{"id":86309,"date":"2019-09-10T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T10:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wpmu.org\/?p=86309"},"modified":"2019-09-10T10:00:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T10:00:22","slug":"managed-wordpress-hosting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/managed-wordpress-hosting\/","title":{"rendered":"Managed WordPress Hosting – What Is It, Is It Right For You & Is It Worth The Cost?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you want to give your WordPress site all the love and care it needs? A Managed WordPress Hosting<\/em> environment may be just what you’re looking for!<\/p>\nOct 2020: We tested all the best WordPress hosts! Find out how we compare.<\/span>View Results<\/span><\/a>\n

WordPress is just<\/em> PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript, so technically speaking, any LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack that meets the WordPress minimum requirements<\/a>\u00a0could easily be used to host a WordPress site.<\/p>\n

Just because WordPress core is under 12 megabytes, takes less than 5 minutes to install, and runs on LAMP, however, doesn’t mean that it should be treated as a lightweight platform or that hosting should be a minor consideration. WordPress is used to build “real” websites for “real” businesses that need to run on “real” time.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Screenshot
WordPress … it’s small to download, but it packs a mighty punch!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/div>\n

While extending WordPress capabilities with plugins and themes is the fun part and hosting is the necessary part, hosting can also be fun when you understand the benefits of managed WordPress hosting.<\/p>\n

If you’re wondering what Managed WordPress Hosting is and whether it’s right or not for hosting your WordPress site, we have you covered in this comprehensive post.<\/p>\n

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?<\/h2>\n

As WordPress now powers over one-third of all CMS websites<\/a> and is used to build all kinds of websites for large enterprises and small businesses, a number of web hosting providers decided to focus on servicing the WordPress industry. Managed WordPress hosting services, therefore, came about as a result of WordPress becoming the world’s leading CMS platform.<\/p>\n

While there are different hosting options available for your WordPress site to choose from, Managed WordPress hosting is a specialized service where the hosting company provides the optimal hosting environment to run a WordPress website and employs WordPress experts to look after all the technical aspects of managing a WordPress site, including performing maintenance tasks like updates and backups, security checks, speed optimization, uptime monitoring, and assisting in areas like troubleshooting, site migration, and scalability.<\/p>\n

While a managed WordPress hosting service allows website owners to focus on their business by taking care of and managing their sites, there’s a difference between ‘true’ managed WordPress hosting providers and companies that offer hosting features that mimic the service but don’t offer the same level of WordPress expertise and specialization.<\/p>\n

While Managed WordPress hosting can mean different things to different providers, it definitely means only hosting WordPress sites, handling the server administration, optimizing it for WordPress, and doing it all well.<\/p>\n

Benefits of Managed WordPress Hosting<\/h3>\n

When you choose a Managed WordPress hosting service, you’re putting your trust and your website in the hands and care of WordPress experts who truly understand the platform and have the knowledge, experience and the expertise to not only provide technical support and manage your site in the best way possible, but who can also advise you when the time comes to scale your website as you grow your business.<\/p>\n

If web hosting is finding a good home for your website, then ideally, your Managed WordPress hosting experience should feel like your website is living in a “5-star” hotel, served by a (pardon the French) retinue and entourage of dedicated WordPress experts.<\/p>\n

Key Features of Managed WordPress Hosting<\/h3>\n

In addition to standard hosting features like reliability, uptime guarantees, reasonable plan pricing and upgrade options, there are a number of key features designed specifically for a WordPress environment that distinguish managed WordPress hosting from other types of web hosting.<\/p>\n

These features include the following:<\/p>\n

Premium WordPress Support<\/h4>\n

Everything looks beautiful when it’s all going smoothly. But what happens when something goes wrong?<\/p>\n

With managed WordPress hosting, you want dedicated 24\/7\/365 customer support from highly knowledgeable WordPress experts and specialists who can respond promptly to your requests via live chat, support tickets, or telephone calls, handle all WordPress hosting issues, from migration to security, optimization, scalability, and more, solve problems faster, and give great advice like what type of plugins can impact your site’s performance, etc.<\/p>\n

Automated WordPress Updates & Failsafe Backups<\/h4>\n

WordPress core software, plugins, and themes are constantly being updated (on average, WordPress releases new core updates every three months<\/a>, though security patches and bug fixes can come out frequently). In a managed hosting environment, your site’s core installation software and plugins should automatically update to the latest versions. Look for automated, done-for-you updates that\u00a0won’t let your site stay on an old version of WordPress or use outdated plugins.<\/p>\n

And don’t forget backups. Backing up your site is almost as important as keeping your heart beating.<\/p>\n

Have you ever worked on your site until very late at night with your body fatigued, your mind exhausted and your eyes half closed, and then suddenly jumped up in panic with drool on the side of your mouth when you realized you accidentally wiped out half your site?<\/p>\n

Well, I have! Luckily for me, I host my sites on a managed WordPress hosting environment that provides daily website backups, one-click restores, restore points, and off-site backup options, so thankfully, I was able to get my site back in minutes.<\/p>\n

Moral of the story: Automatic backups means never losing valuable data or losing valuable sleep over it!<\/p>\n

High Performance & WordPress Specific Server Configuration<\/h4>\n

Managed WordPress hosting environments are typically fine-tuned to work with WordPress out of the box.<\/p>\n

A Twitter poll<\/a> by Kinsta taken by over a hundred WordPress users showed that “performance\/uptime” was the overwhelming feature (63%) they value the most in a managed WordPress hosting environment.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Screenshot
When it comes to managed WordPress hosting, performance wins… hands down!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/div>\n

Your managed WordPress hosting environment should be optimally configured for efficiency, speed, scalability, and security. It should be developer-friendly and offer access to features like SSL and HTTPS, SFTP and SSH, Git, WP-CLI, and more.<\/p>\n

With caching and content delivery networks (CDN), look for server-level caching and\/or full page caching (caching is handled by the managed WordPress hosting environment without the need for third-party plugins, so you don’t need to mess around with it), and the option to use a CDN to improve website speed and reduce website loading times wherever visitors are located.<\/p>\n

Additional things to look for to improve your site’s speed and performance when choosing managed WordPress hosting include: delivering as many assets as possible from cache during surges of traffic to reduce the load on the server; the latest and best hosting architecture and technologies (the latest versions of PHP 7, MariaDB, HTTP\/2 and NGINX, which have all been proven to speed up WordPress); high-performance server settings, using NGINX and PHP optimizations, and strategically located data centers and server clusters with autoscaling, load-balancing, and redundancy options.<\/p>\n

Serious WordPress Security<\/h4>\n

Needless to say, keeping your website secure and protected from hackers, malware, and brute-force attacks is of paramount importance.<\/p>\n

Your managed WordPress hosting service provider should take WordPress security very seriously.\u00a0\u00a0In addition to implementing active and passive measures to stop or clean up malicious attacks and providing improved security features like disabled PHP functions to prevent hackers from exploiting sites, black-listed and white-listed plugins, software to detect DDoS attacks, hardware firewalls, continuous malware scanning, strong password enforcement, IP blocking, etc., your managed WordPress hosting service provider should be a complete expert in all WordPress and web security prevention and post-attack matters.<\/p>\n

One-Click Staging & WordPress Site Migrations<\/h4>\n

Let’s say you’ve got a busy site with lots of traffic. You then make a change, add a plugin, or change the PHP version of your site and your site suddenly goes down (oops!)<\/p>\n

Not a good feeling right?<\/p>\n

\n
\"Still
When your WordPress hosting is out of its depth!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/div>\n

(Source: Finding Nemo, Pixar Animation Studios)<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t afford for your website to go down, you should be testing, changing, or updating your site on a development site or staging environment, not your production or live site. With managed WordPress hosting, look for one-click staging environments for each WordPress install that allow you to test, implement, and roll out changes to your website quickly, easily, and safely.<\/p>\n

Another feature to look for with managed WordPress hosting is easy, simple, and quick site migrations, especially when moving websites from one host to another.<\/p>\n

\n
\"WPMUDEV
Look for a host that offers easy site migration features.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/div>\n

Built For Scalability<\/h4>\n

Even if your website isn’t getting a lot of traffic yet, sometimes unpredictable events can happen and your site gets an unusual flood of traffic or a traffic spike (e.g. your site gets picked up by the media, a post goes viral, or your site becomes the target of a brute force attack. These types of situations can test your site’s ability to handle high traffic. If your server can’t handle it, it can fall over and send your site offline (which is not a good thing, especially if you’re paying for advertising and sending traffic to a crashed website).<\/p>\n

Typically, when you outgrow your server resources, the only option is to switch or upgrade to a higher plan. Normally, you only find this out when you have reached your bandwidth of page view limits and problems start to show up.<\/p>\n

With managed WordPress hosting, this is usually handled for you by your providers. You will be notified if you start going over your limits and be given the option to either upgrade easily or have the servers automatically scale your site. This\u00a0 way, your site never gets taken down, you get blazing fast servers even when your website gets a lot of traffic, and you just get charged extra if you go over your bandwidth or page view limits (so feel free to make the news and enjoy tons of publicity!).<\/p>\n

You Are Still In Control<\/h4>\n

Despite the appeal of having everything in a managed WordPress hosting being looked after and done for you, you still want to be in control of your own destiny (or at least your website), so it’s important to have access to hosting features and dev tools like staging area, stencils, and version control, and WordPress-friendly shortcuts in your hosting admin panels, like one-click install, one-click backup restore, and quick access to customer support.<\/p>\n

With a managed WordPress hosting service, however, you may find that you are limited when it comes to having access to settings normally available through other types of hosting, like cPanel, editing your .htaccess file, setting up Cron jobs, denying IP addresses, etc., and not being able to install certain WordPress plugins for technical or security reasons. If you’re not a technical expert, this should not be a big deal, as it lets you focus on your business while leaving experts in charge of looking after the more technical areas of server management.<\/p>\n

\"Post <\/div>\n

Pros Vs Cons Of Managed WordPress Hosting<\/h3>\n

As we’ve just seen, a managed WordPress hosting service can provide great benefits and many unique features to WordPress website owners.<\/p>\n

Some of the main pros of choosing managed WordPress hosting include:<\/p>\n

WordPress Focus<\/h4>\n

Managed WordPress hosting companies only serve WordPress website clients, so you don\u2019t have to worry about a mix of platforms sharing space on your server. And, because they\u2019re WordPress-focused, support is provided by experts who not only understand the CMS inside and out, but also areas like WordPress management, security, optimization, scalability, and development tools.<\/p>\n

Improved Backend Setup<\/h4>\n

Managed hosting companies have a good idea of what you need to do your job better and more easily. This includes things like setting up your control panel the way you need it, optimizing your database, and giving you SSH access for improved control on the backend.<\/p>\n

Outsourced Management<\/h4>\n

In addition to providing a WordPress-friendly hosting environment and support team, managed hosting companies handle most (if not all) of the ongoing management and maintenance tasks that can take up too much of your time. For instance:<\/p>\n