How To Decide Between Regular and Managed WordPress Hosting

Choosing a hosting provider isn’t simple at all. They will be responsible for the security, speed, and availability of your website so you need take all of these into account amongst other factors.

Hosting issues may affect your credibility, and you can’t sell if people don’t put their trust in you.

Don’t rush making the final decision about the hosting provider.

Luckily, you can find tonnes of reviews of hosting providers and their plans. Many experts have written them, and their insights are objective. However, these articles are often full of jargon and usually are around 2,000+ words long. An average WordPress user who launches a new website doesn’t have the time or patience to read long blog posts about choosing a hosting provider.

This article won’t suggest a hosting provider, but it will help you make a decision that suits your needs. After reading this post, you will know what managed WordPress hosting and regular hosting are and who wins the battle between these two types.

Regular Hosting

The files of all online websites are stored on servers. Regular hosting (aka shared hosting) means that your website’s files are stored together with the files of other websites. A server could host tens or even hundreds of websites. All websites share the server’s resources, so your website might go down if another website stored on that server experiences a traffic spike.

Advantages of Regular Hosting

Price

In terms of price, the battle between managed WordPress hosting and regular hosting has a clear winner. Regular hosting is way cheaper than managed hosting. You can get quality regular hosting by paying a monthly fee of around £5. Pay attention, though – from time to time, hosting companies offer serious discounts, and you can save some extra bucks.

Complete Control

It very much depends on which side you are on, but control freaks will probably prefer regular hosting. As long as you go with regular hosting, no one will forbid you from using any themes or plugins. The administrative interface (usually cPanel) will give you almost unlimited powers on your website. You can improve or crash your website; it’s all up to you.

Disadvantages of Regular Hosting

Bad Neighbourhood Effect

Dan Pataki, a leading WordPress expert, coined this term, and I find it very suggestive. It refers to the fact that, on regular hosting, each website is dependent on the other websites stored on the same server. Your website shares the same resources (e.g., bandwidth, processor) with many others. A huge spike in a neighbour’s (i.e., a website that shares your server) traffic could slow down your website.

Regular hosting is like walking on thin ice.

However, hosting agents monitor the activity of all websites. They strictly evaluate websites with issues and contact the owners to try to find the proper solutions together.

Managed WordPress Hosting

WordPress is the leading content management system by a respectable margin. Naturally, hosting companies have set up WordPress-dedicated plans. Managed WordPress hosting means creating the best context for a website based on this content management system. In other words, the entire hosting infrastructure is WordPress-centred. It sounds great, but it comes with disadvantages and as well as advantages.

Advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting

Website Security

Your website is considerably more secure if you go for managed WordPress hosting.

First, your website shouldn’t be hosted with other websites, so you don’t depend on other webmasters.

Second, the providers of managed hosting implement proactive security actions specific to WordPress.

Third, WordPress experts are in charge of managed hosting, so they take care of your website.

Additionally, these hosting services include automated backups and updates.

Speed, Speed, Speed

Speed is the new SEO! It’s an exaggeration, but it’s not too far from the truth. A website’s revenue is correlated with its loading speed. A fast website has a better conversion rate and every millisecond makes the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart.

Managed WordPress hosting speeds up a website’s load time. Reducing loading speed, even by one second will boost your sales and revenue.

Premium Support

The owners of managed hosting accounts benefit from premium support. Usually, the support agents are experienced WordPress users, and they will help you in no time. Also, they have full control of your WordPress versions and files, which leads to better and lightning-fast support!

Disadvantages of Managed WordPress Hosting

Expensive Pricing Plans

All the above advantages come with a price that isn’t affordable for many users. The cheapest plan is still costlier than decent regular hosting.

Multiple Limitations

Over time, you might want to replace WordPress with an alternative. If you own a WordPress hosting account, you will need to migrate to a new platform. Either that or you have to stay with WordPress because the hosting is dedicated to WordPress sites only.

Another worth-mentioning drawback is the restriction of using certain plugins. Some providers of managed hosting have these restrictions due to performance and security related issues. Check this out to see how a respectable company does it.

On the other hand, these restrictions won’t affect you too much. Cache or security plugins are not allowed because the hosting provider takes care of these aspects. For instance, using a plugin that isn’t compatible with a package installed on the server will slow down your website or crash it.

Regular Hosting vs Managed WordPress Hosting

Speaking strictly in technical terms, managed is better than regular hosting. The main issue is money – does your website deserve such an investment? Would bring it profit in the long run?

Regular hosting is suitable for freshly launched or low-traffic websites. Most likely, your budget is tight, and any saved money is important. The average WordPress user is qualified enough to customise a theme and manage the plugins. In a nutshell, use regular hosting for new projects or for personal projects.

However, if you want to sell products or services, you should opt for a managed host. In exchange for a more expensive service, you get speed, security, and top-notch support.

Finally, the decision is yours! You know your plans and budget better than anyone else.

If you want to learn more about this topic you can check out our shared vs WordPress managed hosting review infographic.

We appreciate all readers’ impressions, and it would be great for you to share with us which type of hosting you use. Plus, we are ready to help you with any questions you may have about regular hosting vs managed WordPress hosting.