What is WordPress Managed Hosting?

WordPress powers over 36% of the top one million websites globally, including huge names such as Nike, Sony Music, and Time Magazine. They may be some of the world’s most illustrious names, but they each have something in common with even the smallest sites, WordPress.

Every WordPress site needs a host. Not the type of host that brings you wine and cheese either, although who doesn't love that?

Building a website from scratch can be a daunting prospect. WordPress was conceived, in part, to make creating and managing professional sites easier for the end-user.

Hosting, too, can be incredibly complicated for anyone without extensive technical expertise and experience. Hosting servers are always on, and they’re expected to serve sites and pages to users globally and as quickly as possible.

Maintaining uptime, handling various plugins, and optimizing speed is no mean feat, especially for the typical WordPress site owner. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of services out there that will manage your WordPress hosting on your behalf. Your WP Guy is one of these!

But what is WordPress managed hosting?

How WordPress Hosting Works

Web hosts have been around for as long as the internet. This is because they provide the server space on which site owners store images, code, text, and everything else that goes into rendering a stunning webpage.

WordPress is no different in that regard.

Your hosting package stores WordPress’s files, scripts, and databases alongside anything you add on top of it, like logos and articles. It’s not all that different from saving a document on your PC. But, of course, most documents don’t require around-the-clock availability to people worldwide.

So, That’s Regular Hosting - What Is WordPress Managed Hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting goes beyond the basics of storing and serving data. Instead, it uses additional scripts, tools, and software, not to mention a healthy dose of good old-fashioned human monitoring and intervention. This ensures that sites perform as well as they possibly can.

It’s all about doing for hosting what WordPress does for web design – making it easy and accessible even if you’re not a tech expert. You might be a writer building a portfolio, a musician streaming your tracks, or a speaker hunting for clients. You don’t need or want to know how your site stays online, just so long as it does.

It’s like having your own outsourced IT team to keep things ticking along. They will:

• Ensure your hosting environment is optimized for peak performance
• Keep the server secure
• Automate backups for a speedy recovery if anything goes wrong – even if you cause it!
• Keep the server up to date

Do You Need WordPress Managed Hosting?

It’s quiz time! (Don't worry you won't be graded). You’ve one minute to answer the following:

1. What’s the latest PHP version?
2. When did you last update your website’s disaster recovery plan?
3. Are your code minification protocols up to date?
4. Would Plesk be better for your site than cPanel?

If you answered each of those questions with a puzzled look (most people do, so you are in good company), then managed WordPress hosting is for you.

Even if you answered them all with confidence and accuracy, you’ve probably got better things to do than tinkering under the hood. That outsourced IT support team can do it for you.

Outsourced IT Support? Sounds Expensive!

You might be used to bootstrapping, or you could be an outsourcer extraordinaire. However, no business wants to spend unnecessarily.

Fortunately, a WordPress managed host usually won’t cost noticeably more than a bare-bones provider.

You’re not paying for someone to sit in a room constantly monitoring your site. Nobody’s hitting F5 repeatedly just in case a page won’t load! Instead, it’s all about economies of scale and reaping the benefits of putting in the hard work early.

One of the great things about hosting is that things rarely go wrong when left to the experts. As a result, virtually every hosting provider guarantees 99.9% uptime or above, and that’s with thousands or even millions of sites under management.

One skilled team can oversee thousands of servers. A combination of automation and expertise means you reap the benefits of a dedicated team at a tiny fraction of the cost. Best of all, they know what to do and when, so you never need to worry about managing the managers!

The Importance of Uptime

There are all sorts of reasons to have a website. You might want to provide information, attract leads, make sales or have one of a million other goals. But unfortunately, an inaccessible website is like a storefront with the shutters down. Even worse, it’s like your store is on a street where every other business does exactly what you do – just not as well, of course.

You might have worked hard on your search engine optimization and rank first on Google for all sorts of excellent terms. However, if your site is down when someone searches for you, your closest competitor is just a couple of clicks away. If they’re doing their jobs right, that potential lead might never return.

You might be running pay-per-click (PPC) ads to get more traffic to your site. Unfortunately, ad companies count clicks, not where the clicker ends up. So you might end up spending good money to show an interested customer a server error message.

Whether you’re in a meeting, asleep, or on vacation, managed WordPress hosting ensures that your site is open for business and operating precisely how you expect it to.