This blog post will discuss some major managed WordPress hosting providers and how to choose between them. We will not focus on the cost of hosting, as most of the pricing for a service level is within the same range, owing to steep competition. Instead, we will discuss the important issues and what actually separates the different providers. Let’s begin.
What is Managed Hosting?
Managed hosting is a type of website hosting where the hosting provider dedicates a server or space/bandwidth/storage for a single customer and manages it on the customers’ behalf.
The hosting provider will monitor hardware availability, software updates, security and backups, and software updates and fixes. The customer focuses on his business and does not have to hire experts to take care of maintenance, upkeep, much more.
The hosting provider is responsible for daily monitoring and any regulatory compliance specific to a customer’s industry — for example, HIPAA or PCI-DSS.
The Need for Managed WordPress Hosting
Some of the reasons people prefer managed WordPress hosting are as follows:
- If you don’t prefer to do the backend maintenance of your website(s), managed WordPress hosting is for you.
- Frequently, newer versions and upgrades of WordPress and the software stack that it runs on keep hitting the market.
- These upgrades contain security fixes, improvements, feature addition, enhancements, etc.
- It’s easier and prudent to let a team of technically qualified engineers of the hosting company manage them rather than the website owner or his employees do it.
- Suppose your website encounters technical problems owing to the underlying hardware or software. In that case, the hosting company will take care of it.
- Delegate the technical, run-of-the-mill instances to the hosting company, and focus only on the content you are delivering through your website.
- Most hosts provide a free CDN to boost performance and security, and a free SSL certificate is always enabled.
- The hosting company constantly monitors and blocks threats, keeping your sites fast and safe.
Major WordPress Managed Hosting Providers
Now, let’s discuss some major managed WordPress hosting providers and their unique features.
WP Engine
WP Engine was the first company to visualize managed WordPress hosting and provide it to the world. WP Engine is the original managed WordPress hosting provider and still leads the pack to provide gatekeeper service and expert support.
If you wish to run an online store, serve multimedia content, expect a lot of visitors, run a resource-heavy workload, WP Engine could be your best bet. WP Engine provides one of the best uptimes, fast speed, and best-in-class security for business-like severe workloads.
More so because WP Engine does not provide any other type of hosting except managed WordPress hosting, the focus on just one thing and are the masters of it. Their tech support and reps do only one thing they know very well. As the icing on the cake, WP Engine also provides a separate test or staging environment, where you can test your changes before you make them live.
Overall, the WP engine is not cheap, but it’s one of the very best if you’re planning to run a moderate to heavy workload.
Cloudways
Allows you to customize and choose the cloud infrastructure provider, the data center location, and the mix of resources that you need.
If you’re tech-savvy and need fine-grained control over the firepower that you choose, go for CloudWays. Cloudways also provides you with a command-line interface for running commands over your managed WordPress installation and lets you specify CRON jobs and scheduling tasks.
Hostinger
If you have just started your website journey and want to improvise as you learn and go ahead, or your storage and bandwidth requirements are low, Hostinger would be the best option for you. Though, it’s not very good for programmers who wish to meddle with the backend.
Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the very few providers that WordPress officially recommends. Bluehost specializes in WooCommerce hosting. Since Bluehost competes with the top in the pack, their offerings are competitive, so they keep improving and improvising.
SiteGround
SiteGround is another hosting provider that WordPress officially recommends. SiteGround straddles the gray area between shared and managed WordPress hosting plans. For a price that is a bit higher than shared hosting, you can get many benefits of managed WordPress hosting.
Dreamhost
Dreamhost is the third WordPress recommended hosting provider that makes it to our list. Dreamhost provides you with a free website builder, too, along with a free domain. It has over a few hundred pre-built templates, ranging from personal blogs to restaurants to fashion and real estate.
Another advantage includes providing domain privacy for free, which would cost around $13 or more, with other hosts. It gives you a 97-day money-back guarantee, the biggest period among popular hosting companies. It promises 100% uptime and will pay you some amount if their system fails.
Nexcess
Bandwidth becomes important if you’re expecting much traffic and much to-and-fro data movement. Nexcess provides you with a whopping 2GB bandwidth in its starter plan only. Another great feature is that advanced facilities, like staging environment/caching/on-demand backups/CDN/Image compression, etc., are also available with the entry-level plans. Their USP is that all features they offer are available with all plans. No differentiation is made based on the price you pay.
Common Stalemates to Managed WordPress Hosting
1. Sometimes, when the hosting company updates your WordPress/PHP-MySQL stack, your other plugins may stop working or behave strangely.
2. It could be overkill if you just need a basic blog/website and do not expect huge traffic/transactions/scaling up often.
3. It’s more expensive than basic hosting and could come up with riders and hidden charges.
4. Nothing is actually “unlimited.” Suppose your site gets much more traffic than provisioned for. In that case, you might be slowing other websites running of the shared infrastructure. Hence the provider may ask you to upgrade and move to another server.
5. A faulty third-party plugin you installed might create problems even with the best of hosting, so this is something you should be careful about.
Learn More About:
WordPress Website Builders
Conclusion
Just be sure of what you want today, and envision your future needs. WordPress might not be the answer to the type of web presence you want, but if it is, decide if managed hosting suits your budget or if you would instead work the things yourself.
Other factors to consider would be your current and future traffic predictions, the user activity you are expecting, the content you wish to serve, and your target geographies. We hope this post helps you decide which host will be best for you.
On the other hand, WordPress is a fantastic platform for building websites. However, you may need to move this data to a Data Warehouse for further analysis. It could be costly and time-consuming to develop an in-house solution for this process. Hevo Data, on the other hand, provides a No-code Data Pipeline that automates your data transfer procedure, allowing you to concentrate on other elements of your business such as analytics and customer management.
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Hevo allows you to transfer data from 100+ sources such as WordPress to Data Warehouses like Snowflake, Firebolt, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, etc. It will provide you with a hassle-free experience and make your work life much easier.
Want to take Hevo for a spin? SIGN UP for a 14-day free trial and see the difference and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite first hand. You can also have a look at the unbeatable pricing that will help you choose the right plan for your business needs.
Pratik Dwivedi is a seasoned expert in data analytics, machine learning, AI, big data, and business intelligence. With over 18 years of experience in system analysis, design, and implementation, including 8 years in a Techno-Managerial role, he has successfully managed international clients and led teams on various projects. Pratik is passionate about creating engaging content that educates and inspires, leveraging his extensive technical and managerial expertise.
