What Are The Advantages and Disadvantages of Shared Hosting for WordPress in 2022?

Are you wondering what are the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting for WordPress? If you are asking yourself this question, then my assumption is that you are brand-spanking new online, right? If so, then let me know below in the comments. Here I will show you what are the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting.

This is a good question that many beginners ask themselves when creating their very websites online. Maybe you are cheap and on a tight budget and curious about ways to save money. Or you perhaps you are serious about your web hosting, but not sure if using a managed hosting provider is really better than shared web hosting. On any note, I want to help you on this topic.

When it comes to shared web hosting, there are few things that I think you keep in mind. Yes there are disadvantages of shared hosting, but this is the case with ANY web hosting provider online. Let me explain why I say this so that you will understand how your nickels should spent online.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Shared Hosting:

Let’s talk first about what is shared web hosting and why people tend to buy it online.

In the years that I have been online I have been able to create several websites using WordPress and other CMS platforms. Of course, when I got I started online years back I used shared web hosting because I was a beginner and wanted to save money. Costs are probably the main reason that MOST if not all beginners get started with shared web hosting. However, what you should know is that not ALL shared web hosting providers online are bad. I will talk about some shared web hosting companies that should avoid later if you really want to avoid a headache and frustration.

To help you, I want you to think about shared web hosting like sharing an apartment or room with a roommate. The advantage is that you save money upfront by dividing bills. What are the disadvantages? The disadvantages are that you have to share EVERYTHING, the bathroom, food, and living space being it’s now limited. Also, whatever noise or disturbances your roommate makes, you will hear it, right?

Shared web hosting is just that. It’s shared with others who might be like good or bad neighbors. You benefit mainly by saving lots of money, but the bad side of the coin is that some website owners [not all] hog or used too many resources that are shared with YOU and potentially THOUSANDS of other users.

The result of this is that your website might be tagged for spam-like activities being that the same IP address is used and shared by others. Also, it could cause your website to have slower page loads which essentially will hurt your SEO rankings and page views.  Lower SEO rankings means your website loses money online. This is something that you obviously do not want, right? 

Some other disadvantages of shared hosting providers [not all] is that the customer support may not be as fast as managed hosting. Phone, chat or email may not be as fast due to customer demand vs the number of customer support personnel. But again this is not the case with all shared web hosting providers, just those owned by a huge company called EIG.

Overall Disadvantages of Shared Hosting

• • Longer wait times for phone/email/chat & customer support responses
  • Slower page loads and performance
  • Bad security
  • Bad reputations & lots of complaints
  • Hundreds or even thousands of people are stacked on 1 single server
  • Not enough resources, disk space, bandwidth
  • Shared IP addresses
  • Lots of downtime

Shared Web Hosting You Should Avoid:

I mentioned before that when it comes down to it, there are advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting.

Endurance International Group, (now Newfold Digital) mentioned before is a large web hosting conglomerate that owns like over 80+ shared web hosting companies & brands. Some common household names that you may know are Bluehost, Hostgator, iPage, Domain.com, Fat Cow, and Hostmonster just to name a few. 

When you get started online with your first website, it is highly recommended by many to use shared web hosting due to low costs. However, as your website grows in web traffic and your business needs change, then you can scale up to what is called managed WordPress hosting, VPS or dedicated hosting.

Managed hosting in my opinion is really a premium quality of web hosting. It’s like driving a Tesla versus a Hyundai. There is a clear difference in the performance and  quality of the product night and day.

Notice some other benefits of using managed over shared overall.   

Benefits of Using Managed Hosting vs Shared Web Hosting:

• Supports higher volumes of web traffic without site crashes [Nginx]
• Content Delivery Networks
• Have faster technical customer support
• Fully managed platforms with automatic updates on software, plugins, databases, php, themes, etc
• Better security to protect websites from malware & brute attacks
• NO need to install too many 3rd party plugins
• Have less people on a single server which promote faster page loads & better user experience
• Better reputations with clients
• WordPress expert support
• Rock-solid uptime performance
• 1-click staging sites and local environments

Versus living in an apartment sharing common space, I like to think about managed hosting, dedicated & VPS as living in your very own house. Your house is bigger with more living space. You have neighbors, but they are not living right on top of you, nor too close to you. With your own house you are not obliged to share your resources with neighbors such as your water, food, rooms, space, etc.

However, you should know and understand that managed hosting comes with all of the web hosting luxuries, but it DOES come with a price ticket. This slightly higher premium that you will pay for managed hosting will provide you with a higher quality of digital life if you will. It provides you with more peace & security as for the management of your website. This is what EVERY blogger, small business, freelancer, agency, eCommerce store and everything in between needs. 

Just like shared hosting, there are many managed WordPress hosting providers to look at for creating fast loading websites. Some really reputable ones to look at are BionicWP, Liquid Web, Rocket.net, Nestify, Flywheel, Pressidium, Cloudways, Devrims, Kinsta, Hoststage hosting,and JavaPipe.

Although there are many more out there, these are some of the best WordPress hosting services on the planet that you will find.

So when it comes to the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting vs managed hosting these are some of most common things that stick out. 

What Is My Final Verdict?

So should you get a shared web hosting plan or managed hosting to create your website? I think that you know the answer to this question.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a beginner online or someone advanced, it’s extremely important to choose the right web hosting provider to host your website. Why? The reality is that your web hosting will be like the bloodline of your digital business. 

Although people may recommend that beginners use shared web hosting to save money, you should consider this step seriously. Why? If you make a wrong decision by taking the cheap way out, then your online business could suffer and make you lose money.

How? If potential clients search online for what you sell and click your website and it is DOWN, then you lose sales. However, if you take your web hosting 100% serious and view it as a true investment, then you will go with a managed WordPress hosting provider. This way you always rest assured that your website is up and running online especially when customers are searching for you. 

Think about this point for a hot minute. You are reading this review because you wanted to know what are the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting. Thankfully you found this website in search results and decided to click through. The mere fact that you are here means that this website has great uptime performance. This is exactly what you want and need for your business online. You need a web hosting provider that is trustworthy and reliable especially when your customers are searching for you locally, nationwide or even globally.

This website learnanet.com receives web traffic from all around the world. The reason my website is able to process all of this web traffic is due to its rock solid web hosting. This is something that you should think about also no matter what type of website, blog, eCommerce or online business you want to build.

Now that you understand what are the main disadvantages of choosing a shared hosting plan for WordPress, what do you personally think? Will you still use them to create websites online or not? Or will you just start with a managed WordPress hosting provider?

It’s your decision, but I would love to read your comments, thoughts and questions below. Thanks for reading this brief overview today. I hope that you have much success online this year and beyond!