Learn what WordPress Managed Hosting is and how it can help keep your website in the best shape so that you can do business smoothly and get more ROI on this beginners guide.
Whether you need a business website, a blog, an eCommerce store, or an online portfolio, the easiest way to create them all is by using WordPress. WordPress is a widely used CMS platform for creating any type of website. It is free, easy to use, and doesn’t require programming.
Anyone with little or no technical knowledge can easily set up a WordPress website. But where do they get stuck in what hosting solution to choose?
Mostly, WordPress users looking for a type of hosting that is reliable, low cost, easy to use for WordPress CMS, and has maximum uptime.
One hosting solution that offers all this is WordPress-managed hosting.
In 2018, managed WordPress hosting providers improved their services by a significant margin and due to these updates, the hosting services are now providing benefits that weren’t previously mentioned in great detail.
So, in this guide, we will focus on these new features and look at WordPress-managed hosting from a new perspective. Let’s get started!
What is WordPress Managed Hosting?
After WordPress became a central CMS platform in the last decade, hosting companies observed that most of their users were using WordPress to host websites. But there were a few problems that these users faced during the management of their websites, including slow page speed, unguaranteed uptime, lack of SSL certificates, and numerous others that made it difficult for them to manage their websites.
So, top hosting providers such as a host started thinking of novel ways that would allow them to keep the customers while providing them a better solution to manage their businesses. So, they came up with a managed WordPress hosting solution.
With this solution, they could cater to the WordPress-based website in a much better way while solving the problems they were facing with the previous hosts. These problems include high downtime, slow page speed, and lack of support, to name a few.
Types of Hosting
There are four basic types of website hosting solutions that a website uses. All of these have benefits and drawbacks. Read more details below to understand if they suit your hosting requirements.
1. Shared Hosting
The first one is shared hosting. It consists of a single server on which multiple websites are hosted. That server’s resources, such as bandwidth, storage, and RAM, are shared with other server websites. The major drawback of shared hosting is that when one website gets a lot of traffic (for any reason), the whole server can be down.
2. Dedicated Hosting
The second one is dedicated hosting. It consists of a dedicated server that is assigned to you. Whether you want to host just a website, the network infrastructure of your company, or multiple apps, you have the liberty to do so. You buy the server resources, including storage space, bandwidth, and RAM, and the pricing is based on that.
It is unsuitable for non-technical users because it requires a system admin to manage it. Also, it is a costly hosting solution for anyone with few requirements. Let’s suppose you only have an e-commerce website. So, getting a dedicated hosting server for it will be a waste of resources. Also, a true hosting solution takes time to scale. So, a reliable hosting solution won’t be viable for websites that need to be mounted abruptly due to their requirements.
3. VPS Hosting
Then, we have a VPS server. It is a mixture of shared and dedicated hosting. One server is further partitioned into multiple virtual hosting servers of this type. You decide how much storage space, bandwidth, and RAM you require on that virtual hosting server, which is allotted to you by the hosting company.
VPS works the same way as a dedicated server, and you won’t see any difference between the two. But some of the VPS servers offer auto-scaling, making it a better alternative for users looking for something between a shared hosting and a dedicated hosting solution.
The only problem is a VPS server is usually built on a single server. If the server goes down, your VPS server and many others hosted on it will also become inaccessible.
4. Cloud Hosting
To fix the problems faced by all the other traditional hosting solutions, web hosting companies came up with the idea of cloud hosting. A cloud hosting solution differs from other hosting solutions because the data it hosts are spread over multiple locations. Most cloud hosts have data centers in different parts of the world.
Cloud hosts spread the data of the user on multiple servers through virtualization. The cloud servers work the same way as a virtual private server with additional perks. They also have the lowest downtime in all the hosting types explained above. This is because most of the data is available on virtual servers. Even if one server is down, the site data can be retrieved from another source over the cloud.
A WordPress hosting service is available with two options: Managed and Unmanaged WordPress hosting services. Primarily, these hosting solutions are based on VPS or Cloud servers and come with additional support, such as the installation of WordPress CMS, plugin installation, and CDN support.
Managed vs. Unmanaged WordPress Hosting
Here’s the difference between managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting solutions, including benefits and drawbacks.
Managed WordPress Hosting
A managed hosting service provides many benefits to the users. For starters, it comes with a WordPress shell installed on the server. But some hosting companies offer plugins (optional service) to speed up the website and optimize them for SEO. Some managed WordPress hosting services also offer SSL certificates and CDN. The users of managed WordPress hosting services can also ask for a dedicated website manager through extended support for a couple of extra dollars.
Advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting
Here is a list of advantages you can get with Managed WordPress Hosting.
Extended Support
A managed WordPress hosting service is for people who can’t or don’t know how to install a WordPress website. They can ask for extended support. In comprehensive support, they get a dedicated engineer to solve their problems, such as installing plugins, setting up the website from scratch, and other tasks.
Security
Most WordPress websites are vulnerable to hackers because their owners don’t know how to secure the websites. With a managed hosting service, they can ask the hosting company to install relevant security software that can keep the hackers at bay.
SSL Certificate and CDN
Now Google has made the SSL certificate an essential part of the ranking algorithm. Those websites that aren’t using an SSL certificate at this time will probably see a drop in their rankings in the near future if they don’t install SSL on their websites.
Similarly, they get free CDN with some WordPress-managed hosting services like hosting.
Provides Peace of Mind using Managed WordPress Hosting
What do you do when your ecommerce site isn’t available on your shared hosting plan?
This nightmare often happens on the busiest shopping day of the year. If your website goes down, you lose money.
However, once you manage your WordPress hosting, you don’t have to worry about downtime. Their team of experts ensures that your WordPress site is virtually trouble-free. This assurance and peace of mind is definitely worth the money.
Unmanaged WordPress Hosting Guide
Unmanaged WordPress hosting only provides a basic hosting service with an installed operating system. Users must install the CMS of their choice to build their website. It is suitable for people skilled in handling their servers and WordPress websites.
Advantages of Unmanaged WordPress Hosting
Here is a list of advantages of using Unmanaged WordPress Hosting for your website.
Lower Costs
If you are tech-savvy and know how to install and set up a server, unmanaged hosting will be an ideal choice. It will lower your costs and provide an affordable solution to get your business up and running faster.
More Freedom
With a barebone server, you can install almost anything on your WordPress website. Whether you want plugins, themes, or nothing, It is possible with an unmanaged hosting solution.
You can roll back to a previous version of WordPress if you want with an unmanaged hosting service.
How Managed Hosting for WordPress Helps?
WordPress Managed Hosting offers a plethora of options to online WordPress website owners. These include:
Impressive Performance
When you host a website on a server specially built for that specific task, then the speed of the website will automatically increase. That’s why WordPress websites on managed hostings have the highest performance ratio.
While searching for a WordPress-managed hosting solution, ensure that the host provides you with the latest technologies that scale performance, such as PHP 7, HTTP 2 support, NGINX, and others.
Consistent Support for Beginners in WordPress Hosting
Another reason to choose a WordPress managed hosting service is because of the superior support the managed hosting services offer. One instance is of hosting. They offer WordPress-managed hosting with an extended license. This allows their users to get all their WordPress-related issues resolved by the technical cloud engineers in minimum time.
Maximum Uptime
Every website claims that it offers 100 percent uptime, but in reality, most are either using VPS or Cloud host. Both these types of hosting services provide the maximum uptime for websites. You can investigate the claims further by asking for reviews of the service you choose on social media or asking one of their previous clients.
Consistent Backups
Disaster can happen anywhere. If you want to keep your data safe, look for managed hosting services that offer users an automatic data backup facility. The solutions team performs the backups and help you stay focused on what you do best while they keep your data safely backed up.
Frequent Updates
The WordPress-managed hosting service should automatically update your WordPress software so that you don’t face any hurdles. The updates are easy to install, but in rare cases, they display a white screen of death. The dedicated WordPress hosting managers keep that from happening on your website while providing 100 percent uptime.
One-Click Features For Beginners in WordPress Hosting
Ensure the hosting server offers one-click installation of numerous other features such as CDN, SSL certificates, and easy Git integration. These help you optimize your website for a faster and more sustainable performance.
Real-Time Monitoring
Most WordPress users want to see an analysis of their website in a simple form. WordPress-managed hosting service offers that and guide that. It provides an integrated monitoring tab in the console that keeps track of the server performance and scales it if needed.
Who Can Benefit from WordPress Managed Hosting?
I wouldn’t recommend the WordPress-managed hosting service to everyone. But here are some types of users who can benefit from its features.
Bloggers
Bloggers need to keep their WordPress blogs up-to-date at all times. They can’t keep their sites updated while focusing on blogging and marketing, all at the same time. Therefore, a managed hosting solution would fit their needs best. This is great for beginners in WordPress hosting.
Dropshippers
Dropshippers need to set up an eCommerce store where they can sell products. They need dropshipping plugins to achieve that. Handling all this is a complex process and requires significant time and effort. While doing this, they can’t focus on updating the WordPress websites and boosting site speed. That’s why they can also benefit from WordPress Managed hosting solution
eCommerce Stores
Like drop shippers, eCommerce store owners have to handle products, logistics, marketing, and much more. They will need a dedicated person just to take their WooCommerce back-end. Extended support of WordPress-managed hosting will easily complement them. As a result, for beginners in WordPress and hosting this will be a great guide.
Affiliate Marketers
Affiliate marketers are trying to promote the products of others on their blogs. They need to come up with creative ideas to achieve that. Moreover, constantly building content strategies, optimizing pages, and monitoring analytics. They can’t simply update plugins and WordPress core. So, they are also ideal users of WordPress Managed hosting solutions.
Small Businesses
Non-tech small businesses also need to have an online presence. This way, their customers can quickly contact them using their websites. Even if they are not actively online, they still need to have a website where they can keep their contact information. As they will not be actively monitoring their website, they can’t update it when a new version rolls out. That’s why managed WordPress hosting solutions will complement their needs and guide the beginners.
Which WordPress Hosting Solution is Best for You?
As you have read, multiple hosting solutions are available, such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated hosting, and cloud hosting. If you are already familiar with how the servers work and would like to set up your own server, then buy an unmanaged hosting solution like the ones we discussed above.
But if you aren’t familiar and would like to take your website to the next level without worrying about WordPress issues, then a managed hosting solution from hosts will be ideal.
Have something to add to this guide? Comment it below and add your thoughts to our piece.
Sajjad Shahid, Ecommerce Community Manager
Author Bio: Sajjad is an Ecommerce Community Manager. He loves helping Ecommerce store owners, merchants, and marketers establish their businesses and startups. Finally, we hope this beginners guide for managed WordPress hosting helps you.