Managed WordPress Hosting is an easier way to get started with WordPress When it comes to building your web presence, WordPress is the most popular choice. At the moment of writing this article, WordPress powers more than 30% of all websites, whether aided by managed WordPress hosting or not.
There are several reasons why WordPress is a popular choice for websites: It’s free and open source, which means you can download it, modify it, use it and even redistribute it for no extra charge. It has tons of free and paid themes and plugins that make it easy to create any type of website you can think of.
It has a large and vibrant community as well as numerous blogs, forums and online resources that allow you to quickly find answers for anything related to building a website with WordPress. Related: Why WordPress? 7 benefits of WordPress websites.
However, despite its many benefits, WordPress can be somewhat challenging for complete beginners. While WordPress is easy to use, you’ll still have to go through somewhat of a learning curve in order to confidently use this content management system (CMS).Another challenge associated with WordPress is that it requires regular updates and maintenance if you want your website to continue operating at peak performance.
These tasks require time commitment and some technical knowledge, which makes many business owners feel a little intimidated. Let’s face it. When you’re running a business, you have plenty of tasks to focus on instead of learning how to manage all the technical aspects of your website. Not to mention you might not have the budget to hire a web professional.
Special hosting plan for WordPress
The good news is that you don’t have to give up on WordPress. In fact, you can have a highly effective WordPress site even if you don’t have much technical expertise, the time or desire to learn the skills necessary to install and manage your WordPress website, or the budget to hire a WordPress developer.
The answer is managed WordPress hosting. Managed WordPress hosting allows you to focus on producing content that will put you in front of your target audience and promote your business while your hosting provider takes care of the core technical aspects of managing your site.
Managed WordPress hosting is a special hosting plan for WordPress that offers a server optimized for WordPress to make WordPress websites run faster and remain secure. Along with the optimized server, the hosting company provides a set of services that take care of the administrative tasks associated with managing a WordPress website. These tasks include WordPress installation, automated daily backups, core WordPress software updates and server caching, as well as file access restriction for better security.
In other words, managed WordPress hosting removes a lot of the unnecessary headaches from your plate when it comes to the administrative and technical aspects of running your site. This, in turn, allows you to focus on growing your business in the myriad other ways that entrepreneurs build their ventures.
It’s worth mentioning that while managed WordPress hosting does take care of the more technical aspects of running and managing a website, you’re still responsible for keeping your themes and plugins up to date as they are not considered a part of the core updates.
What’s the difference between managed WordPress and self-hosted WordPress? At this point, you might be wondering what the difference is between managed WordPress and self-hosted WordPress. Let’s go over the differences. Self-hosted WordPress With a self-hosted WordPress website, you are in charge of every aspect of running your website.
This means you have to download and install WordPress onto your hosting server. This can be tricky for website owners without a lot of technical experience. Plus, if your hosting company doesn’t offer one-click WordPress installation, knowing how to create a database can seem quite daunting.
With a self-hosted WordPress site, you also have to find a theme for your site. And you’ll need to find and install basic plugins that enable you to collect visitor contact information, optimize your WordPress site for search engines, share website content easily on social media sites and more.
Knowing which plugins are the best and safest in their class as well as finding a perfect WordPress theme for your new website is a challenge in and of itself. There are thousands of themes and plugins available online and this can quickly turn into a time-consuming task that overwhelms new website owners.
On top of that, you have to make sure your WordPress site is kept up-to-date and backed up on a regular basis. All of these tasks are not only time-consuming but also require some technical knowledge to complete correctly.
With managed WordPress hosting, on the other hand, the heavy lifting is handled for you. There are no manual backups to perform, no databases to create, no caching plugins to configure to make your site load faster. In the end, even if you’re not tech-savvy, managed WordPress hosting makes having a WordPress website a lot easier.
Let’s take a closer look at why a managed WordPress hosting solution might be the best path to starting and maintaining a WordPress site. As mentioned earlier, WordPress is the world’s most popular site-building tool to get a highly customized, professional looking website with just about any feature and site functionality you can imagine.
Easy installation
Managed WordPress hosting makes the power of WordPress more accessible for more entrepreneurs. Let’s take a look at how managed WordPress hosting is a solid solution if you want a WordPress website that’s easier to launch and maintain.
No complicated installation process The most obvious benefit of signing up for a managed WordPress hosting plan through a trusted provider like WP Engine is you don’t have to go through a manual installation process for WordPress.
Managed WordPress hosting plans usually come with WordPress pre-installed so there are no complicated steps to follow. You don’t have to worry about page speed or configuring caching plugins your page speed matters. If your website loads slowly, chances are your customers will go to your competitor.
Managed hosting plans employ server-side caching and load-balanced servers, which means you don’t have to do any technical tinkering to make your website load faster. WordPress core software updates are handled for you WordPress is a content management system that’s constantly evolving.
Improved security
As such, new updates are regularly introduced to bring about new features. However, updates also include various bug and security fixes that ensure your website remains safe from online threats. That’s why you need to update your WordPress installation as new updates are released.
However, applying updates can often fall through the cracks, given the number of tasks you have on your plate as a small business owner. A great managed WordPress hosting solution ensures you’re always using the latest version of WordPress with all security updates applied.
Improved security with a 60% market share of all open-sourced content management systems, WordPress’s popularity makes it a target for security threats. In fact, 90% of the infected websites that the Sucuri team cleaned in 2018 were built on the WordPress platform, according to Sucuri’s Website Hack Trend Report 2018 .“The most notorious threats to CMS’ stem from vulnerabilities introduced by add-on modules, plugins, themes, and extensions,” the report’s authors note.
While it’s the responsibility of site owners to keep WordPress plugins, themes and other add-ons updated and patched, a strong managed WordPress hosting solution will include security features such as malware scanning.
Companies that offer managed WordPress hosting have WordPress experts as part of their support team. This means they can offer solutions and advice that will help you prevent the problem from happening again. Features to look for in a Managed WordPress hosting plan.
By now, you probably understand that a managed WordPress hosting plan can save you a lot of trouble and headaches down the road. However, not all managed WordPress hosting plans are created equal. As such, knowing what features to look for in a managed WordPress hosting plan is crucial before you decide on the plan.
Managed WordPress Hosting Key Features
Let’s take a look at the key features you’ll want your managed WordPress hosting provider to have. Easy installation and migration If you already have an existing website, you’ll want to make sure that your newly chosen host offers easy migration and installation of your website to their managed hosting plan. After all, the last thing you want is to have to start your site from scratch.
If you’re getting ready to launch your website, look for a managed hosting provider with a simple installation process. This will make it not only easy but also fast to get your site up and running without any headaches.
Uptime guarantee another important feature to seek out in a WordPress hosting provider is an uptime guarantee. In a nutshell, an uptime guarantee ensures your website will be accessible online. The industry standard for uptime guarantee is 99.9%.
If the hosting company you’re considering doesn’t offer the same, think twice about signing up for their plan.A website that goes down frequently or remains down for long periods of time results in loss of revenue and lost customers, and reflects poorly on your brand image. Optimized for speed.
Nowadays, consumers expect your website to load in three seconds or less. As such, having an optimized website that loads fast is crucial. Make sure your chosen managed WordPress host uses server caching to ensure your website loads as quickly as possible. This will ensure that your site continues loading fast even when you’re experiencing traffic spikes.
Reliable support having a support team that can answer any questions you might have regarding your website is priceless. Without reliable support, you’ll be left to your own devices and googling skills to find a solution to your problem and hope that it works without making things even worse. A support team that’s available 24/7/365 can answer all your technical questions as well as help you solve problems and get things back the way they are supposed to be.
Regular website backups, having a website backup gives you peace of mind that in the event something goes wrong, you can easily restore your site with a single click of the mouse. With a regular backup solution in place, you don’t have to worry about being offline while you rebuild your site or losing months’ or even years’ worth of content.
What to look in Managed WordPress Hosting
Look for a managed host that offers daily backups as well as the ability to easily restore your site from the backup. Because access to themes, plugins and finding the right theme and a trusted set of plugins is time-consuming.
On top of that, some managed WordPress hosting providers restrict the themes and plugins that you can install on their servers. Make sure your chosen provider makes it easy for you to find a great looking theme that’s easy to customize and work with. The same applies to plugins, with access to themes and plugins, you will be able to truly make your website a reflection of your brand and have all the necessary features needed to run a successful business. Malware scan and removal.
Lastly, make sure your chosen managed WordPress host includes regular malware scans and malware removal as part of their service. This feature is going to ensure your site remains safe from hackers and, more importantly, the malware will be removed in the event your site gets hacked due to a plugin or theme vulnerability.
Want to learn more about getting started with WordPress website? Check out these resources.