Good hosting is the foundation upon which a scalable, functional website depends. Without reliable hosting, a website will fail when experiencing high traffic. A stunning, intelligently designed website won’t make the impression it ought to if it isn’t successfully served up to site visitors time and time again. Managed WordPress web hosting delivers the functionality and reliability every enterprise customer needs for their website.
The type, quality and cost of web hosting varies hugely. Choosing the right hosting plan for your website is essential to keep your website performing reliably for visitors. You need to have access to enough server memory and processing power to load your site quickly.
The amount of space on a server dedicated to a specific website varies, depending on the type of hosting. There are 4 main types of web hosting, each using different kinds of technology and providing various additional services and server management.
The main benefit of shared hosting is the low monthly costs. However, shared hosting comes with other costs, to your wallet and your website. First, hidden fees often bump up the price. Plans sold as unlimited are misleading, as in there is no such thing as unlimited server and bandwidth resources in real life. Due to the unbelievably cheap plans, hosts often overcrowd servers to make the most of their resources. While it’s typically the go-to option for beginners starting out with a limited budget, you get what you pay for with Shared Hosting. According to Elementor, the cost is the only reason to choose it over other hosting options is the cost. For enterprise customers, it’s to be avoided.
Virtual Private Server hosting sits part-way between shared hosting and a dedicated server. The main server is split up into smaller virtual servers, one of which will be solely for your site. You will still be sharing a server with other sites, but usually with a lower number than with shared hosting. VPS hosting delivers better customisation options and reliability but still cannot handle high traffic. It is a good option for a growing business, but for enterprise customers, a VPS is unlikely to provide enough space.
This is one of the better hosting options. You have a server solely dedicated to your site, so you won’t have to share any resources. The customisation options are far greater, and your site’s performance will never be dictated by traffic going to a different site. As you would expect for a better-quality service, dedicated hosting is more expensive. It is most suitable for enterprise customers who are expecting high levels of traffic, want the fastest loading times and complete server control.
Managed cloud hosting is the newest and most agile hosting option and the ideal choice for enterprise customers. It operates on multiple remote servers, all working together to reliably deliver your site. As cloud hosting uses several servers, if one fails, the others perform additional functions to make sure your site doesn’t falter. This results in far less downtime for your site than with other hosting options.
The other benefit is scalability. With shared, VPS and dedicated hosting, you will typically need to predict your future traffic levels and select a plan that is the best match. Underestimate your traffic levels and your site performance could suffer. Overestimate traffic and you will be overpaying for server resources that you will never use. But predicting website traffic isn’t easy. With cloud hosting, you can scale resources as required and only pay for what you use.
eCommerce and WooCommerce sites typically contain multiple images and products. If you have numerous visual elements on your site, you need the most powerful and agile hosting option to load them quickly and reliably. Statistics show that site speed has a direct effect on conversion rate. 47% of users expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less, take any more of their time and they will simply click the back button. Conversely, make your site quicker and sales will improve. Walmart found that for every 1-second improvement in page loading time, conversions increased by 2%.
As these figures clearly show, a slow or underperforming website can directly result in lost sales and revenue. A down website could be catastrophic for an eCommerce store. Use an agile cloud hosting provider to keep your site fast, user-friendly and making money.
Dedicated hosting and cloud hosting are the 2 options most suitable for enterprise customers as they deliver the greatest reliability and scalability. When deciding which to opt for, there are several key factors to consider.
Your managed web hosting service needs to deliver reliable, fast page loading times, especially during spikes in traffic. This is important if your company has regular product launches or seasonal website traffic, site speed must be consistent during periods of increased demand.
Managed cloud hosting services will do this most effectively. Spreading the load across multiple servers is far more robust than depending on a single server. You won’t have to make difficult traffic predictions as the multiple servers can easily scale up to meet demand as and when traffic spikes.
Websites for enterprise are large and feature-rich. A complex website that contains interactive features and high resolutions images and videos requires a large number of files to be saved and served up to customers quickly. Similarly, 3rd party integrations that provide additional functionality to your site require more substantial server resources. Load-balancing servers used with cloud hosting spread the digital workload across several servers and offer the best chance of reliably delivering a complex enterprise website.
As enterprise sites are often managed by a dedicated development team or company, developer-friendly features are essential for effective site management. More basic hosting options rarely provide SSH Access. Managed hosting comes with all the benefits of SSH, SFTP, Git, WP-CLI and more. While this may not mean much to the majority of us, it’s a game-changer for developers running your site.
Scalable solutions allow you to only pay for what you need and can quickly respond to high traffic. Choose a hosting provider that offers various packages; it’s important to be able to increase your website’s capabilities as demand increases. Shared, VPS and dedicated hosting all require you to predict your future traffic levels. Underestimate and site performance could suffer, overestimate and you lose valuable resources. Cloud hosting is the best option for scalability, as you can scale resources as required, as and when traffic dictates.
Most managed WordPress web hosting providers specialise exclusively in WordPress websites. Like us here at KIJO, we work solely with WordPress. We develop open-source software and work with the platform every day. As you’d expect from such experience, our expertise is vast.
Fast, accurate technical support is critical as it has a direct impact on how long your page stays down. The quicker issues are resolved by a WordPress expert, the sooner your site is up and running again.
If you opt for anything less than dedicated hosting, security breaches will be your responsibility. Shared and VPS hosting rarely provide support for any compromised sites. Managed hosting providers, on the other hand, usually have systems in place to protect your site from malware and work on securing your site if it’s hacked.
Keeping servers up to date and only running the latest versions of software such as PHP are all factors a managed host will keep on top of. The provider your web host uses also impacts your site security. At KIJO we work with industry-leading cloud infrastructure providers including AWS and Google Cloud Platform.
Even with the tightest security, it’s good practice to be prepared for the worst. You should backup your site regularly. A top-quality managed WordPress host should include automatic backups with your service. Cheaper options such as Shared Hosting typically only include this with premium plans and with VPS it’s up to you to manage backups yourself. When you choose a provider, check how often automatic backups are scheduled, what’s included in your package and how easy it is to run a manual backup as and when you need.
Managed WordPress hosts will be able to implement the most effective caching tools that will make your site pages load faster. Caching allows a WordPress site to skip time-consuming steps when loading a page. Instead of going through a complex page generation process for every visitor, caching allows information requests to be stored on a server, so that they can be retrieved quicker next time around. Your site looks and functions exactly as it should, but loading times are dramatically reduced.
Most enterprise websites require dedicated or cloud hosting services. Both options require more technical expertise if they are to be managed properly. A managed hosting service will take care of all system backups, monitor for updates, optimise site performance and manage problems and security issues for you. Choosing a managed hosting provider will ensure your site’s critical infrastructure is always monitored, leaving you free to continue running your business.
At KIJO we offer a managed cloud hosting service. As it is cloud-based, your hosting environment will scale according to load, so you are always ready for sudden spikes in demand. Our hosting is powered by the largest cloud hosting providers, delivering fast and reliable server performance across international locations. Your traffic load is distributed evenly across load-balancing servers, ensuring the most reliable performance across your website.
We offer Starter, Business and Enterprise packages, each designed to suit companies with different requirements. Our services include free site migration. We manage the transfer of your site, ensuring a smooth transition with no downtime.
We provide a fast-acting, expert support team with vast technical knowledge. Should you experience any problems, contact a member of the team and we will get back to you within one business day. It’s important to us that our customers are informed at all times. You can see the status of your website at any time. We also send monthly reports detailing your website’s uptime, so you can see how we’re doing.
Hopefully, this article has given you a deeper understanding of how important hosting is. Where your website is hosted has a huge impact on the speed, reliability and scalability of your site. To make sure your customers always experience fast page loading and perfect website functionality, your web host needs to be able to manage spikes in traffic and grow with your business.
While each web hosting option does have its merits, enterprise customers looking for a long-term solution should opt for cloud hosting. We believe that the flexibility provided by cloud hosting makes it the standout option and have created our WordPress hosting packages in line with this technology. Choosing a managed hosting service is a big decision. Simply contact the KIJO team today, we would be happy to discuss the process with you in more detail.
