Most WordPress hosting articles are useless. They’ll give you a list of 15 providers, claim they “tested them all,” then recommend whatever pays the highest commission. You learn nothing about what actually matters.
Here’s the real problem: a photographer’s portfolio and an online store need completely different things.
But every article treats hosting like there’s one “best” answer.
There isn’t.
I’ve teamed up with one of the developers from Websites That Sell and we’re going to show you how WordPress actually uses server resources, then help you figure out what you need.
No affiliate links.
No BS.
Just the framework to make a smart decision from the team at Simpler Server Setup.
How WordPress Actually Works (The 60-Second Version)
When someone visits your site, three things happen:
The web server (Apache, Nginx, whatever) catches the request. For images and CSS files, it just serves them directly. Fast and simple.
PHP is where WordPress lives. The web server hands off to PHP, which loads your theme, runs your plugins, and figures out what to show.
The database stores everything—posts, comments, settings. PHP asks the database dozens of questions to build each page.
Here’s why this matters: your bottleneck could be anywhere. Slow web server? Everything’s slow. Not enough PHP memory? Crashes. Crappy database? Every page takes forever to load.
Most people upgrade the wrong thing because they don’t know where the problem actually is.
Match Your Hosting to Your Site (Not the Other Way Around)
Small Brochure Sites: You’re Overthinking This
What you have: 10-page website for your business. Maybe 2,000 visitors a month. You update it twice a year.
What actually matters: Uptime. That’s it. Nobody cares if your contact page loads in 1.2 seconds vs 0.8 seconds.
What you need:
- Shared hosting works fine
- 128MB PHP memory is plenty
- Any modern MySQL version
- 10GB storage is overkill
Stop worrying about: LiteSpeed vs Nginx. Advanced caching. Database optimization. Your site sits idle 99% of the time.
Real talk: Those $5/month Hostinger or Bluehost plans? They’re perfect for this. Don’t let anyone upsell you on “performance optimization” you don’t need.
When to upgrade: If you hit 10,000 visitors a month or add e-commerce. Otherwise, don’t.
Content Blogs: Caching Matters More Than Power
What you have: You publish weekly. 50,000 monthly readers. 20 plugins running. Occasional traffic spikes when something hits Reddit.
What actually matters: Caching. Most of your traffic should never touch PHP or the database. Serve cached pages and you can handle 10x more traffic on the same server.
What you need:
- 256MB PHP memory (plugins add up fast)
- 2-4GB RAM total
- LiteSpeed is noticeably better here
- Proper object caching (Redis or Memcached)
The thing everyone gets wrong: People buy bigger servers instead of fixing their caching. I’ve seen sites on $200/month VPS that would fly on $20/month hosting with proper cache configuration.
Why LiteSpeed actually matters: It has native WordPress cache that works at the server level. Apache and Nginx need plugins that are… fine. But LiteSpeed Cache is genuinely faster. Not marketing BS—measurably faster in real testing.
When to upgrade: When you’re consistently over 100,000 visitors a month and your cache hit rate is above 90% but things are still slow.
E-commerce: Database Performance or Die
What you have: WooCommerce store. 500 products. Processing 20 orders a day. Every product page is dynamically generated because of pricing, inventory, and variations.
What actually matters: Database speed. Product pages make 80-150 database queries each. Multiply that by simultaneous shoppers and you see the problem.
What you need:
- 512MB PHP memory minimum, 1GB better
- 4+ CPU cores
- Fast database (version matters less than optimization)
- 8GB+ RAM
- Managed WordPress hosting starts making sense
The harsh reality: WooCommerce is a resource hog. It’s popular because it’s flexible, but it’s not efficient. Those 50 plugins stores typically run? Each one adds database queries.
Payment gateway + shipping calculator + subscription plugin = everything queries the database independently. Nobody optimized for the whole ecosystem, just their piece.
Why managed hosting makes sense here: Companies like Kinsta and WP Engine optimize specifically for uncached requests. Your blog can serve cached pages all day. Your checkout page can’t be cached—every customer sees different cart contents. Managed hosts are better at handling that.
When to upgrade: When checkout starts timing out during normal traffic. That’s lost sales. Fix it immediately.
Membership Sites: This Gets Expensive
What you have: User logins, private content, forums, personalized dashboards. 100 people online simultaneously.
What actually matters: RAM. Every logged-in user is an active PHP session. Traditional caching doesn’t work because everyone sees different content.
What you need:
- 8+ CPU cores
- 16GB+ RAM
- 512MB-1GB PHP memory per process
- Significantly increased database connections
- Cloud hosting or high-end VPS
Why membership sites are different: Most sites can cache 80-95% of requests. Membership sites cache maybe 20%. You’re processing 4x more requests than a blog with similar traffic.
The brutal truth: Shared hosting physically can’t handle this. You need dedicated resources. Budget $100-300/month minimum.
When to upgrade: When users report slowness or you see “too many connections” database errors.
What Those Specs Actually Mean
Let’s decode the numbers hosts throw around.
Web Server Software
Apache: The old reliable. Been around forever. Reads .htaccess files, which means your plugins can modify server behavior. Easy and compatible with everything.
Handles maybe 200 concurrent users before it starts sweating.
Nginx: The performance king. Processes thousands of connections using less memory than Apache. The catch? Doesn’t read .htaccess files. You need to configure everything at the server level.
For most WordPress sites on managed hosting, someone else handles that configuration. You won’t notice the difference.
LiteSpeed: Apache-compatible but with Nginx-style performance. Reads .htaccess AND handles tons of traffic. Plus the native caching integration is legitimately better.
The downside? It’s commercial software, so not every host offers it.
Which one matters? For small sites, they’re all fine. For high-traffic sites, LiteSpeed or Nginx pull ahead. But honestly, proper caching matters 10x more than your web server choice.
PHP Memory: Stop Setting It Too Low
WordPress core uses maybe 64MB. But you’re not running just WordPress core.
128MB: Tight. Plugin updates might fail. 256MB: The real minimum for most sites. 512MB: Necessary for WooCommerce or 25+ plugins. 1GB: Page builders (Elementor, Divi) or complex e-commerce.
Check your actual usage: install Query Monitor plugin, look under Environment. If you’re using 200MB, you need at least 256MB allocated. Add some headroom—running at 90% capacity is asking for crashes.
OPcache changes everything: This stores compiled PHP code in memory instead of recompiling it every time. It’s a 20-40% speed boost for free.
Most managed hosts enable it by default. If you’re on VPS, verify it’s on. It should always be on.
Database: Version Doesn’t Matter As Much As You Think
MySQL vs MariaDB? For WordPress, the difference is 3-8% in benchmarks. In real life, you won’t notice.
MySQL 8.0 and MariaDB 10.5 have some performance improvements over older versions. But a well-optimized older database beats a poorly configured new one.
What actually matters:
- Regular table optimization
- Proper indexing
- Query caching (or better yet, object caching)
- Enough database connections for your traffic
Object caching (Redis or Memcached) will do more for database performance than upgrading from MySQL 5.7 to 8.0.
Storage: SSD vs NVMe
SSD is standard now. 10-100x faster than old hard drives.
NVMe is 3-10x faster than SSD.
Does it matter for WordPress? Sometimes.
For cached pages served from memory, storage speed is irrelevant. For database queries, NVMe helps—15-30% faster query response times.
For media-heavy sites serving tons of images, you’ll notice the difference. For a text blog, you won’t.
The jump from HDD to SSD was huge. The jump from SSD to NVMe is nice but not critical. If you’re choosing between great caching with SSD vs poor caching with NVMe, take the caching every time.
Server Location: Mostly Overrated
Everyone says “choose a server near your visitors.” That’s… incomplete.
If you’re using a CDN (Cloudflare, Bunny, whatever), your server location barely matters. The CDN serves cached content from edge locations worldwide. A Sydney visitor hits a Sydney CDN server, not your Dallas origin server.
80-95% of requests never touch your origin server.
When location matters:
- You’re NOT using a CDN (fix this first)
- Membership sites where most content can’t be cached
- You have legal requirements for data location
- Your admin team is in Australia and you want fast dashboard access
When it doesn’t matter:
- You use a CDN
- Your traffic is global anyway
- Most requests hit cached pages
For Australian businesses: Sydney hosting is available from AWS, Google Cloud, Vultr, Kinsta, and others. But honestly, a US server with Cloudflare often delivers faster page loads to Australian visitors than Sydney hosting without a CDN.
Test both if you’re unsure. Run GTmetrix from Sydney before and after adding a CDN. The CDN makes a bigger difference than server location.
How to Actually Choose
Stop reading reviews. Here’s the process:
1. Profile your site honestly
Monthly visitors: ____ What you do: blog / e-commerce / membership / portfolio Plugins you need: ____ Technical skill: none / some / comfortable with servers
2. Calculate what you need
Concurrent users ≈ (monthly visitors × 0.05) ÷ 720
RAM: Start at 512MB, add 10MB per plugin, add 256MB for WooCommerce, multiply by 1.5 for headroom
CPU: 1 core per 25 concurrent users for blogs, 1 per 15 for e-commerce
Storage: WordPress + plugins (500MB) + media (estimate) + backups × 30 days
3. Pick the hosting tier
< 10,000 visitors → Shared hosting ($5-15/month) 10,000-100,000 visitors → VPS ($20-50/month) 100,000+ or e-commerce → Managed WordPress ($50-150/month) 500,000+ → Cloud infrastructure ($100+/month)
4. Test it for 30 days
Use GTmetrix or Pingdom. Check from multiple locations. Your targets:
- Time to First Byte under 400ms
- Page load under 2.5 seconds
- Uptime above 99.9%
If you hit those numbers consistently, you’re good. If not, either optimize or upgrade.
Things That Matter More Than Specs
Backups You’ve Actually Tested
Host-level backups are great. Plugin backups are great. You know what’s not great? Finding out your backup doesn’t work when you need to restore.
Test a restoration quarterly. Download a backup, restore it to staging. If that doesn’t work, your backup strategy is broken.
For e-commerce, run database backups every 6 hours. Losing a day of orders is unacceptable.
Staging Environment
Testing plugin updates on your live site is insane. Staging lets you break things without affecting visitors.
Managed hosts usually include one-click staging. Shared hosting rarely does. That alone might justify the extra cost.
Support That Knows WordPress
Every host claims “24/7 expert support.” Test them during signup with a real question:
“I’m getting PHP memory exhausted errors with WooCommerce. How do I increase the limit?”
Good answer: Specific instructions or offer to do it for you. Bad answer: “Upgrade your plan.”
WordPress-specific support means they can actually diagnose plugin conflicts and suggest real solutions.
Migration Help
“Free migration” usually means one site, standard WordPress only, done on their timeline.
For complex sites (WooCommerce, multisite, custom configs), you might need to pay for professional migration. Budget $100-300 if your site is business-critical.
DIY migration takes 4-8 hours your first time. Factor that into your decision.
Red Flags
Walk away if you see:
“Unlimited” anything: Physics doesn’t allow unlimited resources. This means “unlimited until we decide you’re using too much.”
Only outdated PHP/MySQL: PHP 7.3 or MySQL 5.6 means they’re not maintaining their servers. Security risk.
No clear renewal pricing: If you can’t easily find what year 2 costs, they’re hiding it. Expect 3-5x increases.
Overselling indicators: $1/month hosting with “unlimited everything” means 500 accounts on one server. Your neighbor’s traffic spike crashes your site.
Restrictive fine print: Hidden inode limits, CPU restrictions, execution time caps that break WordPress functionality.
Support requires phone calls: If you can’t cancel online, they make leaving deliberately difficult.
The Actual Recommendation
Most WordPress sites should start here:
Under 10,000 visitors: Hostinger Premium ($3-5/month) 10,000-50,000 visitors: Managed VPS ($20-40/month) 50,000-200,000 visitors: Entry managed WordPress hosting like SiteGround or Cloudways ($30-60/month) E-commerce or 200,000+: Kinsta, WP Engine, or similar ($50-150/month)
But honestly, specs matter less than caching configuration, database optimization, and choosing hosts that don’t oversell their servers.
Start with adequate hosting for your traffic tier. Monitor performance for 30 days. Optimize before upgrading. Upgrade when specific metrics (not arbitrary timelines) indicate bottlenecks.
And for the love of god, test your backups.