Best Managed WordPress Hosting Compared (2020)
Hosting as a type of online service that has been developing along with the World Wide Web. It is used for locating websites of customers in the data centers of providers.
The virtualization technology that came later attracted the attention of hosting providers because it proved to be the way to maximize the use of available physical resources. With virtualization there came VPS and cloud servers that have the great scalability capacity. Plans that you purchase defines what type of server your site will be located on. The editing and management of content is realized via CMSs.
You probably know that WP is one of the easiest for understanding and use control management systems for hosting. Apart from that, wordpress.com, the blogging platform, enables modern users to create a blog or a simple website without knowledge of programming and without great time expenses.
5 Best Managed WordPress Hosting
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So, what then is WordPress managed hosting? Why is it singled out in a separate category?
This type of hosting is specifically devised for those, who 1- have or plan to build a WP site and 2- don’t have the needed technical skills/ experience. By purchasing such a plan, you place the major management burden onto your provider while concentrating on more important tasks yourself.
Right now, we are inviting you to take a peek at WordPress managed hosting comparison made by eWeb that will help you pick the right provider for your project.
What is managed WP hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is a reasonable mixture of tools for WordPress websites management. This type of hosting is designed to make websites faster and safer, while offering each user an all-inclusive services that he or she needs.
It is called “managed” because hosting providers take care of the basic administrative tasks that laymen may not know how to deal with. These include WordPress installation, daily backups, WordPress core updates, and server caching.
It is also about the level of your web skills. While you don’t need profound knowledge to create sites of almost any type, some management tasks require preparation. If you do have some, you can manage the site by yourself. If not, find out what are some major features and capabilities of managed hosting:
- Caching for superb performance
- Automatic updates of WordPress
- Increased security, provided by limiting access to files
- Setup of the latest WordPress version to the root directory
- Access to sFTP and phpMyAdmin
- Automatic backups
- SSL certificates to all websites for increased security.
There, however, exist some limitations:
- Not all Managed WordPress plans support multisite mode, i.e. you cannot manage more than one site using one plan.
- Some tools that provide access to root file and management possibilities are not available.
Pros and Cons of Managed Hosting for WordPress
We’ve already established that managed plans (in comparison with ordinary ones) are much more user-friendly, i.e. permit to get by hosting stuff using the skillful support of your provider. By paying more you, naturally, get more. Here are the advantages of managed wp hosting:
- Speed. Would you want your site to load in a blink of an eye? It has been discovered by countless studies that users hate waiting. Is your site loading for more than 5 seconds? In this case, you are more likely to never see that user again. By losing customers due to slow loading speed, you decrease the chances of your business to succeed by sevenfold.
The best WordPress managed hosting providers that we rated for you guarantee the 99.95% uptime of your site throughout the year. The speed, with which your page will be fully loaded can indeed be compared with the speed of light. No potential customer will leave your site without seeing what you offer.
- Security and backups. Talking about fully managed wordpress hosting, you don’t even have to know how and when all that is happening. The intervals between creation of reserve copies differ depending on the provider; we consider daily backups to be a sufficient preventive measure.
Managed wordpress hosting services are top-notch providers of stonewall security. Professionals will make sure that your files and data are out of danger by installing anti-virus software, and controlling the environment for malware and data leakages.
- Updates. Regularly updated software is what is needed for uninterrupted work of a website. WP managed hosting team will do that for you regularly and in a proper way.
As to some of the drawbacks, we’ve identified the following:
- High costs. Those clients who have limited budget may not want or have enough funds to afford it. They simply may not understand why they should pay more. WordPress managed hosting service presupposes a great deal of involvement in the process of hosting management, which is why, naturally, it comes as a more costly one. For example, in comparison with ordinary shared hosting, you will have to pay x2 or x3 times more for managed services.
- Low flexibility. Are you a creative person who tends to change her mind more often than not? Usually, such people decide on the extras they need in the process of website creation. If you like different addons and plugins that expand the features added to your website or blog, WordPress hosting managed is not the best choice. As a rule, you are to make the most of features and tools that are already presupposed by a plan.
- No access to files. You are not given root access with managed plans (especially shared.)
Why would I need managed WordPress hosting?
Reading any managed WordPress hosting review, you will find out that virtually all popular providers offer you more or less the same. Unlimited bandwidth, disk space, emails, etc., etc. However, why do you need managed WP and not just ordinary shared WP hosting? Let’s figure it out.
In order to decide what kind of hosting you need, answer the following questions:
- Who is going to pick and install the security software?
- Who is going to set periodicity and run backups?
- Who will perform the updates?
- Who will be optimizing loading time?
- Who will continually monitor and fix the arising issues?
If the answer is “Not me,” then you most likely need a managed WordPress web hosting 🙂 Being well-equipped with the latter, you can expect the security, updates, and optimization to be done for you. Managed plans would work well for small businesses and inexperienced site owners in the first place.
To choose the best option, you need to understand the requirements of your project. To do this, it is necessary to answer a number of questions.
- What type of website do you plan to create? This can be, as a case in point, a WordPress site for publishing content or a static HTML site.
- What are the technical requirements? After determining the type of site, you need to make a list of technical requirements, including programming languages and database types.
- What level of security is required? Although any site needs at least a basic level of security, some types of sites require enhanced protection. For example, when they have to deal with processing bank card data or storing users ‘ personal data.
- How much data are you going to store and maintain? The capacity of your virtual server is not only a matter of traffic, but also the size/number of files. The larger the files, the more storage capacity and network bandwidth is required. For example, if a site stores high-quality images or videos, it has high requirements.
- What initial traffic is expected? Hosting services are usually segmented by traffic. In fact, most new sites have little traffic. But, if it grows, you need to be sure that the virtual server will cope with it.
- What traffic is expected in the future? Do you expect significant traffic growth in the future? If so, you should plan ahead to increase capacity and bandwidth.
- What is your hosting budget? If it is limited some of the bells and whistles will have to be abandoned. Conversely, you can take advantage of additional tools and features utilizing your financial capabilities.
- Do you need email accounts? You may have email addresses associated with your site’s domain name.
- How many websites are you planning to create?
- What does the hosting provider offer? Most providers have complete list of their offers and indicate what is included in a particular plan. Sometimes a table is given so that you could compare the packages.
Cheap managed WordPress hosting
As previously mentioned, the cheap managed hosting for WordPress is not really cheap. The leader amidst the most affordable providers, BlueHost, offers shared managed plans starting at $20 per month.
Another top managed WordPress hosting, InMotion, outlines the distinction between what you gonna get and what you not gonna get when choosing/not choosing such a plan.
- WP and other features are already preinstalled.
- Ready-for-use plugins, SEO, and ecommerce tools.
- Safe upgrades.
- Ultimate performance.
- Money-back guarantee.
InMotion can be recommended as the cheap managed WordPress hosting that offers plans for less than $10 per month. Apart from that, the price allows to receive wide spectrum of services of high quality for different websites.
How we rate hosting providers
We carefully prepare information and the results of testing before posting our managed WordPress hosting reviews. With the help of various paid and free tools, we check the following aspects of plans by hosting providers:
- Uptime guarantee
- Load time
- Diversity of services
- Quality of support
- Possibility of managed WordPress multisite hosting.
Step 1. We select managed hosting providers and create blank websites to begin the testing.
Step 2. We set the corresponding online tools to measure the indicators including bandwidth, uptime, and page loading time. Making the WordPress managed hosting speed comparison, we basically compare the real results with what was stated by each provider initially.
Step 3. We create our original WordPress managed hosting reviews based on the performance of each hosting provider.
