7 Managed Hosting Providers to Check Out & Why Managed Hosting Is Superior
- By Frank Morrison
- August 30, 2021
- 10:00 am
- No Comments
All the hard work is done by the host.
The hassle is handled by them. They are responsible for WordPress installation and updates. The enhanced security and the fast servers ensure that your site never goes offline.
If you have any troubles or issues you cannot deal with, a team of experts will always be there to help you. Some hosting providers will even fix your site for free (Kinsta) if it gets hacked.
Many companies and businesses already realized the advantage of this type of hosting, so much so that today, managed hosting has more than 65% of the worldwide hosting market.
That being said, managed hosting is superior.
Today, you’ll learn why it’s better than shared hosting, what can you expect, and of course, which managed hosting providers are the best.
The Benefits of Choosing Managed Hosting
Aside from what we mentioned in the introduction, the benefits of managed hosting are:
- significantly lower costs
- time-efficiency
- more advanced security
- all the maintenance work is handled
- the customer support team is filled with tech-savvy professionals eager to help
- automatic site backups
- a higher overall uptime
- dedicated caching and better speed optimization
- a CDN is often included in the package
- constant server monitoring
The list doesn’t end here: we could go on and on explaining why you get a better deal with managed WordPress hosting.
Instead, we would like to show you why the difference between managed and shared hosting.
Managed Hosting vs Shared Hosting
Managed Hosting
If you decide to go with managed hosting (which we recommend), most of the basic tasks will be completed by your host. By basic tasks, we mean backups, monitoring uptime, WordPress updates, and so on.
You don’t have to worry about the little things such as updating a plugin and doing a backup, you can focus on building your online business.
Also, managed hosting plans include professional support, which means you will be speaking with technicians, web developers, and engineers, not a regular customer service agent who (in most cases) lacks the technical knowledge.
They are available 24/7/365, so you can reach out to them anytime you’re having issues, and they will be there, eager to help.
Shared Hosting
We discussed managed hosting. What about shared hosting, what’s the difference?
Here are the characteristics of shared hosting and how it differs from managed hosting:
- you have to do every WordPress and plugin update manually, on your own
- the control you have over your server configuration is next to none
- your server will share resources with over website owners (that’s why its called shared hosting)
- when you hit the traffic or web visit limit, your website can and in many cases will go offline
- you won’t get any additional caching or speed optimization
- there are no automatic backups
- when it comes to security, you’ll only get the basics, your host won’t go above and beyond to protect your site
- you will be talking to average customer service agents, who are typically unable to solve complex, more technical issues
Are there any positives to managed hosting, you might be wondering? There are only two advantages we could think of:
- extremely low costs (you can purchase a shared hosting plan and pay less than a dollar a month)
- the setup is quick, it takes less than 5 minutes
Still, we wouldn’t advise you to go with shared hosting. You might be able to save a few bucks here and there, but the truth is, if you invest a little bit more money ($10-20 a month) and get managed hosting plan, you’ll see what your website is capable of.
Liquid Web
Liquid Web has been around for quite a while now. The company was started 22 years ago and over the years, they were able to build a loyal customer base.
Currently, they have 45 000+ customers in 150 different customers, over half a million websites are under their management, and they’ve got 10 global data centers to choose from.
Additionally, they’ve been ranked #1 for dedicated servers by HostingAdvice.com.
Their teams consist of 250+ professional, Windows-certified administrators, engineers, and Level 3 technicians committed to helping you.
They market their services primarily to robust online businesses, agencies, experts managing multiple WordPress and “mission-critical sites”.
As for support, Liquid Web offers 24/7/365 support that’s available via phone or live chat, both of them promising a 59 second initial response time. You can contact them through helpdesk as well, and within an hour, they will get back to you.
Besides managed hosting, Liquid Web also offers:
- dedicated, single-tenant servers ($169 a month)
- high-performance VPS hosting ($15 a month)
- dedicated cloud servers ($169 a month)
- VMware Private Cloud hosting ($510 a month)
- managed WooCommerce hosting ($19 a month)
- Magento Cloud hosting ($49 a month)
- scalable cloud hosting ($139 a month)
- private VPS servers ($139 a month)
- server clusters ($743 a month)
- high-performance hosting ($ 1127 a month)
- high availability hosting ($1448 a month)
- database hosting ($1498 a month)
- HIPAA compliant hosting for the healthcare industry ($343 a month)
The Pricing
Their least expensive managed hosting plan, Spark, starting at $9.50 a month (renews at $19 a month after 6 months), comes with:
- host 1 site
- 15 GB worth of storage
- 2 TB bandwidth
- unlimited domain-based email accounts
- Beaver Builder Lite plugin
- iThemes Security and iThemes Sync plugin
The more expensive plans (up to $499.50 a month) offer multi-site support, more storage, and bandwidth.
For the full pricing details, click here.
The Positives
- truly enterprise-level solutions
- multi-site support
- reasonable prices
- full access to the database and the server
- no overage fees
- in-house image caching plugin
- frequent-discounts on plans
The Negatives
- not necessarily the best option for smaller and medium-sized websites
Get Started with Liquid Web
WP Engine
WP Engine is another leader in the web hosting industry. They are known for their lightning-fast servers and their great speed optimization, which makes WP Engine a perfect choice if you’re struggling with loading times.
Their services (any type of hosting you can think of) are trusted by household names such as Yelp, Marriott, and Hello Fresh – which speaks volumes of WP Engine’s reliability.
On top of that, they host over 1.2 million websites in 150 countries and they won several awards in the past.
When it comes down to it, WP Engine is a company you can trust – they will great care of your site.
The Pricing
WP Engine is known for its premium pricing: their plans tend to cost more than other competitors, however, if you pay annually, you can get a quite substantial discount.
Startup, the least expensive plan of all, covers all the basics a smaller-sized website or a blog needs:
- host up to 1 site
- 25 000 visits per month
- 10 GB worth of storage
- 50 GB bandwidth per month
- 24/7 support
- 10 premium StudioPress themes
- free automated migrations
- automated daily backups
- free SSL certificate
- free SSH access
- one-click staging
If you need customized solutions tailored to your brand’s needs, you can get in touch with the WP Engine team, and they will create a personalized plan for you.
The Positives
- outstanding speed optimization
- StudioPress themes included in the plans
- beginner-friendly control panel
- built for WordPress, as their name suggests
- tools for agencies
- trusted by brands like Asana and Etsy
The Negatives
- high prices, although the quality you get isn’t disappointing
- WP Engine modifies the WordPress source code heavily, which makes moving to another host difficult
Cloudways
Cloudways is a hosting company that specializes in providing managed cloud hosting services.
They partnered with 5 cloud computing companies: Digital Ocean, AWS, Google Cloud, Vultr, and Linode.
Their managed WordPress hosting plans power 600 000+ WordPress websites, they have more than 120 000 servers around the world, plus Cloudways has a Net Promoter Score (measures customer experience) of 72.
Migrating your website to Cloudways is free and completely automatic, they’ve developed a specific plugin for it.
When it comes to security, expect the best: you get dedicated firewalls, built-in database security, plus you can whitelist IP addresses and enable two-factor login authentication to make sure your site is protected.
Additionally, you can enhance your hosting plan by purchasing add-ons and other additional web services.
The Pricing
Every single Cloudways plan comes with:
- 24/7/365 support
- free SSL
- CDN add on
- free migration
- unlimited application installation
- team management
- dedicated firewalls
- real-time monitoring
- automatic backups
- staging
- advanced caching
- auto healing
- regular security patches
- HTTP/2 enabled servers
- SSH and SFTP access
The Positives
- free trial
- pay-as-you-go pricing model
- data centers all around the world
- malware is monitored
- caching for WordPress and Magento
- the ability to install unlimited applications
The Negatives
- expensive premium support
- plans are VAT taxed
Kinsta
Kinsta is a young, lesser-known web hosting company. They were founded in 2013 to create the best hosting platform for WordPress.
Since they launch, they experienced rapid growth (262% client base growth in 2018), and currently, they have more than 20 000 companies relying on their services.
Their team works remotely from countries all over the globe, allowing Kinsta to find the best talent in the world.
Kinsta’s control panel, the MyKinsta dashboard, and their platform, in general, were built specifically for WordPress, which makes navigation and managing your website significantly easier.
Kinsta’s main focus is speed, server optimization, and making sure that your site can handle any difficulties from traffic spikes to server overload.
The support team they have is outstanding. The people you’ll get assistance from are experienced WordPress developers, Linux engineers, or even plugin contributors. Moreover, you can expect a ticket response in less than 2 minutes.
Every website under their management is monitored 24/7, and whenever an issue comes along (such as expired SSL certificates, or plugin compatibility issues), their customer service agents will reach to you immediately.
The Pricing
Plans are ranging from $30 to $1500 a month. The cheapest plan, Starter ($30 a month) includes:
- host 1 website
- 25 000 visits per month
- 10GB worth of storage
- free CDN (Kinsta CDN)
- 1 free premium migration
- free unlimited basic migrations
- Google Cloud data centers
- self-healing server Technology
- automatic daily site backups
- 24/7 support
- hack and malware removal
- staging area
- free SSL or imported SSL certificates
- PHP 8.0 support
- SSH access
- white-labeled caching plugin
- performance-monitoring tool
- 30-day refund policy
When it comes to add-ons to your plans, you are spoiled with choices. Here’s what you can get:
- Redis ($100 a month per site)
- Nginx reverse proxy ($50 a month per site)
- external backup ($2 a month per site $1 per GB bandwidth)
- extra backups every 6 ($50 a month) or every hour ($100 a month per site, stored for 24 hours)
- more disk space ($20 a month)
The Positives
- uptime checks every 2 minutes
- top-notch security
- hacked website restores for free
- easy-to-navigate panel dashboard
The Negatives
- expensive plans
- overage fees
- no email hosting
SiteGround
Siteground is undeniably one of the most trusted web hosting providers on the market. Their top-notch services and overall affordability keeps attracting more and more customers.
If we take a look at their dashboard, we can see it’s built for beginners. Everything is organized into different sections, the navigation is straightforward, and the panel has a minimalist look to it.
As far as optimization goes, they are one of the best out there. All of their servers have the lighting fast SuperCacher technology and if that isn’t enough, every SiteGround client gets access to the powerful caching plugin, SG Optimizer.
Sidenote: SG Optimizer only works with websites hosted by SiteGround.
Recently, they added a feature called “Collaboration Tools” that allows SiteGround users to add collaborators to their hosted sites and transfer websites to a different SiteGround user. The latter clearly is aimed at web designers, agencies, and people, in general, creating websites for clients.
When it comes to support, there are several options to choose from: the standard email ticketing, live chat (where they respond in minutes), phone support, and of course, and a knowledge base filled with helpful articles.
To summarize, they provide excellent services, you can’t go wrong with SiteGround.
The Pricing
The GrowBig plan comes with these features:
host unlimited websites
20 GB worth of space
unlimited bandwidth
free WordPress installation
free WordPress migrator
automatic WordPress updates
free SSL
daily backups
free CDN (Cloudfare)
free domain-based email accounts
SuperCacher caching
unlimited databases
100% renewable energy match
30-day refund policy
collaborators
Additional features:
- on-demand backups
- ultrafast PHP
- staging
Their most expensive managed hosting plan, GoGeek, which costs twice as much ($14.99, renews at $39.99 a month), offers advanced support, white-label hosting, and client management.
The Positives
- great speed optimization
- dedicated caching plugin
- affordable pricing
- collaboration tools
- ideal for medium-sized websites
- WordPress and Drupal recommended hosting provider
The Negatives
- not necessarily suited for enterprise-level businesses and high traffic websites (> 100 000 visits per month)
Take Advantage of The Summer Discount
Bluehost
Bluehost is a hosting provider that’s often recommended by affiliate marketers, web designers, and content creators.
They are quite versatile when it comes to hosting: you’ll find everything from shared hosting plans to VPS servers.
Managed hosting plans are hosted on SSD-based servers, which means your website will outperform other websites hosted on HDD plans.
The Jetpack plugin is included in all plans, and if you upgrade to Grow or Scale, you’ll get the premium version of it.
What’s unique about Bluehost is that they offer a package of marketing tools, Marketing Center. Marketing Center works from the same dashboard, and it allows you to manage SEO, social media, and email marketing metrics from your hosting panel.
If you already purchased a shared hosting plan from them and want to switch to managed WordPress, Bluehost will automatically migrate your site for free, ensuring that you have a smooth transition process.
The Pricing
There are 3 managed hosting plans: Build, Grow, and Scale.
Build, starting at $9.95 a month, includes all the basics you need to set up a professional website:
- 50 000 visits per month
- 20 GB worth of storage
- 200+ Global Edge Servers
- Free SSL certificate
- Staging
- Scheduled, daily backups
- Malware detection and removal
- Free domain privacy and protection
The other 2 plans are only worth purchasing if you have a bigger, more established website.
If you are unsatisfied with what Bluehost has to offer, you can get your money back within 30-day of your purchase.
The Positives
- built-in spam protection (trough the Akismet plugin)
- WordPress recommended hosting provider
- marketing and SEO features
- pre-scheduled backups
- multi-layered security
- SSD-based servers
- PayPal integration
- business review tool
The Negatives
- to host multiple sites, you have to upgrade to a more expensive plan
- the quality of the support varies
DreamHost
DreamHost is one of the oldest web hosting companies on the market. They were founded in 1996, by a couple of college students, and today, they have over 400 000 satisfied customers and the number of websites hosted by DreamHost exceeds 1.5 million.
They also officially recommended by the WordPress team, which is a title only two other hosting provider holds: SiteGround and Bluehost.
DreamHost is the hosting provider we chose. We’ve been on their managed DreamPress plan for a while, and we are absolutely impressed with their services.
Since we switched to DreamHost, not once has our site gone offline. Our loading time has gone down significantly thanks to their super-fast servers, the advanced caching technology they provide, and the third-party speed optimization plugin, WP Rocket.
When it comes to customer support, every time we contacted them via email, they responded within a few hours (sometimes, it took less than an hour), and with their help, we resolved our problems quickly.
The automatic site backup feature is our favorite: when we needed to restore our site to a previous site, we were able to do so by just clicking a button, and within 5 minutes, everything was set and done.
The biggest (and probably the only) issue we had with DreamHost is their slow Webmail servers. Every plan includes unlimited domain-based email accounts and access to their email client, Webmail. The program itself works just fine, for the most part, however, it takes ages to have all your emails fully loaded.
Apart from that, DreamHost also offers shared hosting plans, which we do not recommend, and some more expensive packages for high-traffic sites.
Overall, DreamHost has an impressive range of features and for $12 a month, the standard DreamPress plan is definitely worth a try.
The Pricing
The DreamPress plan comes with:
- host 1 WordPress site
- 100 000 visits per month
- unmetered traffic
- 30GB worth of storage
- Pre-installed WordPress
- 1-click staging
- Free automated WordPress migrations
- WP Website Builder
- Pre-installed SSL certificate
- Automatic WordPress updates
- On-demand backups & 1 click restore
- Free domain name
- Free WHOIS privacy
- Domain-based email accounts
- 24/7 email ticket system
- Live chat support
To see the other plans, click here.
The Positives
- 1 click staging
- competitive pricing
- quick customer support
- intuitive hosting panel
- free WHOIS privacy
- unlimited domain-based email accounts for free
- officially recommended by WordPress
The Negatives
- several customers have reported migration issues before
- slow webmail servers
- shared and managed hosting plans can only host 1 website
Conclusion
Managed hosting beats conventional shared hosting in many respects. It offers more advanced caching, faster servers, and a higher-overall uptime, so your website never goes down.
Because of the server monitoring and top-notch security you get with managed hosting, you don’t have to worry about your site is getting hacked or your data being stolen.
The backups are free and automatic, which means reverting your website to a previous version isn’t going to be difficult at all – for the most part, it’s as simple as clicking a button.
Over the years, the cost of managed hosting has gone down significantly: technology has advanced, the computing industry has evolved, which resulted in lower prices.
Today, you can make sure your site is up and running no matter what, all you have to pay is a few dollars a month.
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