Over the years, we’ve worked with all the major WordPress hosting companies and always give honest advice to people looking to choose the best host for their blog or website.
One of the topics that comes up a lot has to do with something called “managed hosting,” specifically managed WordPress hosting.
What is Managed WordPress Hosting?
Sadly, this is not an easy question to answer because the hosting industry doesn’t have clearly defined standards in this area. It’s easiest to compare managed hosting with normal hosting to illustrate some key differences.
Shared vs. Managed Hosting
With normal shared hosting, your WordPress site lives on a server with a lot of other websites. If you use one of our two recommended shared hosting companies (HostGator or Bluehost), this is no problem. Both of those companies are very responsible and avoid overloading servers with too many websites. That’s why they can deliver such fast speeds and high reliability, not to mention such great prices.
A managed hosting company is different. Instead of your website sharing a server with lots of other websites, you’ll either get your own dedicated server, or share a server with just a few other websites. Typically managed hosting is much more conservative and reliable than shared hosting. You’ll pay a bit more for managed hosting, but our third recommended hosting company (Page.ly) starts at $19.95 a month for most sites.
Technical Help
One other thing that sets managed WordPress hosting apart is the level of help and support you’ll get. With a shared hosting provider, you’re basically renting space on a server where you can install WordPress, set up your site and maintain it yourself. If you’re a little bit techie, you’ll be fine, and all our recommended companies have fantastic support when you need it. Still, you’re on your own when it comes to maintenance.
With Page.ly, you get a lot more help. This is one of the best things about page.ly. Instead of you worrying about keeping your site safe and secure (or getting it set up), page.ly just does it for you. You can have your WordPress site set up in 2 minutes (no joke), and page.ly will automatically update your WordPress core, all your WordPress plugins and anything else you might need. Page.ly focuses on your WordPress website so you can focus on running your business.
Day to Day Management
I mentioned that page.ly will automatically keep your WordPress core and all your plugins up to date. They also look out for you in other ways. One of the best things about page.ly is the automatic nightly backups. That’s right. Every single night, page.ly will back up your entire website and keep it in a safe place in case something happens. Of course, they have bulletproof security, so the odds of something happening to your site are extremely tiny. Still, other WordPress backup solutions cost $15-30 a month, and that’s on top of your normal hosting costs. At $19.95 a month, page.ly is a very sweet deal.
Speed
I’ll make this simple. Page.ly does one thing and one thing only: managed WordPress hosting. They won’t even host sites that aren’t built with WordPress. Everything about the way their hosting platform is set up is specially tuned for WordPress hosting. One of the best byproducts of that is SPEED. Crazy fast speed! I could bore you with a lot of techie details like ping-time and load-times, but this is what you really need to know: In all our tests, Page.ly consistently ranks among the fastest hosts.
Security
I’ll be honest here. I love WordPress. I use it exclusively for all my websites and all my clients’ websites, but something about WordPress does make me a bit nervous. As WP get’s more popular, it’s increasingly being targeted by hackers and other nefarious web-baddies. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to keep your site nice and secure (managed hosting helps there), but making sure your hosting company is secure is also important. This is one area where page.ly really stands out. They offer:
- The latest generation cloud architecture
- Backed by bulletproof security
- Managed Redundant Firewall Protection
- Managed Redundant Web Application Firewalls
- Managed Redundant DoS/DDoS Mitigation
- Multi-level Intrusion Prevention and Detection
- Nightly automatic backups
- Automatic core upgrades
- Automatic plugin upgrades
Even if you don’t know what all that means, this is what you need to know: Page.ly plugs the holes that the bad guys try to use to get into your site.
The Bottom Line
Managed WordPress hosting isn’t for everyone. It’s a bit more expensive than shared WordPress hosting, but for some users it’s worth the expense. If you want to make sure your WordPress site is easy, fast and secure and don’t want to spend time maintaining it, give page.ly a try today.
You’ll be very glad you did.
