Managed WordPress Hosting – What Is It? Why Should You Consider It?

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is very important. Running and managing a WordPress site efficiently, without technical hiccups is a feat that requires conscious efforts, and you making the right decisions.

And one of the critical decisions you will have to make is choosing the right hosting plan as well as hosting providers for your site.

Why is this important? Simple; the wrong hosting solution or provider will adversely affect the availability of your site. You may find yourself struggling often to restore your downed website back online or fix other issues that arise with your site.

If you are a business owner, you sure would want your website to be online all the time. Frequent outages might cost you valuable customers.

In light of this, we have drafted a list of managed WordPress hosting providers, all guaranteed to give you the best online experience.

Never heard of managed WordPress hosting before? Simply put, it’s a hosting solution meant exclusively for WordPress websites. You get to enjoy 24/7 support from WordPress experts whose job is to see that site works at optimum performance. More on this later.

But managed WordPress hosting isn’t for everyone. It has its pros as well as its cons that are worth considering. When compared to other hosting solutions like shared hosting, the cost can quickly stack up against you.

In this article, we will discuss what this type of WordPress hosting is all about. Also, we will talk about its pros and cons. In the end, we will arm you with the right information to make a decision.

In this article:

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

With over 35% of the websites online running on WordPress, it made sense to have dedicated hosting service created exclusively for WordPress. Hence WordPress Managed Hosting came about.

One of the biggest selling points of Managed WordPress Hosting is the support it provides. What’s more, it takes off the troubles of handling the technical side of WordPress, thus affording you the time to focus on growing your business.

Issues like WordPress security, site migration, speed optimization, SEO, WordPress backup etc. are handled for you right off the bat.

Of course, this will come at a cost, but when you tally up the benefits you will discover it’s often worth it.

Like we said earlier, managed WordPress hosting isn’t meant for everyone. So, it might not be for you. But how would you know?

Here are some of the pros and cons of using the service. We start with the pros.
 

Benefits of Managed WordPress Hosting

Here are the reasons why WordPress managed hosting is worth giving a try.

High Loading Speed

If you have tried all you could to make your WordPress site load faster, but with little results, it’s about time you did something differently.

Moving your website to managed WordPress hosting is a sure way of reducing its load time. Most webmasters who have done so reported experiencing blazing speed on their website.

Now, you might be wondering the reason why loading speed can be increased by merely changing a hosting solution.

The reason is simple: managed WordPress hosting providers automatically handle caching for you on the server-side. Thus, caching problems that limit the load speed of websites are eliminated automatically.

Also, their servers are optimized for WordPress sites.

Automatics Backups

What would you do if you woke up one day to discover your website has crashed? Certainly, it will be devastating – an experience nobody ever wishes to encounter.

No matter how careful and diligent you are, there’s that risk. A poorly coded plugin you installed can crash your site, a determined hacker can take your site down. These are just a few instances of things that can go wrong.

The only way to prevent data loss when such occurs is to create backups for your site regularly. Managed WordPress hosting providers will come to your help when this happens.

They offer daily backups for websites at no extra cost. You might get WordPress backup service from shared hosting providers, but in many cases, it comes at a higher cost.

Creating backups yourself will work, but you need to have the skills, the time, and the discipline.

So, Managed WordPress hosting is best for you if you are more interested in growing your business than worrying about backups.

Here at Fixrunner, we offer WordPress backup service at pocket-friendly rates.

WordPress Backup in managed WordPress hosting

Improved Security

In the previous section, we talked about the possibility of a hacker gaining access to your website and maliciously taking it down.

The truth is, hackers are always on the prowl looking for websites with weak security to take advantage of. And they won’t spare yours if you haven’t taken measures to keep them off.

The risk of an attack is much higher if you run an e-commerce website. This time around, their motive won’t be to take down your site but to steal sensitive financial information of your customers.

To prevent a malicious compromise of your site, security must be top on your priority.

With managed WordPress hosting, WordPress security is taken care of for you. You don’t have to worry about finding the right security plugin. The experts themselves know will give you the best security solution.

Additionally, an SSL certificate is automatically installed on your domain, further improving your site’s security.

Higher Uptime

What do you think would happen if there is a sudden surge in traffic to your website? It will go down if your server doesn’t have enough bandwidth to handle the surge.

But with managed WordPress hosting, it’s an entirely different case. No matter how sudden or intense traffic to your site might spike, there is room to accommodate the increase. As such, you are guaranteed of higher uptime.

Even more, most providers use cloud hosting solution, instead of conventional server solutions. That way, you are saved of slow loading problems others on shared WordPress hosting experience.

Expert Support

While it’s true that WordPress is easy and beginner-friendly, technical issues do arise.

If what you have is a WordPress blog with a little audience, then with a little bit of research you might be able to solve your issues.

However, if you run a business site with large traffic, you will need expert help. In fact, you will need a team of WordPress experts to keep your site running without a hitch. It’s a full-time job!

Rather than having a team of support developers on your payroll, wouldn’t you rather outsource this task for a lesser cost?

Managed WordPress hosting providers have the knowledge, experience, and expertise to guide you in making the right decisions.

And the best part, problems that can be handled without you getting involved will be taking care of for you.

Seamless Staging Environment

Let’s say you found a bunch of premium themes that look great. But you would first like to test it out to know which would be the best fit.

Ordinarily, all you needed to do was to install and test run the themes on your site. But that’s impractical.

First, it will give your site a strange look, thus confusing your visitors. Second, some plugins might stop working, and in the process hamper the functionality of your site.

For this reason – and many more – it is always best to test new updates and designs in a staging environment.

Thankfully, you are provided with a one-click staging environment when you use managed WordPress hosting. By one-click, we mean you can seamlessly set up a staging environment just at the click of a button.

Automatic Updates

One of the things you can do to make your WordPress website perform a lot better is installing the latest version of PHP, MySQL, and other infrastructure.

While you can do this manually, it’s always best if you have a system in place that does it automatically.

Here again is where managed WordPress hosting shines. Updates are automatically handled for you without you noticing it. This also includes security solutions – they update it for you as soon as they release a newer version.

That way, your website is kept safe, fast, and online.

Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting, as we earlier said, isn’t for everyone.

Here are some of the cons that might make it unattractive for you.

Cost Prohibitive

Managed WordPress hosting isn’t for you unless you have the cash to spare. Expect to spend up to $30 every month on a Managed WordPress hosting plan. It can go beyond that depending on what you need and can be as expensive as $1500/month.

This makes an option for revenue-generating businesses, not for a new blogger looking to start with WordPress.

Limited Flexibility

If you found a caching plugin you are sure will further improve the performance of your website, you might not be able to install it.

Or maybe you found a plugin that will give your contact form a better look and functionality. You may still end up not being able to install the plugin.

The reason is that on managed WordPress hosting, you are barred from installing certain plugins. So if the plugin you intend to install has been red-flagged, you won’t be permitted to install it.

Limited Control

The idea behind managed WordPress hosting, after all, it to have all technical aspects of WordPress handled for you. That’s why they charge you so much.

However, this hosting feature can become an annoyance. Your site can be given a new feature that you are unfamiliar with. Or worse, a feature you are well used to has been replaced.

And there’s very little you can do about it.

Exclusive to WordPress

If you are looking to use another technology other than WordPress for your website, managed WordPress hosting isn’t for you, obviously.

You just have to look for other hosting solutions. We highlighted some other hosting solutions in the last section below.

Top Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

If you have decided to go with it, here is a compilation of managed WordPress hosting providers you might want to consider.

FixRunner WordPress Hosting

FixRunner WordPress hosting

With nightly backups, free SSL, and a CDN, FixRunner hosting offers a solution that is fast and secure.

On all plans, you get multisite support, a staging site, and a highly optimized staging environment for WordPress.

Being a WordPress support company, FixRunner offers 24/7 support on all plans. Which means you will get the high quality support that the company has built a name with.

FixRunner hosting currently offers 3 plans – Basic, Pro, and Custom. And they cost $35/month, $75/month, and ‘custom quote’ respectively.

Note: If you subscribe to our Rocket or Advance site care plans, you already have access to premium WordPress hosting.

WP Engine

WP Engine Managed Hosting

Peace of mind, 99.99% uptime, reliability, and speed – if these are what you are looking for in a provider, WP Engine is it for you.

With over 120,000 website owners already using it, you can rest assured you are in the right company.

One other cool feature of WP Engine is its ease of scaling. You can easily grow your business from a single site to as many as you would like to have.

The basic plans have a price tag of $29 every month.

Flywheel Managed WordPress Hosting

Flywheel Managed WP

Let’s say you have your website hosted somewhere else, and would like to move it to a managed WP hosting solution. How do you go about that?

Thankfully, Flywheel – alongside many other providers – will help you do that without an extra charge. And to start, all of it would cost you is $23 on a monthly basis.

On the starter plan, you get to enjoy 24/7 support, topnotch security, one-click staging, and so much more.

Whenever you are ready to upgrade, you can move up to their Freelancer and Agency plans, starting at $115 and $290 respectively.

Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting

Kinsta managed WordPress hosting
If you are looking for a solution that is beginner-friendly, yet powerful, Kinsta is the way to go. It comes with an intuitive dashboard board where you can monitor the performance of all your registered websites. What’s more, you get to enjoy free SSL certificate plus a 10GB storage space.

The basic plan starts at $30, and there is a money-back guarantee on it.

Inmotion Hosting

For as little as $7 per month, you can get started with Inmotion WordPress hosting solution. Of course, this plan limits your options. But you will at least get to enjoy 40GB SSD storage, limitless email account, one-click staging environment and lots more.

Inmotion managed WordPress hosting

And if you feel what the basic plan has to offer won’t meet the needs of your business, you can always upgrade.

SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting

If you are just starting out, and wish to hop on managed WordPress hosting, SiteGround is the place to start. Not only is it pocket-friendly, but it’s also full of freebies.

For example, it comes with a free SSL certificate, daily backups, free email, and allows you to install WordPress for free.

And all these cool packages for just $4 per month. The major limitation of this plan is that it restricts you to just one website. And your website receives nothing more than 10,000 visits per month.

 

Siteground managed WordPress hosting

Of course, there is always room for upgrade.

Liquid Web

Liquid Web offers a suite of hosting solutions that can fit just about every need. You will find shared hosting, managed VPS hosting, or managed WordPress hosting here.

The basic WordPress plan starts at $29 per month and comes loaded with lots of free features. Free round the clock support, free staging to run tests before deploying your tested sites, etc.

Additionally, there is free automatic updates plus free tools you will need as a developer to deploy your sites, or that of your clients’.

Liquid Web Managed WP

BlueHost

BlueHost has been at the forefront of providing innovative hosting solutions for businesses and individuals alike.

Their managed WordPress hosting solution is rated as the best in the industry.

For just $19.95 per month, you can start on their starter plan. On the starter plan, you can have as many domain names as you please. Plus, there is no limit to the number of monthly visits your website receives.

Bluehost Managed WP

Like other hosting providers, you are free to upgrade your plan whenever you wish.
 

Other Hosting Solutions You Might Want to Consider

Maybe after going through the cons of this type of hosting solution, you realized it wasn’t meant for you in the first place. If that’s the case – or for whatever other reason – here are a few alternatives.

Shared Hosting

As the name implies, shared hosting is designed in such a way that webmasters are made to share a web server. That is to say, your website along with many others are stored on one server.

The reduced cost to this type of hosting solution is its upside. That’s because you are sharing a server with others, the cost of running and maintaining the server is spread evenly.

At the end of the day, you might end up paying as little as $3 per month.

Shared hosting is ideal for those starting out in the web, or businesses with small-sized traffic.

Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated Server hosting is best if you are looking to rent out an entire server without needing to share it with anyone.

This hosting solution, though more expensive, is best for big businesses and websites with a large influx of traffic. Or perhaps you are looking to configure your web server just the way you want it without minding the added cost. Dedicated Server hosting is the one for you.

Most WordPress hosting companies offer dedicated hosting alongside shared hosting. Of course, that’s not to say you are only limited to WordPress.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

What if you wanted to enjoy the benefits of dedicated hosting, but your pockets aren’t deep enough to foot the bill?

VPS hosting is the answer.

It’s a hosting solution that combines the robustness of dedicated hosting with the cost-effectiveness of shared hosting.

That is to say, your website is stored on a dedicated server that you virtually share with others.

Conclusion on Managed WordPress Hosting

We have discussed in great length what this type of WordPress hosting is about. We pointed out some of its numerous benefits as well as its cons.

If after reading its cons you feel like it isn’t for you, there are other hosting solutions you might want to try. You can check recently published details of testing for ‘The 12 Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers‘ by Matthew Woodward.

This article includes a list of top managed WordPress hosting providers, so feel free to check them out.

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