If you’re in the market for a managed web hosting plan, you need to be extra careful when choosing your web host. Ideally, your managed hosting plan will take care of website tasks that may take up a lot of your time. But, while a managed hosting plan may look like nirvana, you might be surprised that something you’d expect to be included isn’t. Here’s some areas to pay particular attention to.
Features
You may see a managed hosting plan that promises it has great features for your website and is reasonable priced—but most people need additional stuff like email accounts and other site utilities. With some managed plans, you’re only getting a website. Certainly you should be able to add these other options—at an additional cost. So, although it may look like you’re getting a bargain, you’ll wind up paying more.
Transferring Your Website
You can have the greatest features in your managed web hosting plan, but they’ll do you no good if you can’t get your site moved to that host. If you have an existing website you plan to move to a managed hosting plan, make sure you know what that web hosts policies are regarding helping you make the more—and preferable handling the entire process.
I once spent close to a week trying to move my site to a managed WordPress hosting plan on my own. I finally decided to go elsewhere.
Maintenance
One of the main reasons for opting for managed hosting is not having to spend time preforming a lot of maintenance on your website. But, be aware that you’ll still have to put in maintenance time with some managed plans. For example, SiteGround has a good managed WordPress hosting plan. And, auto updates are one of the features showcased. However, although the WordPress core is updated automatically, most WP plugins are not. This isn’t a huge deal for me, but for some folks it might be.
Expert Support
Every managed hosting plan touts the expert support you’ll get. My advice is to make sure the expert support is available through multiple channels at all times. One managed hosting plan I tested out promised access to an expert support staff. The problem was, the expert support was only available via phone. And, whenever I’d call up, I’d be on hold seemingly forever—until I finally hung up.
Even if you only have some technical experience, in most cases managed web hosting is not needed. However, if you’d prefer to have your hosting company take care of maintenance tasks or you’re not tech savvy at all and would rather have others take care of your website, then managed hosting is a good choice. But, be extra careful when researching your managed hosting plan features. Make sure that the managed hosting plan includes everything you’ll need. And, confirm with them exactly what tasks are done for you—automated or otherwise.
Finally, be wary of managed hosting plans that come with a cheaper price tag—they aren’t necessarily the best way to go.
