Is the managed WordPress hosting industry coming to an end? I mean, is WordPress easy-to-grasp enough so that we no longer need any companies helping us out setting up our web servers, and then taking care of those servers on a regular basis?
Well, if you’re a developer working with WordPress every day, then you might want to believe that it’s indeed the case. For people like that, setting up efficient servers with Linode or DigitalOcean is a breeze. But as Chris Lema very accurately pointed out, WordPress is far from simple, especially for your parents, your neighbors, or whoever else simply wants a website without getting their hands dirty.
What is managed WordPress?
Managed WordPress is a hosting package optimized for easily building and managing WordPress websites. The term “managed” for WordPress means that all the server-related responsibilities and tasks are handled for you by the web host.
This usually includes things like installing WordPress itself, handling backups, updates, plus security and performance checks.
For the end user – who might not be that familiar with the technical stuff – WordPress is just a black box that allows them to have their work/posts/articles/products published on the web. And it should stay that way too.
So, companies offering managed WordPress hosting seem to be a good response to that need. Or are they? Let’s find out in this article.
💡 Note: looking through our analytics, it becomes apparent that the majority of our readers are interested, more than anything else, in finding out who the top managed WordPress hosting companies are, so we moved that section of the article to the very top. If you want to learn the theory behind managed WordPress hosting, check out the following shortcut links:
Managed WordPress hosting – comparison table
Here’s a handy comparison table for those of you who like to look at managed WordPress hosting from bird’s eye view:
Host | Price / mo. | Traffic / mo. | Disk space | No. of sites allowed | Support |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
SiteGround | $2.99, $4.99, $7.99 | ~ 10,000 visits | 10GB | 1 | 24/7 chat and phone |
Bluehost | $29.99, $49.99, $89.99, $109.99 | ~200,000 visits | 10GB | 1 | 24/7 chat and phone |
Cloudways | $11.00, $24, $46, $88, up to $1,056 | unlimited | 25GB | unlimited | Online support w/ tier levels (live chat & tickets) |
Kinsta | Single-site from $30.00; multi-site from $59.00+ | ~ 25,000 visits | 10GB | 1 | 24/7 online support |
Flywheel | $13.00, $25, $96, $242 | ~ 5,000 visits | 5GB | 1 | 24/7 online support |
WP Engine | $13.00, $20.00, $40.00, $77.00+ | ~ 5,000 visits | 5GB | 1 | 24/7 online support (phone for higher-up plans) |
Presslabs | $27.50, $70, $125, $150, $275+ | ~ 30,000 visits | 30GB | 1 | 24/7 chat and phone |
LiquidWeb | $17.50, $35.83, $72.50, $100.00, $136.67, $273.33, $501.67, $912.50 | unlimited | 15GB | 1 | 24/7 chat and phone |
GoDaddy | $6.99, $9.99, $13.99 | not disclosed | 10GB | 1 | 24/7 online support, chat, phone |
Pagely | $199, $299, $375, $499, $999, $2500 | not disclosed | 30GB | 5 | 24/7 online support |
WPMU DEV | $8.00, $18, $45, $90, $180, $375, $750, $1200+ | unlimited | 10GB | not disclosed | 24/7 online support, chat, forum |
The managed WordPress hosting comparison and reviews
Here’s our comparison and specific recommendations for those looking for the best managed WordPress hosting services out there.
- SiteGround (www.SiteGround.com)
- Bluehost (www.bluehost.com)
- Cloudways (www.cloudways.com)
- Kinsta (www.Kinsta.com)
- Flywheel (www.getflywheel.com)
- WP Engine (www.WPEngine.com)
- Presslabs (www.Presslabs.com)
- LiquidWeb (www.LiquidWeb.com)
- GoDaddy (www.GoDaddy.com)
- Pagely (www.Pagely.com)
- WPMU DEV hosting (premium.wpmudev.org)
1. SiteGround
💸 First year pricing: $2.99, $4.99, $7.99 / month
🔄 Renews at: $17.99, $29.99, $44.99 / month
SiteGround offers the cheapest managed WordPress plans, catering both to bloggers and non-technical people, as well as developers that need advanced features like Git integration and staging areas.
Among their entire offering, the GrowBig and GoGeek plans stand out as the best managed WordPress hosting options. The former is a more affordable setup ($4.99), while the latter is more powerful (less accounts on the server) plus offers “geeky” features for developers and enterprises ($7.99).
Overall, the GoGeek plan is a nice solution for people who want to experiment with the platform on their own, apart from getting all of the standard hosting features that come out the box.
👍 Pros
- Officially recommended by WordPress.org.
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL for all plans.
- Git integration.
- Free PCI compliance (for e-commerce).
- Staging.
- SSD drives.
- CDN included.
- Multiple websites on a single account.
- 24/7 support. Via phone as well.
- Free backup and restore features.
👎 Cons
- Even though the cheapest plan is enticing at $2.99 / mo, it won’t be the best solution for most high-traffic sites.
2. Bluehost
💸 First year pricing: $29.99, $49.99, $89.99, $109.99 / month
🔄 Renews at: $79.99, $109.99, $169.99, $249.99 / month
Bluehost offers several different hosting plans depending on your needs and the type of website that you want to launch. One of the more interesting and powerful ones is their “Cloud” series, which is a fully managed setup.
As part of it, you get unrestricted bandwidth, global edge caching, real-time security updates and backups, a premium web application firewall, and more.
The names of the four plans reflect how many websites they support. So the Cloud 1 supports a single website, while the Cloud 10 supports up to ten websites. The same pattern continues for the Cloud 25 and Cloud 50 plans.
Moreover, Bluehost also guarantees a 100% uptime through the use of redundant servers that are spread across the globe. If anything were to happen to the primary server that your website is running on, the backups would take over instantly until the issue got resolved. They are so confident in this guarantee that they even back it up with cold hard cash. Okay, maybe not cash, but credit. If your website were to ever go down, they’ll credit you 5% of your monthly fee for every 30 minutes of downtime.
💡 Note: If you’re unsure about the Cloud plans and think they might be more heavy-duty than you need, then consider getting started with a classic shared hosting plan (starting from $1.99 per month.). That one also has great onboarding and gives you access to a few of the “managed hosting” features for a fraction of the price. Later on you can upgrade to a higher-up plan if needed.
👍 Pros
- Built-in CDN.
- Ability to choose servers in California, Texas, Virginia, or the Netherlands.
- Up to 10 PHP workers per website (max total PHP workers are capped, depending on the plan).
- 100% network availability.
- Multiple data centers for full redundancy.
- DDoS protection, SSL, and 2FA included.
- 24/7 priority Cloud support.
👎 Cons
- Cannot add custom HTML or PHP.
- No custom API connections.
- Click funnels, drop-shipping websites, marketplace websites (like Amazon or Ebay), and MLS / IDX (real estate or properly listings) are not allowed.
3. Cloudways
💸
: $11.00, $24, $46, $88, up to $1,056 / monthCloudways offers managed WordPress hosting for developers and agencies. This hosting service focuses particularly on performance, coming with packages that bring extensive storage, bandwidth, and RAM. Security is another strength that Cloudways relies on; if you choose this host, you’ll get dedicated firewalls, non-stop real-time monitoring, automated backups, auto healing servers, regular patching, and more.
Cloudways is the hosting service that you should consider if your company works with big amounts of (sensitive) data. You can choose a pricing plan based on your preferred cloud server. You’ll get the cheapest deal with Digital Ocean (Cloudways’ parent company) and Linode, while the most expensive one is on the Amazon server.
👍 Pros
- The prices are actually decent for the multitude of services you get.
- There’s no visitor number limit on pricing plans.
- Each pricing plan allows unlimited websites.
- Dedicated cloud servers.
- User dashboard with 1-click staging and application monitoring.
- Cloudflare Enterprise CDN.
- 24/7 support.
- Advanced caches.
- Unlimited application installation.
- Automated WordPress updates and backups.
👎 Cons
- Support is only provided via live chat and the ticketing system. You need to buy the Advanced and Premium Support add-ons to unlock other support channels.
4. Kinsta
💸
: Single-site from $30.00; multi-site from $59.00Kinsta is a smaller player compared to the other companies on this list, but they’ve quickly earned their spot in the landscape due to the high quality of their hosting platform and an overall WordPress-only focus.
Kinsta is more of a premium solution, but what you get for your investment is a highly optimized platform, ready to take on a large number of visitors, automatically scaling, supporting SSH, WP-CLI, Git, integrating a CDN, and offering many many more perks.
Not only that, but Kinsta has launched two pricing plans that are more affordable for smaller businesses.
👍 Pros
- Powered by Google Cloud Platform and their premium tier network.
- 480 daily uptime checks per site.
- Free CDN for every plan.
- Full HTTP/3 support, which improves performance, security, and reliability.
- Support for Wildcard SSL, SSH, WP-CPI, Git, and more.
- Free website migrations and hack fixes.
- Staging and cloning environment.
- Weekly automatic MySQL database optimizations for your WordPress site.
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Tool visualizes site speed issues so you can fix them.
- Self-healing PHP.
👎 Cons
- The cheapest option is $30.00, significantly more than some of the other options on this list.
- Although you do get access to the Google Cloud Platform for cheap, the lower priced plans have fairly low monthly visit maximums.
5. Flywheel
💸
: $13.00, $25, $96, $242 / monthAlthough a somewhat new player in the managed WordPress hosting space, Flywheel has made a name for themselves very quickly. They’re a great choice for non-developers who want to launch a WordPress site and make sure that it’s going to work with no interruptions.
Potentially great for designers, small business owners, freelancers, bloggers, and all non-technical people in general.
👍 Pros
- Ultra beginner-friendly interface and easy to use.
- Data centers around the world – your website will perform well no matter where your audience is.
- Built-in caching and automatic backups.
- 24/7 live chat customer support on all plans (and phone support for the highest plan).
- Free CDN and SSL on all plans.
- Staging sites on all plans.
- Nightly backups (each backup is stored for 30 days).
- Some relatively inexpensive pricing for those just getting started with managed hosting.
👎 Cons
- Multisite is not available until you get to the third plan.
- Phone support is only provided on the highest-level Agency plan (and on Custom plans).
- Overage charges if you exceed your plan limits (though they are reasonable – $1 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors).
6. WP Engine
💸
: $13.00, $20.00, $40.00, $77.00 / month; custom pricing available for bigger setups🔄 Renews at: $15.00, $30.00, $59.00, $115.00 / month
Managed WordPress hosting is something that WP Engine has offered ever since the company was created, and it’s what originally put them on the map among other firms more established at the time.
At the moment they are getting a lot of press because of their active lawsuit against WordPress co-founder, Matt Mullenweg (and the WordPress.com parent company, Automattic). But legal drama aside, they offer some good managed solutions that are somewhere in the middle of the road between beginner-friendly, and developer-friendly WordPress hosting.
There is one important anti-feature to be aware of though. It’s actually part of what kicked off the whole battle between WP Engine and Mr. Mullenweg, and it’s that WP Engine puts severe restrictions on a key WordPress feature – revisions. It disables them by default. You can custom request them from support, but even if you get your request approved, the most you’ll be allowed is five (with three to start).
👍 Pros
- CDN included for all plans.
- Great scalability – suitable for websites rapidly growing in traffic.
- Free automated migration.
- 24/7 chat support for all plans. 24/7 phone support starts with the “Professional” plan.
- Free access to the Genesis Framework and over 35 StudioPress WordPress themes.
- GIT and SFTP access.
- EverCache® for better performance.
- Included SSL certificates.
👎 Cons
- High overage costs, even up to $1 per every 1000 visits.
- It’s reported that WP Engine tends to modify native WordPress code quite heavily, making it hard to move to another host in case you need to do so in the future.
- The add-ons for options like WordPress Multisite, geotargeting, and additional sites can get pricey and some aren’t even available until you reach higher plans.
7. Presslabs
💸
: $27.50, $70, $125, $150, $275 / monthPresslabs offers high-performance managed hosting for personal use, agencies, and publishers with website networks and web development clients. There are many varied pricing plans to choose from. They are divided into five series: Publisher, WooCommerce, Professional series, Agency, and Enterprise.
Regardless of which plan from whichever series you choose, you will get an incredibly fast, secure, and reliable hosting environment that’s completely managed for you. Presslabs is meant for personal site owners, publishers, and agencies with rapid growth in mind. In short, Presslabs customers expect tons of traffic in the near future and don’t want any hiccups along the way. However, that performance does come at a steep price once you hit the Professional series of plans.
On the extreme other end, there is also a unique Developer plan, which is completely free. It offers an excellent environment for workflows, along with plenty of custom tools.
It seems like Presslabs makes the most sense for developers and extremely fast-growing publishers. Having said that, we’re not factoring in the Developer Plan in this comparison since it doesn’t seem to qualify as a managed WordPress hosting plan.
👍 Pros
- Collaboration features for managing your agency or publishing team.
- Git-driven environment for development.
- 24/7 email and phone support. The general support is during normal business hours, but Presslabs has emergency email and phone lines.
- Free SSL certificates.
- An included CDN with HTTP/2.
- Incremental backups every 15 minutes.
- Staging environments.
- A beautiful and powerful dashboard powered by ReactJS Technology.
- A Developer Plan is provided at no cost.
👎 Cons
- The pricing for some of the plan categories makes it too cost prohibitive for many businesses.
- Even after paying $599 per month you still must pay extra for additional page views.
8. LiquidWeb
💸
: $17.50, $35.83, $72.50, $100.00, $136.67, $273.33, $501.67, $912.50 / monthLiquidWeb caters to agencies and online professionals with multiple websites. It has everything from Cloud VPS to custom solutions, but the WordPress managed hosting starts with a plan that supports one site and 15GB of SSD storage. With solid speed, security, and customer support, LiquidWeb should be considered by larger enterprises and those who need quality managed hosting for several websites.
👍 Pros
- Plans that support anywhere from one to 250 sites. You can also get a custom price for more sites.
- Daily, automated website backups.
- Staging areas to test your sites.
- Free SSL.
- Development tools including Git and SSH.
- 24/7 customer support through chat, email, and phone.
- A fairly reasonable monthly price to host 10 websites.
- Unlimited traffic, with notifications when usage rises quickly.
- Plugin performance monitor that tracks performance, page weight, and load times.
👎 Cons
- LiquidWeb has some history with downtime issues.
9. GoDaddy
💸
: $6.99, $9.99, $13.99 / month🔄 Renews at: $38.97, $50.97, $68.97
GoDaddy is really expanding deeper into the WordPress space every day. Or at least it seems like it. The company has been releasing many new for-WordPress products lately, and they seem like they really have a grasp on what’s needed for a more traffic-heavy WordPress website. Their managed WordPress hosting plans offer good server performance, with modern technologies and additional security features.
👍 Pros
- The second cheapest host on the list.
- NVMe storage for better performance.
- Backups ranging from weekly on the tier one plan to daily on the higher plans.
- Automatic daily malware scans.
- Airo™ site optimizer.
- WP-CLI, SSH and SFTP access.
👎 Cons
- You need to be careful going through their checkout process / shopping cart. There’s a lot of upselling going on … for things you might not necessarily need. Most of those additional offers are enabled by default.
- Allegedly, GoDaddy is not the easiest host to leave if you ever need to.
- To get the cheapest promo rate, you have to pay for three years up front, and the renewal rates are considerably higher.
10. Pagely
💸
: $199, $299, $375, $499, $999, $2500 / monthAs of the last update to this article, Pagely seems to be a more developer-centered solution among the companies presented on this list. It’s also the fastest of the managed WordPress hosts.
First off, they’re now using Amazon’s servers, which gives them access to many of Amazon’s advanced features. For instance, they let you take advantage of things like SSH, staging, Git integration, WP-CLI and more. You also get the power and privacy of a VPS. That being said, Pagely is also much more expensive than most managed WordPress hosts.
👍 Pros
- Real-time malware monitoring.
- Advanced developer features.
- Automated daily backups.
- Built-in redundancy.
- Great scalability.
- You can use nearly any plugin or theme you want.
- Each plan supports a large number of sites.
👎 Cons
- No phone support. You’d think that for $2,500 per month you could call someone.
- The highest overall prices on this list – starting from $199 / month.
11. WPMU DEV hosting
💸
: $8.00, $18, $45, $90, $180, $375, $750, $1200 / monthWith WPMU DEV hosting, you can choose between two pricing models based on your needs. Either buy a membership to the whole WPMU DEV platform, or get only the hosting service that you require.
If you decide to go with their membership based plan, you’ll get access to a number of tools and plugins. And, chiefly, you’ll get $10-$30 worth of credit towards your hosting plan. Just as an example, your $30 credit that’s part of the Agency membership allows you to use up either three Bronze hosting plans, or one Silver plan with no additional payments.
WPMU DEV is a new player to the WordPress hosting landscape. They provide a wide range of premium services, plugins and themes, delivered as part of a single membership and meant to make managing and growing your WordPress website easier.
On the hosting front, they offer a fully managed setup that runs on a VPS platform. Every hosting plan gets its virtual machine with containerized server resources (this includes RAM, SSD storage, a vCPU, etc.).
Each setup gives you a choice of one of eight data centers all over the globe, good security features (WPMU DEV’s own Defender and Automate services), object and page caching, CDN, backups, staging environments, and automated migration tools.
👍 Pros
- Great security features to keep your site safe.
- A really nice UI, which contributes to an overall great user experience.
- Daily backups handled for you (with 30 days storage).
- 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors and NVMe storage.
- All plans come with unlimited visitor numbers.
- Staging environment included.
- Compatible with Elementor, WooCommerce, WPBakery, Astra, Elegant Themes, GeneratePress, Visual Composer, and Cloudflare.
- Multiple support options available: big knowledge base, a members forum, 24/7 live chat, ticket support.
👎 Cons
- The pricing structure can be a bit confusing.
What is managed WordPress hosting?
Managed WordPress hosting means that hosts handle basic hosting administrative tasks, such as installing WordPress, security, speed, WordPress updates, daily backups, website uptime, and scalability.
But hold off on the WordPress hosting companies thing for a moment. Let’s talk 1/4 mile drag racing.
If you wish, you can drag race with your everyday stock Honda Civic.
But if you watched The Fast and the Furious, you know that in order to get some real good 1/4 mile times out of it, you need to get specific work done to that Civic.
… Get a tricked out turbo charger, a tuned chip, better tires, a better tuned gearbox that puts the power to the wheels quicker (or whatever, I’m no expert here).
So at the end of the day, you still have the Civic, but it’s been optimized to perform at its best in a 1/4 mile drag race.
WordPress hosting is somewhat the same.
Under the hood (no pun intended), a web server is a web server, and it’s usually built with the same components. Every car has an engine, some wheels, and all the other usual parts. But it’s how these parts are set up, and what kind of specific parts they are, which makes all the difference. It’s what makes a car purpose-built for one thing or the other.
While all web hosts can handle WordPress, the best managed WordPress hosting has been optimized for WordPress websites specifically.
More than that, it usually features some side-services revolving around things like expert support, automatic updates, backups, and so on. It’s like a concierge WordPress hosting package, where you not only get the hosting, but also everything else that will enrich your experience further.
Essentially, having your website hosted on a managed WordPress hosting platform gives you the freedom of not having to worry about the technical stuff, and simply focus on the true essence of your work online – running your business, publishing content, selling your products and what-evs.
What’s the difference between shared hosting and managed hosting?
Here are some of the things that you usually don’t have to worry about if you’re on a managed WordPress hosting plan vs. its shared hosting for WordPress counterpart:
Managed
- Automatic site/WordPress updates.
- Automatic daily/weekly backups.
- Built-in speed optimization through caching and CDN networks.
- Built-in security mechanisms optimized for WordPress.
- Built-in database optimization for WordPress.
- Scalability optimizations (servers capable of handling more traffic if need be).
- Server settings optimized specifically for WordPress software.
Shared
- You need to do updates manually with most hosts.
- Backups only available through third-party plugins.
- Speed optimization only available through third-party plugins.
- General security mechanisms on the server itself. Added security through third-party plugins.
- No additional database optimization.
- You’re usually limited to a set number of visits. Your website can go offline for a while if you go over it.
- Set to work with a range of different platforms and website scripts.
Most importantly, with managed WordPress hosting, you get access to expert support (preferably in a 24/7 manner and via phone) that’s always ready to solve any issue you might have. With shared hosting plans, on the other hand, you have no certainty that the person on the other end will be knowledgeable about WordPress and/or able to solve a specific problem related to the platform.
In short, all of what you can see in the left column of the table above is managed on the host’s end … that’s where the name managed WordPress hosting comes from.
When do you need managed WordPress hosting?
Okay, so let’s answer the big question: Why and when do you need managed WordPress hosting?
Use the best managed WordPress hosting companies for:
- ✅ Websites that are growing rapidly.
- ✅ Websites experiencing spikes in traffic.
- ✅ Individuals, bloggers, and businesses without much technical knowledge that just want for their WordPress website to work with no hassle.
- ✅ Business websites that can’t afford to be offline.
- ✅ Website owners who value great support that responds fast and can solve any issue.
- ✅ Businesses looking for growth, and everyone who wants their hosting platform to be able to grow with them.
With all of the above in mind, it’s also important to know some downsides usually related to managed WordPress hosting.
Keep in mind, though, that the things listed below are not deal-breakers by any means. They are just the realities of managed WordPress hosting, and potentially what makes this kind of hosting unique and optimized for the WordPress platform specifically:
- Usually more expensive than shared hosting. As we talked about a while ago, you can get a reliable shared hosting plan for $5 a month. With managed hosting, it’s usually in the $15-$50 range (or more).
- Most of the time, you can only run WordPress sites on this kind of hosting. This is due to the architecture of the server itself and its settings. However, for 99% of the users this won’t be an issue, for obvious reasons.
- Some of your favorite plugins might be banned by the host. Due to the optimizations made by a given managed WordPress hosting company, some plugins can be banned from the servers. Most commonly, this is done to prevent those plugins from slowing down the server, straining the database, interfering with caching, making too many HTTP requests, and so on. For instance, WP Engine’s list of disallowed plugins is a good reference here.
- You have less control. If you enjoy taking a look into the WordPress core every once in a while to fix this or that, you might find this difficult to do with some managed WordPress hosts. The environment tends to be more closed down in some areas (although specific modifications are possible … just not all of them).
Found your ideal managed WordPress host?
If you’re still on the fence with which managed WordPress hosting provider you should use, here’s the comparison table again to make the decision easier:
Host | Price / mo. | Traffic / mo. | Disk space | No. of sites allowed | Support |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
SiteGround | $2.99, $4.99, $7.99 | ~ 10,000 visits | 10GB | 1 | 24/7 chat and phone |
Bluehost | $29.99, $49.99, $89.99, $109.99 | ~200,000 visits | 10GB | 1 | 24/7 chat and phone |
Cloudways | $11.00, $24, $46, $88, up to $1,056 | unlimited | 25GB | unlimited | Online support w/ tier levels (live chat & tickets) |
Kinsta | Single-site from $30.00; multi-site from $59.00+ | ~ 25,000 visits | 10GB | 1 | 24/7 online support |
Flywheel | $13.00, $25, $96, $242 | ~ 5,000 visits | 5GB | 1 | 24/7 online support |
WP Engine | $13.00, $20.00, $40.00, $77.00+ | ~ 5,000 visits | 5GB | 1 | 24/7 online support (phone for higher-up plans) |
Presslabs | $27.50, $70, $125, $150, $275+ | ~ 30,000 visits | 30GB | 1 | 24/7 chat and phone |
LiquidWeb | $17.50, $35.83, $72.50, $100.00, $136.67, $273.33, $501.67, $912.50 | unlimited | 15GB | 1 | 24/7 chat and phone |
GoDaddy | $6.99, $9.99, $13.99 | not disclosed | 10GB | 1 | 24/7 online support, chat, phone |
Pagely | $199, $299, $375, $499, $999, $2500 | not disclosed | 30GB | 5 | 24/7 online support |
WPMU DEV | $8.00, $18, $45, $90, $180, $375, $750, $1200+ | unlimited | 10GB | not disclosed | 24/7 online support, chat, forum |
I hope this WordPress hosting comparison will come in handy to you while looking for a managed WordPress host. Feel free to comment and let us know your opinions about any of the hosts featured here.
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Agreed. I would say the best I’ve used (and i’ve used siteground, InMotion, Pagely, WpEngine)
Lightning base support and performance fantastic!
Siteground were not bad but the CPU limits were painful
Yes, absolutely right! +1 for Lightning base!
You missed ecomlane, great managed super fast dedicated servers. Been with them for just over a year, and I’m extremely happy with them!