Yesterday’s Apple event revealed their new iPhone lineup that showcased the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. The iPhone 12 Pro, which launched at $999 in the United States reaches the Indian market at shockingly expensive prices.
It’s always been like this in India, all Apple products are expensive in India when their base prices from the USA is converted from dollars to rupees. But what I’m pointing this out because now the pricing has gone from expensive to insanely expensive.
Apple Store Pricing for the iPhone 12 Pro
The iPhone 12 Pro launched in the USA for $999 (Rs.73367) but it costs Rs.1,19,900 in India which is $1633 (rounded figure). By looking at these figures you will understand that there is a $634 price difference, that’s huge!
Apple iPhone 12 Pricing and Comparison
iPhone 12 Base Variants and Price in USA VS India (Direct Converted)
When it comes to a country like India where Apple has less than 4% share in the market, this pricing is really aggressive. Apple has such a low share in the Indian market because the majority of the population in India has a hard time making both ends meet. The smartphone market in India loves smartphones within the budget segment and android devices rule there. Now during the Covid-19 crisis, the situation is even worse, so let’s see how the sales numbers go.
There are some factors that made the iPhone 12 Pro this expensive. Maybe because this particular model isn’t being manufactured within India. The import charges and taxes could one factor that makes the iPhones more expensive.
If fast web hosting is what you are looking for then here is a list of 7 fastest WordPress hosting services. When it comes to web hosting, a fast server is only one factor for good experience and ranking there are many other things to consider while choosing the perfect web host. That why I’m listing out the best WordPress web hosting companies that are crazy fast, reliable, offers good support, and easy on your pocket.
There are a ton of web hosting companies that offer web hosting for dirt cheap rates but why should you choose a fast web host over them. Well, the short answer is, your website will be fast. The long answer is that a faster server will provide lower response time which will improve the overall performance of your site by making pages load much faster. If you have ever used website speed testing tools like Google’s Page Speed Insights, then you can see how fast your site loads by giving a score.
There are many factors that make a web hosting provider fast and most of it comes down to the physical hardware infrastructure of the servers used by the web hosting company. Here are some factors that make a web server fast.
Fast and Reliable Network
Slow network speeds will result in higher server response time. Initial Server Response Time is one way by which Google measures a website’s speed, Initial Server Response Time is the time a website’s server takes to serve the byte of data to a visitor’s browser. If the server takes longer to respond then the initial server response time will be higher which will the website load much slower.
The initial server response also depends on the geographical locations of a website’s server. That is if you are trying to visit a website that is hosted at a faraway location the response time will be higher.
CPU Cores and Clock Speeds
The processor that powers a web server has a really crucial role in determining the performance of a website, a low-end CPU can handle some traffic on your website but if there is a lot of traffic then a more powerful one will be needed to fulfill all the database queries and PHP processes.
However, you shouldn’t be worried about this as most hosting providers offer good CPU even on their base plan. But what you should consider is the number of CPU cores you are getting on your plan. If your website’s traffic is low then you can start from a 1 core CPU and then upgrade your plan later.
RAM and Storage
Most hosting providers now offer SSD or even NVMe SSD storage for their web hosting plans, these are high-speed storage options that will significantly increase a server’s I/O speed there by making a site snappier.
RAM is an important factor that helps a server to cope with the traffics loads and ongoing tasks, it’s better to have at least 2GB of RAM but most small sites should be fine with 1GB RAM also.
So that now you know what are the key factors that make a web hosting provider fast, you might be worried about choosing the perfect hosting service. Don’t worry mate, in this post ill show you the 7 best hosting providers so that you don’t have to worry about all the hardware selection stuff.
What is Managed WordPress Hosting?
Managed WordPress Hosting is WordPress-specific hosting that makes it easier to manage, secure, and speed up your WordPress site. Managed hosting is a description of the service you’ll receive. While most hosting providers leave the majority of the work up to you, managed hosting takes some of the responsibility for keeping your site going off your shoulders.
5 Fastest & Best Managed WordPress Hosting Services
Cloudways is first on the list because they use superior cloud hosting services like DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud for hosting your WordPress site. They will do all the work for you buy setting up your WordPress website on these cloud services and makes your life easier.
Cloudways provides an intuitive user interface from which you can manage your WordPress sites. With Cloudways you can scale your website seamlessly as your traffic increases thanks to their cloud providers. Cloudways hosting plans start from as low as $10 for a single WordPress installation. One main feature that I really like about them is their “Pay As You Go” billing method, ie. you only need to pay for the number of hours your server runs.
They also provide 24/7/365 Support and their on CloudwaysCDN for free on all their plans. Key features offered by Cloudways are:
Kinsta is a WordPress specific hosting company that is backed by Google cloud servers which are optimized for speed and performance. Hosting plans starts at $30 per month and includes two months free with annual billing. Their key features include:
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting provider who also makes use of cloud hosting infrastructure by AWS and Google Cloud. They provides a number of managed WordPress hosting plans that can be scaled at any instant to meet your needs. Apart from all the other managed WordPress hosting providers WP Engine provides more WordPress specific features.
Using WP Engine’s control panel you can easily convert a normal WordPress installation to a multisite installation with a few clicks, they provide Activity Log to see changes you make in your WordPress site and also they provide Dedicated Dev Environments on their Premium or Enterprise plan. Not just that! you will get a bunch of StudioPress themes to kick start your WordPress website.
Being one of the few hosts that are officially recommended by WordPress.org, Siteground is used by the top websites to host their WordPress blogs. Siteground offers pocket-friendly plans when compared to the competition.
They provide a reasonable amount of WordPress-specific features. That includes free one-click installations, WordPress site transfers, and automatic updates.
SiteGround also has ‘WordPress SuperCacher’ which is a SiteGround-specific feature that adds caching for your WordPress site on multiple levels, to improve loading times. And by the way Siteground is also powered by Google Cloud servers. Highlighted features on Siteground are:
Flywheel which is owned by WP Engine is also a popular and fastest-managed WordPress hosting provider. Even though its owned by WP Engine, they both run separately.
And again! Flywheel powered by Google Cloud, they offer a free CDN and a custom dashboard for WordPress site management. Flywheel also provides custom caching tools and nightly backups.
Flywheel’s Managed WordPress hosting provides the following features:
DreamHost offers budget-friendly shared, VPS, and managed WordPress hosting plans. Aside from being one of the affordable hosting companies DreamHost’s DreamPress Plus and DreamPress Pro plans come with a free subscription to Jetpack premium.
DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting referred to as DreamPress, and their base plan starts at $16.95/mo. If that feels expensive to you then you can choose their Word Press Basic plan which starts at $2.59/mo which doesn’t have any fancy features.
Like DreamHost, InMotion Hosting also has Shared, VPS, Cloud, Dedicated, and Managed WordPress hosting plans. Their shared and WordPress plans are very much affordable also.
InMotion Hosting also offers a one-click software installer, a drag-and-drop WordPress page builder (BoldGrid), and automatic WordPress, plugin, and theme updates.
That’s the list of 7 web hosting solutions for your WordPress website, this list has been made from experience in 8 years of WordPress life. I have hopped on to many providers and know all of these providers.
If you have any questions or queries then you can post on our forums so that many people like you will join to have a conversation over there.
Linux vs windows, which operating system is more secure? which one should you choose? you might have these questions. But despite the recent articles on the internet claiming that Linux is the most vulnerable operating system, the fact is Linux is far more secure operating system than windows.
On the 9th of March 2020, multiple articles started popping up on the web that Linux is not secure. Most of the data is accurate but is wrongly scaled. “Linux is the world’s most vulnerable operating system” quoted by Fudzilla, “Debian Linux Was the Most Vulnerable Operating System in the Last 20 Years” quoted by Softpedia news, etc are few of the articles on the web telling Linux/Debian is not secure and is the most vulnerable Operating System in the world. It seems according to their reports Windows is a much more secure Operating System than Linux.
Lets say these data are correct,
Most Vulnerable Operating Systems
Now, let us take all these data into perspective. In the above image, it is clearly shown statistically that Debian Linux is the most insecure operating system in the world. But is it, let us see where the x-axis (time) for each of the projects start, mainly Debian Linux, Windows 7, Windows 10. According to Wikipedia Debian Linux started on June 17, 1996, Windows 10 pre-release was on July 29, 2015, and Windows 7 was introduced on July 22, 2009. Now you could see the perspective.
Linux VS Windows Security Compared
Analysis of Windows 7
Windows 7 was released on July 22, 2009, which makes it around 10 years old give or take few months. Let’s divide this data shown here, that is 1283 with 10 years, which will yield several 128.3 vulnerabilities per year in average, now let’s compare the same with Debian, Debian is 24 years old give or take few months. If we divide 3067 with 24, we are left with 127.79 vulnerabilities per year. This makes Debian exactly equally vulnerable as windows 7.
Analysis of Windows 10
Windows 10 was released on July 29, 2015, which makes it 5 years old, give or take few months. Now if we do the same analysis again by dividing 1111 with 5, we are left with 222.2 vulnerabilities a year, this is considering the pre-release period. This number is clearly way higher than Windows 7 as well as Debian. This is because when a new closed source product is released, the chance of findings vulnerabilities is really high at the infant stage. But still, the numbers are high.
Analysis of Windows 7 and 10 combined
Let’s say from 2009 to 2014 127.79 vulnerabilities a year due to the fact that Windows 7 only existed, if we calculate, its 5 years * 127.79, which gives an answer of 638.97 vulnerabilities until 2014, now from 2015 to 2020, another 5 year period 127.79+222.2 vulnerability a year because Windows 7 and 10 coexist in this time period for 5 years, so 5*(127.79+222.2) which will give an answer of staggering 1749.95 vulnerabilities for 5 years combined. Now the total of these two values will equate to the sum of total vulnerabilities of Windows 7 and Windows 10, which is 2388.9 vulnerabilities for 10 years combined. This means its value is 238.89 vulnerabilities a year!. This is far greater than what Debian has.
Why is Windows Vulnerabilities more serious than Linux ones
Windows is as you all know, a closed source. It has been around for a while and is still able to support 16-bit windows applications on a modern Windows 10 operating system, this means it’s having all legacy support built-in. When a vulnerability is found in Windows 10, it may work for all the windows versions ever released, this makes a lot of users at risk unless Microsoft puts up an official patch, people and companies have to pray to God not to become a target to a botnet. One thing you might have caught in the above sentence is that Windows vulnerabilities are normally discovered by bad actors first, then Microsoft after some time comes with a patch. Linux doesn’t work like that, there are a lot of eyes on the code all the time. Most of the vulnerabilities and bug reports are filed with a possible fix to the source code as the source code is freely available for everyone to download and inspect. This means Linux vulnerabilities are short-lived and are normally found by the security researchers who do good for the community. This means a patch is fast and people with malicious indent has a very small window of opportunity to exploit.
Android is not Linux ( in a security level )
Android has a peculiar way of updating. It updates mainly contain the whole system or a patch to already existing binary files called incremental updates. Even if android has a Linux kernel, the update system is so broken that, each manufacturer has to push updates for each phone separately, this is mainly due to the fact that android HAL and vendor code are proprietary and need to be used while building. So I won’t count Android vulnerabilities in this. Android even if it uses Selinux, is more vulnerable because so many people use very obsolete software due to no updates to the system are available. Even for custom ROMs, updates and bug fixes to the kernel and OS is slow.
Cooperates are using Linux
Enterprises use a different flavor of Linux called enterprise Linux. Some examples of these OS are, RHEL, CentOS, SUSE, etc. These operating systems use SELINUX or some other sort of kernel hardening and live patching which will help kernel to update and patch without rebooting the system. These features are still unavailable in Linux. Enterprise Linux has less than 1000 vulnerabilities overall over 20 years of existence. SUSE is the oldest Linux distribution. Most of the servers in the world run Linux as the host OS. All people choose to work with Linux because Linux has so many similarities with UNIX, UNIX was manageable with a terminal like Linux. Server administrators do not have time to use windows and fiddle with GUI. Cooperates using Linux as their server OS proves that they trust it. And they trust it more than they trust Windows.
Conclusion
In general security of the computer a person is using more depends on what is running on it. Even if Windows is vulnerable than Linux, 3rd party software like Adobe Reader, Microsoft Office suite are more vulnerable to get exploited. If you are a person who is privacy concerned and need to secure your computer then use a hardened Linux distribution like CentOS or Fedora. At last, hackers are not going to hack you unless you are a great target, and investing in a great firewall and thinking twice or thrice before running a binary downloaded from the Internet should keep you safe enough from attacks. So if you are using Windows keep it updated, even Linux users need to update frequently, Stop downloading and installing pirated software as it may contain malware or a keylogger.
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