You know your business needs a website, but there are many options and details to sift through to find what exactly you need to do for it. How do you build your own website? What does your website need to compete with other businesses? What is managed WordPress hosting, and can it help your business?

Before you click buy on a website design package or choose a web host, weigh your options and determine what will work best for your business.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

If you’re new to website ownership or don’t want to spend your precious time doing tedious backend website maintenance tasks, managed WordPress hosting is a great option. Simply put, managed WordPress hosting is where a provider manages your site and server for you. It’s a hands-off option for business owners who want to outsource site management and spend more time running their business and doing the tasks only they can do.

There are many options and plans when it comes to managed WordPress hosting, and some plans include more than others. Generally speaking, managed WordPress hosting includes the website setup, security, backups, maintenance, and performance improvements. And if you have more than one site you need managed, there are plans for that too.

Difference Between Managed and Non-Managed Hosting

Comparing managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting can help you decide what will work best for your business. Before you choose, think about your business and what it needs.

Unmanaged Hosting

Unmanaged WordPress hosting is better for business owners who’ve run websites before. The website is set up and then handed off to you so you can run it yourself. When you have an unmanaged WordPress site, you rent hosting space from a hosting company and upload your website to it.

Unmanaged hosting is a popular option for newer, smaller businesses that don’t have the budget for managed WordPress hosting or are simply trying to test out the online business environment. While this option is more affordable than managed WordPress hosting, you’ll spend more time maintaining your website, which will take time away from working on your business. Upkeep and design are up to you. And if your site crashes, you’ll have to drop everything and focus on fixing it.

Managed Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is more expensive than unmanaged, but everything is built and maintained for you. The site functions more like a part of your business rather than something that needs your attention. And that’s a good thing, considering no one knows how much hosting support they may need in the future or what resources they might require. Most site owners assume they’ll be able to access support services, even if they don’t have a managed hosting plan. But if their site goes down in the middle of a product launch, they may be stuck messaging a chatbot and hoping everything works out for the best.

Most unmanaged hosting means your site is on a server with many other sites, meaning your site will get slower over time as more websites are added to that server. But with managed hosting, you get better speed and support, so your site functions at peak levels, which means your business can run more smoothly.

Advantages of Managed Hosting

Fully managed WordPress hosting can make your life as a business owner much easier. There are many advantages to managed hosting plans.

Setup

Sure, the YouTube tutorials make it look straightforward to launch a WordPress site from scratch or to migrate a website’s content to a new platform. And it is easy – for people who do it regularly. One of the perks of managed hosting is saving the time and energy (and the headache) of setting up or migrating a website. It allows the experts to step in and do the thing they do best while you focus your time and energy on your business.

Backups

Your website’s databases are critical. You can always update your website’s look and feel and even change the theme entirely if you’re using WordPress. But if you don’t back up your site’s databases beforehand, you could lose all your blog posts and comments. Making sure your site is regularly backed up is the difference between a fully functional website loaded with branded content and a massive headache for you as a business owner. With managed hosting, your site backups are taken care of, so you don’t have to worry about losing any of the hard work you put into your website.

Support

You started your business to do what you do, not to troubleshoot website issues. With a Hostdedi managed WordPress hosting plan, you get automatic plugin updates and automatic core WordPress updates, so you don’t need to worry about your site going down because one little thing is out of date. Plus, you get access to our WordPress experts, who manage and support sites like yours. Having this level of support means your site is in the hands of people who can help prevent disasters and warn you long before an issue occurs.

Security

There probably isn’t an elite group of hackers trying to take down your site, but that doesn’t mean bots and malware aren’t a problem. Malware monitoring in managed hosting can expose issues on your server and address them before they become problems. It keeps your site in tiptop shape and keeps your customers’ contact information and credit card data safe.

Maintenance

Setting and forgetting a website isn’t a great way to run an ecommerce business. A managed WordPress hosting plan is like having a doctor for your website. Maintaining a website ensures it runs smoothly on a constantly changing internet. Ensuring everything is up-to-date and working well with all the internal components keeps your business running smoothly. And just like with your health, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Regular maintenance helps prevent any problems your site might have.

Ready to Try Managed WordPress Hosting?

Fully managed WordPress hosting is worth it. Your site is a critical component to your business’s success, and as such, it deserves the time and attention it needs to run like a well-oiled machine.

With managed WordPress hosting from Hostdedi, a faster, more scalable site is at your fingertips. Email hosting, one-click staging, PHP optimization, and automatic backups come standard with every plan. To find out more or chat with one of our WordPress experts, check out our Managed WordPress Hosting page.