ServeTheHome

Several years ago STH grew to the size that AWS hosting became too expensive. One of the largest drivers here is that AWS outbound bandwidth is expensive: ~$0.09 per GB at the time of this writing. If you host your own videos, then that will cost a ton. If you have an image-heavy site like STH, then you are still going to start seeing large bandwidth costs. You can see our “Falling from the Sky” series on how we saved just shy of $10,000 on hosting costs by self-hosting between 2013 and 2015. Since then, our savings have been even greater.

We have had several iterations and plenty of time to do things both well and poorly. As a result, we wanted to share our hardware guide to dedicated WordPress server hardware.

These tips will help you get started with WordPress hosting hardware without overpaying for hardware or buying something you will regret later.

In this guide, we gave a bit of guidance on server hardware for WordPress hosting. The average user spending a few hundred dollars hosting WordPress in AWS should be able to have a payback period in the 6-9 month range, including remote hands, and get higher-performance.

There are other options out there that handily beat AWS pricing such as virtual private servers and dedicated servers. Those are certainly worth looking into if you are less comfortable with the up-front investment.

Here is an example $1500 server that should run almost any WordPress site that is not a top 20,000 worldwide website at a monthly cost of around $50/ month:

• Barebones: 1U Xeon D-1521 barebones
• RAM: 2x 32GB ECC Registered DDR4 RDIMM (room to expand to 128GB later)
• SSD: 2x Intel DC S3500 480GB
• Total ~$1500

If you want to estimate power, that will use less than 1A 110V or 110W total and as a 1U is extremely inexpensive to colocate anywhere in the world. You can even build multiple machines like this and deploy them worldwide.

Looking to build a dedicated WordPress hosting server? Check out the STH forums where many in the community can share their advice.