In this day and age, if you have a business it’s pretty much a necessity for you to have a website. With a website, you will need to have a web hosting provider. There are lots of different options for hosting providers out there. By now, you will probably have heard of WordPress.
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) on the internet today and is used by many people to make their website run. It offers a high level of customizability and is multifunctional. Since WordPress is so popular, there are even hosting packages that are optimized for hosting WordPress websites. Providers that offer this type of service are called Managed WordPress hosting providers.
If you are in the market for a Managed WordPress hosting provider then stay tuned. Below, we will walk you through 5 things that you should look for in a managed WordPress Provider. Before we do that, however, we will take some time to explain what exactly managed WordPress hosting is.
An Explanation of Managed WordPress Hosting
With web hosting, your provider will either provide you assistance with the maintenance or it will be left completely up to you. With managed WordPress hosting, your provider will help you out with the maintenance of your website and they will also ensure that your WordPress updates are carried out in addition to doing things like making sure that backups are carried out and making sure that things like the security and speed of your website are in order. You will also be provided with excellent support services.
Things to Look for in a Managed WordPress Hosting Provider
Below, we will cover some things that you should keep an eye out for when purchasing managed WordPress hosting.
1. Excellent Support
When you’re running a website, you will inevitably run into issues. This is just how it goes, unfortunately. Instead of having to go through the stress of having to solve all of these issues alone, you should make sure that your managed hosting provider is competent and that they offer excellent support. In addition, having 24/7 support available is ideal. This option ensures that you can get help with your issues no matter the time of day. A knowledge base full of tutorials and help articles should also be expected. These make sure that you also have the option of solving easier problems on your own by just looking at an article or 2. Overall, support should be fast and accurate. They should also offer their support over a few different channels such as via live chat, email, tickets, and phone.
2. Built for Scalability
When you are looking for a hosting provider, you should make sure that you choose one that lets you easily scale up the size of your website without putting obstacles in your way. Some types of web hosting like shared hosting limit you when your website starts to grow. When you start to outgrow the resources allotted to you by your hosting provider, you might face penalties and you will eventually have to upgrade your plan in any case. Depending on your hosting provider this might not be an easy process. With managed WordPress hosting, you will be notified if you are encroaching on the limits set by your provider, and they also make it easy for you to upgrade if this is needed. Some providers even scale up the resources you’re given automatically based on demand.
3. High Performance
Any managed WordPress hosting provider that you choose should be optimized for high performance. This is done through things like optimizing servers and there are some WordPress plugins that can be implemented to facilitate this too. They should also have excellent uptime. This is very important since you will want to make sure that your site is available to your customers and/or viewers at all times. With a high performance hosting provider, in addition to them having optimized servers, they will also usually have the latest versions of important internet software installed to ensure the highest speeds possible. For example, they will have the latest version of PHP installed and all of the related plugins.
4. Security
Security shouldn’t be underestimated. In this day and age where cyberattacks are happening quite frequently, you can’t afford to choose a hosting provider that doesn’t pay attention to security. Hundreds of millions of dollars are lost annually because of cyberattacks so this is no joke. Usually, with a typically shared hosting provider, you are more exposed to cyberattacks since you have to share server space with others. If you have a more advanced unmanaged service then security is all up to you. On the other hand, with a managed WordPress hosting provider, you will be provided with adequate measures that will keep your website safe. These include things like firewalls and automatic virus and malware scanning and removal. They will usually have measures in place to detect and thwart DDoS attacks. Measures will also be in place to keep your account isolated from other accounts. This is great since it means that in the event that an account is breached, other accounts won’t be affected.
5. Automatic Backups
We have mentioned this before, but you are bound to run into problems when working on a website. For this reason, it’ s important to have your data backed up. Imagine that for some reason an error occurred and all of your data was deleted. If you didn’t have a backup system in place, then all of your data would be lost. Managed WordPress providers should typically provide this service automatically. This means that in the event of any errors, you can easily restore a backup if needed. You will need to check to see how frequently they carry out backups so that you know how far back you can restore backups from. You might want to add additional backup capacity on top of what your provider offers depending on how far back you want to go. Most providers go as far back as 15 – 30 days. If you want to go further back than this then you will need to add more backup capacity. This is fine though since you will have a backup available immediately without having to do anything if something goes wrong.
Final Thoughts
Managed WordPress hosting is an ideal solution if you’re thinking of starting a WordPress website. If you do choose to go with managed WordPress hosting make sure that the support is great, that your provider can scale up your service if needed, that their service gives you a high level of performance, that they offer a secure service, and that they offer automatic backups which are stored for several days. These things will make your life much easier while you’re running your website.
