What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress Hosting has become increasingly popular in recent years, and according to 451 Research, this form of hosting is expected to grow faster than both shared hosting and VPS hosting in the coming years. If you are wondering if this is the right type of hosting for you, this article will hopefully provide guidance and answers.

What does managed WordPress hosting mean?

Managed WordPress Hosting can be compared to a 5-star hotel, whose exclusive concierge service is available to meet your needs around the clock. You can expect the same luxurious service from Managed Hosting, but instead of getting help with table booking at a trendy restaurant, you get help with creating the best possible conditions for your website.

What is the difference between Managed WordPress Hosting and traditional hosting?

With traditional web hosting, whose service is often called shared hosting, your website is placed on the same server as hundreds of others, which risks leading to downtime and slow loading times, and increases the risk of being hacked. The business idea behind shared hosting is to host as many websites as possible at as low a cost as possible.

So why are there are so many risks and problems with old, classic web hosts? That your website risks slow loading times and that sometimes even become completely unavailable, is because there are limited resources on the server where the website is located. If one, or more, websites on the server suddenly get a lot of traffic, which leads to the server maximizing its resources, this affects all websites on the server. Only when the traffic has decreased, or when the web hosting staff has upgraded the server’s resources, can you access your website again. An upgrade can, if you are unlucky, sometimes take several hours and who knows what business opportunities you have missed then.

If you use Managed WordPress Hosting instead, the website is usually isolated from other websites, or located on a completely separate server. You thus do not risk losing sales because another website on the web host has a temporary traffic peak. And if the website suddenly gets a high load and becomes inaccessible, the web host will usually solve this for you before you even notice it. At Templ, we have monitoring around the clock and check every three minutes that every website is up. If a website goes down, we find the cause and solve the problem for the customer immediately.

The fact that your website runs a greater risk of being hacked at traditional web hosts is because that the website shares an environment with several other websites. If another website on the server has a security hole, there is a risk that the hackers will also access your website. To protect their customers, many web hosts shut down the hacked website as they do not want other websites on the server to be affected. This is of course good for other websites, but for those who have been affected, it can be difficult to get their website up and running again.

The big advantage of shared hosting is the price, which is lower than for Managed WordPress Hosting.

What is the difference between Managed WordPress Hosting and VPS hosting?

Another alternative to Managed WordPress Hosting is to place the website on a so-called VPS (or Virtual Private Server). You then have your own server and can decide for yourself how much resources it should have. You are responsible for optimizing server settings so that the website is both as fast and secure as possible.

Buying a VPS is cheaper than Managed WordPress Hosting, but requires you to manage the technology yourself. In other words, you need a lot of knowledge. If you have the knowledge and have a website with high traffic, VPS may be the right choice for you.

What are the benefits of Managed WordPress Hosting?

Servers optimized for WordPress = Fast loading times

Web hosts that offer Managed WordPress Hosting place your website in an environment that is powered by the latest technology and optimized for WordPress. They regularly update their software to the latest versions, and can offer features that help speed up your website:

• Server-level cache
• Nginx/Litespeed
• CDN
• HTTP2/Quic
• MariaDB
• Latest version of PHP

At Templ, Google Cloud’s cloud servers are used, which helps to further reduce websites’ response times.

WordPress-savvy support

If you enjoy developing your website and adding new features, you will sooner or later encounter challenges that require help. You can find a lot of information online, but it can be time-consuming and difficult to determine if the source is reliable.

If you have access to a support team that has solved thousands of WordPress-related problems, you can count on saving serious time, compared to if you have to find solutions to all problems yourself.

Unlike a traditional web host where there can be thousands of customers per support employee, you also get 5-star service within a few minutes, around the clock.

Higher security

As I mentioned earlier in the article, it is a great advantage that websites are placed in a separate environment, isolated from other websites at the web host. At Templ and other web hosts that offer Google Cloud cloud servers, you can also enjoy the same security structure that Google uses for its services, such as Gmail and Google search.

You also get several other features that prevent your website from getting hacked. Some of these are:

• Latest version of software like PHP and MySQL
• Free and automatically updated SSL certificates
• Firewall to protect against attacks

Should your website nevertheless be hacked, you have the option of restoring a backup, as these are taken automatically and placed on a separate server. Templ also offers a so-called “hack guarantee”, which means that we help you clean your website of malicious code and ensure that it works again.

Developer-friendly

Regardless of what your development process looks like, you can count on a web host offering Managed Hosting to assist with all the tools you need to facilitate the work of editing your websites.

Among other things, you can expect a large selection of services and integrations, such as SSH, GIT, and WP-CLI. Another popular feature is staging websites, which is perfect for you who want to create a copy of your website and test new features, or new designs before you publish the changes to your live site.

Place your website wherever you want

To deliver a fast website, it’s important to place it in a data center that is close to your visitors. At the time of writing this article (June 2020), you can choose between all 24 of Google Cloud’s data centers, which are located across five different continents.

Easy to scale

If your website has a high load for shorter periods, your allocated resources will be scaled up automatically at no extra cost, to avoid your website becoming slow or even go down. If we notice that you would benefit in the long term from upgrading your plan, or individual resources, we will contact you with recommendations.

Disadvantages of Managed WordPress Hosting

Are there any disadvantages to Managed WordPress Hosting? Yes, there are a couple of disadvantages.

The cost

The price varies from web host to web host, but be prepared to pay between $25 – $30 for the cheapest plan, regardless of which provider you choose. However, the cheapest plan usually goes a long way, and at Templ we have both larger brands with a lot of traffic and online stores that can handle our Small plan which costs $29 per month.

No traditional email service or domain management

As web hosts with Managed WordPress Hosting focus on offering the best hosting solution possible, they rarely provide any traditional webmail or domain registrar, meaning that you likely will have to host your email and buy your domain name elsewhere.

This can of course be a bit daunting for those who want to have everything gathered in one place. At Templ, we help to edit our customer’s domain settings and set up their requested email solution in connection with the migration of the website – all to facilitate the relocation process for the customer as much as possible.

When should you switch to Managed WordPress Hosting?

• You run an online store and are in need of fast loading times and high reliability
• You care about your brand and can not risk your website going down due to high traffic, or being hacked
• You think you can save time if you have access to broad and flexible support that can help you with WordPress-related matters
• You run a web agency and have customers who appreciate a fast and secure web host
• Your website has been hacked and you do not trust the security of your current web host

Is Managed WordPress Hosting worth it?

Managed WordPress hosting is a good solution for many, but not for everyone. The more expensive cost means that you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it for you.

If, after reading the article, you see the benefits of Managed WordPress Hosting, and are interested in trying it out, we recommend that you try Templ or some other service for a few months. After the test period, you can evaluate if it’s the right solution for you. You always have the option to pay per month, and can often also test for free for a limited time.

If you want to try Templ for free, you can do so for 10 days, by registering an account here.