If you’re looking for a hosting provider for your WordPress website, you’ve probably come across the term “managed hosting provider.”
But, what does “managed hosting” mean? Do you need it? And, what are the best managed WordPress hosting plans?
In this article, we’ll answer all those questions and more. You’ll get a rundown of the pros and cons of managed WordPress hosting. We’ll also be comparing the best managed WordPress hosting companies.
Keep reading to find out which hosting solution is right for you.
What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?
Managed WordPress hosting is a complete hosting solution where a hosting provider manages the technical side of running your WordPress website.
Managed hosting companies take care of site speed and security, daily backups, scalability, uptime, and WordPress updates.
The purpose of managed hosting is to provide a hassle-free experience for you, so you can focus on running your business instead of worrying about your website.
Pros & Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed hosting isn’t right—or even necessary—for all websites. Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons so you can begin to understand if managed WordPress hosting will be useful to you.
Advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting
Lightning Fast: Managed WordPress hosting servers are specifically geared to WordPress websites. This means that they know how to keep your site whizzing along, even if you get a ton of traffic.
Security: When you use a managed hosting provider, you’re darn near hacker-proof. These hosting providers have robust security in place to keep malware and hacking attempts at bay.
Expert Support: As you can imagine, the staff at your managed WordPress hosting provider is knowledgeable in WordPress. This means that they can advise you on the use of WordPress plugins that might impact your site’s performance. Additionally, they’ll be able to help you solve problems faster because they know all about WordPress.
Daily Backups: Managed hosting providers take care of your daily backups, so you’ll be able to restore your site easily if you need to.
Automatic Updates: Your managed hosting provider automatically applies WordPress updates, giving you more time to focus on anything else.
No Downtime: Along with being super-fast, managed WordPress hosting means that your site isn’t likely to go down—no matter how much traffic you get.
Developer Tools: Managed hosting usually comes with developer tools like staging areas and version control.
Disadvantages of Managed WordPress Hosting
Price: Managed WordPress hosting is going to be more expensive than shared hosting. Of course, you get a lot in exchange for this cost, so if you don’t want to deal with all aspects of running your website, you’ll want to consider managed hosting.
Limits: You’re limited to WordPress-based sites with managed WordPress hosting. These providers will also block any plugins that slow down your site. Make sure that your managed hosting provider allows the plugins that you need to use before signing up.
Less Control: Someone else is in charge of the technical aspects of your site, so you’re going to have a lot less say in what happens there.
Things to Look For in a Managed WordPress Host
As we mentioned already, not every website needs managed WordPress hosting. If you’re running a blog or smaller website, you can use a shared hosting provider like Bluehost to get your domain and email needs met.
For larger sites, sites with a lot of traffic, or if you’re just not comfortable with the technical aspects of running a website, a managed WordPress hosting provider will be better for you.
When you’re looking for the best managed WordPress hosting, there are a few things you’ll want to consider:
- Is the hosting provider offering speed, reliability, and security?
- Will they do daily backups of your site?
- Are you getting a free SSL and CDN (Content Delivery Network)?
- Does the provider offer outstanding customer support?
Best Managed WordPress Hosting Plans
At this point, you probably know if you need managed hosting or if a shared hosting plan will work for you.
In this section, we’re going to tell you all about the best managed WordPress hosting we’ve found so you can make an informed decision before choosing one for your site.
1. WP Engine
WP Engine is fast, reliable, and hassle-free. It’s one of the most popular managed hosts around, and for good reason. Your website is hosted on powerful servers and is basically hacker-proof. Plus, WP Engine offers excellent customer support.
This managed hosting solution includes daily automated backups, an SSL certificate, a CDN, automatic updates, a 1-click staging area, and top-of-the-line site security, among other things.
With WP Engine, you also get the Genesis Framework and 35+ StudioPress themes for free.
Features:
- Development, staging, and production environments
- Genesis Framework and more than 35 StudioPress themes
- Transferable sites to start a website for free then switch to a paid plan
- LargeFS for unlimited media storage
- Real-time, page-level reporting and analytics
- Lots of addon services to create the best managed WordPress hosting plan for your business
Pricing: Starts at $35/month for 1 site with 10GB local storage and up to 25,000 visits per month.
You can add additional sites to your plan for $20/month or upgrade to a higher plan for additional sites, storage, and visits per month.
2. SiteGround
SiteGround is another popular and highly-rated hosting provider. They offer both shared and managed WordPress hosting and are one of the hosting providers recommended by WordPress.org.
With SiteGround, you get access to the latest technologies to ensure that your WordPress site is fast and secure. They also offer 1-click staging, version control, automatic WordPress updates, SSL certificates, free Cloudflare CDN, and more.
Features:
- Free site migration
- Developer toolkit with WP-CLI, SSH, PHP version control, and Git integration
- Collaboration tools
- Unlimited email accounts
Pricing: Plans start at $3.95/month for a 1 site with 10GB space and up to 10,000 visits per month.
We recommend a minimum of the Grow Big plan that starts at $5.95/month for unlimited sites, 20GB space, and up to 25,000 visits per month—and access to all the features.
3. Bluehost Optimized
Bluehost is another hosting provider that offers both shared and managed hosting for your site. It’s also another recommended by WordPress.org. The WordPress-optimized service is called Bluehost Optimized, and that’s the service we’ll be talking about here.
Bluehost Optimized includes a free domain with all their plans, as well as a free CDN and SSL, daily backups, security firewall, staging sites, and business email.
Features:
- Manage everything from enhanced cPanel
- 100+ free WordPress themes
- Marketing Center so you can view traffic/blog traffic and social media from dashboard
- Jetpack site analytics
- Malware detection and removal
Pricing: Plans start at $19.95/month for unlimited sites, unlimited storage, and no traffic limits.
4. DreamPress
DreamPress is the managed WordPress hosting service from web host giant DreamHost. It’s also recommended by WordPress.org.
With DreamPress, you get 1-click WordPress installation and automatic updates, unlimited space and bandwidth, a custom dashboard, and free SSDs.
Features:
- Unmetered bandwidth
- WP Website Builder
- SSL certificate pre-installed
- Automated daily backups with 1-click restore
- 1-click staging
Pricing: Plans start at $16.95/month for 1 site, 30GB SSD storage, and up to 100,000 visits (unmetered).
5. Liquid Web
Liquid Web is a fully-managed web hosting provider famous for fast and high-quality support. Their hosting servers offer speed and security and they even offer managed WooCommerce hosting service.
Their managed hosting service comes with an image optimization plugin, staging sites, automatic updates, and a dashboard that makes it easy to manage all of your sites in one place.
Features:
- No pageview or traffic limits
- Automatic daily backups
- Full server access
- Developer tools
- SSL certificates
Pricing: Pricing starts at $29/month for 1 site, 20GB SSD storage, and 5TB bandwidth (so, basically unlimited).
Upgrade for more sites and storage.
6. HostGator Cloud
HostGator is a well-known shared hosting provider, but they offer hosting to high traffic sites with HostGator Cloud.
They have an easy-to-understand dashboard so you can manage your site, as well as cPanel for management of your email, domains, and more.
Features:
- Free migration
- Automated daily database backups with file-level restore
- Automatic malware removal
- Free SSL
- Unlimited email
Pricing: Plans start at $4.95/month for 1 site and unmetered storage and bandwidth.
What Is the Best Managed WordPress Hosting Plan?
After comparing the features of the best managed WordPress hosting plans, we highly recommend WP Engine. It has everything you need for a hassle-free, worry-free managed WordPress hosting solution.
If you’re looking for something even more affordable, SiteGround is our #2 recommendation.
Now that you have your hosting plan all figured out, why not check out the best drag and drop page builders for WordPress to build your beautiful site? And, don’t forget to join OptinMonster to help you convert your website traffic into subscribers and customers!
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