Do You Really Need a Dedicated IP for Your WordPress Website in the Philippines?

A dedicated IP address is showing up in your hosting checkout, a few hundred pesos extra per month.

You are not sure if you need it. You do not want to skip something important.

Most Filipino website owners do not need a dedicated IP. Full stop.

But there is one real use case. And there is a smarter upgrade worth knowing about. This guide covers both.

Quick Answer: Do You Need One?

Your situation	Do you need a dedicated IP?
Blog, portfolio, or small business site	No
WordPress on quality shared hosting	No
You need SSL for your site	No. Free SSL works fine on shared IPs.
You want better Google rankings	No. Google confirmed this is a myth.
Sending thousands of marketing emails daily from your own server	Yes. This is the one real use case.
Legacy app or payment gateway needing a static IP	Yes. But this situation is increasingly rare.

What Is a Dedicated IP?

Every website has an IP address. It looks like 198.51.100.1.

Your domain name, yoursite.ph, is the friendly label on top. The IP is the actual server location underneath.

On shared hosting, your site shares one IP with hundreds of other websites on the same server.

A dedicated IP is yours alone, one address, one account.

It costs extra because your host has a limited pool of IP addresses to allocate.

For example, two businesses both host on Truehost shared hosting. Both their sites point to the same IP address, say 103.20.50.10. With a dedicated IP, one business gets its own unique address, say 103.20.50.45, that belongs to them alone.

The Three Myths Keeping This Upsell Alive

Myth 1: You need a dedicated IP for SSL

This was true fifteen years ago. Not anymore.

A technology called SNI (Server Name Indication) solved this problem completely. SNI lets a server host multiple SSL certificates on one shared IP address.

Every modern browser and server supports it today. Free SSL through Let’s Encrypt works perfectly on a shared IP.

If a host tells you that you need a dedicated IP for SSL in 2025, their infrastructure is outdated.

Myth 2: A dedicated IP improves your Google rankings.

Google has said this clearly and repeatedly for over a decade.

Google ranks websites and not IP addresses. Who else shares your IP does not affect your SEO.

Buying a dedicated IP for SEO wastes money. Spend it on faster hosting or better content instead.

Myth 3: A dedicated IP protects you from bad neighbours

The flawed neighbour argument goes like this: if another site on your shared IP gets blocked for spam, your site suffers too.

On old, poorly managed shared hosting, this was a genuine concern.

Quality modern hosts isolate accounts in separate containers. They quarantine problems before they spread.

The host manages that risk at the infrastructure level. You do not need a dedicated IP to stay protected.

A bad neighbour problem means you chose the wrong host. A dedicated IP on a poorly managed server does not fix that.

Why You should Really to Get a Dedicated IP

High-volume email sent directly from your own server.

When your site sends an email, it originates from your server’s IP address. Anti-spam systems track which IPs send email and build a reputation score over time.

On a shared IP, your sending reputation connects to everyone else on that server.

One bad actor on your shared IP gets flagged for spam. Your legitimate emails follow them into the junk folder.

With a dedicated IP, your reputation is yours alone.

Who this applies to:

• Digital marketing agencies running bulk newsletter campaigns for clients
• E-Commerce stores sending thousands of order emails daily
• Businesses with high transactional email volume from their own server

Who it does NOT apply to:

• A blog sending a handful of contact form notifications per week
• A small business website with occasional enquiry emails
• Anyone using an external email service like Mailchimp, SendGrid, or Mailgun

A more alternative could be using dedicated transactional email services like Mailchimp, SendGrid, or Mailgun to manage pre-warmed IP pools professionally. 

They handle the technical reputation work for you. Most senders get better deliverability from these than from managing their own IP.

The Warm-Up Problem Nobody talks about

A brand new dedicated IP has zero reputation.

Gmail and Outlook are suspicious of new IPs sending email immediately.

If you buy a dedicated IP and send 5,000 emails on day one, you will be flagged as a spammer. You have to warm up the IP first.

What warming up looks like:

• Week 1: Send only 50–100 emails to your most engaged contacts
• Increase volume slowly over several weeks
• Monitor bounce rates and spam complaints closely
• One bad week can destroy months of reputation-building

This is a real technical commitment.

But for most Filipino businesses, a dedicated transactional email service is the more straightforward, more reliable path.

When VPS Is the Better Conversation

Are you asking about dedicated IPs because your site has outgrown shared hosting?

Slow load times. Hitting resource limits. Occasional downtime.

Then the real upgrade is not a dedicated IP add-on. It is a VPS.

A VPS  gives your site its own guaranteed resources like a dedicated CPU, RAM, and storage.

Your site performance does not change based on what other sites on the machine are doing.

A VPS comes with a dedicated IP address included by default. You get the IP benefit without paying for it separately on top of shared hosting.

Truehost Philippines Cloud VPS 3:

• ₱1,300/month billed triennially
• 4 vCPU cores, 8GB RAM, 200GB SSD storage
• 25TB bandwidth
• Dedicated IP included
• Full root access
• Managed VPS available if you don’t want to handle server administration yourself

Right for: Growing Filipino businesses, digital marketing agencies managing multiple client sites, and WooCommerce stores with consistent traffic needing reliable performance.

How to Decide What You Actually Need

Your situation	What to do
Site loads fast, no issues	Stay on shared hosting. Nothing to fix.
Site is slow or hitting resource limits	Upgrade to VPS. The dedicated IP comes with it.
You want SSL	Free SSL on your shared hosting
Sending bulk marketing emails at scale	Consider dedicated IP or use SendGrid/Mailgun instead.
Checkout offering dedicated IP as add-on	Skip it unless your situation matches the email use case above.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a dedicated IP make my site load faster?

No. Page speed depends on your server resources, hosting quality, caching setup, and how your site is built.

 A dedicated IP does not affect any of those. If your site is slow, upgrade your hosting plan or move to a VPS instead.

Will Google penalise me for sharing an IP with a spammy site?

No. Google evaluates each website individually on its own content, links, and technical quality. Shared IPs do not affect your search rankings. 

Google has confirmed this multiple times. You do not need a dedicated IP for SEO purposes.

What is the difference between a dedicated IP and a VPS?

A VPS is a complete hosting environment with dedicated CPU, RAM, storage, and a dedicated IP address, all included. 

A dedicated IP add-on only gives you the IP address. Everything else about your hosting stays shared.

If your site needs more resources, a VPS is the right upgrade, not a standalone IP add-on.

Can I take my dedicated IP when I switch hosts?

No. The IP address belongs to your hosting provider’s network, not to your account. When you move to a different host, you receive a new IP address. 

Any email sending reputation you built on the old IP starts over from zero at the new one.

This is one more reason why dedicated transactional email services like Mailchimp or SendGrid are a more portable solution for email deliverability.

Is a dedicated IP included with Truehost Philippines VPS plans?

Yes. All Truehost Philippines VPS plans include a dedicated IP address as standard. You do not need to purchase it separately or pay an add-on fee. See current plans here.

My host says I need a dedicated IP for SSL. Is that true?

No. SNI technology has made this requirement obsolete. SNI allows multiple SSL certificates to run on a single shared IP address, and every modern browser and server supports it. 

Free SSL through Let’s Encrypt works on shared IPs without any issue. If a provider tells you otherwise in 2025, their server setup is outdated.

The Bottom Line

A dedicated IP is one of the most common hosting upsells in the Philippines. Most buyers do not need it.

SSL works without it. Google rankings are not affected by it. Bad neighbour risks belong to the host to manage, not you.

The one situation where a dedicated IP genuinely matters is high-volume email sending directly from your own server.

Even then, a dedicated transactional email service often delivers better results with less technical overhead.

If your site is outgrowing shared hosting, the proper conversation is a VPS upgrade.

You get dedicated resources, better performance, and a dedicated IP as a standard part of the package.
Skip the add-on. Get the right hosting level for where your site actually is today.