Most small business owners understand that they need to have website hosting and it makes sense that when they first, they gravitate towards the most basic, cheapest options available.
Many are not aware that there are far better options out there for most businesses that cover more of their bases. In this post, I’m going to highlight the differences between a managed WordPress plan and basic website hosting and explain who should be using which.
We’ve worked with many hundreds of WordPress websites over the years and have interacted time and time again with the cheaper hosts. We know the platform inside and out and can advise on the best options for working with it.
First, let’s define what each option is.
Basic Website Hosting
A website needs hosting to be available to the public on the internet. The “website hosting” itself is essentially the physical server that houses your website’s files. When visitors arrive at your address, the server provides them with the right files and website content.
Basic WordPress hosting is what companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, Hostgator, and many more typically provide. At its most basic level it’s quite inexpensive. You pay a small monthly or yearly fee, and they provide the server space for your site (and, probably, thousands of other websites on the same server).
They may provide upgrades like SSL certificates and they may try to upsell you with other related services (which may or may not be helpful in the least).
But that’s about it.
You are typically responsible for moving files around or dealing with problems. They may have a support number for you, but the actual help they can give you is generally very limited and, at best, they’ll be providing you with the information you need to fix any problems yourself.
But the important thing is, at the end of the day: you do have to fix problems yourself.
Some providers may charge more and offer a higher level of hosting service, but even then the support is usually limited to the hosting environment itself.
So what does a Managed WordPress Plan add?
A Managed WordPress Plan (like our Total WordPress Maintenance Plan) includes website hosting, of course. But it adds so much more.
Most fully managed plans will cover all of your bases. In addition to handling all hosting-related setup and issues for you, most will also provide:
- WordPress file updates
- Security monitoring and review
- Hack fixes
- Uptime monitoring
- Premium caching solutions
- Included changes (varies, but included in our plans)
The general idea is that these plans provide you with peace of mind that everything is covered. All critical maintenance tasks are covered and you can focus on your business instead of troubleshooting problems on your website.
Difference between Server Management and Application Management
One thing that is important to understand is the difference between management of the server and management of the application – which in this case, is WordPress.
Almost any website host or plan will manage the actual server for you. You should never need to worry about hardware failures, or updating operating systems, or hardening server ports, or replacing physical firewalls. That is all the responsibility of the website host.
The application layer, however, includes WordPress, your themes, your plugins, and more. This is all of the software configuration within your website.
With basic website hosting, typically only server management is provided. You are responsible for everything WordPress-related. That means updates, security monitoring, and more will all need to be dealt with by you. In most cases, support won’t even help you with these unless specifically mentioned in your plan agreement.
With a Managed WordPress Plan, your provider will typically handle both for you. If there are ever issues with the server, they’ll still handle those. But they will also proactively maintain your WordPress installation to make sure it keeps working properly. And if you have any issues there, they will typically fix them for you or work with you closely, depending on what the issue is.
It’s important to understand this distinction because the application layer (WordPress) is where most failures typically occur.
Over the years we’ve worked with literally hundreds of hacked websites. Most have been new clients that came to us with a hacked site asking us to fix it. In our experience, most website hacks are the result of poor website maintenance. Updates aren’t being run, plugins are out of date, and often there are glaring security holes.
These things are surprisingly difficult to manage correctly over time.. You need systems in place to ensure nothing is getting left behind.
A good managed WordPress plan will address all of these and proactively protect so that nothing goes wrong, and fix it for you in the event that it does.
In order, I’d say the following are the most common failure points in WordPress:
- Outdated plugins (leading to conflicts or hacks)
- Security vulnerabilities
- Poor hosting performance
- Lack of optimization
These are all things that happen at the application layer, and they are all things that are only covered with a managed WordPress plan.
Just as a simple (and very plausible example) of what could go wrong, consider the following. You know you need to keep things up-to-date, but you lack the time to do it manually. So you set your plugins to update automatically.
One of your plugins updates overnight and breaks the site completely. Since you’re not checking everyday, you don’t even notice. Days or even weeks go by until a client tells you your site is broken. By that time, your search engine rankings have tanked and you’ve missed dozens of leads because you haven’t been online.
With a managed WordPress plan, these types of things would be caught immediately and rectified right away. Your site stays up and your potential clients keep reaching out.
The Managed WordPress Spectrum
While I’ve described two mostly-unrelated services, in reality you can think of it as more as a spectrum. There are providers and plans that fit squarely into one definition, but many more that fit somewhere in the middle.
You can think of it more of a spectrum that goes in this order:
- Basic Shared Hosting
- Managed Hosting
- Fully Managed WordPress Maintenance
At each level, you receive more comprehensive services and support. At the lowest level, you only get the hosting itself, while at the highest level you receive comprehensive management and support at all layers.
Who should choose a managed WordPress plan?
My general advice when clients ask this question is that any business owner that is profitable or has a dedicated website budget should choose a managed WordPress plan.
It makes things really easy and frees up time for the owner while simultaneously preventing problems proactively which leads to a business that is much more stable.
Most business to business companies, almost all e-commerce businesses, and even successful solopreneurs should all generally choose this option.
Who should go with basic hosting?
This actually is the best option for a handful of businesses and situations. Basically, if any of the following are true, you may want to go with basic hosting:
Brand new businesses that don’t mind getting their hands dirty and aren’t yet profitable
Those with no budget at all – especially small side-projects
Individuals who use the site just as a hobby and have some technical know-how
These individuals may find that their needs are small enough or that they are willing to put a lot of their own time into it and don’t need someone else to help them. And in that case, basic hosting can absolutely be the right choice.
What does it cost?
Basic hosting can vary wildly, but for one website, expect to pay $10-50/month depending on the size and traffic of your website.
Fully-managed WordPress plans tend to start just under $100/month and go up from there depending on upgrades and specific inclusions like development hours included. There obviously is some room between these two with partially-managed services as well.
What types of companies provide managed WordPress plans?
It’s almost exclusively small agencies like ours. Larger companies typically either make their money with commodity services and very limited support, or work exclusively with a handful of very large clients themselves and have far-more comprehensive plans bundled together with broad marketing strategies and ongoing maintenance and development.
Companies like mine can provide individualized attention to their small business clients without having to resort to low-service high-volume tactics.
Summary
Basic website hosting can be just fine for brand new businesses that need to track every penny. But for established businesses, a managed WordPress plan is a very cost-effective way to proactively prevent problems and ensure online stability. It frees up your time to focus on other areas while minimizing the risk of problems.
If you’d like to learn more about our Total WordPress Maintenance Plan, you can read the full details here or contact us if you have questions.
