When a WordPress site grows quickly or gets lots of traffic, there will be problems with loading time, security, and performance. For that reason, many businesses and websites switch to a dedicated WordPress hosting plan, but not all the platforms work the same, some web hosting providers offer managed services, and others do not.
So, it’s up to the website owner in the end to choose a fully managed WP dedicated plan or to sign up for a self-managed package and let his team do the technical operations, optimizations, and everything else.
As I was using WordPress for 9 years, I encountered all the common issues with using shared, VPS, and dedicated servers. So, that helped me a lot in determining which one of the web hosts works better for WordPress, and what small businesses should avoid when choosing a website hosting company.
Now, here is your guide with details, comparisons, and tips for adding dedicated resources to WordPress and making it secure at the same time. There are options for Linux, Windows, and of course Root access to manage the servers the way you want to even add your custom configurations. Taking time comparing web hosts is crucial for starting a blog on WordPress that works well.
What is dedicated WordPress hosting?
With dedicated WordPress hosting, you’re renting a real physical server and getting 100% of its resources like RAM, disk storage, bandwidth, and CPU to your website. So, there is no shared IP or resources and WordPress gets its own IP address and allocated server resources. That means faster page loading time, more control on the configurations, and better user experience when applying the right tips and adding the recommended systems.
Unlike shared web hosting, dedicated servers offer full control over customization, security patches, and even hardware implementations. Some web hosts offer on-demand dedicated servers while others have their own architecture. Thus, they’re ready to use web servers.
Most dedicated hosting solutions offer cPanel for Linux architecture and Plesk for Windows-based servers. All that means flexibility for choosing the best operating system that you need and without a doubt there is an auto-installer software for WordPress like Softaculous or others.
Technically speaking, someone who hosts his WordPress website on a dedicated server, has more tools and options to outrank someone else’s website on shared hosting or even VPS. But all that is not coming from just more RAM and server caching. So, there is always a need to optimize WordPress for speed on the server level and have great content on the website that can be products with good descriptions and high-quality images.
Now, there are advanced dedicated WordPress server management technologies that handle traffic spikes and even secure the site and prevent DDoS attacks and malware better than other site hosting solutions.
Now, because WordPress is using PHP and MySQL to work, it’s not easy for traditional hosting solutions to handle all these operations and in many cases, servers fail because of that.
So, buying a WordPress dedicated hosting plan is the first step, and it should be optimized on the server level. But that’s easier than doing it on VPS because there is full server root access and you can add any script to cache files, compress images, and secure WordPress at the same time.
That’s which make your online business stand out from the others and generate more sales (good website content, plus speed and security is the secret sauce to win the competition these days even without advertising)
Top 6 dedicated WordPress web hosts
Because there are so many options and dedicated solutions, it’s always recommended to opt for dedicated WordPress servers with a trusted company and professional support.
Many web hosts offer offshore technical support with low quality and for that reason, it’s always a good choice to choose the right provider with in-house staff. In this case, the engineers know their architecture and have access to their own servers in case of any urgent intervention. Now, here is the list of the best solutions to host WordPress in its dedicated environment.
1. Liquid Web
Liquid Web is well known for its managed Woocommerce hosting on WordPress, but also, they have the fastest dedicated servers on the earth, and I wrote about that years ago. I had the chance to try one of their bare metal servers for 6 months and it was like a wow. No matter what some of the websites you host, their technical team does a hard job in optimizing the software and making it super secure.
Talking about dedicated servers for WordPress, there are two types of solutions:
- Physical dedicated servers
- Cloud dedicated servers
The dedicated servers come with the latest technologies in Intel core processors and SSD storage. So WordPress gets super-fast CPU and lots of resources thanks to the high level of RAM that can reach 128 GB and that’s not easy to access in the web hosting industry.
Liquid Web has also a managed WordPress hosting, but it’s not dedicated. However, the resources are auto-scaled without extra costs for you until they reach the next plan. What matters here is the plan to choose a high-traffic WordPress site.
There is a dedicated server plan called Intel Gold 6130 that offers 128 GB RAM, 16 Cores at 3.7 GHz max 15 TB bandwidth, and of course additional disk space for storage and dedicated IP. This is a Linux dedicated server that you can use for WordPress and make it stand out from other websites, especially in the e-commerce world when speed and performance matter.
There is also Window dedicated WordPress servers, it’s not only for Linux OS, each one of them includes:
- cPanel Pro, Plesk Web Pro, or Interworx control panels
- Linux or Windows OS
- Severs protection and malware removal
- Anti-DDoS
- POP/IMAP Microsoft Exchange
- Encrypted backups
- Instant server provisioning
- Web-based dashboard for managing backups
- Dedicated IP
- Business-class SSD storage
- Customize your own dedicated server
- Premium business email including contacts, calendar, and tasks
- WordPress cache management with few clicks
- PHP accelerated
- Nginx and
2. WP Engine
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific hosting with full optimization and an exclusive caching system. However, the first plans are shared, and there are on-demand dedicated servers for WordPress that handle millions of visits and come with enterprise-level hardware installs.
The customer hosting plan for WordPress comes with dedicated server resources and all the 35 premium themes from StudioPress which is now its own company they acquired in 2018. In addition to the exceptional hosting quality for enterprises and web agencies, there are lots of quality themes to choose from and then customize them the way you want. Here is what to expect from WP Engine Custom WordPress hosting plan:
- Dedicated WordPress environment
- Disaster recovery included
- Their own automatic migration tool (I moved a site of 60 GB in a few minutes with one click)
- Blazingly fast loading time
- Dedicated onboard manager
- Dedicated area for developing, staging, and production
- Automated SSL
- Add your own SSL certificates
- Git and SFTP connections
- Daily automated backups
- Millions of visits to your site with no performance issues at all
- Global CDN from premium service they partnered with
- Priority support by phone, live chat, or tickets
- PHP version control
- Custom server implementation available, (call them for details and explanations)
- Multisite WordPress hosting support
- Page speed diagnosis and analytics
- API integration
- Advanced use permissions
- WordPress hosting account ownership transfer for agencies who build sites for clients
- Detailed activity logs
- Geo-Targeted content based on your site user locations
- Managed WordPress core updates and security patches
- Two-factor authentication
When quality matters, WP Engine should be the number one choice for building or hosting a WordPress site that needs lots of resources and gets huge traffic. The monthly web hosting solutions work well for bloggers, but when choosing an on-year plan, for example, eCommerce sites and sites get generous discounts.
3. Pressidium
Pressidium is an enterprise dedicated WordPress hosting that handles millions of visitors without any issues. In fact, it’s not any managed WordPress hosting, but one of the fastest solutions that lots of large retail eCommerce businesses and digital marketing agencies host their WP sites with.
I was one of the first ones who reviewed Pressidium hosting in 2014 when they just started, and their server speed amazed me. But for pricing, it’s not the same thing, they are using high prices compared to their competitors. Now, I think they review their pricing model and it’s acceptable for what the website gets as resources compared to the price of renting a WordPress server.
To see the details of their dedicated hosting solution for WordPress, you should skip their managed WordPress hosting plans first and look at the bottom of their site or just click on the image above to get access and find the details. In fact, such a powerful WordPress hosting with its dedicated servers should not be easy to get these days. So, check for availability first.
Here is what makes the Pressidium dedicated hosting unique:
- High availability architecture for WordPress where clusters are organized in multiple tiers for WordPress
- The support comes from engineers and not regular agents
- Advanced load balancing technology to make the server one of its kind, no traffic issues
- No plugins are required for security or caching, the servers have their own sophisticated technologies
- Scalable resources
- DevOps collaboration between your WordPress developers and the Pressuim Engineers
- One-click staging environment
- You can push a staging site into production with one click
- Clone your site with one click and test things without affecting the live site
- SSL certificate installation in seconds supporting Let’s Encrypt and Third-Party SSL
- Global data centers in the USA, Europe, Oceana, and Asia
- Their own architecture is designed specifically for dedicated WordPress hosting
4. InMotion
I used InMotion Hosting for WordPress, but it’s not as fast as expected, but with a dedicated server, it’s much better. The company offers commercial class dedicated servers for all kinds of sites, and what’s really cool is their free 2 hours of managed hosting consultation through the phone. That way, you can tell them about your server configurations, WordPress hosting needs and they’ll set up the environment based on your requirements.
There is RAID-1 and RAID-5 storage with up to 15 dedicated IP addresses, 15 TB bandwidth, and cPanel or WHM with managed servers.
The InMotion dedicated hardware keeps WordPress running smoothly and it gets all the server resources with superior uptime and good support.
5. CloudWays
CloudWays is another trusted company that provides WordPress dedicated hosting in the cloud, and the difference here is that they’ve partnered with the biggest cloud hosting provider in the US. You can expect superior quality and 100% uptime when you choose one of their WordPress dedicated hosting plans.
Now, let’s talk about their partners, the CloudWays engineers build their architecture to install WordPress on the cloud and get the maximum speed and of course its dedicated resources. Unlike traditional dedicated hosting, when you host WordPress on its own dedicated cloud server, you get 100% Uptime and unbelievable speed and performance.
With a few clicks of the button, you can install WordPress on one of the largest cloud hosting services and get your site running in minutes. There is a free migration service and of course, SSL and a good control panel to manage WordPress from one place.
For infrastructure, CloudWays lets you install WordPress on the cloud on one of the following platforms:
- Linode: The maximum RAM is 192 GB
- VULTR: 64 GB is their maximum RAM
- Amazon AWS: Exeptila maximum RAM of 384 GB
- Google Cloud: 120 GB of RAM is their maximum RAM
- DigitalOcean cloud comes with up to 192 GB of RAM
6. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is well-recognized as a domain name registrar company, but it also offers dedicated servers you can use for WordPress. The good thing about this web host is that every machine comes with 4 CPU cores with 3.7 GHz each no matter if you choose a memory of 4 GB or 32 GB RAM.
That means speed and real server resources, but also there is SSL, unmetered server bandwidth, and up to 2TB RAID-1 storage.
GoDaddy servers work well, but you should wait 2 days on average to get the server up and running, that’s because of the security measures they take into consideration. Also, the engineers build the server for your needs which is also great.
The GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting is not dedicated, so it’s not for websites that need extra levels of bandwidth and security. Additionally, the dedicated plans come with cPanel and the auto-installer software at no extra cost.
WordPress dedicated hosting vs shared servers
It looks like there is a lot of confusion for website owners who want to choose a WordPress hosting that’s secure, reliable, and optimized at the same time. In reality, most web hosting providers offer shared WordPress hosting and are not dedicated. So they advertise that as optimized hosting or managed WordPress, but in reality, it’s not like having a website and hosting it with a dedicated environment. Here are the main differences between shared hosting for WordPress and a dedicated server.
- On a dedicated server, WordPress gets all the speed it deserves
- On shared hosting, WordPress suffers in resource usage
- Another website on a shared server can cause downtime to your site because of traffic spikes
- Excessive shared web server usage can crash WordPress and get your account removed
- On a dedicated environment, you can configure WordPress the way you want
- Dedicated solutions come with exclusive technical specifications that shared accounts do not have
- In a shared hosting environment, any suspicious website can cause blacklisting to your site because they share the same IP
- With a dedicated IP, your site gets its own unique IP. Thus, no other domain share it with you
- Unlike regular hosting, dedicated accounts help WordPress get crawled faster and better by google because of its high resources. That way, you don’t have to worry about crawling limits
- Web agencies prefer using dedicated WordPress hosting for their top clients because they know no one will help them if a problem occurs on shared hosting servers.
VPS or a dedicated server for WordPress?
I hosted a WordPress site on a VPS and it worked well even without doing any optimization. But later, there were issues with traffic spikes, especially from social media sites. Some web hosts do not adjust the RAM and CPU according to these critical situations when the servers are handling traffic using 100% of their power. So, expect the same if you have a high-traffic website no matter if it’s WordPress or any other CMS.
Unlike shared hosting a VPS works better, the site gets more power and a dedicated IP. But here is a rule from me, don’t opt for dedicated WordPress hosting for a small blog or eCommerce site just to get the benefits of its power and speed. Instead, use a managed VPS that’s optimized and well protected.
That’s better than paying for lots of resources that you don’t use. In fact, the advantage will be somehow not a big deal compared to what you pay for each month. Dedicated hosting costs lots of money and I only recommend these solutions for high-traffic WordPress sites and online stores that use Woocommerce.
Managed vs unmanaged WordPress servers
Web hosting providers build their data center and server architecture to meet the minimum requirement for a small business website. However, not everyone is looking for the same features and OSs. So, there is always a need to let customers manage their servers the way and implement their preferred technologies and security software.
Managed dedicated web hosting for WordPress is the best solution for most users. There is no need to deal with server configurations, security updates, and so on. Instead, the website owner can focus on his business and let experienced engineers do their job,
Using a dedicated server WordPress hosting
Hosting a WordPress website on dedicated servers is not the same as regular hosting solutions. Dedicated servers are costly and tricky in terms of security, especially in the cloud. But messing with some of the server settings can cause serious security threats to WordPress. Consequently, it’s not advised to choose dedicated hosting if you have a small blog.
Dedicated WordPress hosting is a solution that’s designed for heavy traffic websites that need a high level of bandwidth and powerful CPU processors. Therefore, eCommerce websites that use Woocommerce can get benefits from opting for a dedicated server hosting. Web agencies, and freelancers who build WordPress sites for clients worldwide should be happy when choosing a dedicated environment.
That way, clients notice the great performance of a dedicated server hosting without the need to do the technical support themselves.
For bloggers, it’s not always the case, but in general, when WordPress started getting unexpected traffic because of the popularity of growth. Moving it to a dedicated server will be the right decision.
I saw lots of food blogs and others in the fashion world moving their sites to a dedicated environment, and that’s true because these types of blogs use lots of images and with hundreds of thousands of visits per month, it becomes so tricky to make pages load fast without the big size of images. So, they prefer 100% allocated resources to their site instead of regular hosting solutions.
For corporate companies, dedicated hosting is not recommended unless they want to have the fastest page loading time and better resources, a VPS can work well for WordPress business websites and even an organization can use that. But once the traffic is too high, then, a dedicated web server is the solution.
Tips for hosting WordPress in a dedicated environment
If you choose a fully managed server for WordPress hosting, things will be better for you as there will be no technical configurations and management that cost money and lots of time. On the other side, if you prefer installing WordPress on its dedicated servers and you want to manage the settings, updates, plugins, and everything else, then, here is what you can do with tips and recommendations for fast, secure, and reliable hosting.
Server Uptime
Back in 2017, the Amazon web service caused a loss of $150 M to companies because of downtime that lasted for 3 hours only. So, imagine the negative impact of big downtime on eCommerce websites these days. Just for clarification, that has been a problem of typos, the Amazon agent entered server inputs incorrectly for a regular operation to remove some AS3 servers.
Warning about Backups
That fact that neglecting the importance of WordPress backups causes lots of trouble to many companies because they never worried about that. Taking daily backups is not an option, you have to organize the WordPress backups by months and store them in different locations. Most dedicated WordPress hosting companies create a daily backup for your site. But, that’s not enough, always look for the best options.
Let the web host backup your site and create your own copy once a week or so, here is what I think is better, once a week create a full backup of your WordPress site if there is a lot of content added like pages, products, users, etc…Then, once a month, create a folder for the previous 30 days with all the backups inside.
Make that a monthly routine and you’ll thank me later for that. Also, make sure you save these backups in 3 different places at least if you think you have a mission-critical WordPress site that’s worth a lot. Save a copy of your backup on your local computer, another one in an external drive to use in case of any failure, and another one in a secure cloud hosting like Amazon or Dropbox. That way, you can restore WordPress if all the problems happen at one time (trust me, it can happen!)
Server monitoring is crucial
As we talked about WordPress many times before, it’s not the most secure CMS, and there is no secure app at all. But what makes the difference is the measures you can take to prevent these problems. Installing WordPress on Linux servers is not that hard, but once you neglect monitoring its uptime, speed, and scan for malware and virus, that will be a nightmare to every online business that uses a CMS.
For that reason, there is no reason for not monitoring your site uptime first and second. You have no choice but to install a powerful security system that scans for vulnerabilities, malware, and viruses and then blocks every suspicious user’s activity and makes the site safe and secure.
Look for the highest server security levels
If you don’t need software in your server, remove it, that will add issues and never help your WordPress site. Also, change the default SSH Port number which is 22, and add an extra level of security to your servers. Even if that won’t secure it at 100%, it will make a difference and prevent Robots from trying to log in and access your machine. You can go a step forward in hardening Linux servers and add the right configuration like
Server and system updates
Updating WordPress should be done without verifying that the server software is up to date, some incompatibility issues can cause problems. Sometimes, webmasters get locked out of the WordPress admin area because they messed with settings or caused caching conflicts.
Check for the latest version of Linux and its distributions and make sure you read the WordPress requirements for the server before doing any upgrade. That being said, keeping the server security system and malware scanner up to date is not a choice. There are many vulnerabilities caused by WordPress plugins or even themes that you can prevent by doing updates the right way.
Prepare for server crashes
The server crashing itself is not the end of the world, it can be fixed if there was any known error. But many companies lost their sites because they didn’t prepare for bad web hosting scenarios, attacks, and other problems. Letting expert engineers do the job is much better using fully managed dedicated servers. However, once you choose a self-managed WordPress server, things need your intention.
You can start looking for a WordPress security firm and ask them if they can help when something wrong happens to your site or in the case of an attack. Then, you can look for partnerships or long-term problem fixing. That way, you will have someone who can fix your WordPress website if you don’t want to mess with a security system and server configuration that can complicate things.
Leave a room for server upgrades
Unlike having a team that manages your web servers, dealing with server disk space, bandwidth and resources is not easy, especially when you’re using 90% of the RAM and CPU allocated.
Because every second counts in downtime, your server management team should leave room for upgrades and expect excessive resource usage on holidays and special days. So, instead of installing a static RAM and CPU, look for additional RAM and other resources that can absorb the traffic spikes and attacks.
In reality, most web hosting companies offer basic DDoS protection, but for WordPress, you need premium DDoS as the server itself is not ready for such bad scenarios if you don’t focus on that. Thus, having a scalable dedicated server or at least adding more resources than what your site consumes should make things better for your online business.
Conclusion
For good reasons, using WordPress dedicated server hosting should be a good step to have a super-fast website or online store. But don’t neglect optimizations and server-level caching. If you can do that yourself or you have a WordPress management team, things are better. But if you don’t have experts, then, it’s not recommended to choose a self-managed server. Instead, opt for a fully managed dedicated plan and save your time and effort and focus on your business and not the technical issues.
Now, because WordPress has a dedicated Woocommerce plugin, it’s always a smart move to choose Woocommerce specific hosting and estimate your monthly traffic and bandwidth usage to choose a good plan.
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