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The most important choice you need to make when choosing a hosting provider for your website is whether to get managed or unmanaged hosting. It is very common to get fooled and go with unmanaged hosting even when you are not ready to handle the tasks that come with it.
But it is understandable because the hosting plans are dramatically cheaper compared to the fees for the managed hosting plans. However, in web hosting, you get what you pay for you.
Unmanaged hosting plans do not come with support and maintenance from the hosting provider. This may not be a problem if you have the skills and time to manage your own server.
Therefore, if you prefer lower costs over fewer maintenance tasks may be managed hosting is not for you.
But if you do not have the time nor the skills to maintain your own website and you do not mind spending a few extra bucks going with managed hosting is the best option for you.
What is Managed Web Hosting?
Managed hosting will do automated backups, monitoring, server setups, malware scanning and removal, security sweeps, and anything you desire.
This will give you the freedom to focus on growing your business without having to worry about technical issues.
To further understand the benefits that come with managed web hosting, this article will in detail discuss the features that are often included in managed hosting plans.
It is also important to note that there are different managed solutions such as managed VPS, managed cloud hosting, and so on.
But for now, we will focus on why you should choose managed solutions over unmanaged ones.
Site Speed
The loading speed on your website is very important for visitors. People today expect a flawless experience when they visit your site.
Over 40% of consumers will wait no more than three seconds before they exit a site. This means site speed is a ranking factor for any website’s success.
Managed hosting will make sure you deliver the fastest desktop and mobile-friendly experience to your customers. It also boosts your site speed by enabling content caching at their server to keep it readily available for customers.
Managed hosting providers will also keep up with the speed of business, meaning they will ensure your IT scales and create the needed technology to support your business’s upcoming growth.
Expertise & Security
Managed hosting providers have a wide range of talented professionals that will focus all their energy on maintaining and improving your website’s performance.
The website’s security and customer data protection are a top priority for any website. Your managed hosting provider will run virus scanning, software firewall configuration, spam filtering, as well as running audits for more security.
This way, they can ensure an upper hand on your website security-related issues.
Server Monitoring
Server monitoring is a service that most managed hosting providers offer. This can increase your website performance by keeping your site and server working efficiently 24/7. It improves the website security because you get real-time notifications if your security is at risk.
Real-time monitoring can also detect when problems might be starting so they can be prevented from affecting your website.
Unmanaged hosting does not provide any server monitoring, so you will need a special set of skills or hire a tech team to supervise your servers.
With managed hosting, there is no need to have special hardware or personnel, which can massively reduce your cost.
Customer Support
Managed web hosting providers offer 24/7 customer and technical support that can be reached through different modes like via phone, emails, live chats, support tickets, etc.
This is probably one of the most popular benefits that come from managed hosting.
The hosting provider offers a support staff of experts that are trained to resolve glitches and early prevent minor issues so they do not turn into major problems that can affect the performance of your site.
Backups
Using the managed hosting backup, you will not have to worry about losing any of your data. Managed hosting providers automatically back up your data and secure you with their DR strategies to avoid a loss of any data.
If you decide to go with an unmanaged hosting plan, you will not be able to back up your data as efficiently, this may lead to some data loss.
If you experience data loss, you will have to take necessary measures to prevent it from happening any further or again. Losing data is a serious problem that can permanently damage your website.
Conclusion
From this article, we can see that managed hosting offers some amazing features that you will not be able to enjoy with some of the cheaper hosting plans available on the market.
If you want the best for your website and you prefer quality over price, going for managed hosting will not disappoint you.
There are a lot of things to consider when choosing a web host provider.
So make sure the web host provider offers the speed, storage, customer service, uptime, security, and extra features that your website requires.