The Top 5 Things You Need to Know about Managed WP Hosting Plans
There is a significant difference between a traditional web hosting service and a managed WordPress hosting plan. With the latter, you will find that there are many more options in how your website can be configured with different caching capabilities and security features which protect from common exploits.
In this post, we will review 5 key features of managed WordPress hosting services that can help you understand how they work and what value they provide so you can choose the right hosting plan for your website.
1. Automatic WordPress Updates – One of the benefits of using a managed WordPress hosting service is that updates are done automatically for you (provided that your site doesn’t host any plugins that may conflict with an update). This ensures that your website will remain secure without having to worry about manually installing updates, which could leave it vulnerable to attacks if not properly configured beforehand.
2. WP Optimized Servers – Most traditional web hosts use servers optimized to run other application software like Drupal or Joomla, leaving your WordPress install to somewhat fend for itself on slower hardware because it’s often not configured to take full advantage of some of the newer server technologies.
3. Automatic Malware Removal & Scans – With a managed service, your site will be thoroughly scanned at least once every day for malware and security exploits so they can be immediately blocked and removed if found before hackers can cause any harm to your website or its visitors. This applies not only to your WordPress install, but also to all of the plugins you activate and files uploaded throught the user interface from within your WordPress dashboard.
4. 24/7 Monitoring – To add another layer of protection for your website, most hosting companies offer an additional service that monitors their entire network of servers around the clock in case anything goes down. In this instance, their support team should be able to assist you with restoring back-ups and quickly troubleshooting the issue to minimize downtime.
5. Server Side Caching – WordPress generates dynamic content from your database which can be cached on demand directly from the server where your website is hosted giving it a significant speed boost as all of the heavy lifting is done by the host’s servers instead of you having to install and configure a plugin into your WordPress install that adds this feature yourself. The most common type of caching used by hosting services with support for WP is called “Varnish” and implements a number of features designed to increase performance such as image/object caching, page fragment caching, etc.
Conclusion: With these 5 key features in mind, you should have a better idea how managed WordPress hosting plans stack up compared to traditional