Because a business’s website is the portal through which it connects with visitors, choosing the right hosting solution is critical.
After all, business websites essentially act as online storefronts, and a storefront that is uninviting or inaccessible will surely turn customers away.
One way to approach hosting your business’s website is through managed WordPress hosting. This article goes over this setup’s pros and cons to help you decide if it is right for your business.
What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?
As the name suggests, managed WordPress hosting is relevant to websites built using the WordPress content management system. WordPress is a very popular website-building platform.
WordPress owes its popularity to many factors, but the platform’s prominent strengths include its relative ease of use and robust flexibility.
A website is only as good as its hosting infrastructure, though, which affects the website’s speed, security, and overall capabilities. To get the most out of a website, businesses need to select the best hosting option that their budget allows.
For many businesses, that option is a cheap WordPress hosting, in which the hosting provider’s team focuses on continually maintaining and fine-tuning the WordPress site, at the same time, doesn’t burn a hole in the pocket.
As the WordPress blog WPBeginner puts it, “Managed WordPress hosting is a concierge service.” By taking care of all of the website’s technical needs, this service delivers a “hassle-free experience.”
The 5 Advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting
Next, this article turns to some specific advantages of WordPress sites with managed hosting.
Advantage 1: Speed
Speed is an incredibly important attribute for any website and managed WordPress plans are usually among the fastest plans a hosting provider can offer.
Another helpful factor is that the host’s infrastructure is specifically tailored toward handling WordPress sites, further boosting speed. If you’re not familiar with how critical speed is for a website, consider these facts:
- More than half of mobile users will abandon a site if loading it takes more than three seconds.
- On average, it takes mobile sites 15 seconds to load, far longer than the aforementioned three-second window.
- Other platforms suffer as well: A load time of between 8 and 11 seconds is the average, despite that being quite slow.
The longer your website takes to load, the more likely customers are to bail on it without making a purchase or learning about what you have to offer.
In fact, the slower your website, the less likely visitors are to even find it in the first place. This is because, in search rankings, Google favors rapidly loading websites over slower ones.
This is directly tied to customers abandoning slow websites. Google’s goal is to lead customers to relevant results, and websites that customers bail on register as irrelevant.
For maximum speed, managed WordPress hosting is a good way to go. Its fast load times will help your business in search rankings and once customers access the website.
Advantage 2: Continual Backups
Managed hosting packages for WordPress typically involve backup services. It’s an unfortunate reality that websites sometimes suffer problems that necessitate data recovery.
Backups make that possible: If something goes awry, the website can simply be restored to an earlier version, allowing operations to continue as normal. Without backups, a failure can cause a disastrous loss of data and extended downtime.
Many hosting plans offer daily backup plans and options to restore the website to multiple past iterations. For frequently updated websites, this can be a godsend. In general, a website needs to be backed up as frequently as it is updated.
That means a website updated daily would benefit greatly from creating a backup every 24 hours. The right host will handle this for you. (Because it’s impossible to play it too safe when it comes to backups, you may also want to back up your website through an additional method, but hosting backups are a good starting point.)
Advantage 3: Focus on WordPress
While some hosts handle different content management systems, signing up for a managed WordPress plan means that your website will be taken care of by professionals with expertise specifically in WordPress.
And because they can work with WordPress on a day-to-day basis rather than juggling multiple platforms, they can keep up with the latest developments, meaning your website will be getting the most out of WordPress now and as the platform evolves.
Depending on the host, a managed plan may also give you access to ongoing support features and special WordPress tools like staging areas.
Advantage 4: Security
Most managed WordPress hosting plans offer robust security features. Backups are one method of securing your website, but additional security layers can help fight off malware, hackers, and other nefarious actors. A damaged or insecure website can erode the trust of website visitors, so security is essential.
Advantage 5: Website Uptime
Managed WordPress hosting puts a premium on maintaining a high website uptime percentage. Many factors play a role in uptime, including a website’s security and ability to handle traffic surges.
As is the case with speed, uptime also affects how a website performs with Google. Every time a website goes down, its owner loses sales and credibility, meaning the high uptime of managed WordPress plans is appealing.
Disadvantages of Managed WordPress Hosting
No web-hosting solution is absolutely perfect, and there are some drawbacks to managed WordPress hosting. One is the price: Because of the ongoing service and robust features, managed WordPress hosting typically comes in at a higher price point than other hosting solutions.
The situation may get even worse if you need to host multiple WordPress sites.
Another is that certain providers may disallow some third-party plugins for security and/or speed reasons, so if there’s a plugin you’re dead set on using, ask your hosting provider if they will allow it (or can suggest an alternative).
Additionally, if you’re the type of person who wants to take a hands-on approach with your website, keep in mind that managed hosting puts a lot of the work in someone else’s hands.
Conclusion
Managed WordPress hosting isn’t for everyone, but for many companies, it’s the ideal hosting solution. Countless businesses have found the higher price point absolutely worth it and the hassle-free system eminently enjoyable.
To learn more, don’t hesitate to ask your current hosting provider or any providers that you are considering using.