you’ll get access to a professional video streaming platform that will let you create and monetize live streams. Dacast has solutions for OVP, OTT, as well as VOD distribution, and it offers its services worldwide, including in hard-to-reach markets such as China. As for video hosting, Dacast doesn’t lack in that department either – it comes with its content management system, as well as transcoding, mobile video, and security and privacy capabilities.

Dacast is a premium service that offers a 30-day trial for you to get a sense of what they offer. The plans start at $39 per month and include storage and bandwidth allotment, services such as support, and functions such as ads, paywalls, and migrations.

Vidyard

When it comes to boosting holiday season sales or even making the most out of sales events such as Black Friday, reaching potential customers with the right type of content at the right time is one of the keys to success. If video is your content of choice, then the good people over at Vidyard have created just the platform for you.

Vidyard is positioning its service as “video built for virtual selling,” aiming to help people achieve remote sales using the solutions available on their platform. The three core services it offers are video hosting, video analytics, and video creation, helping you chisel out the best content you can every step of the way. As if that weren’t enough, Vidyard also sweetened the pot with awesome integration capabilities that include LinkedIn and Salesforce Sales Cloud integrations.

Vidyard’s basic plan is free to use, and it includes video recording, uploading, and sharing. The Pro plan, which starts at $15 per month, adds intro banners, video sharing page customization, and video performance insights. The more expensive plans include calls-to-action analytics, scheduled video release, and Zoom integration, just to name a couple of features.

Wistia

Staying in the lane of video as a solution for various business needs, we’ll turn our attention to another great video hosting service that pledges to help you grow your business using video – and podcasts. Wistia is its name, and video marketing is what you’ll use it for.

Wistia offers the full gamut of functions and features that will help you leverage the power of video for your marketing needs. From allowing you to fully customize your player to make it match your brand, to giving you access to lead generation tools as well as the ability to create easily embeddable channels, it’s hard to find an option you might miss if you go with Wistia. From hosting to analytics and audience segmentation, Wistia will help you stay on top of your video marketing game.

Another reason you’ll love Wistia is that it offers you all of its standard features for videos and podcasts, with three complementary videos or podcasts you can embed anywhere you want. To get more out of Wistia and its services, however, you might opt for one of the paid plans, which start at $99 per month.

Jetpack VideoPress

So far, all of the tools we’ve mentioned weren’t created specifically for WordPress. Closing the list and representing the WordPress plugin ecosystem is Jetpack, the well-known plugin that helps with everything from website optimization to boosting security. With VideoPress, Jetpack also gives you a handy tool to host your video content.

Jetpack VideoPress offers you many of the things you’d expect to see in any decent video hosting solution. First, it lets you dip your toes for free and try it out before committing to anything. Next, it allows you to upload 1080p video at 60 FPS. You get a brandable player without any ads, and it integrates with your WordPress media library.

There are two ways you can use Jetpack VideoPress. It’s included in the Jetpack Complete plan, so as long as you have it you can use VideoPress. Alternatively, you can sign up for it at roughly $10 per month.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

If video hosting is what you need, rest assured that you won’t lack high-quality options to choose from. Whether you’re looking for video hosting as a way to enrich your content offering on social networks or want a way to live stream earnings calls, there’s a hosting platform out there that will help you out.

One of the crucial moments of choosing a web hosting provider is figuring out which packages they offer and under which conditions. There’s a hierarchy of different types of hosting – with dedicated servers beating VPSs, and shared hosting generally being considered the least ideal of the options. Somewhere among all the choices is managed WordPress hosting – a type of hosting service that’s usually only offered for WordPress websites.

Now, you know that WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system and that it’s the backbone of a huge share of all websites, so it makes perfect sense that someone will create a service, slap “WordPress” on its name, and market it towards WordPress users. But what do you get for the extra cost of opting for managed WordPress hosting, and is it worth it?

We’re here to help you find out! In this article, we’ll list seven of the top reasons you should at least consider using managed WordPress hosting for your WordPress website. The reasons we’ll list include:

Access to Expert WordPress Support

With general hosting support, you can expect to get answers to the hosting issues that are common to all website platforms. Support staff might have some knowledge about WordPress, but its extent could vary, leaving your requests unfulfilled to a satisfactory level.

With managed WordPress hosting, the support staff that helps you with the problem are people who know WordPress. Some would say that this might be the most important reason to opt for managed WordPress hosting, as you’ll always be sure that you’ll have access to someone who knows WordPress and is willing to help you.

Their skills are just one part of what makes them great. With regular hosting, you are to a large extent responsible for fixing things around your website. With managed hosting, it’s almost like you share custody over the website – the support staff will take care of the technical stuff for you, making managed WordPress hosting a perfect choice for busy people or novices.

Backups and Security Provided

Regular backups are an important item in your website maintenance schedule. There are different ways you can back different parts of your website, from manual database backups to backups using some of the WordPress backup plugins. With managed WordPress hosting, you still might want to create a backup, but, likely, you won’t need to. The hosting provider will take care of that for you.

Regular backups are just one of the services routinely offered by providers of managed WordPress hosting. You should make sure to check how often they back your website up, where the backups are stored, and how you can access them. Whatever the frequency of the service, however, it should relieve you of some of your work.

The same goes for some aspects of your website’s security. Sure, you’ll still be responsible for the things you install on your website and the people you give access to. Providers will, however, have some types of built-in security features specifically created for WordPress websites. Not to mention that you can expect an extremely swift reaction when new WordPress-specific threats arise.

Hosting Optimized for Performance

A website host can do several things to ensure top performance for your website. They can, for example, use data centers around the world, so that people visiting your website don’t experience issues based on their locations. Access to CDNs is another welcome feature, and some managed WordPress hosting providers are bound to offer it.

The main boon to performance with managed WordPress hosting is that you can expect the hosts to have a closer look and a more thorough understanding of how the CMS’ architecture affects performance issues. Your website is hosted by WordPress specialists, after all, and you’re well within your rights to expect them to have a deep knowledge of the workings of a WordPress website.

Hosting a website in an environment that’s built to support WordPress websites is a major performance boost. Implementing services such as server-level caching are a more than welcome addition, as are other optimization techniques a host might use.

One-Click Staging Sites

There are many different scenarios when you might need to create a staging site. Whether you’re preparing to migrate a website from another host, or you’re trying out some new features before you implement them onto your main website, a staging site can be an invaluable tool. You can use plugins to create them if you want, but with managed WordPress hosting, chances are you won’t have to.

One-click staging sites are one of the services you’ll find most of the managed hosting providers offer. It might seem just like a convenient service because it takes care of building the staging site for you. In reality, however, it supports security and responsible website management. It’s also great because it’s so easy – if one click separates you from trying a plugin out on a clone of your website instead of the real thing, you’ll be more likely to use the clone.

Awesome Scalability

If things go according to plan, your number of website visitors will not remain flat – it will grow with time, as you invest in attracting new audiences. You’ll have to keep up with the increased traffic by continuing to give people what they want – and probably more of it. Your hosting provider will have to keep up with new traffic, too.

When compared with other, weaker types of hosting, managed WordPress hosting is likely to have awesome scalability possibilities. It’s much better than you’d get with shared hosting, that’s for sure. It might not be as good as having a dedicated server – a few things are – but when it comes to getting the biggest bang for your buck in terms of scalability, managed hosting could be the best choice.

To deal with the increased demand, you might need to adjust your server to gain access to additional resources. With managed hosting, it’ll be completely up to your hosting provider to take care of this for you. Once again, managed WordPress hosting proves itself to be the best option for people who lack the time to learn all the technical skills needed to run a server.

Less Need for Plugins

Plugins are great – they’re arguably one of the best things about WordPress. You can do incredible things with your website thanks to plugins, and you won’t have to write a single line of code to do it. But plugins have another side to them, too, as they will inadvertently become a drain on your website’s resources.

Thanks to managed WordPress hosting, that’s another thing you won’t have to worry about. Managed hosting will apply on the server level some of the solutions you’d apply, with plugins, on the website level. We’ve mentioned a couple of examples – caching, backups, and some security features will be taken care of by the host, leaving you with less need to install the solutions on your own.

Having fewer plugins to bog down your website can lead to a boost in its performance. If anything else, it will give you more room to install other plugins that will provide an even better experience to people visiting your website.

You Get to Focus on Your Website

Taking care of a website is a lot of work. Just making sure it’s regularly stocked with fresh content is a chore. Getting people to visit it is another one, setting up ads the third one, optimizing for search engines a fourth, setting up and linking social media a fifth, and so on. The work on a website never stops.

Thanks to managed WordPress hosting, however, you can rid yourself of the technical side of running the website. Your host will take care of most of the things that happen under the hood, leaving you to make sure people get to the website and have something to see or do once they come. And that just might be the most important reason you should use managed WordPress hosting.

Let’s Wrap it Up!

When you’re choosing the perfect hosting package for a WordPress website, managed WordPress hosting has to be on your radar. The benefits of using it are many, from the freedom it gives you by doing plenty of behind-the-scenes tasks for you, to the performance boost you might get from specially optimized servers. The only real downside to managed WordPress hosting is that it’s not the cheapest hosting option out there. If that doesn’t turn you off managed WordPress hosting, though, you might as well give it a try.

Whether you’re using it to create a business website, a blog, or a portfolio, WordPress is a great content management system that comes with a plethora of customization options. It’s completely free to use, too – core WordPress software is open source and readily available to be used for all your projects. There’s just the small issue of taking care of hosting.

Hosting is where costs come into play, as you’ll have to pay a hosting provider to take care of it for you. The two ways around paying a hosting provider are to run your own server, which also requires an investment, and to use free WordPress hosting.

We’ll discuss the second option – free WordPress hosting – in this article. The topics we’ll cover include:

Pros of Free Hosting

First, let’s explore some of the things that make free WordPress hosting a solid choice. Even though it has a bad rap, there has to be some upside to free hosting, right? Let’s see how many we can find.

It’s Free!

Starting with the most obvious, and the most important, pro of free hosting – you don’t have to pay a dime for it. While it’s certainly possible to find paid hosting at very low prices, nothing beats knowing that you’ll never have to pay anything to have the website up.

Take a moment to appreciate just how important having access to free hosting can be. You can use your website to learn about WordPress, blogging, or affiliate marketing – free of cost. It can be a tool you can use to lift yourself from poverty, a tool for learning and experimenting.

Free WordPress hosting can be your first step on a road to a career in marketing, web design, programming, or entrepreneurship. If this would be the only benefit of free hosting, it would be enough to justify its existence.

Access to a Variety of Services and Features

When you compare a couple of free WordPress hosting providers and their offers, you’ll quickly realize that you’re looking at a surprisingly wide scope of services that are on offer. You’ll find that you can create email accounts, have many MySQL databases, support for SSL certificates, and access many other important features and services.

The presence of some services and features in a free hosting offer might shock you. Some providers will offer access to live human support. Others might provide you with full server access. Need a content delivery network? Some hosts will provide access to it for free.

Reputable Service Providers

Contrary to what you might hear, free WordPress hosting providers aren’t sketchy businesses that pop up overnight and offer you free hosting so they can steal your content or whatever. At least not all of them are.

You’ll find plenty of reputable hosting service providers who have a free plan under their name, like AccuWeb Hosting does. Some offer free hosting through a sibling brand that’s used specifically for free hosting, like Hostinger does through 000webhost. While it would be impossible to claim you won’t come across any nefarious actors among free hosting service providers, you can rest assured that they won’t be all you come across.

Possibility to Upgrade

One of the reasons why reputable hosting service providers might choose to offer hosting services for free could be because they want to upsell you a hosting package later on, as the need arises. Offering services for free can be a marketing model, but it’s one where you get an added benefit, too.

When your website’s needs surpass whatever the hosting provider is offering for free, the question of transferring your website to another host will come about. However, if you have a good host and they have paid plans to offer you, transferring your website might be either unnecessary or managed by them if you choose to simply upgrade to a paid service.

Cons of Free Hosting

See how free WordPress hosting doesn’t sound half that bad when you focus on the pros? Unfortunately, we have to look at the cons, too, and when it comes to free hosting, it’s easy to notice that the cons tend to outweigh the pros.

Hard to Find a Comprehensive Offer

We’ve mentioned that you can have access to a variety of services and features with free hosting, so much so that you can almost find anything you’d expect to get from paid hosting. While that’s technically true, an important caveat applies – you probably won’t get all those services in a single provider.

If you were able to mix services from different providers, you’d surely come up with something that would match any premium provider. You can’t, however, so you’ll have to identify the services and features you can live without.

Likely to Suffer from All Kinds of Resource Limitations

Not being able to find free hosting that offers the same features as premium hosting is one thing. The resource and features limitation that are commonly implemented by free WordPress hosting providers is a completely different thing.

Any resource your website needs that comes across your mind can be rationed or limited – bandwidth, disk space, number of visitors, processing power, memory. Sure, premium hosting providers might limit those resources, too. They might not, however, limit the number of subdomains or subdirectories you can create. They surely won’t limit the number of pages your website can have.

Geographic Availability

Geography comes into play with free hosting in a couple of ways. The service, for example, might be available only to residents from a specific country or region. Seeing how countries have different laws regarding services, property, and the internet, it makes sense that there will be some geographic restrictions to services.

You probably won’t be able to choose where the server is located, either. Once again, this might put your website under a jurisdiction where you don’t want it to be and without any way to change it to a different location while staying with the same service provider.

Compensation Plans Might Involve Ad Placement

Finally, you should be aware that service providers need to calculate the free hosting into their business plans and still come out on top. Sometimes, they do that through upselling different kinds of services or features, or simply attracting paying customers by offering them freebies to start with.

In some cases, however, hosts will place ads on your website and use the ad revenue to remain profitable. If you’re not willing to display ads on your website, especially ads you have no control over, you should make sure that the service provider you choose doesn’t use them in their business model.

Tips for Choosing Free WordPress Hosting

So there you have it – the good and the bad of free WordPress hosting. As you can see, this might be a great option for someone who doesn’t have much money to spend on a website but also doesn’t expect to have top-notch services in return.

If you’re thinking about using free WordPress hosting for your website, here are a couple of things you should do:

The final tip would be, whatever free WordPress hosting provider you choose, always make regular backups of your website. Other than that, try not to forget that having a website can be exciting – have some fun with it!

Whether you’re someone looking for hosting services or someone trying to provide them, having an easy way to manage the many different aspects of web hosting should be a priority. Web hosting control panels fulfill that need, helping users do everything from installing WordPress to setting up FTP or finding images on your server. Control panels are the interfaces that make all of this easy, and cPanel is one of the most widely-used tools of this kind.

Still, no matter how popular it might be, cPanel is hardly the only web hosting control panel you could be using. You can choose its top competitor, or a whole other free, open-source control panel, or a niche premium solution. On this list, we’ve gathered seven of the best cPanel alternatives for your WordPress website.

The list includes:

Plesk

Featuring many of the same functionalities that made cPanel so popular, Plesk is a widely-used control panel and cPanel’s main competitor. If you’re running Windows on your server, it just might be your go-to option – the very fact that Plesk supports Windows when cPanel doesn’t is one of its main advantages.

Support for Windows isn’t the only thing about Plesk worth mentioning, though. Plesk works great on Linux, too, and it offers a mix of features for admins and clients alike. It boasts a user-friendly interface, and it’s especially well-suited for WordPress users. They can count on a one-click installer, staging and testing capabilities and controls, and security features in the Plesk WordPress Toolkit.

Plesk offers several pricing plans that differ on the number of domains they can support, the type of hosting, and additional services. The most affordable plan starts at roughly $10 per month, and it allows access to a limited version of the WordPress Toolkit.

DirectAdmin

WordPress fans who appreciate customization might find DirectAdmin just the right solution for them. With DirectAdmin, you can use a plugin to boost security, one-click install a variety of applications, or support webmail, chat, and other forms of communication. You can also easily change how the panel looks using skins.

DirectAdmin allows for three access levels – admin, reseller, and user – each with its features. Administrator features include DNS administration, DNS clustering, and complete usage statistics. Resellers can create nameservers, user packages, and allocate IP addresses. Users can administer email, create FTP accounts, databases, and DNS records – and that’s not nearly all.

DirectAdmin offers a sixty-day free trial. After it, you can choose one of the paid tiered packages, which start at $24 per year for the Personal package.

Froxlor

Need an open-source alternative to cPanel? Froxlor is one of the more popular ones and being built by people who themselves know what admins need from a server management panel, it’s more than worthy of checking out.

As an administrator, you’ll be happy to know that Froxlor was built to be light, simple, and give you all the tools you’ll need to manage your server and give clients and resellers access to panels and features of their own. The features that stand out include MySQL management, use of free certificates from Let’s Encrypt, PHP configuration, traffic monitoring, and CSS-customizable interface.

Froxlor is free, so you don’t have to pay to use it. You can, however, support the developers through donations.

ISPConfig

Sometimes, the deciding factor for your choice of a web hosting control panel might hide in a feature that’s not crucial for the functioning of the panel. For example, if you want a control panel in your specific language, ISPConfig might catch your eye thanks to its twenty-two support languages.

You’d do well to choose it, too, because ISPConfig has pretty much everything you’d expect from a hosting control panel. It supports multiple access levels, Linux systems that include Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS, as well as both IPv4 and IPv6. Whatever else you need for a website, DNS, or email server, you’ll get, as well as support for virtualization and traffic limiting.

ISPConfig is free to use. Addons come at a cost, however, as does the full ISPConfig manual.

Virtualmin

When flexibility and power are what you need, Virtualmin will be there to deliver. This open-source web hosting control panel was built on top of – and integrated with – Webmin, a Linux/UNIX system management user interface. Thanks to this combination of system management and web hosting capabilities, Virtualmin is often described as a solution for more demanding users.

The features you’ll encounter in Virtualmin will give you all the tools you need to manage a hosting service on your own, and delegate some of the work to resellers and end-users. Thanks to domain accounts, you can assign email, DNS, database, and web application management to website owners. Setting up email with Virtualmin is easy, security is boosted with optional two-factor authentication, searching the logs is easy, as is backing up your websites.

Virtualmin comes in two versions. The free version is Virtualmin GPL, and it comes with some reductions in features. The full version, Virtualmin Professional, starts at $7.50 per month.

Ajenti

Sticking with the theme of control panels created for people who know a thing or two about development, let’s meet Ajenti. This open-source solution consists of a core platform and additional plugins that come together to form a control panel experience. It’s fast and it doesn’t overwhelm with options, but it does require Python 3, JavaScript, AngularJS, and some HTML knowledge.

Ajenti boasts great performance capabilities, with a small footprint and the capability to handle over a thousand requests per second. It offers a responsive user interface with no reloading, full support for mobile and tablet viewing, and live data updates. You can run it on Linux and BSD systems, and you can find a whole bunch of plugins and integration to expand its features. If you have the know-how, you can also create your own.

Ajenti is free to use.

SpinupWP

Here’s an alternative to cPanel built exclusively for WordPress users – SpinupWP, a cloud-based server control panel. While this type of solution might have fewer options than some on the list – to manage your database, for example, you’ll either have to use the command line or install a desktop app.

Still, the things SpinupWP does are great, and what it offers will help you set up a server and install WordPress in no time. It works with any service provider, it installs the latest versions of software for you, takes care of caching and backups, comes with free SSL, and puts an emphasis on security. On top of that, it includes features that facilitate teamwork, make site cloning easy, and lets you isolate different sites for security.

SpinupWP is subscription-based, and it starts at $12 per month.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

If you think the time is right to switch from cPanel to an alternative hosting management control panel, don’t worry – you’ll have plenty of options to choose from. Remember to take pricing into account, make sure the solution you choose supports your server’s operating system, and that it has just the right balance of features and requirements for you.