So you’re using WordPress and you are getting a nice amount of traffic, say a few hundred visitors a day. Maybe you love running many of the great plugins that add extra functionality for your visitors. There’s just one problem: your server is struggling with the load and your site isn’t just slow, it’s ssslllooowww!
Shared hosting maybe inexpensive but resources are limited and security can be compromised. Dedicated servers are very powerful, can require high levels of technical knowledge for customization and are extremely expensive. VPS hosting can be the happy halfway house.
A Virtual Private Server is a physical computer partitioned into multiple servers each with running its own operating system.
Here are the most recommended VPS hosts for WordPress
I contacted hundreds of WordPress experts to ask them about their experiences and recommendations for VPS hosts. Speed, reliability, ease of use and quality of support were considered in the following recommendations.
A2 hosting
Inexpensive and their support comes highly recommended. 256 MB (burstable to 512MB) RAM, 10 GB storage, 300GB monthly bandwidth for $14/month. Other packages are similarly competitive. You can get cPanel with much higher specs for $50/month with the super Managed VPS Packages. 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Sign up to A2 VPS hosting here.
Dreamhost
Reasonably priced, good support, fantastic recommendations. This is my choice! RAM starts at 300MB, unlimited space and bandwidth. Dreamhost have their own award-winning user’s control panel. Prices start at $15/month. You can change your resource levels on the fly… no reboot needed!
Use IWANTADISCOUNT7 as a coupon code to get 50% off your first month if you sign up to Dreamhost.
VPS.net
This is all on the cloud – and affordable. Their experts will move your site to VPS.net for no charge. By default everything is command line; cPanel is an extra. 5GB disk space, 250GB network transfer, for an average 25k visitors for £13 per month (first month £1). 25GB disk space, 500GB network transfer for an average 125k visitors for £40 per month. Their users were extremely complimentary.
Sign up with VPS.net here.
Used by famous WordPress SEO blogger Joost de Valk (Yoast).
Rackspace
Their users had nothing but good things to say about Rackspace. Cloud Sites™ runs on a series of clusters so it has redundancy and protection built in. When you upload your site or web based application, multiple instances of it run so that even if an entire server goes down your site stays up and running. They have their own cloud control panel proprietary GUI to navigate you through the clouds. Cloud Sites™ start at $149/month.
Sign up with Rackspace here.
Used by the famous tech blogger Robert Scoble, who is an employee of the company. Your site will be super fast here.
Liquidweb
Their VPS plans start at $60/month and include cPanel as well as root access, 384MB RAM, 20GB storage, 400GB bandwidth, 4 IP addresses. Their VPS packages support 100 percent network uptime, VPS monitoring and a 30 minute support response guarantee.
VPS hosting can be the happy halfway house
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting could be a solution if you have outgrown your shared hosting and don’t need to move to a dedicated server. It is the best option for small to medium sized businesses. A site hosted on a VPS gets its own RAM and disk space, however, it shares the processing capacity (CPU) with other sites.
Remember, Google includes a site’s speed into it’s algorithm – so a faster running site is not only advantageous to your visitors but also may push you higher in the search engine results pages.
To command line or to control panel?
A web host control panel (such a cPanel) provides a graphical interface designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site. It makes it easier to, for example, move files around, or set up or import MySQL databases necessary for WordPress. Alternatively you can type command lines through a Secure Shell (SSH). SSH is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged securely between two networked devices. Anything you can do via cPanel is also doable via SSH without the overhead of the HTML, imagery and web server processing so it is therefore quicker.
Personally, I find the WYSIWYG nature of the control panel more familiar and intuitive, however, I’ve been using SSH as well and it can sometimes be a better way of doing things.
VPS hosting in the cloud or Standard VPS hosting?
Cloud computing is run on multiple of servers whereas on standard VPS hosting your site will sit on only one computer with associated backups. For this reason there is usually less or no downtime with cloud based services.
Conclusion
Deciding on a VPS host for WordPress is no easy business. There are many things to consider. Above all make sure you pick a host that other WordPressers recommend.
Use the following criteria to decide:
- RAM: 500MB RAM would be OK for a WordPress site that gets on average 400 visitors a day.
- CPU
- Band Width and Disc Space
- Server Software: if you want to use cPanel you may have to pay extra or maybe your favorite server software isn’t available
- Quality of Support
- Reputation
If you have any other recommendations or questions be sure to make them known in the comments section!
Shared hosting for WordPress
Alternatively, if you find these prices too expensive for you your can try shared hosting for WordPress.
Incredibly informative and interesting article.
Very well written..
What I liked:
You delivered all the information efficiently and easily. And even today being incredibly tired, I could absorb all of the info and remember.
Compare now with other blogs where they waffle and waffle (also about their cats) where they write *not* because deep down they want to convey valuable info to others – but more for self-glorification, for Google’s sake – stupid PageRank obsession (haha what fools, they are!)
Thanks Rob, I truly learnt something new today .. Keep it up!
Thank you, Henry for your truly encouraging remarks! I’ll keep on plodding away. All the best!
This was a good idea for a blog article, Rob. For the novice site owner, it can be easy to get confused by hosting plans and the response frequently is to go for the very cheapest option, which may not suit the site’s needs.
Thank you, Tracey, I spent a good month researching this and, you’re right, it can get very confusing! Hope all’s well with you.
Very interesting list you have there. I am very thankful for your effort so that I didn’t have to go through the trouble of researching these myself! Thanks.
It would also be helpful to have information on a website hosting’s downtime. We all know how their downtime is not only frustrating, but potentially devastating for online businesses.
Cheers.
Thanks, Jamie, good point about downtime. Not surprisingly, I’ve always found that information quite hard to come by and then when you see it (excuse the cynicism) how do you know it’s true?! But an interesting factor to write about on another day. Cheers.
Thanks for VPS list. I will a2hosting
Thanks Rara, hope it works out well.
Great list. I think i favour LiquidWeb ahead of other VPS hosts that you stated. They have one of the best reviews, VPS wise.
Hello Afam, those that use LiquidWeb speak very highly of it. They are a small company compared to some of the others.
What a fantastic article.I’ve previously wrote a similar article, (though not as in depth), and have learned an awful lot from this post..
That’s great Monty, glad it helped.
Thanks for the tips. My shared godaddy is getting, as you say, sssslowwwww, have about 50 sites with about 50k monthly page views.
Cheers, Thomas, I would definitely urge you to go for one of these, it’ll result in more visitors for you, I would think.
Hi Rob, are you still happy with your Dreamhost VPS?.
I’ve just tried A2 but something is serious wrong them at present. I’m not set up properly and their chat has been down for at least 3 days and my ticket are not being answered. It seems this is recent, but now common thing.
Hey, David, they’re OK. I’m not over the moon about their support. They can be hours responding. Even worse they were 7 hours offline the other day. It was probably a one-off but difficult to deal with at the time! Another thing I found is that you shouldn’t go for the cheapest VPS package. Or you can start with it but you can bump up the RAM in the admin area by, I think 100MB for $5 a month. I kept on bumping it up and as soon as I put it onto 500MB it was alright and still pretty cheap. Other Dreamhost bonuses: really easy to host email with Google apps – putting your email through Google Apps is really good, I’ve found. Your problems with A2 sound dreadful. That must be a one-off. And they should give you a rebate. Good luck!
Thanks Rob, you have been incredibly helpful again.
After reading up a bit I concluded that (if running a control panel) it was best to have 380+MB.
I went for A2′ hostings 768 MB package (Burstable 1536 MB) – $50 monthly.
Folk with .coms maybe be OK with them. I used a .co.uk and their system generated the account as .co. They acknowledged this problem before turning of the lights and hiding behind the sofa. What fun!
Quick update – A2 swung into action when I cancelled the account and resolved it with lots of apologies. Just in time.
Well, that’s a black mark against A2′s name. But good that once they realised their mistake they tried to do the right thing. Good to hear your comments on RAM and pricing. I hope to write more about hosting and server specs in the future. Best of luck with the dot co website!
Thanks for the list
What I am looking for is the alternative for cpanel. It is too costly & if there is any good alternative, the cost of vps could come down drastically.
Hello Amanda, it depends why you require cPanel but Dreamhost have their own award winning control panel that they don’t charge for which provides most if not all of the functions cPanel does. And their VPS packages are reasonably priced.
I was looking at the vps options from godaddy and they seem to offer a 2gb RAM plan for $40.00…It seems a little bit fishy because no other vps hosting company offers anything even close to that price range for the amount of RAM.. Here is the link:
http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/virtual-dedicated-servers.aspx?isc=cjcunlmtd&ci=9013
Your thoughts please?
Hello Maxim, I wouldn’t say that the offer sounds that dodgy. Not too much and not too little. GoDaddy’s shared services have been almost universally reviled. But I heard of one company that were using them for WordPress multi-sites very successfully and that it was a new hosting deal from GoDaddy that they were using. Maybe this is it? Sorry I can’t be of more help, Maxim.
Thanks Rob – an extremely useful list!
I’m assuming the VPS hosts are US-based, judging by the US$ prices – right? Is this intentional on your part, given that you’re London-based? Is it worth my looking at local hosts? (I’m based in Australia)
These are quite large companies, Cos, so they may have an Australian server. Although I’m London based, I’ve always used US hosts. You can specify your geographical location in Google Webmaster Tools and I’ve always done well in local and international searches. However, some companies may require being hosted in a certain country for SEO purposes.
Very interesting article. I work for a small charity and we have a shared hosting account with Heart Internet. We have been with them for about two years and at first all was well but more recently our site has crawled along and sometimes disconnected from the database. This is usually in the afternoons and has happened countless times with very little explanation from their support team. Maybe too few resources on their servers?
Anyway, we are now looking at moving to VPS hosting for better consistency. Just wondered if anyone can recommend a company with UK based servers that are reliable?
Cheers and really enjoy reading your articles Rob as they are clear and to the point.
Hello Jean, there is a company I use called Vidahost (affiliate link) and I can personally vouch that their servers are ultra-fast and the support is extremely good. Other than that I haven’t used many UK hosts.
Glad you’ve found my articles interesting, Jean, welcome to the site!
Thanks for the feedback Rob.
This has been hugely helpful, thanks! From my experience, shared hosting works for only the smallest and most streamlined of websites, and the reliability just isn’t there.
Yes, Emma, shared hosting is hit and missed to say the very best. Glad the article was helpful!
I hate to say that your list is not the best ! i hate the way you use affiliate links ( making money doesn’t mean you mislead people, some hosts in the list are the worst ).
Do you want to update your list ! well :
1) Knowhost
2) Wiredtree
3) Servint
Jean, this list of hosts was put together having consulted over 100 WordPress experts many of whom use multiple VPSs. None of them mentioned the hosts only you recommend. What’s best, one person’s recommendations or the survey of over a 100 people? I know which one I’d prefer. And many other people have thanked me for the information on this page.
I would be helpful if you could tell us about your grievance(s) with whichever host(s) you have. Maybe I or somebody else could help.
I regularly inform the visitors here of affiliate links although it’s not on this page as I originally wrote this a while back and it was one of the first articles I wrote with affiliate links. If you don’t like affiliate links (again, you don’t say why) then I can only suggest that you avoid the internet. If you’d said that affiliate links could prompt a false recommendation then I’d agree that that maybe is an argument against them. However, whether you believe me or not (I don’t care but I do care about what other people think of me and this site), these hosts came out on top of a survey I did amongst WordPress experts and I didn’t add any due to any favorable affiliate scheme.
Thanks for reading the article.