Fully Managed WordPress Hosting vs Cheap Shared Hosting

Last Updated on September 17, 2021 by Gerson Robles

Fully managed WordPress hosting is a type of WordPress hosting that has a dedicated technical support team. These types of hosting setups are more expensive than shared hosting environments more commonly available through cheap hosting plans, but the difference in investment is worth it because you don’t need to stress about sharing your server’s limited resources with who knows how many other websites and risk your website running slow or breaking or worse; getting lost (yes – websites have mysteriously gone missing before).

With a fully managed hosting plan in Australia, you get a human support team that will monitor your site and ensure that it stays up and running – and that it runs well.

Table of Contents

What is fully managed WordPress hosting?
What are the benefits of managed WordPress hosting vs shared hosting?
How much does managed WordPress hosting cost?

What is fully managed WordPress hosting?

A fully managed WordPress hosting service provides peace of mind because you are not only getting premium infrastructure that delivers on speed and security, but you also get a dedicated support person (a real human) that runs regular backups, core updates, theme updates and plugin updates on your site. While updates can be easily done automatically, this is not advisable as some updates can crash sites and cause conflicts with used plugins. This is why we take care when updating your site. All this ensures your website is kept fresh and bug-free. It’s like having your own car mechanic that takes care of your car for you while you sleep, and when you wake up, your car just runs like a dream.

With a managed WordPress hosting plan, you’ll have access to industry-leading speed, security, and support for your WordPress site.

What are the benefits of managed WordPress hosting vs shared hosting?

A managed WordPress hosting solution provides the best protection against hacking, DDoS attacks, malware and other security issues. You also get tailored attention and care on your site. Shared hosting providers do not offer this level of expertise. Our premium hosting and site care plans offer a variety of features and services that make it an attractive option.

1. You Get Dedicated Support

The benefits of a managed WordPress hosting include the ability to have a professional server management team who provide monitoring and critical support. Customer support is crucial for newly launched websites and you want someone knowledgeable about WordPress and other plugins and software, who can help diagnose an issue you might be having quickly, and who will fix any problems or be able to offer you suitable solutions. Our managed WordPress hosting plans come with a dedicated team who are experts not only in WordPress websites, but server management.

2. Optimized, High-Performance VPS

When you use a managed WordPress hosting service, there are no more worries about server resources or your website becoming slow. You can focus on your business, rather than spending time on the technical aspects of web hosting. Our websites are hosted on scalable software stacks, suitable for the most demanding high traffic websites. Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are the most commonly used server type for Managed WordPress hosting. These servers come with the latest high clock speed CPU’s and NVMe local storage designed for SSD (solid state drives). NVMe increases throughput over traditional SSD’s which means your website is built on solid infrastructure that runs quality processors and high memory speed that delivers optimal performance across the board.

3. Strategic Server Locations

Managed WordPress hosting is a monthly service that provides the best server-level performance, plus support for your site, but this is just one part of it. To give your website the best changes of loading fast, one of the things you need to do is ensure your server is located as close as possible to your target audience. For local businesses in Australia, this usually means you should be hosting your site in Australia, but cheap shared hosting platforms typically use overseas data centers to house the servers which create a delay in site loading speed. Utilising a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can overcome this issue of latency, but local businesses don’t normally require this if their server is located in Australia.

4. Scheduled Backups to Multiple Locations (Never Lose Your Data)

With managed WordPress hosting, you can rest assured that your site will be backed up at an appropriate schedule so if anything happens to it, you’ll always have an up-to-date copy. These copies are usually stored in several locations such as the hosting server, or cloud locations. You can even request to have an automated backup integrated with your cloud service such as dropbox. Good hosting providers will have multiple restore points and backups in order to provide a fail safe approach and easy restoration in case its needed.

5. Per Site Staging Environment

With the help of fully managed WordPress hosting like ours, you can clone your site with a single press of a button and have it up and running in minutes in a staging environment. This is great for development or testing plugins, etc. Once you are done with testing or changes, you can push your changes to production from within the hosting dashboard. This means you can make changes to your site, test them out and then push them live without ever having to worry about downtime. Shared hosting does not typically offer staging sites.

6. You Get Robust Security and it is Taken Seriously

A fully managed WordPress hosting company will take care of all the technical side of your site. They will regularly scan for vulnerabilities and implement security measures that help your site stay safe. This includes DDoS protection, hardware firewalls and a range of server hardening and site level measures that ensure that your website is safe and secure. Since WordPress websites power over 40% of the globe’s websites, you can be sure they are a target for hackers, but with a robust hosting environment like ours, you can rest assured your site is extremely hard to hack.

7. Included Free SSL

While shared hosting providers will usually charge for SSL certificates to secure your website, managed hosting providers will include this for free. Let’s Encrypt SSL is a service that is free and a good hosting provider will have scripts installed on their server that automate the process of assigning certificates to your website.

8. Use of Licensed Premium WordPress Plugins

It’s no secret that there are many WordPress hosting providers on the market. But you should try to find a provider that offers you more bang for your buck. Here at Gerson Seven, we provide our hosting and site care clients the use of our licensed premium plugins to use as best suits the purpose of their site. WordPress is incredibly flexible due to the sheer number of plugins that add functionality, and we have a set of reputable go-to plugin we use can use to add the functions you need, from SEO, to site-speed optimisation, to form builders, page builders and many more.

9. Real-time monitoring of uptime

Serious hosting providers will deliver a real-time monitoring of uptime guarantee. Shared hosting plans are not ideal for people who need a website that handles lots of traffic because their server can quickly run out of resources at peak times and the site will crash. Fully managed WordPress hosting providers usually guarantee uptime of between 99.95% and 100%. With our hosting servers, our clients also have the option of subscribing to uptime alerts should their site experience any downtime, and if these issues do occur, we jump on them pretty quickly to resolve them. Our customers know their site will be up, even if they are asleep.

How much does managed WordPress hosting cost?

Managed WordPress hosting is a great option for those that simply don’t have the time or expertise to manage their WordPress sites all on their own. If business owners are going to invest hard earned dollars on a new website design, they should think seriously about ensuring their investment does not suffer from a lack of care, or that its housed in a sub-par platform. A standard brochure site with about 5 pages will normally cost around $1300 and go up from there, but what I often see are these great website being hosted on cheap shared hosting plans that cause poor performance and since there is no dedicated human support or maintenance, they tend to run slow and buggy. Sometimes, due to a lack of attention, I’ve even seen websites end up beyond repair.

At Gerson Seven, we believe we have the best managed WordPress hosting in Western Australia. Take a look at our plans.