Membership Sites are the counterpart of the free to use websites on the internet
and require a different set of perspective regarding where to invest the operational budget
when building them, than the free to use websites.
In this Article, we will be going over
- What are Membership Websites?
- How is the Choice of Web Hosting different for Membership Sites than Free To Use Non-Membership Websites?
- and then go over 6 Reliable WordPress Hosting Providers for Membership Websites
that I’ve personally used or have a great reputation because of their excellent services.
Also, before moving forward, know that everything in this article is subjective and based on my personal opinion
your experience may vary based on your technical skills and understand of your purchases.
So, without further ado, let’s get started!
What are Membership Websites?
Membership sites are websites whose content is either completely or partially hidden behind a paywall
and only the people who pay for a subscription or a one time fee can get access to the said hidden content.
The hidden content can be anything from
- Physical Merchandise
- Educational Courses
- EBooks
- Videos
- Music
- Digital Art
- Podcast
- Blog Posts
- and more
As i said above it can either be completely or partially hidden
which means that some of the content might be free to access for everyone
so as to display the type of content that they provide regularly
and entice people into buying a subscription or a particular product on their website.
How is the Choice of Web Hosting different for Membership Sites than Free To Use Websites?
Security of Customer Data on the Membership Website
Now, when it comes to Membership Websites the most important to understand is that
you will be collecting sensitive information from your customers like their
Physical Addresses, Contact Details and Financial Information.
Any leak of such data will have grave repercussions for your membership website.
So this means that to give a secure base to your Membership Website,
you can’t cheap out and buy a Shared Hosting Plan.
This is because in Shared Hosting, hardware resources like CPU, RAM and Storage
are Shared between various users of that Hosting provider
which leads to your website being in a situation where you are always at a risk
Having shared resources is not a huge issue for blogs and information only websites
but this could be a security issue for membership websites that deal with such sensitive information
because if the people you are sharing the resources with don’t take appropriate measures to secure their own website
then a breach to their website could make your data
as well as data of any other people sharing resources with the breached website, completely vulnerable.
Type of Content and Resource Usage on the Membership Website
Another point to consider is – How much bandwidth you will approximately use
based on what type of content you are serving and the amount of subscribed customers that you have.
Note: Bandwidth is the metric of the total amount of data that has been transferred from and to the server.
The type of content can be anything,
it can be a blog post which on average will be from some hundred KBs to a couple MBs
or it can be a 1080p video which can be from tens to hundreds of MBs.
This difference is important to understand as if you only have Blog Posts
then on average, you might be able to serve hundred of times more customers on the same hosting plan
when compared to if you were self hosting video content.
So, do your due diligence and note down what you are going to serve,
approximate the usage based on how many customers you have
and how much bandwidth and resources they will consume
before deciding on a Hosting Plan for your Membership Website.
With that understood, now let’s go over all the 6 WordPress Hosting Providers
which would work perfectly for Membership Websites.
Liquid Web
Liquid Web is one of the most popular and well receive web hosting companies in today’s web hosting landscape.
They provide highly secure and performant hosting because of their completely Self Owned Data Centers located in US and EU with 25,000+ Servers
making them the perfect choice for a Membership Website.
Their SLA i.e. Service Level Agreement is also one of the most comprehensive ones that i’ve seen
which really shows how confident they are in their service and how they value their customer’s time.
Server Locations :
US : Michigan, Arizona
Europe : Netherlands
Support : Live Chat, Phone, Help Desk
Link To Website : Liquid Web
Nexcess – A Liquid Web Company
Nexcess, a premier ECommerce Hosting Provider, joined the Liquid Web Brand Family in 2019.
It provides has excellent plans for Managed WordPress Hosting and Managed WooCommerce Hosting.
Nexcess primarily focuses on Managed Cloud Hosting Services,
which makes it a great solution for Blogs, ECommerce Websites and Businesses Owners who are not technically inclined
and want a excellent Customer Support but don’t have budget for it’s parent company Liquid Web’s Hosting Plans.
Server Locations :
US : Michigan, California, Florida
Europe : Netherlands, UK
Australia : Sydney
Support : Live Chat, Phone, Help Desk
Link To Website : Nexcess – A Liquid Web Company
Hostinger
Hostinger is a brand that has taken over the market with it’s Highly Cost Effective yet excellent Web Hosting Services.
Now, their WordPress Hosting Plan is a Shared Hosting Plan so i won’t recommend using it for a Membership Website.
Instead, Hostinger has an excellent category of plans for VPS Hosting
which provides Dedicated Resources and would be perfect for Membership Websites.
But as it is a VPS Hosting Plan, you might need a bit more knowledge on managing server and linux
because you will basically be managing your own Server.
All in all, Hostinger just like Liquid Web and Nexcess is an excellent Web Hosting Service.
Server Locations :
North America : US
South America : Brazil
Europe : Netherlands, Lithuania, UK
Asia : Singapore, India
Support : Live Chat
Link To Website : Hostinger
Namecheap
Namecheap as it’s name suggest is another Cost Effective Web Host that has over the years made a name for it’s services.
It started out as a Domain Registrar but slowly got into the Web Hosting side as it grew.
For Membership Websites, Namecheap provide Managed WordPress Hosting but it is done through a different branding – EasyWP
and it also has VPS Hosting and Dedicated Hosting Plans
which would be suited a bit more for people with knowledge on linux and managing servers.
Just like all the other Web Hosting Providers in the article,
Namecheap has a good reputation which it has built over the years.
Server Locations :
US : Arizona
Europe : Netherlands, UK
Support : Live Chat, Ticket System
Link To Website : Namecheap
Kinsta
Kinsta is one of the best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers available today and will be a great option for a WordPress Membership Website.
It is Built on Google Cloud Platform’s premium tier network and it’s fastest C2 virtual machines
with 30+ Data Centers Worldwide to choose from.
Though, their service is quite costly,
Just like Liquid Web, Kinsta is know for the Quality of it’s Service and knowledgeable technical staff
who would be able to understand and solve your issues.
The support team at Kinsta as stated by them, are all WordPress Developers and Linux Engineers,
who contribute to WordPress Core and other open source projects and use WordPress daily.
This can be a huge benefit for non-technical website owners
because at some point in time everyone will definitely face issues that would leave you scratching your head
and at that time they can receive the much needed help from experts in the field.
Kinsta also provides Cloudflare Enterprise for Free to it’s customers
containing Enterprise-level DDoS protection, CDN, automatic SSL certificates and wildcard support.
Also, just so I’m clear, Kinsta does not provide Web Hosting Services for technologies other than WordPress.
Server Locations :
North America : US, Canada
South America : Brazil, Chile
Europe : Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, France, UK, Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Finland,
Asia : India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia
Australia : Sydney, Melbourne
Support : Live Chat, Email
Link To Website : Kinsta
SiteGround
SiteGround just like Liquid Web and Kinsta is a Web Host know for it’s excellent customer service.
It is built on the premium Google Cloud infrastructure, but unlike Kinsta,
SiteGround has excellent Shared Hosting Plans for Managed WordPress Hosting and Managed WooCommerce Hosting
but as they are Shared Hosting Plans, i personally won’t consider them for a Membership Website.
Instead, i would look at their Scalable Cloud Hosting Plans which provide dedicated resources.
Server Locations : (CDN and Data Centers)
North America : US
South America : Brazil
Europe : Netherlands, UK, Spain, Germany, Poland, Finland,
Asia : Japan, Singapore
Australia : Sydney
Support : Live Chat, Phone, Help Desk
Link To Website : SiteGround
Conclusion
Well Folks! That does it for this article.
I hope that the information within this article will be helpful to you,
when making your choice for your WordPress Membership Website’s Hosting Provider.
May you have develop an awesome website and have great success in your respective careers!
Goodbye and see you again in the upcoming articles!
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This is your host VP
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Links To Product Buying Guides
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