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Finding the right hosting provider is a big challenge, let alone finding one that fits your budget. In this article, I will take you through the most affordable managed cloud hosting providers that are not only ideal for your website but are also a light on your pocket.
But why should you go for a managed cloud hosting solution in the first place when there are other hosting types that are far cheaper, like shared or VPS hosting? To answer this question, we’ll first take a look at some of the benefits that managed cloud hosting has over traditional hosting.
Best Affordable WordPress Hosting Providers
- Benefits of Managed Cloud Hosting
- Scalability
- Better Security Than Shared Hosting
- Optimized for Performance
- Platform to Manage Your Server and Application
- The Most Affordable Managed Cloud Hosting Providers
- Cloudways
- Kinsta
- WP Engine
- Final Words
Benefits of Managed Cloud Hosting
To understand why an affordable managed cloud hosting is better than cheaper alternatives like shared hosting or a VPS, let’s look at some of its key benefits.
Scalability
Let’s say you are running an ecommerce store and you have planned a holiday season campaign where you expect your site traffic to increase ten folds. If your server isn’t ready for it, though, your online store might crash and you will lose significant traffic and customers.
Managed cloud hosting gives you the ability to scale your resources whenever you need to. You can always increase your RAM size, Storage, and Bandwidth when you are expecting a spike in your daily traffic.
Server scaling also comes in handy when you are a growing business and your server resources need to increase regularly. For example, if you are a web agency, you would need a bigger server whenever you acquire a new client or a project.
Better Security Than Shared Hosting
There is no doubt that managed cloud hosting is more secure than shared hosting. To find out why let’s understand the basic distinction between the two.
In shared hosting, a server hosts multiple applications including yours. Since your application is hosted on the same server as hundreds of other applications, a vulnerability in one application can have a bad impact on your application too.
In managed cloud hosting, your application is hosted on a network of physical servers with no one else sharing the resources with you. This means that your data’s security is completely dependent on you and your server. Managed cloud hosting also offers end-to-end data encryption that protects your data at every point throughout its transition from the server to the browser to prevent security breaches.
Then there are automated backups. In case your website’s data is compromised, you can always restore it and resume your operations from where you left off because managed cloud hosting provides.
Optimized for Performance
Managed cloud hosting is built on top of cloud servers that are spread throughout the world which makes it possible for your application to perform at optimum speed. When you launch a cloud server, you can always select a data center location based on the location of your target audience.
Server-side caching is another added benefit of managed cloud hosting that directly impacts your application’s performance and speed. But what is server-side caching? A server-side cache is when data is stored on the server and handled without any involvement from the user or the browser.
There are three types of server-side caches:
Object Caching: This is when your database queries are stored in your server so that it can be quickly retrieved upon request.
CDN Caching: A CDN or a Content Delivery Network is a cluster of servers that are spread all over the world. When users send requests to visit your website through their browsers, the server closest to them loads the data, resulting in quicker load times.
Opcode Caching: This type of caching compiles and caches PHP code between requests so it is quickly executable when needed.
Platform to Manage Your Server and Application
The word “managed“ in managed cloud hosting refers to the platform that lets you manage your server and application. This platform allows you to launch a server or an application in minutes, a task that usually takes hours and professional help. You can perform other server-level tasks like scheduling backups, server scaling, enable or disable CDN, enable SSL, and much more.
The platform also lets you migrate your site in a few clicks and some cloud hosting providers have a dedicated support team that takes care of this task for you.
Speaking of support, managed cloud hosting also focuses on providing you 24/7 support through live chat, calls, and ticketing systems where you can launch a ticket for your problem and the support team will solve it as soon as possible.
The Most Affordable Managed Cloud Hosting Providers
Now that we have understood how managed cloud hosting is better than going for a cheaper option like shared hosting or a VPS, let’s take a look at the best cloud hosting providers that fit your budget.
Cloudways – Starts at $10/month
Since affordability is the biggest factor here, it makes sense to start with Cloudways.
The cost of hosting your WordPress application on Cloudways depends on 2 factors; Infrastructure and RAM.
Cloudways offers you the flexibility and freedom to choose between 5 best-in-class cloud infrastructure providers:
(Cloudways pricing is Pay-as-you-go, meaning you will be charged only for the time your server is active. The following pricing is on the assumption that your server is active for 30 days.)
- DigitalOcean – starting at $10/month
- Vultr – starting at $11/month
- Linode – starting at$12/month
- AWS – starting at$36.51/month
- Google Cloud – starting at $33.30/month
Since the topic of this article is “Affordable” hosting solutions, I’d recommend DigitalOcean, Vultr, or Linode. All three options offer speed, optimization, and security at a budget-friendly price. AWS and Google Cloud servers, on the other hand, are expensive hosting options and mostly used by large businesses with deeper pockets.
The most affordable managed cloud server on Cloudways will cost you just $10/month with the following specifications:
Infrastructure: DigitalOcean
RAM: 1GB
Storage: 25GB SSD
Processor: 1Core
Bandwidth:1TB
Of course, this type of server is not enough for any complex application but this was just to show you that Cloudways is incredibly affordable and yet manages to outperform any other hosting service.
You can obviously choose a larger server as well. A 4GB DigitalOcean server will cost you just $42/month with the following specifications:
RAM: 4GB
Storage: 80GB SSD
Processor: 2Core
Bandwidth: 4TB
These are some impressive features for a server that will cost you just over $40 a month. Such a server is usually enough for a blog having a hundred thousand blog visitors or a slightly complex website. And with that price, it’s one of the most affordable hosting options out there.
Cloudways’ Flexibility and Freedom
You might have noticed that while you are choosing your cloud server with Cloudways, you have the freedom to choose not only your desired infrastructure but also your preferred RAM size. This is an amazing feature because you know how powerful you want your server to be based on your application or business requirements so you can choose accordingly.
I haven’t come across any managed cloud hosting provider that offers such flexibility and freedom to its users when choosing their servers. This especially gives their customers control over their billing as well.
Pay As You Go
In the screenshot above, you can see the hourly rate alongside the monthly payment. This is because you pay by the hour and not on a monthly basis which means that you only pay for the number of hours you use your server resources.
If you’re wondering how paying by the hour is beneficial and how it saves costs, then remember that there are cases when a server is used only for certain hours of the day. For example, a developer may use a staging environment to test different tools, and when they’re done, they can just delete the server and the billing meter will stop. The developer will only be charged for the time they used the resources and not for the entire month.
This is what gives Cloudways customers great control over their billing and makes it affordable to use even larger servers.
Cloudways Stack
Every server at Cloudways comes with a performance Stack designed for better optimization of your server and application. The Cloudways Stack is a combination of different servers and caching mechanisms that ensures your server runs at peak performance. Here are its components:
Varnish Cache:It caches and serves all the contents of a webpage directly from it’s stored cache without involving a server for repeated equests.
Redis: REmote DIctionary Server that speeds up the database queries.
Apache: Cloudways has integrated Apache, a well-known web server, with all its components for an optimized hosting experience.
NGINX: It is a super fast reverse-proxy server capable of handling a greater number of requests than traditional web servers.
MariaDB: MariaDB is a popular database that is fast, robust, and scalable.
Memcached:It is a caching mechanism that makes database calls, API calls, and page rendering a breeze.
A combination of all of these technologies completely optimizes your server and application without any extra cost. All these come with all the servers you launch at Cloudways which makes it an excellent value for money as well.
You can also avail Cloudways using this coupon code: WPB30 and experience 3 months of free managed WordPress hosting!
WP Engine – Starts at $25/month
A close competitor of Cloudways, WP Engine is arguably the most popular cloud hosting provider around. It is built on top of Google Cloud’s infrastructure, though, so it’s not as affordable as Cloudways.
Furthermore, WP Engine doesn’t offer the flexibility and freedom to choose your cloud provider or your preferred RAM like Cloudways does. Hence, pricing plans are fixed and you must pay what you signed up for whether you utilize it fully or not.
If you compare WP Engine’s pricing plan with Cloudways’, you’ll notice that in $25/month, WP Engine gives you:
Cloud Provider: Google Cloud
Storage: 10GB
RAM: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Number of applications: 1
Bandwidth: 50GB
Visitors:25,000
While with Cloudways, this is what you get in $22/month.
Cloud Provider: DigitalOcean
Storage: 50GB SSD
RAM: 2GB
Processor: 1 Core
Number of applications: Unlimited
Bandwidth: 2TB
Visitors: Unlimited
Yes, Google Cloud is a better infrastructure than DigitalOcean, but Cloudways has clearly more value for money when it comes to server specifications. You are getting a lot more for your money without any restrictions and limitations.
What’s more important is that WP Engine is solely a WordPress hosting solution while Cloudways offers hosting for a number of applications like Magento, Laravel, PHP, and more. And this has benefited WP Engine in a lot of ways.
Expert WordPress Support
Since WP Engine is built for WordPress websites, their support team consists of WordPress developers and experts who are familiar with all the issues that you might face while your application is hosted on WP Engine. This significantly improves the support quality because they are able to handle chats, real-time queries, and support tickets much better.
Optimized for WordPress Performance
WP Engine comes with some optimization tools that help you speed up your WordPress site and improve performance.
CDN:Every WP Engine plan includes a CDN or a Content Delivery Network that helps reduce load times significantly.
GeoTarget:It is an addon that displays your content while catering to the visitor’s location. This way, you can show country-specific content to your visitors.
Page Performance:Page Performance is a built-in speed testing tool by WP Engine that lets you test your site and helps you make improvements to it.
StudioPress WordPress Themes
In 2018, WP Engine acquired StudioPress, a popular WordPress theme creator behind the Genesis Framework and a number of high-quality portfolio themes. This gave WP Engine customers access to the StudioPress theme library. Customers can now get any StudioPress theme on their WordPress site managed by WP Engine and considering each theme costs around $100, this is amazing value for money.
Another advantage here is that users often find it difficult to choose the theme that is not only right for them, but it’s also bug-free and optimized for speed and SEO. WP Engine makes it easier for its customers to choose from a selection of more than 30 quality themes.
Automated WordPress Core Updates
Unlike Cloudways, WP Engine offers application support through its platform. This means WP Engine also takes care of your WordPress application for you which includes automatic WordPress updates.
Now WordPress rolls out new updates every 2 or 3 months and it’s important to update your application to the latest version. But many users don’t update out of laziness and because the process requires a number of steps and sometimes the help of a developer. WP Engine offers to take this task upon themselves by updating your WordPress core automatically.
Kinsta – Starts at $30/month
Just like WP Engine, Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider. They are relatively new in the market but have quickly achieved a reputation as a reliable hosting solution for WordPress websites.
Powered by Google Cloud, it is easy to imagine powerful cloud servers powering your WordPress websites, but at what cost?
Let’s compare Kinsta’s basic plan with that of WP Engine and Cloudways. So in $30/month, this is what you get:
Cloud Provider: Google Cloud
Storage: 10GB
RAM: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Number of applications: 1
Bandwidth: Unknown
Visitors:20,000
You can see how some vital information is not included in Kinsta’s plan like RAM, Processor and the Bandwidth which makes it difficult to judge what the performance would be like.
In $25/month, WP Engine offers:
Cloud Provider: Google Cloud
Storage: 10GB
RAM: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Number of applications: 1
Bandwidth: 50GB
Visitors:25,000
While with Cloudways, this is what you get in $22/month.
Cloud Provider: DigitalOcean
Storage: 50GB SSD
RAM: 2GB
Processor: 1 Core
Number of applications: Unlimited
Bandwidth: 2TB
Visitors: Unlimited
You would notice how Cloudways is transparent with their value proposition as no essential information is hidden from their customers.
Just like WP Engine, Kinsta is a “WordPress” hosting solution too which means the hosting environment is specially crafted to optimize WordPress sites. Apart from automated WordPress updates and expert support, here are some of Kinsta’s standout features:
Rock-Solid Security
Kinsta is known for its highly secure hosting environment that is powered by Linux Containers on top of Google Cloud servers. This enables Kinsta to completely isolate each application so a vulnerability in one application doesn’t affect the other.
Also, Kinsta doesn’t host WordPress applications that are running on unsupported versions of PHP because they no longer have security updates and are exposed to several vulnerabilities. If you have been keeping an eye on hosting news, you would know that Kinsta is one of the first ones to adopt new technology and this is mostly the case with PHP versions. Kinsta is usually the first one to offer the latest PHP versions while all its competitors are figuring out how to do it.
Kinsta servers also support TLS 1.3 which is an encryption protocol that is not only more secure but is also faster.
Even after all these protocols if your site is hacked, Kinsta promises to fully recover it without charging a single penny.
Uptime Checks
For your website and business to be successful, it is important that your site is up 24/7. Kinsta ensures this by checking all its WordPress applications every 2 minutes which means your site is checked 720 times each day. This adds to the reliability of Kinsta’s WordPress hosting.
Because of the regular checks, Kinsta’s team is able to act proactively and identify issues that might affect your site later. Once these are identified, they are fixed there and then by WordPress experts.
Automatic Scaling
Most WordPress users are worried that their hosting provider might bail out when there is a traffic surge on their website. Kinsta has got you covered through its auto-scaling feature. Cloud servers at Kinsta are always ready for unprecedented spikes in traffic on your websites by scaling your resources as per need.
Also, since Kinsta’s hosting environment is built on top of Google Cloud, you always have the option to scale your resources yourself through the platform. Apart from that, you can always get in touch with their 24/7 support to resolve all server or application related issues.
Final Words
In this article, I took you through three of the most affordable cloud hosting solutions available with all their features so that you can decide if they are worth your money or not.
Cloudways, starting at just $10/month, gives you the freedom and flexibility that you need to launch your server and your application.
WP Engine is a powerful managed cloud hosting platform starting from$25/month and comes with lots of performance optimization options and not to forget, a premium theme library from StudioPress.
Kinsta offers a secure hosting environment with the basic plan costing $30/month. Powered by Google cloud, Kinsta ensures that your server is regularly checked for uptime and vulnerabilities while also making sure that it is updated on the latest technologies.
So there you have it. Now that you have all the necessary information, you can an informed decision on which Cloud hosting provider to choose for your online business.
