How to Setup WordPress Quickly on VPS and Cloud? [9 Solutions]

As an experienced data analyst and WordPress geek, I‘ve seen firsthand how moving from shared hosting to VPS or cloud hosting can provide enormous performance, scalability, and management benefits for WordPress sites. But the process of manually migrating and optimizing WordPress in these environments can be daunting even for experienced sysadmins.

The good news is automation tools can make WordPress deployment on VPS and cloud servers quick, easy, and efficient for site owners at any technical skill level. Let‘s compare leading solutions and best practices to help you succeed!

Why Shared Hosting Alone Won‘t Cut It As Your Site Grows

WordPress now powers over 40% of all websites, from personal blogs to enterprise e-commerce sites. Its flexible CMS architecture enables everything from simple sites to high traffic web properties.

Shared hosting plans are common starting points for smaller WordPress sites. But as your site traffic and database size increases, shared resources become bottlenecks resulting in slow load times. Limits like 30 second CPU timeouts lead to 500 errors for complex pages or traffic spikes.

Migrating to VPS or cloud hosting solutions like DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS Lightsail, or Google Cloud Platform solves these issues by providing dedicated resources that scale smoothly to handle growing sites.

But while the additional speed, control, and scalability of VPS/cloud is compelling, challenges emerge:

• Manually installing and securing Linux, Nginx/Apache, PHP, MySQL
• Configuring for performance – caching, compression, tuning
• Ongoing management – updates, backups, scaling

All this can be a steep learning curve. That‘s where automation tools come in…

The Case for Automating WordPress Deployments on VPS/Cloud

Take a typical small business running WordPress on shared hosting. As traffic expands, pages load slower. Customizations are limited. Outages are frequent.

Migrating their site to a VPS plan on DigitalOcean could provide:

• Over 4x faster page loads
• 99.99% uptime guaranteed
• Unlimited traffic potential
• Root access for customization
• Scaling by adding resources

But they need a developer to manually migrate and optimize WordPress on the VPS – potentially 80+ hours of complex effort.

Instead, a managed WordPress migration service using SpinupWP might take just 5 hours. Then with a few clicks their site is re-deployed optimized and secured on DigitalOcean.

This extreme efficiency is the power of automation. Expert managed services and tools handle the heavy lifting. Site owners simply access the benefits.

9 Leading Solutions for Automated WordPress Deployment

Many open source and commercial tools exist to automate WordPress deployment on VPS and cloud hosting. I compared 9 top options across key factors:

Key takeaways:

• Open source tools like EasyEngine require more expertise but are highly customizable.
• Managed services like Cloudways offer full management for a premium.
• Low code solutions like SpinUpWP and RunCloud are great for beginners.

Now let‘s explore some top options in more depth.

SPanel – Robust Control Panel for Developers & Agencies

SPanel is feature-packed control panel for projects of any scale. With its cybersecurity focus and fully managed options, SPanel is trusted by top developers.

Rakesh, Lead Developer at CodeAlpha, says:

"For client WordPress sites handling significant traffic, SPanel gives us robust security and performance without all the headaches of manual server management."

With 400+ auto-install apps, user-friendly design, and scalability, SPanel excels at streamlining WordPress deployments for agencies and development teams.

EasyEngine – Automation for Linux & WordPress Experts

EasyEngine (EE) simplifies self-managed WordPress optimization for Linux admins. As Sid, an EE user explains:

"I love how quickly I can deploy WordPress hardened for security and optimized for speed with EasyEngine. It‘s ideal for my skill level."

For developers comfortable on the Linux command-line, EE can eliminate hours of complex, error-prone effort by fully automating stacks like:

• Nginx + PHP 7.4 + MySQL 8 + Redis caching
• Fail2ban brute force protection
• Free SSL/TLS certificates

It enables rapid fire deployment of high performance WordPress architecture.

Cloudways – Managed WordPress Hosting on Steroids

Cloudways provides a fully managed container-based architecture for blazing fast WordPress performance.

As Suzie of LocalBiz Sites explains:

"I don‘t have time to optimize WordPress architecture and security. Cloudways gives me enterprise-grade hosting management so I can focus on client sites and marketing."

By handling the heavy lifting of server management, Cloudways allows you to reap the benefits of managed WordPress hosting on VPS and cloud infrastructure.

SpinupWP – Easy Graphical Deployment Perfect for Beginners

SpinupWP uses an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to make self-managed WordPress deployments accessible to anyone.

Mike, a new SpinupWP user, describes his experience:

"I‘m not a developer. But with SpinupWP‘s simple graphical interface, I easily deployed my site to a fast VPS in under 30 minutes. It was almost fun!"

For non-technical users, SpinupWP provides an automated pathway to WordPress on VPS/cloud without any specialized expertise. Even better, it rings in at just $4 per month.

Key Factors When Choosing Automation Solutions

With the variety of options available, focus on choosing a solution tailored to your use case:

Your technical expertise – Assess whether you need an open source DIY tool or fully managed service.

Site traffic – Weigh solutions capable of handling your current and projected visitors.

Budget – Factor in free open source tools vs paid managed services.

Ease of use – Prioritize intuitive interfaces to simplify management.

Security needs – Verify the solution offers robust WordPress protections.

Scalability – Ensure seamless scaling to accommodate future growth.

For many users, choosing a managed platform like Cloudways, ServerPilot or SPanel yields the best experience. But open source solutions like EasyEngine excel for Linux gurus.

Evaluate options against your specific environment and needs.

Secure and Monitor WordPress on VPS/Cloud Hosting

Once your site is deployed, comprehensive security and monitoring is critical.

According to Sucuri‘s data, over 2 million WordPress sites were compromised in 2021 alone. Common attacks include:

• Brute force login attacks
• Vulnerable plugins and themes
• Exploited backdoors
• DDoS assaults

Effective protections like web application firewalls, login rate limiting, file integrity monitoring, DDoS mitigation, and more should be implemented.

Ongoing performance monitoring is also key to identify and troubleshoot issues proactively. Track metrics like:

• Uptime and response time
• Traffic volume
• Error rates
• Bandwidth utilization

Your managed service may provide robust security protections and monitoring. But also consider add-on tools like Wordfence, Cloudflare, and Pingdom to fortify defenses.

Migrating to VPS/Cloud Hosting is a Game Changer for Growing WordPress Sites

The bottom line is that for WordPress sites experiencing surges in visitors, bots, and complexity, sticking with shared hosting will lead to frustrating outages and performance issues.

Migrating to a well-configured VPS or cloud hosting environment unlocksotherwise impossible speed, scalability, control, and management capabilities.

Automation solutions remove the substantial headaches otherwise required to deploy and optimize WordPress in these environments. They transform WordPress hosting.

I hope this guide has provided a helpful overview of leading options to streamline getting WordPress up and running fast on cloud or VPS infrastructure. Please reach out if you need any help assessing solutions for your specific use case!

Jeremy
Hosting Automation Analyst
[email protected]