WordPress has become one of the most popular CMS and blogging platforms. As per WordPress.com 30.2% of all websites are based on WordPress. What makes WordPress so popular? Well for starters it’s free and Open Source. It is very easy to use, highly customizable and can be easily integrated with other systems. With such a huge market share and popularity, having a hosting environment which is very compatible with WordPress became sought after. That’s when hosting providers started offering WordPress Hosting plans. WP Hosting ensures that the hosting hardware, software, infrastructure and other settings are geared to optimize performance, security and maintenance of WordPress based websites. In this post we will talk about what is Managed WP Hosting and Unmanaged WP Hosting and their features.
Managed and Unmanaged WordPress Hosting
When technical aspects of WordPress Hosting such as resource scalability, website backup, WordPress updates, plugin & theme management, WP-Database optimization etc. are taken up by the WP Hosting provider, it is deemed as Managed WordPress Hosting. This is mainly done so that the website owners can then focus on the core business rather than engaging their time on technical aspects of their website and hosting. When these technical and maintenance aspects need to be taken up by the client, it is referred to as Unmanaged WordPress Hosting.
Although both Unmanaged and Managed WP Hosting offers a hosting environment fit for WordPress websites, the efforts needed for the website owner’s team or the client’s team to manage and maintain the site and hosting can be greatly reduced in Managed WordPress Hosting. Of course this comes with an added cost, as Managed WP Hosting plans tend to be costlier than Unmanaged, and if your website is pretty small and does not require a lot of expert support then Unmanaged WordPress Hosting should be just fine.
Managed WordPress Hosting should definitely be something you look at when your WordPress site is the primary means of your revenue and your site is growing and handles sensitive data or allows transactions etc. Let’s look at how Managed WordPress hosting can make your life easier.
Aspects covered under Managed Hosting services
- Performance Monitoring: Most Managed WordPress Hosting plans offer 24×7 monitoring services that keeps you on top of any issues like downtime, slow site speed, etc. In the need of scaling up hosting resources, your Managed WordPress Hosting team will take it up as and when needed, without you having to look into the technical aspects of things.
- Automatic updates: To keep the performance optimum, the hosting provider automatically updates the WP core to the latest version. You don’t have to manually check and install them. Managed WordPress Hosting Plans also include plugin and theme management so that everything is working smooth across your website.
- Security: It is not only about security measures that the Hosting Provider will setup, but also about constant monitoring of security threats and taking regular backups to have adequate restore points in case of a disaster. Managed WordPress Hosting teams will also provide valuable support in case of data restoration, migration and recovery. Read more about WordPress security here.
- Back-ups: Back-ups are an unavoidable element of any website. If something were to go wrong with your website, then you can always restore your website from the back-ups. With Managed WordPress Hosting, these back-ups are typically taken daily.
- Support: Managing a website involves battling your way through a lot of unexplained errors. A 24×7 support team ensures that an expert guides you through any such roadblocks.
However, as mentioned before, there is a difference between the pricing plan of a managed and unmanaged WordPress Hosting plan. Managed plans are more expensive than their unmanaged counterparts. But the enhanced performance of your website and the time saved by you by not managing the technical aspects is well worth the money.
Hope this helps to shed some light on Managed WordPress Hosting and what to expect and in case I have missed out on any point, please feel free to pen it down in the comments section.