With custom, easily designable themes and an intuitive interface, WordPress is one of the most popular website creation tools on the planet. With WordPress, you can design a remarkably professional website for your company in a matter of hours.
When it comes to WordPress hosting, however, your site looks like a million bucks doesn’t mean you have to spend that kind of money on a dedicated server.
Knowing what kind of hosting service you need for a website can be one of the trickiest decisions to make because you not only have to consider your current needs but also what they might be in the future.
Most small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) want their websites to grow as their success does, but way too often, vision doesn’t match reality. It’s the same across the board for overzealous startups. Plenty of businesses buy brick-and-mortar spaces way too big for their initial size or employ far too many people for the number of jobs they actually need.
The same holds true when it comes to putting resources into hosting your website. Just because your company aims to be the region’s largest seller of your service or product in three years doesn’t mean you need to invest in a dedicated server that can handle 100,000 visitors a month from the get-go.
Here are four questions to ask when considering if you need a dedicated server to host your WordPress site.
Is Website Security a Concern?
Plenty of laypeople think cybercriminals and hackers only target giant corporations to reap the bounty of selling precious data online. The truth is that those jobs take lots of time to plan and usually entire networks of hackers to pull off. Meanwhile, 58% of cyber attacks in 2018 saw small businesses (fewer than 250 employees) as victims. A dedicated server is not going to save you from cybercriminals, but they tend to have much better security tenets in place than a shared server where you’re not only worried about your own space but that of your multiple neighbors.
Do You Have a Lot of Graphics/Multimedia Content on Your Site?
You might employ the most brilliant coder of his or her generation, but all those bells and whistles don’t mean a thing if your site is loading slowly when visitors take a gander.
Statistics show again and again that Internet browsers are even worse than television viewers when it comes to a short attention span. If your site isn’t loaded and glowing brightly within about three seconds of that initial click, Internet users are going to pound the “Back” button and head off in search of greener pastures. If your WordPress site is flexing its muscles with video, audio, or anything interactive, odds are that a shared server is going to get pushed to the limit as more and more visitors come to your site. A dedicated server not only gives you your own little corner of the Internet to call yours, but it can be scaled up (or down) as your requirements for size and scope change.
Are you expecting your site’s traffic volume to increase soon?
When you kick off your new business website, it’s thrilling to watch those first few page views come in – even if most of them are just your mom checking it out. The difficulty comes when the number of viewers exceeds what your shared server can handle and your website starts experiencing blackouts that will drive your potential customers towards your competition. Your current needs are essential to making the decision, but accounting for future potential is just as vital. Hosting your WordPress site on a shared server makes it impossible to expand your reach past the set maximum resource allocation.
Do you want the freedom to customize your WordPress site’s domain settings?
Some business owners are perfectly content to use someone else’s design, plug in their text and photos, and ride off into the profitable sunset. Others want the power to bend and shape a domain to their specific will. Shared hosting servers don’t allow lots of creativity on this front as they are locked into parameters for the scope of what they are. If your web site’s back-end is going to see some heavy-duty use as you alter it to adapt to your current needs, a designed server is the right call. Shared servers don’t have much freedom when it comes to altering things such as custom software or hardware specifications. If you’re going to get creative or specific, make sure you have a server that can handle it.
WordPress is a powerful tool to use when creating a powerful website for your business. Ensure that your domain needs to match your site’s capabilities in order to maximize your return on investment.
