No plugin allowlist. No per-site cap. No one patching it either.
People leave managed WordPress hosting for one checkable reason: the restrictions. No banned plugin list, no resource cap per site, no opinion imposed about your caching layer. What comes with that is the update responsibility — and on WordPress specifically, that is not a footnote.
- Any plugin, any theme
- As many sites as the server holds
- Your PHP, cache and database
- Your updates, too
$4.95/mo
Though for a site with real traffic, start where the storage is fast
- No banned-plugin list
- Unlimited sites per server
- One dedicated IPv4 included
- No automatic core or plugin patching
What Actually Changes When WordPress Moves to a VPS
Two things change, and only one of them is usually advertised. The advertised one is freedom: no plugin allowlist, no per-site resource cap, your choice of web server, PHP version, database and caching layer, and as many WordPress installations on one server as it will hold. That is real and it is checkable. The unadvertised one is that WordPress security updates become your responsibility, and WordPress is not a neutral case — it is the most scanned application on the public internet, so an unpatched install with a vulnerable plugin does not stay unnoticed for long. The freedom is worth having. It is worth having with automatic updates turned on.
- No plugin restrictions — nothing here can ban one.
- Your stack: Nginx or Apache, MySQL or MariaDB, Redis or Varnish.
- Priced per server, not per site.
- Storage matters most — WordPress is database-heavy.
- Dedicated IPv4 on every plan.
- Updates and backups are yours — every plan is unmanaged.
Related: VPS for web hosting · NVMe VPS · Running cPanel · Linux VPS · What unmanaged means
What You Gain Over Managed WordPress Hosting
Five things, with the storage point ranked where it actually belongs.
- No plugin allowlist This is the reason most people leave managed WordPress hosting, and it is the one claim in this category that is straightforwardly checkable. Managed hosts ban plugins that duplicate their own features, hammer the database or conflict with their caching. On your own server nothing is banned, because there is nobody to ban it. Yours
- The whole stack is yours to tune PHP version and memory limits, Nginx or Apache, MySQL or MariaDB, Redis or Varnish, and how they fit together. On managed hosting you get the host's opinion about all of that; here the opinion is yours, for better and occasionally for worse. Running a full web stack → Yours
- As many sites as the server holds Managed WordPress is usually priced per site. One VPS runs as many WordPress installations as its CPU, memory and disk allow, which changes the arithmetic sharply once you are past two or three sites. Yours
- Storage, where WordPress actually feels it WordPress is database-heavy, and a database under concurrent load is small random reads and writes — precisely what HDDs are worst at. The Classic range is HDD; SSD, NVMe and Cloud are faster. For a site with real traffic this is the spec worth paying for before cores. What NVMe changes → Matters
- A dedicated IP for your certificates One dedicated IPv4 on every plan. SNI means you rarely strictly need one for SSL any more, but having your own address keeps DNS, mail and firewalling simple and means your reputation is not shared. Dedicated IPv4 → Included
Which Plan Fits Your Site
Sized by what the database has to do, not by traffic alone. Each row shows the cheapest plan in the catalogue that meets the requirement.
| If this is you | Cheapest plan that fits | What it gives you | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| One small site, low traffic A blog or brochure site. Works on the entry range, though the database will feel HDD on a busy day. | Essential Budget VPS Classic VPS range | 1 Core · 2 GB DDR3 RAM 20 GB HDD Storage | $7.95/mo + $2.00 one-time setup |
| A real site with plugins and a growing database The common case. Storage speed matters more than cores for WordPress at this size. | Business SSD VPS SSD VPS range | 2 Cores · 4 GB DDR3 RAM 30 GB Enterprise SSD | $14.95/mo + $0.00 one-time setup |
| WooCommerce, or several sites on one box Commerce means uncacheable logged-in traffic hitting the database on every request. | Professional NVMe VPS NVMe VPS range | 3 Cores · 6 GB DDR4 RAM 50 GB Enterprise NVMe SSD | $21.95/mo + $0.00 one-time setup |
| High traffic, or an agency hosting clients Many sites, many databases, and no single one allowed to take the others down. | Enterprise SSD VPS SSD VPS range | 4 Cores · 8 GB DDR3 RAM 50 GB Enterprise SSD | $24.95/mo + $0.00 one-time setup |
What Moving to a VPS Costs You
Three of them, and the first is the one that actually gets sites compromised.
Updates become your job, and they matter more here
Managed hosts patch WordPress core and often plugins for you. On an unmanaged VPS nobody does. An out-of-date WordPress with a vulnerable plugin is one of the most reliably compromised things on the internet — not because WordPress is bad, but because it is everywhere and scanned constantly. Automatic updates plus a weekly look is the minimum.
Backups become your job too
No plan includes an automatic backup product. WordPress backups mean both the files and the database, kept somewhere other than the server. A backup plugin writing to the same disk protects you from nothing that actually happens.
A VPS is not automatically faster
An unconfigured LEMP stack with no caching can easily be slower than good managed hosting, which arrives tuned. The speed comes from what you set up — object caching, page caching, a sensible PHP version, an indexed database. The server gives you the ability to be fast; it does not hand it to you.
WordPress on a VPS: Questions
Your stack, your plugins, from $4.95.
No allowlist, no per-site cap, as many installations as the server holds — and a 7-day money-back guarantee on your first order if the trade turns out not to suit you.