What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

There’s no denying that WordPress is one of the most powerful website hosting platforms on the market today. It offers extensive SEO capabilities, robust security, and all the customization features a website owner might need. WordPress also has a worldwide community of developers, bloggers, and experts dedicated to growing and improving the open-source platform. However, businesses looking to adopt WordPress should first distinguish the difference between managed WordPress hosting and unmanaged, or shared, WordPress hosting. Understanding the nuanced benefits of managed WordPress hosting can help you make the best choice for your business website.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting is a professional service that controls and maintains the technical elements of a WordPress website. Managed WordPress hosts are a more sophisticated option for businesses and institutions in all industries, offering invaluable advantages, such as cutting-edge security, superior customer support, optimal site speed, improved performance, and a variety of other benefits.

Unmanaged vs. Managed Hosting

While unmanaged hosting is traditionally less expensive than managed WordPress hosting, unmanaged sites often offer minimal features and require much more work to create and maintain. The minimal nature of unmanaged WordPress hosts can be a great option for individuals, bloggers, or independent contractors looking to create a personal website or establish an online presence. It can also help engineers and other individuals who want to learn more about WordPress development and customization.

For businesses trying to grow their brand and expand their audience reach, however, managed WordPress is a much more effective and reliable option. Why? Because managed WordPress hosts like Pagely oversee the more challenging and technical aspects of a WordPress business site. For example, managed hosts conduct routine backups, monitor site downtime, and ensure speed and reliability. Managed WordPress sites almost always guarantee faster site speeds, despite the amount of traffic your website receives. And with automatic updates, you’ll always have the most up-to-date version of WordPress — without having to spend time checking for updates and waiting for downloads.

With the specific knowledge and skills required to manage such technical elements, managed WordPress hosts provide business owners with a hassle-free experience and piece of mind. As a result, investing in managed WordPress frees up resources that website owners can dedicate to other key areas of business development.

What are the benefits of managed WordPress hosting?

The number of sites relying on managed WordPress has grown rapidly in the last seven years, and it has become a dominant content management system for companies of all sizes and industries. And if you’re considering a managed WordPress host for your company, it’s important to understand the main differences between managed hosting and unmanaged hosting.

Here’s a more detailed look into four key benefits of managed WordPress hosting.

Site Security

One of the most beneficial aspects of managed WordPress hosting is that it offers unparalleled security. With an unmanaged WordPress site, for example, you’re responsible for finding the right tools, scans, and updates you need to keep your site secure. This might work if you’re a one person team who has experience in malware and file scanning and DDoS mitigation. If not, no problem. Managed sites implement the highest level of security on your site, plus they’ll conduct daily backups, malware scans and frequent updates that prevent hackers from disturbing your website.

Uptime Monitoring

The speed and performance of your WordPress site has a direct impact on your search engine rankings and your user experience. So when your website experiences slow speed, downtime, or other performance issues, it’s important to identify and remedy these issues promptly. Most managed WordPress hosts offer 24/7 website monitoring, so business owners don’t have to worry about checking their site’s performance at every waking moment. For busy business owners who want to maintain a strong reputation and customer experience, performance monitoring is a huge plus of Managed WordPress.

Customer Support

When you invest in managed WordPress hosting, you’re paying for highly-skilled support agents that can assist with all your needs 24/7. Managed WordPress hosts train support technicians who can understand the technical nuances of WordPress, helping to solve both common and complex problems. For example, Pagely equips every member of its support team with a comprehensive skill set and contextual client knowledge. Every person who calls Pagely support receives consistent, high-quality support tailored to their website’s specific needs. This is just one example of how technical support differs between managed and unmanaged WordPress.

Customizable Hosting Solutions

Most managed WordPress hosts have the customization capacity to support all industries, from higher education, to eCommerce companies, and everything in between. If you’re in the healthcare industry, for example, Pagely supports regulatory compliance statues like HIPAA. If you’re an online retailer, you can protect cardholder security through PCI DSS support. Additionally, managed WordPress sites can be a great solution for agencies. By managing critical site elements like server management, speed tuning and caching, agencies can launch creative work confidently and securely.

Choosing a Managed WordPress Host

Once you’ve decided that managed WordPress hosting is right for you, it’s time to choose the right provider. And while many managed WordPress hosts are designed to support a variety of industries, every website’s needs are unique and some hosts may meet your needs better than others. This article features reviews of managed WordPress hosts, and it’ll provide you with some industry-specific details. If you’re new to managed WordPress hosting, this is a great place to start learning about the marketplace.