Choosing the right WordPress VPS hosting approach can make or break your website’s performance and management efficiency. InMotion Hosting offers two distinct paths for hosting WordPress on VPS infrastructure: UltraStack One for WordPress (designed for single, high-performance sites) and Managed VPS Hosting with cPanel (built for managing multiple WordPress installations).
This guide breaks down the key differences between these approaches to help you make an informed decision based on your specific needs.
Understanding the Two Approaches
UltraStack One for WordPress: Purpose-Built Single Site Hosting
UltraStack One for WordPress provides a fully-isolated VPS dedicated to a single WordPress installation, managed through InMotion Central, a custom dashboard that replaces traditional cPanel. InMotion Central is an all-in-one dashboard with multiple site and account management features designed to provide the best user experience on a fully-isolated VPS server.
Each UltraStack One plan dedicates all server resources to powering one WordPress site, eliminating resource competition and maximizing performance for mission-critical websites.
Managed VPS with cPanel: Flexible Multiple Site Hosting
Managed VPS Hosting includes your choice of cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM), or Control Web Panel (CWP), for managing critical server administration functions. This approach allows you to host multiple WordPress sites on a single VPS, each with its own cPanel account and isolated resources.
All WordPress VPS plans give you the ability to create multiple cPanels based on your specific hosting plan, with an option to purchase more cPanel accounts as you need them. This flexibility makes it ideal for agencies, resellers, and businesses managing multiple brands or client websites.
Performance Comparison
Front-End Performance: How Fast Your Visitors Experience Your Site
Both hosting approaches use InMotion’s UltraStack technology, which combines NGINX reverse proxy, PHP-FPM, and Redis caching to accelerate WordPress. However, the single site approach offers distinct advantages.
UltraStack One Performance Benefits:
WordPress VPS Hosting is a standalone server that provides flexible dedicated resources for a single WordPress site, ensuring faster page load times and improved site performance. When all server resources focus on one site, you eliminate resource contention from neighboring sites or applications.
UltraStack plans use NVMe SSDs that offer up to 40x faster I/O than traditional HDDs, with improvements to Core Web Vital scores through NGINX reverse proxy, PHP-FPM, Redis, and dedicated caching pools.
Multiple Site Performance Considerations:
When hosting multiple WordPress sites on one VPS, performance depends on how you allocate resources. With WHM, you can configure everything from bandwidth and disk space to basic account features available based on what a given site does and does not need.
The challenge comes when multiple sites experience traffic spikes simultaneously. While cPanel allows you to set resource limits per account, one site consuming excessive CPU or RAM can still impact others on the same server.
Back-End Performance: Admin Dashboard and Development Speed
InMotion Central Advantages:
Unlike cPanel, where your website and control panel compete for server resources, InMotion Central ensures optimal performance for your website by removing this resource contention. The control panel runs separately from your production environment, keeping administrative tasks from slowing down your live site.
InMotion Central streamlines every aspect of your workflow, from server provisioning and site deployment to performance monitoring and team collaboration. The interface is specifically designed for WordPress, eliminating unnecessary features that clutter traditional control panels.
cPanel/WHM Considerations:
cPanel provides comprehensive control but requires more system resources. When managing multiple sites, WHM adds another layer that sits between you and your websites. cPanel focuses on the technical aspects of hosting and provides tools specifically tailored for server and website management.
For experienced administrators, this depth of control is valuable. However, it comes with increased complexity and resource overhead.
Resource Allocation and Management
Dedicated Resources vs Shared Pool
Single Site Approach:
Every resource on your VPS serves one purpose: powering your WordPress site. Each site receives a dedicated IP address to improve site security and prevent blacklisting, which is a problem when you host multiple sites on the same server.
When you need more power, you simply upgrade your entire VPS tier, and all resources scale together.
Multiple Site Management:
Managed VPS with cPanel gives you flexibility to divide resources among multiple sites. You can allocate specific amounts of disk space, bandwidth, and create resource limits for each cPanel account.
This approach works well when you have predictable traffic patterns across your sites. However, when multiple sites share the same resources such as vCPU, RAM, and bandwidth, if one site experiences a sudden spike in traffic or resource usage, it can impact the performance of other sites on the server.
Scalability: Growing Your Hosting Infrastructure
Scaling with UltraStack One:
InMotion Central makes it easy to upgrade or downgrade your UltraStack VPS as your budget and performance needs change. When you upgrade your server tier, all resources including disk space, RAM, vCPU cores, and bandwidth increase proportionally.
To host additional production sites, you purchase additional UltraStack One plans. You will be able to access and manage all WordPress sites from your InMotion Central dashboard, even though they’re on separate VPS instances.
Scaling with Managed VPS:
Managed VPS hosting offers more granular scaling options. You can add more cPanel accounts without necessarily upgrading your entire server. However, you’ll eventually hit resource limits as you add more sites.
Upgrading and downgrading your VPS hosting plan is simple and easy through your Account Management Panel to match your current hosting needs. You can also add more powerful VPS tiers when your combined sites outgrow your current plan.
Security Architecture
Isolation and Risk Management
Single Site Security Model:
InMotion Hosting uses fully-isolated cloud servers that secure your data and prevent cross-infection from other WordPress sites. When your WordPress installation is the only site on the VPS, you eliminate the most common security risk: lateral movement from compromised neighboring sites.
All plans include a fully-isolated VPS, root access, free dedicated IP address and SSL certificate. This isolation means security breaches cannot spread beyond your single installation.
Multiple Site Security Considerations:
When hosting multiple WordPress sites on one VPS, security becomes more complex. If one site in the network gets compromised, it can potentially affect all sites on the server, as hackers could install a rogue plugin that can potentially break all hosted websites.
However, proper isolation through cPanel accounts and file permissions can mitigate these risks. Each cPanel account operates with its own user permissions, providing a layer of separation between sites. The key is maintaining security best practices across all installations.
Update Management and Maintenance
Simplified Updates with Single Site:
Managing one WordPress installation means you only need to monitor one set of plugins, themes, and core updates. Expert technical staff manage server updates, firewalls, and security patches at the infrastructure level, while you handle WordPress-specific updates for your single site.
Multiple Site Update Challenges:
With multiple WordPress sites, you multiply your maintenance workload. Each site may use different plugins, themes, and configurations. Each site requires separate updates, backups, and user management, increasing overall management complexity.
Some administrators use WordPress Multisite to centralize updates, but this creates its own challenges. All hosted websites in a multisite network share the same server resources, and a single vulnerability has the potential to affect all sites within the network.
Partitioning and Client Site Management
Agency and Reseller Considerations
Multiple Site Benefits for Client Management:
For agencies and resellers, Managed VPS with cPanel shines. You can not only provide your clients access to a personal cPanel, but also configure everything from bandwidth and disk space to basic account features available based on what a given site does and does not need.
This granular control allows you to create packages tailored to each client’s requirements. You can set resource limits, create branded hosting packages, and provide clients with direct access to their cPanel without exposing your master WHM account.
Single Site Approach for Agencies:
If you manage client sites that require maximum performance, purchasing separate UltraStack One instances for premium clients makes sense. Each plan offers playground environments to support development work, with collaboration features through Teams, allowing you to invite developers, marketers, and clients to work on Projects together.
You can manage access and permission levels to website environments, domains, billing, email, and more, all from the InMotion Central interface.
Development Workflows
InMotion Central Development Features:
UltraStack One provides playground environments for staging work, allowing you to test updates and changes without affecting your live site. The staging environment operates as a separate space where you can experiment freely.
InMotion Central allows you to manage your plugins and themes, saving time by quickly installing, uninstalling, and updating them right from the dashboard.
cPanel Development Tools:
cPanel offers robust development features through tools like Git integration, staging environments (via plugins), and SSH access. The level of control offered by a WordPress VPS account is useful even if you just have one primary business site, as you can create development and staging cPanel accounts alongside your production account.
Cost Considerations
Pricing Structure Differences
UltraStack One Investment:
UltraStack One plans dedicate an entire VPS to one WordPress site, which means higher per-site costs. However, you’ll save on additional cPanel license fees, making it a cost-effective solution when you factor in the eliminated licensing costs.
For high-traffic sites where performance directly impacts revenue, the investment pays for itself through improved conversion rates, better user experience, and reduced bounce rates.
Managed VPS Economy of Scale:
Managed VPS with cPanel requires licensing fees, but allows you to spread VPS costs across multiple sites. VPS Hosting with cPanel is available for purchase during checkout, starting at $25.50 per month.
When hosting five to ten sites on one VPS, your per-site cost drops significantly compared to dedicated single-site hosting.
Making Your Decision
Choose UltraStack One for WordPress When:
Your WordPress site generates significant revenue and performance is critical to your business. The approach ensures optimal performance and security for serious, high-traffic websites by dedicating each plan to one WordPress site.
You value simplified management over granular control. You want maximum isolation from security threats. Your site handles sensitive data or transactions where compromise could be catastrophic. You prefer a modern, WordPress-specific management interface.
Choose Managed VPS with cPanel When:
You manage multiple WordPress sites with varying resource needs. You’re an agency or reseller providing hosting to clients. You need granular control over resource allocation per site. You’re comfortable with traditional cPanel administration. Performance isn’t your primary concern, or you would like to host multiple WordPress sites on a single server.
Quick Feature Comparison
All plans include InMotion’s UltraStack technology, NVMe SSD storage, NGINX caching, Redis, PHP-FPM, and 24/7 expert human support.
Getting Started
Both hosting approaches provide robust WordPress hosting with InMotion’s reliable infrastructure, 24/7 support, and 99.99% uptime guarantee. Your choice depends on your specific priorities.
For businesses running a single mission-critical WordPress site, UltraStack One delivers uncompromising performance and security through complete resource dedication and isolation.
For agencies, resellers, or organizations managing multiple WordPress properties, Managed VPS with cPanel provides the flexibility and control needed to partition resources and manage diverse hosting needs from one powerful server.
Consider your current needs, but also think about where you’ll be in 12 months. Both solutions scale differently, so choose the approach that aligns with your growth trajectory and technical comfort level.