Different WordPress groups on Facebook have the perfect symbiosis and coordination. This is teamwork. Some “experts” will try to convince you to switch to the “best” shared hosting plan with slow hardware, while others will try to convince you that there is nothing faster and more secure (sic!) than an unmanaged Vultr HF VPS on Cloudways. In both cases, affiliate fees are collected by misleading the unsuspecting public and convincing them to switch to the wrong service provider.
Many users are surprised to learn that there is a third option: Premium Shared Hosting providers with hardware as good or better than unmanaged VPSs. With cPanel, server-level malware protection, and LiteSpeed Enterprise, you get a much more secure experience and faster website loading speed from Premium Shared Hosting. For WooCommerce sites, the benefit is even greater. The best providers may not have an army of affiliate warriors behind them, but that does not mean their services are any less attractive.
When selecting your VPS configuration, it is important to consider that now you are responsible for controlling the load of your server. You should monitor that average utilisation does not exceed 40% capacity to serve a sudden spike in traffic. The CPU usage of 30% is close to your fair share on most VPS plans with dedicated RAM, but you will sometimes be allowed a little bit more if other clients are idle with their projects. You also need be ahead of the game and plan for extra visitors when running ads. Terrible things can happen if your website suddenly crashes during an advertising campaign – especially since successful promotions often lead to persistent increases in visitor volume. That could overload servers with less than adequate resources available. Plan with your hosting provider ahead of time so that they’re ready when you need them.
With MechanicWeb’s or HostXNow’s Semi Dedicated Hosting, you get VPS-like performance on a modern hardware/software bundle for a much lower cost since you don’t have to pay for licenses or manage the server. VPS and Semi-Dedicated Hosting both offer scalability. Upgrading the VPS require a reboot. Semi-Dedicated Hosting can be upgraded seamlessly.
Root access is the main difference between Semi-Dedicated Hosting and VPS. You can use root access to change the VPS’s configuration and to install/uninstall specific software, making VPS plans more customizable. Semi-Dedicated Hosting only supports basic tasks that do not require root access, for example, changing PHP versions, enabling or disabling PHP extensions, and installing WordPress. Most shared hosting providers, including HostXNow and MechanicWeb, offer jailed SSH access to your shared account. This option is usually blocked by default, and you will need to ask technical support to allow access to your IP address by creating a support ticket.
Whenever you need to host a dozen or so websites on a VPS, CloudLinux is the obvious choice because it provides OpenVZ VPS-like isolation for each cPanel/DirectAdmin account. cPanel has far fewer hiccups than DirectAdmin. When the client’s budget allows it, hosting providers will recommend cPanel over DirectAdmin. DirectAdmin is offered free of charge by MechanicWeb for resellers/agencies. Hosting companies such as HostXNow and Brixly, however, offer reseller plans that deliver better value for money.
A substantial amount of work must be done in the root shell when using DirectAdmin. In contrast, CPanel provides nearly all the configuration and functionality through the UI. It makes it easier to use and a better fit for users of all skill levels, especially beginners. DirectAdmin can be a budget-friendly alternative, but if you don’t have much experience, you’d be better off switching to cPanel. OpenLiteSpeed is supported only by DirectAdmin. cPanel and DirectAdmin are both compatible with LiteSpeed Web Server Enterprise.
If you can afford it, you should always use LiteSpeed Enterprise instead of OpenLiteSpeed. The Enterprise version of LiteSpeed Cache Engine offers much better performance at both the server and user levels. It is the only option for shared web hosting. The performance of LiteSpeed Enterprise has improved significantly since version 5.4 (current version is 6.0). It’s better suited for production websites thanks to features like optimized commercial mod_security engine, WordPress Brute Force Attacks Protection, ESI integration, and higher stability.
WooCommerce owners should familiarise themselves with ESI and LiteSpeed integration to understand how they can speed up their eCommerce site. Even heavily loaded WooCommerce pages can achieve significantly higher Core Web Vitals thanks to the new Guest Mode introduced with the latest version of LiteSpeed Cache. However, according to LiteSpeed technical support, both ESI and the new Guest mode will work just fine for your website under the OpenLiteSpeed server at the QUIC.cloud CDN node.
There are some users who do not appreciate the stability, security, and performance improvements provided by CloudLinux+cPanel+LiteSpeed Enterprise. In many communities, such as LowEndTalk, there are people who dislike paying for software. Some even refer to paying for the above software bundle as “mafia choice”. Be sure to do your homework before ordering managed VPS plans and don’t be surprised to find out that your hosting provider recommends CloudLinux+cPanel+LiteSpeed. This has nothing to do with upselling. It shows that many hosting providers do recognise the benefit of offering the latest standard software for their users. You have the choice to follow their diligent advice or not.
If you want to host a dozen or more websites, cPanel + LiteSpeed + CloudLinux + Softaculous is the most reliable combination. Together, the software in this combo provides performance, stability, security, and ease of use. CloudLinux does not only offer isolation, but also hardens PHP, provides better PHP extension management, and complements both LiteSpeed and cPanel in ensuring hosting security and reliability.
A managed VPS provider is not there to solve your web development problems. To begin with, they are only responsible for installation and initial software tuning to keep your hosting secure and stable. Do not expect them to provide you with more than a couple of hours of technical support per month. Expect to pay extra if you need much more support. If you are not technically savvy, consider a semi-dedicated or quasi-dedicated plan. Managed VPS services are not designed to provide advice and assistance to technically incompetent users.
For those on a tight budget, Black Friday is the time to choose your service provider. Your discount for the first year will likely be 30% higher. If you switch to a different provider every year, you can also upgrade your server hardware. However, we’d bet that if you are not making enough money to pay for premium hosting after a few years, you should abandon such a business anyway.
Any CPU allocation on a VPS plan is only for serving peak loads. Continuous CPU usage should be much lower. Your fair share for continuous CPU load on HF-48 plan with 4 CPUs and 8 GB RAM is about 35% (1.5 CPU). However, MechanicWeb will tolerate more if many plans on your server are using much less than their fair share. Most LiteSpeed web hosting plans with full server-level caching are idle most of the time. The usage of CPU is close to zero. This means you can always count on four CPUs to handle your peak load. A VPS plan with continuous CPU load can consume up to 50% of its quota without the hosting provider expressing any particular concern. MechanicWeb offers broad geographic coverage with servers in Dallas and Germany.
Do not be fooled by questionable companies like NameHero, who offer 8 CPUs with an 8 GB RAM VPS plan. With NameHero, you get the same 1.5 CPUs as MechanicWeb’s H-48 plan as a fair share for continuous use. That’s less than 20% of your allocated 8 CPUs. At peak load, eight CPUs can be used for a short period of time. A large number of CPUs is only offered for marketing purposes. Typical hosting providers offer two times fewer CPU cores than the amount of RAM in GB to reflect the reality of the hardware used in most shared CPU VPS plans. NameHero and LiquidWeb are examples of questionable marketing that trumps technical realities. To confirm our claim, take a look at the offerings of Linode, Vultr, DigitalOcean or Hetzner.
MechanicWeb’s VPS service is based on KVM (Kernel Based Virtual Machines), a true virtualization technology. KVM VPS is a virtual machine, similar to a small dedicated server. Any software can be installed on it as with any dedicated server. VPS accounts require their own set of software; therefore, license fees must be paid. KVM VPS accounts offer dedicated disk space and RAM by default, threfore they offer better isolation than CageFS and are less likely to be affected by bad neighbours. Similar KVM VPS plans can be found on Cloudways from Linode, DO and Vultr. However, their hardware is about twice as slow. Most users who switch from Cloudways to MechanicWeb VPS are blown away with the performance gains offered by the modern hardware and software bundled by MechanicWeb.
OpenVZ, another virtualisation technology for VPS plans, shares RAM and storage among multiple accounts. OpenVZ offers very similar isolation between VPS accounts to CageFS for shared hosting accounts. OpenVZ provides easy possibility of overselling resources on VPS accounts. From the point of view of resource allocation, there is not much difference between VPS hosting using OpenVZ and ordinary shared hosting. A KVM VPS hosting provider makes more sense if you are thinking about switching to a VPS account.
Dedicated CPU VPS plans are much more expensive per CPU, but are still available if you need them. These VPS plans are the closest thing to a small dedicated server, created as a fraction of a larger physical server. These plans are appropriate only if you prefer to have a CPU resource that is several times smaller but is exclusively yours. Another, more appropriate use case is the requirement for unusually large RAM resources to keep a large object cache for a website which demands heavy dynamic changes to its content. If you have dedicated CPU resources, your fair share is still about 60%. It might be better to reduce it to 50% to avoid hitting 100% utilisation during traffic spikes.
HostXNow’s VPS plans complement MechanicWeb’s because their servers are located in different countries. MechanicWeb’s locations are in Dallas and Germany. HostXNow has locations in London and Washington, DC. To improve delivery of dynamic pages, you should choose a location that is closer to your visitors. However, the difference between Dallas and Washington, as well as between London and Germany, is quite small. Dallas offers a small advantage in serving West Coast and Asian traffic. But Washington offers a slight advantage in serving European clients.
DirectAdmin is the only other traditional control panel that supports OpenLiteSpeed, and LiteSpeed would like to offer an alternative. The fact that you have to use the root shell is exactly why many users do not want to use DirectAdmin – yet another layer of complexity to deal with. CyberPanel might be more user-friendly and better suited to the needs of beginners. The community is very interested in continuing to help improve the system – not only with documentation and tutorials, but also with coding. CyberPanel remains the focus of LiteSpeed, which has further plans to improve it and develop documentation and tutorials.
Given the rapid improvements in security, we expect more managed VPS hosting providers to offer CyberPanel alongside DirectAdmin as a more user-friendly option. The combination of CyberPanel, OpenLiteSpeed, Bubblewrap, CSF/ImunifyAV+, KernelCare, and AlmaLinux provides a low-cost, stable VPS for many customers who are not able to afford the additional licensing costs of about $40 per month for a far more professional and stable software set like cPanel, CloudLinux, and LiteSpeed Enterprise.
In its default form, DirectAdmin is too complicated and its UI is not user-friendly, especially if you want to use it like cPanel. Nevertheless, everything is installed with a single command – including the control panel, CSF firewall, and web server. Also, many things can be installed from the control panel without having to use a terminal. DirectAdmin has undergone some substantial developments in the past two releases. The panel will become more popular if Martynas Bendorius, the developer, starts thinking more about the convenience of the user. There are still difficulties finding good DirectAdmin-based providers despite cPanel’s price rise.
Some vendors, such as MechanicWeb, offer a heavily customized DirectAdmin panel that looks very similar to the cPanel. Unfortunately, it’s usually not possible to see a showcast of a customized DirectAdmin implementation published as a YouTube video. Without knowing that your provider has developed a simpler interface, people assume it’s the default DirectAdmin, which is complicated for beginners to use.
Hosting providers have been reluctant to offer CyberPanel alongside DirectAdmin to customers interested in OpenLitespeed. Introducing less common solutions to customers is not without its drawbacks. Those who invest effort in simplifying GUI in their own DirectAdmin implementation are especially hesitant. CyberPanel has a better chance of being attractive to hosting providers who have only offered cPanel in the past and are now willing to offer an additional, cheaper option for OpenLiteSpeed users. The success of CyberPanel will depend on overcoming this initial resistance from the web hosting community.
Due to budget constraints, many businesses use entry-level dedicated servers. MechanicWeb’s Ryzen Zen 3 servers are a good solution for these customers. The performance of the Ryzen Zen 3 CPU is typically three to five times that of many entry-level dedicated servers. When such customers choose even entry-level Quasi-Dedicated Hosting, their websites will benefit from significantly more resources.
Quasi-Dedicated Hosting, however, is primarily designed for corporate clients. It is an enterprise-level managed VPS with complete sysadmin control and responsibilities retained by MechanicWeb. The target customers are willing to pay more for a seamless service that is essential to their success. For agencies looking to host their clients’ websites, this priority is automatically lowered. They might prefer to continue using managed VPS or dedicated servers.
In a similar way to VPS plans, Quasi-Dedicated servers are created through KVM isolation. The default software includes cPanel Solo (1 account), LiteSpeed Site Owner Plus, Softaculous, KernelCare, malware scanner, CSF WAF, ModSecurity, Redis/Memcached, SSL certificates, and free daily offsite backups. CloudLinux Shared, ImunifyAV+ or Imunify360, and incremental hourly backups are included as highly recommended paid options. Migration services are included for free with all plans, but only when moving from cPanel and DirectAdmin servers.
The plan’s upgrade to dedicated resources comes at a cost. A quasi-dedicated Spark plan with eight CPUs and 32 GB RAM costs four times as much as a semi-dedicated Elite plan with eight CPUs and 12 GB RAM. The Flux plan with eight shared CPUs and dedicated 16 GB RAM costs $169 per month.
The Flux plan with dedicated 16 GB RAM will cost about 20% more than MechanicWeb’s managed VPS plan HF-612. Yet, the quasi-dedicated Flux plan offers 30% more hardware resources and already includes the cost of most software licenses you will need for your server. MechanicWeb’s sysadmin team will also devote more attention to the Flux plan to provide a more secure, streamlined service. We recommend considering the quasi-dedicated plans with 8 CPUs / 16 GB RAM, and 8 CPUs / 24 GB RAM as the first diligent step before moving to the dedicated server. The higher-tier plans are expensive and some clients might find it more cost-efficient to switch to the managed dedicated servers.
Zen 3 AMD Ryzen 9 5950x with 16 CPU cores (=32 logical CPUs) and 128 GB RAM is the most affordable super powerful server on the market right now. AMD Ryzen 9 5950x are currently available from MechanicWeb in Dallas and Germany but will be more widely available in the coming months. AMD has taken a big step forward with Ryzen Zen 3. The 45% performance improvement over AMD Ryzen 2 makes them an ideal workhorse for even the most demanding projects. The GridPane team recommends them for the most advanced users.
The main difference between a VPS plan and a dedicated server is that you need to aim for a much lower average CPU load. Dedicated servers should never be 100% utilised to avoid heavy multithreading that slows them down. Your server’s peak load should not ever exceed 60% of CPU resources. For this, you may need to make sure that the average load does not exceed 30%. Reputable shared hosting and VPS providers run their servers underutilised, and now it’s your turn to do the same.
On the dedicated server, please start with LiteSpeed Web Server Enterprise Site Owner Plus or Web Host Essential, depending on your needs. There is no direct correlation between the number of LiteSpeed Workers and the number of CPU cores, but rather between the number of PHP child processes the Workers create. The parent process spawns a child process, which delivers the web page. Each child process increases the CPU usage of the parent process. Once the CPU consumption of the parent process reaches 80%, it is time to get another worker license.
Even though LiteSpeed Web ADC is software-based, it can compete with hardware load balancers. It should be possible to add as many servers as needed. Scaling up your application using this method is the most cost-effective option. However, it is not the fastest setup. Scaling up first using AMD EPYC Zen 3 servers is a more expensive alternative to LiteSpeed Web ADC, but it will perform faster.
Using AMD EPYC you have several steps to increase your server’s computational power by more than six times. All servers listed below are based on the most recent 3d generation of AMD EPYC processors introduced in Q1 2021. However, please be aware that AMD Ryzen Zen 3 is about 30% faster and is significantly cheaper to rent. The family includes AMD EPYC 7443 (3.6 GHz turbo all cores) with 48 cores, AMD EPYC 7513 (3.2 GHz turbo all cores) with 64 cores, AMD EPYC 7643 (3.4GHz turbo all cores) with 96 cores, and the expensive monster AMD EPYC 7763 (3.2 GHz turbo all cores) server with 128 CPU cores (=256 logical CPUs) and 512 GB of RAM. All websites are different, but we believe that using the CDN services described above will allow you to serve the traffic of more than five million visitors per day or about 150 million per month.
It does not help that many WordPress “experts” recommend slow web hosting services as the best. We have already shown examples of charlatans trying to convince you to use services like Hostinger, GreenGeeks, and even low-key providers like RaidBoxes. Customers of such web hosting companies are fed up with shared hosting accounts with slow hardware. They are desperate for something different. As a result, two new web hosting markets have emerged: one is the high-end shared hosting market, and the other is the simplified cloud control panel services for unamanged VPS that requires no sysadmin skills.
Most users ignore the warning on the wall that 94% of all hacked websites use WordPress. Website security is not an issue for users until their website is hacked. Their desire to save a monthly fee while maintaining a decent hardware setup is completely understandable. But what does it cost to fix the hacked website? You are committing a far greater sin when you host your clients’ websites on unmanaged VPS hosting accounts. Are you sure you are qualified to take full responsibility for protecting your clients’ websites? After a website is hacked, more than half of companies are out of business within the first year. Are you sure that hosting on an unmanaged VPS is in the best interest of your clients?
Stay away from unmanaged VPSs if you are not technically savvy. It could turn out to be the biggest disaster of your career. You shouldn’t use an unmanaged VPS unless you are knowledgeable about server administration. When it comes to sysadmin tasks, experience is even more important than skills. There are a hundred ways to accomplish a task, but only experience can give you the insight to pick the right one. Use fully managed VPS or premium shared hosting accounts instead of taking unnecessary risks – no one, including your clients, will blame you.
Many users believe that using emerging management panels such as Cloudways, RunCloud, or CloudPages provides management-lite VPS accounts. These are mistakes of judgement. The junior accounts on RunCloud and CloudPages do not even come with WAF protection, and ModSecurity is only available on their highest-tier plans, priced at about $40 per month. Unlike their mature siblings such as cPanel, none of these new management panels developed in Malaysia and Pakistan undergoes an external security audit. In addition, none of them offers server-level integration with industry-standard malware scanners and removal tools. While there is an option to reduce security holes by using paid security WP plugins, many agree that proper malware protection should be handled at the server level.
SaaS platforms such as Cloudways, RunCloud, and CloudPages are installed on their servers with only client software installed on yours. Some sysadmin tasks are automated, but tools lack the human expertise that is essential for managing a VPS. Their codebase is not tested anywhere. Aside from Cloudways, other teams are too small to perform even basic quality checks (QA). Reputable security firms do not recommend any of the above-listed SaaS management panels. As of now, they have mostly been praised by affiliates and not by experts or hosting veterans who have no intention in collecting affiliate fees.
Try out MechanicWeb’s Semi-Dedicated and Quay-Dedicated plans. You might find they meet all your technical needs and are less expensive than most managed VPS hosting plans.
Unmanaged VPS accounts are best used as a test environment during the development process for the complex websites. If your site is not in production, you may be able to restore it from a backup in case it gets hacked. Below are some recommendations that can help you choose your infrastructure.
As we mentioned earlier, most VPS providers offer shared CPU VPS plans. The following rule of thumb is based on the typical configuration of modern servers. A shared CPU account will give you up to twice as much memory in GB as the number of CPUs (e.g. 8 GB RAM and 4 CPUs). It is most likely a dedicated CPU account if you have 4 times more RAM in GB than the number of CPUs (e.g. 8 GB RAM and 2 CPUs).
Make sure you subscribe to dedicated RAM accounts, preferably KVM VPS (Kernel-based Virtual Machine). Dedicated RAM ensure that the user density on the VPS servers is low. The cost of dedicated RAM VPS accounts can be four times as much, but they are worth it in the long run!
When choosing your VPS provider, consider the speed of the hardware. VPS accounts based on Ryzen Zen 3 hardware offer some of the best value for money with impressive performance. You can find cheap hosting providers recommended in the LowEndTalk community. But affordable price does not make their services reliable or stable. Below a certain price point, it is very difficult, almost impossible to monitor and ensure stability. Therefore you should be very careful if you are using such providers for production websites. However, they can be an option for hosting your development servers.
Because it is incredibly easy to manage load on free OpenLiteSpeed, it is very popular option on RunCloud for adding server-side caching. OpenLiteSpeed consumes less CPU and RAM than other web servers like Apache or Nginx. However, you should only host a handful of websites. OpenLiteSpeed has some critical bugs and should not be used for demanding applications.
If you use CloudPages at this early stage, be prepared to be a guinea pig for beta testing. Before seriously considering this option, give them some time to discover and fix the bugs. It is not advisable to use a control panel that a reputable security company has not yet audited. The team that developed CloudPages is small, but they are now combining the best ideas from RunCloud, GridPane, and their own CyberPanel to build something interesting. From their experience developing CyberPanel, they have valuable feedback. However, please be aware that the external security audit of CyberPanel in 2019 and 2021 produced a long list of issues. The list will be as long or even longer for CloudPages, but the product is not yet ready for its first round of security audit. It is not wise to use CloudPages until it has been subjected to several rounds of security audits by Rack911 Lab.
If you can afford it, you should always use LiteSpeed Enterprise instead of OpenLiteSpeed. The Enterprise version of LiteSpeed Cache Engine offers much better performance at both the server and user levels. It is the only option for shared web hosting. The performance of LiteSpeed Enterprise has improved significantly since version 5.4 (current version is 6.0). It’s better suited for production websites thanks to features like brute-force attack protection, ESI integration, and higher stability. WooCommerce owners should familiarise themselves with ESI and LiteSpeed integration to understand how they can speed up their eCommerce site. Even heavily loaded WooCommerce pages can achieve significantly higher Core Web Vitals thanks to the new Guest Mode introduced with the latest version of LiteSpeed Cache. However, according to LiteSpeed technical support, both ESI and the new guest mode will work just fine for your website under the OpenLiteSpeed server at the QUIC.cloud CDN node.
Even if you must have root access, consider all the costs involved and decide whether you can afford a managed VPS plan that costs from $40 to $50 more per month than an unmanaged one. If a managed VPS provider charges less than $40 extra per month, they won’t provide any decent technical support. Do not be surprised to pay another $50 to $60 per month for software licenses. You should not ignore suggestions from your provider – additional software like cPanel, CloudLinux, LiteSpeed Enterprise, Softaculous, and ImunifyAV+ will make your server more reliable and secure. The advantage of managed VPS providers such as HostXNow and MechanicWeb is that they keep the servers underloaded. Therefore, hosting accounts do not compete for CPU cores, but instead, get them on demand. Providers do not offer fully dedicated CPU plans, but they can handle higher sustained CPU loads than some shared VPS plans.
When websites attract heavy traffic, they overwhelm the provider’s hosting capacity. Adding a CDN service is an excellent way to get your website in front of more people and grow your audience. If you have a website with high traffic, then we recommend giving BunnyCDN a try. It will store a permanent cache of your website’s static files like CSS, JS, and images in its Geo-Replicated Perma-Cache servers. These servers will provide your files to the cache of 30 servers located around the world, shielding your origin from traffic. Your origin server will be left with the task of delivering HTML files to visitors, reducing the bandwidth load at your origin by a minimum of thirty times. BunnyCDN services cost you about $1 per month. It is a much better option than upgrading the level of your subscription with your original hosting provider.
Through our comprehensive solutions, we can help your business from logo designs to designing eCommerce stores. We provide a range of services, including technical SEO and relocation assistance to better web hosting. With our graphic design expertise, we are prepared to meet any other creative need that may arise.