For web design and digital marketing agencies, fully optimised WordPress hosting can be a real game changer. When your workstream involves building and managing multiple client sites – all with very different needs – choosing the right platform is a pretty high-stakes decision.

With WordPress hosting, you can streamline website builds for all your clients (no matter how big or small) and generate extra income to boot. Let’s dive into what it is, and all the ways your agency could benefit.

What is WordPress hosting?

Simply put, WordPress hosting is a type of web hosting that’s specifically designed for WordPress sites. When you choose it, you’re getting a platform that has the CMS pre-installed and is purpose-built for optimal WordPress performance and easy platform management.

What’s the difference between web hosting and WordPress hosting?

You may have seen the two terms thrown around and have been left wondering what exactly the difference is. The main thing to remember is that “web hosting” is a catch-all term used to refer to all types of website hosting, like shared hosting, dedicated hosting and cloud hosting.

On the flip side, WordPress hosting refers to a type of hosting built for the WordPress CMS that gives you high levels of performance and tech support, as well as support for the latest WordPress releases.

WooCommerce hosting

Another type of web hosting that’s fantastic for agencies is WooCommerce Hosting. Like WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting is optimised specifically for WooCommerce websites, which means you get much better performance, support and loading speeds for your site. Plus, WooCommerce hosting comes with WooCommerce pre-installed, making it easier than ever to build an online store from scratch.

Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, we would recommend WooCommerce hosting for the same reasons as WordPress hosting, which we’ll get into below. However, this type of hosting is geared towards ecommerce sites, so if you tend to manage ecommerce websites more often, you should definitely consider using WooCommerce hosting.

WordPress is known for being the world’s most popular CMS – as of 2024, it has a massive market share with 43% of all websites (a total of 455 million websites!). But the big question is “why?”.

Well, for starters, it’s one of the most powerful, versatile, secure and user-friendly options on the market. On top of that, since its launch in 2003, the WordPress platform has consistently evolved, with continuous improvements to meet the changing needs of users, from new features and plugins to security patch updates.

And let’s not forget about the 59,000+ plugins and 9,000+ themes available for free, so you can build and customise for any and every use case, no matter what your client’s goal is.

Why should agencies choose WordPress hosting?

WordPress is hugely popular with agencies for good reason, and if you're not already using it yourself, there are tons of ways you could benefit from making the move. We’d struggle to squeeze them all into one post, but here are a few that we think really hit the nail on the head with why your agency should be using WordPress.

Benefits of WordPress

1. Extra service equals extra revenue

You can add ‘website hosting’ to your list of available services, growing your offering as an agency with an extra revenue stream, and all without having to expand your team.

For example, say you’ve been working with a client on and off for a while and you’ve done a handful of ad hoc projects for them. Offering to host their website will usually mean starting up a retainer, so you can bank on a more reliable income. This is ideal for any companies you work with that have minimal technical expertise available in-house, as they’ll likely prefer to outsource it to an agency like yours. Plus, if you’re using an external hosting provider (like us) and then reselling hosting to your client, you can charge a premium, or add an extra fee for website management. 

To learn more about Reseller Hosting and how it can benefit your business, make sure you check out our articles on what reseller hosting is and how it works and how to choose the best reseller hosting. 

2. Get set up quick

Having WordPress pre-installed with your hosting means you won’t need to spend time downloading the CMS on your server. Just purchase a plan and start developing (or migrating) your clients’ sites in a snap. There’ll be no complicated server settings to mess around with, and all the tools you need are there ready for you to use straight away.

And the added bonus is that most providers make it easy to add extras like SSL certificates and domains in the same place so you can set those up quickly too. For example, it’s super easy to register a domain name with Fasthosts. And with Fasthosts WordPress Hosting, you get a domain name and SSL certificate included for free!

3. Performance that does your clients justice

Because it’s specifically optimised for the CMS, this type of hosting amps up the performance of WordPress sites so that glitches and system freezes are kept to a minimum. It also boosts your clients’ sites in more ways than one – like page speed, error rate and time to interact. Fast sites equals happy clients, and happy clients leads to more revenue.

4. Keep on top of things with automatic updates

When you’re managing multiple sites, you probably don’t have the time to juggle updates and security patches for all of them. But without regular upgrades, your clients’ sites will not only miss out on helpful bug fixes, but they’ll also be more vulnerable to external security threats.

That’s where WordPress hosting comes to the rescue! Many hosting plans now come with an ‘automatic updates’ feature, so rather than manually upgrading every site in your portfolio, each site updates on its own. That means more time for your developers to focus on building stunning sites.

5. Robust security that keeps client data safe

Speaking of security, we know it’s one of the biggest concerns agencies have to deal with. Handling confidential data and sensitive material for many different companies at once calls for super tight security for your WordPress hosting. Most providers offer security features like two-factor authentication and pre-installed security plugins to keep your clients’ data away from prying eyes. You’ll also find a lot of them, including us, have data centres that boast the latest in hardware and software security so your WordPress hosting is secure from every angle.

6. Round-the-clock support from the experts

It’s no secret that devs are usually tackling a long backlog of jobs to keep up with client needs, and fixing minor site issues is the last thing they need to add to the pile. That’s why we offer 24/7 tech support with our hosting packages, so our team of experts is on hand to help, day and night.

How to choose WordPress hosting

As we’ve established, WordPress hosting is a fantastic thing to offer your clients. You’ll get a steady income stream from hosting and start building a loyal customer base, and it won’t require a lot of set-up or maintenance on your end since WordPress is so hassle-free, secure and user-friendly.

But not all WordPress hosting packages are created equal. To ensure that you and your clients are receiving the best support, performance and security possible, you need to choose a reputable, trustworthy WordPress hosting provider that gives you the features you need for the right price. 

So, how can you choose the best WordPress hosting plan for your agency? Here are the main features you should be prioritising in your search:

1. Reliable customer support

Downtime can be catastrophic for an online business, whether you’ve got a general business website or ecommerce store. The longer the problem with your site persists, the more potential traffic and conversions you’re losing out on. If downtime ends up lasting for hours or days, this could represent a serious blow to your operations.

If you’re managing WordPress hosting for your clients, they won’t want to see these kinds of issues, or they could end up cutting ties with your agency. So, you need a WordPress hosting provider with reliable support (preferably 24/7 support) that you can contact as soon as there’s a problem. 

Check out their reviews to see if current customers are satisfied with the way issues are handled and how long this process takes. If quick, dependable support is mentioned as a key benefit for a particular provider, then you can trust them to handle your clients’ web hosting needs.

2. Robust security

Your clients are also trusting you to keep their websites and data safe, so you need to choose a WordPress hosting provider with robust security measures for their peace of mind. For example, you should be looking for security features like multi-factor authentication, malware scanning, advanced firewall configuration and built-in data backups. These will significantly reduce the chances of cyber attacks and ensure that data can be recovered if the worst does happen. 

3. High server uptime

As discussed above, your clients need their web hosting to be reliable and dependable, as this will ensure that their customers are able to visit their website and complete purchases without any hiccups. One way to make sure that your WordPress hosting provider can offer the reliability you need is to check their server uptime guarantee. Server uptime refers to the amount of time a server is up and running, which means the amount of time that the websites hosted on that server are available. 

You should be looking for at least 99% uptime when searching for a hosting provider. Very small amounts of downtime may be needed for maintenance, but downtime should be kept to the absolute minimum since it can have such a drastic impact on website traffic and conversions. Here at Fasthosts, we guarantee 99.99% uptime as part of our service level agreement (SLA), so you can rest assured that your clients’ websites will remain easily accessible.

4. Scalability

As an agency, you need to offer scalability to your clients if you want to nurture long-term relationships. The ultimate goal for businesses is to continue to grow over time, so if you can’t offer hosting solutions that can keep up with their resource needs, they may decide to move on and find another agency.

This means you need to look for a hosting provider that offers easy scalability in their hosting packages. For example, it should be straightforward to migrate to a more advanced hosting plan or add more virtual resources to their control panel. Make sure that resources can be scaled dynamically with your chosen web host, as this is especially important for ecommerce clients that need to adapt to fluctuating traffic demands. 

5. Pricing

Naturally, you’re going to want the best deal possible to avoid cutting into your profits too drastically, but don’t just go for the cheapest option you see. If it seems too good to be true, it usually is! Always compare the pricing with the features and guarantees you get to see if the price is fair – especially compared to competitors.

If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to provide web hosting and WordPress hosting to your clients, we would definitely recommend reseller hosting. As a Fasthosts hosting reseller, you can access our hosting packages at discounted prices, allowing you to sell on these packages for a fantastic profit. Plus, as this is a white-label service, you’ll be able to market these hosting services as your own, but we’ll still be in charge of handling all of the technical details for you.

When you weigh up everything that WordPress hosting has to offer an agency, it’s really no surprise it’s so popular. It’s great for helping to ease the pressures of agency life, making it easier to create impressive sites for clients and manage it all hassle-free.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to put a dent in your wallet either. For example, our WordPress Hosting is stuffed full of features like free SSL certificates, automatic updates, unlimited bandwidth, first-class security and flexible performance, starting from only 49p per month for 6 months! Why not make your website go even further with a .agency domain?

Want to learn more about WordPress? We have loads of interesting reads on our blog, like troubleshooting a slow WordPress site, the best themes to get started with and how you manage it all from the WordPress app.