Managed vs Unmanaged Hosting: Which Solution is Best for You?

You are ready to get your website online. You have got your assets together and some great content written up. All that is left is finding a hosting company, uploading your stuff via FTP, and you are good to go, right? Maybe not so fast. When it comes to hosting, there is a variety of options. It’s not a matter of signing up for a hosting plan.

Hosting offers a variety of packages for different businesses and their requirements. One size doesn’t fit all, so let’s discuss some important choices you need to make when signing up for a hosting plan: managed vs unmanaged. Both have advantages and disadvantages depending on what you want to accomplish. For example, some people like managed solutions because they want all the support they can get. And for some people, an unmanaged solution is a way to go because they want the freedom to create the development environment they are after.

Let’s explore the difference between managed and unmanaged hosting and know which is the best option for your website.

What is Managed Hosting?

With managed hosting, you will get many services, such as a pre-installed server operating system and other software you need to run your website. It comes with excellent speed and more security.

Managed hosting comes with automatic/managed backups to keep your data safe. In addition, it comes with automatic updates to save you time to continue your work while your site is automatically updated.

When you choose a managed hosting plan, your hosting provider will be responsible for server setup, operating system, pre-installed applications and control panel. For example, if you have a WP website, choosing a managed WordPress hosting will be the best choice as you will get pre-installed WordPress with hardware and additional software built for wordpress.

Usually, managed hosting comes with website monitoring, malware scanning and top-notch support by your hosting provider for every problem.

Managed hosting is simply a plan that comes with tons of services compared to unmanaged hosting. Instead of implementing features by yourself, your hosting provider will look after everything, and you can focus on the growth of your site.

Pros

• One of the main advantages of managed hosting is your hosting provider will look after everything to save your time so that you can focus on your business growth.
• You don’t need any technical expertise to manage your site.
• It provides excellent 24/7 customer support. You can contact the team anytime to get the issue resolved.
• Your website will become fast and perform better.

Cons

• The only disadvantage of managed hosting is that it’s expensive.

What is Unmanaged Hosting?

On the other hand, unmanaged hosting is a very affordable solution. It comes with very few additional services and features, such as rebooting the servers, replacing the failed components and maintaining the network. However, it does not support additional software, nor will you get pre-installed software for your website. Still, it does provide you with a pre-installed operating system, and then you will have to install different pieces of software like PHP and Apache manually. Moreover, you will also have to install WordPress by yourself.

Some hosting providers don’t even provide a control panel. In this case, you will have to set up everything manually.

As the name implies, unmanaged hosting does not provide any management on your server. This solution can be time-consuming, and you will need technical knowledge and some experience to manage your server.

Pros

• It gives you absolute freedom to do anything as if the server is on your computer rather than having everything spoon-fed to you.
• It is a cheap solution, perfect for small businesses or anyone with a low budget.
• It lets you customize everything as per your requirements.

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Cons

• Automatic backups and common addons will cost you additional money.
• If you’re a beginner, you may face enormous difficulties setting up your servers.
• It is time-consuming as you have to do everything by yourself.

Detailed Benefits of Managed Hosting

We have outlined some points that illustrate the benefits of managed hosting in detail below:

Automatic Backups

Backups are critical to running a website. Without backups, you risk losing your sight entirely if disaster strikes. Even if you have implemented the best security on your site, it is not 100% protected. If an incident occurs, you can lose your website in no time. In this case, the web host will be able to restore your website from backup and make it run again.

While choosing a web hosting company, ensure that it provides daily automated backup.

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Technical Support

Technical support is an influential component of hosting providers. If you ever need help, you may want to know that there will always be a team of experts ready to respond and solve your issue on time.

Before signing up for a specific hosting, you can determine how good a provider’s support will be by contacting their team via live chat, email, or phone call to see how they respond. If you get efficient answers from the pre-sales team, it’s a good sign that the technical support will offer a similar service.

Maintenance

A fully managed service takes care of everything behind the scenes to keep a website up and running via daily monitoring and maintenance. Such tasks include performance monitoring, keeping the operating system up to date and customizing the server according to your requirements on demand. It also helps install third-party applications, solve technical issues, and offer recommendations on improving your site’s performance. A good hosting plan should include the ability to respond quickly to any problem. It should also include a website migration service to help you move your website from your current provider if you have one.

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Security

Website security is as important as support when it comes to web hosting. A fully managed hosting solution should have advanced security features, such as installing a local firewall as standard, a pre-installed SSL certificate, regularly scanning your website for malware and viruses, and blocking unauthorized users to log into the website’s control panel.

Another reason for choosing a managed hosting solution is if your website is running on an older version of the software that can’t be upgraded or has other special requirements. With a managed service, the host should be able to configure a server to your liking. When looking for providers, it’s a good idea to ask if support is offered for third-party software. If you are using any specialized software from a third party and need any help with technical uncertainty, you can request help from your hosting company.

Which Option Is Best for Your Website?

Everyone has different needs for their website; for example: if a low budget is a crucial factor for one user, that won’t necessarily be true for other users. Therefore after the comparison of managed and unmanaged hosting, the main question should be which one is the best for me? Not which one is the best.

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Managed hosting is an excellent choice for beginners. Even if you’re not a complete beginner and don’t have enough skills to set up everything, we would recommend going for managed hosting. Not only that, if you want to save your time and need to focus more on the business aspects, managed hosting is a great pick.

On the other hand, if you have the technical knowledge and want the freedom to set up and customize everything according to your needs, unmanaged hosting is the right choice for you. Additionally, it is also a good choice for those on budget.

Now you have probably a better understanding of managed and unmanaged hosting, their pros and cons and how they operate, you can decide which one is right for you.

Final Thoughts

Deciding on a hosting plan is one of the essential things in your business journey. All the information above should help you determine whether you want to go with managed or unmanaged hosting.

Things like the level of technical expertise, the size of the business, and the budget all are a factor in the final decision.

AEserver is a well-known service provider in UAE for its tremendous speed and security. You get 24/7 customer support from our team. It comes with various hosting plans, so you can pick the one that fits your needs. Remember, if you try a specific hosting plan that isn’t working for you, you can always switch plans. In the long run, it’s easier to make the best decision before you get started.