Sometimes, regular web hosting is not powerful enough for popular websites. Other times, regular web hosting provides too much power for WordPress sites. I have tried many hosting solutions—shared, VPS, dedicated, and managed WordPress—and I would like to share my thoughts and recommendations on managed WordPress hosting.
What is managed hosting?
When you want to tell someone else to do something on your server instead of doing it yourself, you need managed hosting. Most managed hosting providers can fix server problems, add new accounts, tweak caching, setup domains, merge databases, schedule backups, and more.
Unmanaged hosting would be where you do this all yourself. Usually, the only thing the provider will do for unmanaged hosting is restart a crashed server for you.
What is special about managed WordPress hosting?
A new trend among some web hosting companies is to offer a specialized hosting package designed specifically for WordPress. This managed WordPress hosting usually runs only the necessary server components for WordPress, and thus usually runs a lot faster that other servers.
Commonly, managed WordPress hosting providers—like Flywheel and WP Engine—will power the PHP backend with entirely different software, which is usually Nginx instead of Apache. This makes a huge difference in speed as Apache contains so many pieces that WordPress doesn't need, but Nginx is a slimmer, faster way of running the web server.
Managed WordPress hosting also often uses custom control panels and may have custom caching and CDN built in.
The result is, generally, that a WordPress website will run faster on managed WordPress hosting than on almost any other standard platform—all without your spending hours to setup and configure a server.
Because this hosting is focused on WordPress, the support team is often specialized for WordPress and can recommend plugins, tweaks, and other improvements to your WordPress site. Sometimes, they will even login and adjust things for you.
My managed hosting needs are huge
I run a large WordPress Multisite for my podcast network. This involves more than 10 subsites with their own domains, dozens of plugins, and a massive bbPress forum on my Once Upon a Time podcast website—this creates a database larger than 2 GB.
This large network also receives a lot of traffic—as high as 6,000 visitors per day and 750,000 pageviews per month.
I outgrew shared hosting a long time ago. VPS and dedicated servers were getting expensive for the amount of power I needed. So I opted to try managed WordPress hosting. Within the last few weeks, I've evaluated other options, looking to save money—WP Engine, Synthesis, Page.ly, BlueHost, SiteGround, Linode, Servint, WiredTree, Pressable (formerly ZippyKid), MediaTemple, and Flywheel.
Here are the core features I have been considering.
- Nginx or specialized PHP engine for fast performance
- Specialized caching
- Built-in CDN
- SSH access
- Daily backups
- WordPress Multisite support
- At least 5 WordPress sites (Multisite counting as 1)
- Staging site
- Customer support options
- Maximum budget of $150 per month (not including domains)
In the coming weeks, I'll share my reviews of each service and why each may or may not be the best choice for me, but why they could be better for you.
I’m looking forward to the reviews… I’m still using shared hosting but recently a Bluehost customer service agent asked me if I wanted to move to their WordPress Managed Hosting. That got me thinking about it so these reviews will be helpful.
Great! I will be using affiliate links, but I’ll still keep my reviews honest.
At present, I’m actually leaning back in the direction of a VPS, since I have mostly enough knowledge to make it work for me, and I need to save the money.
I’ve been a huge fan of WPEngine, and with no size limits, or bandwidth limits, you should be fine at the $99 per month plan for 10 sites. The CDN will cost a little more, but you should be able to stay in budget. Phone support comes at the higher level (that I have used as an agency for our sites).
Thanks, Timothy. I did try WP Engine and they actually include the CDN in the $99 plan. They don’t have bandwidth limits, but they do have traffic limits. My sites were on target to cost $220/month through them.
Watch for my blog post on October 31. It will have my review of WP Engine with more details.
Hi @DanielJLewis:disqus just curios how far did you evaluate Linode? Very curios to learn more about them.
Hi, Brian! I did run a full test on Linode with my Multisite network and compared them to Vultr. At that time, I was testing with HHVM. I found that Linode was consistently a little slower than Vultr.
Bluehost used to be very good, but not today, they even didnot support me properly. They have many customers and maybe dont care about us anymore, bye bye bluhost for next renewal. Anyone can recommend a well supported hodting for me, please!
Top Web Hosting
BlueHost’s site hasn’t changed a ounce for years. Ok maybe they have updated the specs…
But anyway, what I like about them: they’re rock solid, and time proven!
Top Web Hosting
Like Andrew McGivern I am also using Shared Web Hosting for my personal blog website. from past few month I am getting mails from my hosting provider
https://www.znetlive.com/
about Managed WordPress Hosting with 30 Days free trial.
Today I am doing google about WordPress hosting and here I came. any one suggest me shell I change my hosting from share to WordPress hosting ? does WordPress hosting have benefits if Yes share me..
If you haven’t had any problems with your website thus far, and you don’t get a lot of traffic, then you’re probably okay sticking with what you have.
thanks @daniel J. Lewis
Managed hosting is really a good thing. I am using managed WordPress hosting from Go4hosting and it is very beneficial for my business.
Hi Daniel,
Regarding this:
> VPS and dedicated servers were getting expensive for the amount of power I needed.
You might want to take a look at using DigitalOcean with ServerPilot.
https://www.digitalocean.com/
https://serverpilot.io/wordpress-hosting
This combination will get you a managed server with a control panel for $5/month.
Cheers,
Justin
Thanks, Justin! For the moment, I’m running Centminmod on a Vultr instance. But I’m really glad you mentioned ServerPilot, because it looks great!
I already created a free account to play with. I’ll soon test it with my WordPress Multisite beast.
I was going to ask to use your affiliate link, but then I realized you run ServerPilot! 😛
That’s right! And you can find your own affiliate link in your account details after logging in,
If you host multiple sites and want the absolute best, there’s nothing like managed dedicated hosting from serverwala.org. $5 per month, but the speed is blazing and support is best in class.
Managed hosting is really a good thing. I am also using managed WordPress hosting from everdata.