Why Managed WordPress Hosting Matters
Unless they are very techy, most people upload their websites to a hosting company and proceed to forget about their sites, thinking, “My site is working – so it must be okay.” But there is a big difference between the quality of the service provided by shared hosting companies and those of Managed WordPress hosting companies. Most hosting companies host websites built on a variety of different platforms. So those companies have to configure their servers with generalized settings that allow for the broad needs of this group of disparate websites.
Managed WordPress hosting companies can optimize their servers to the exact specifications needed for WordPress. Then they continually customize, enhance, and tweak their platform’s servers to have the configurations that get the best performance for WordPress sites.
Beyond taking care of server requirements, managed WordPress hosting companies often provide additional features such as scanning their servers for malware and removing it as they find it. These companies stay in touch with Automatic, so they are the first to know when WordPress core updates are available or if a plugin you are using gets hacked, allowing them to deal with those things immediately, keeping our sites in the best working order.
Another cool feature provided by most managed WordPress hosting companies is providing their customers with staging sites. These are extra sites that you can use to test your changes before uploading and overwriting your live site.
They also provide SSL certificates, which show visitors who see HTTPS:// that the information to and from your site is encrypted, which provides security for you and your site’s visitors. Other excellent options are one-click installs for any other websites you want to host, firewalls for protection, and CDNs (content delivery networks), which improve your site’s load speed by serving the information from the fastest locations.
Most shared hosting companies offer a variety of these services too, the difference is that you would have to deal with a cPanel interface to implement, configure and manage the work yourself. Managed hosts do the heavy lifting for you, so their backend interfaces are simple, intuitive, and easy to navigate, which means less hassle and more time to focus on your business.
Do you need Managed WordPress Hosting?
While managed WordPress hosting is usually more expensive, If you’re running a WordPress website, the short answer is yes, you do need managed hosting, especially if you are running an e-commerce site.
Not only will your website run faster, but it will also be safer from hackers. The increased speed of your website will help with your SEO. One of the best things about managed hosts is they provide you access to staging sites. When you need to test a new plugin or troubleshoot a conflict, you can create a one-click staging site and test the changes there, making sure your changes work. Testing first is preferable to finding out something is wrong when your site goes down because you made a simple error. Managed WordPress hosts create daily backups making it easy to restore your site if it goes down.
With all these advantages, you will still be the one dealing with your website and the hosting company when things go wrong. Most of our clients at New Tricks have decided they are ready to have someone else provide all their website needs. So a long time ago, we stepped in to do just that.
New Tricks Offers Hosting, Maintenance and Support Services
We provide WordPress hosting, maintenance, and support for over 150 websites at New Tricks. Do we host these sites in our basement? No way! We have teamed up with the experts at Pressable, a Managed WordPress host company owned by Automattic, the company that created WordPress. We think Pressable offers some of the best website hosting around. Yes, you could get an account on Pressable yourself, but if you have trouble with your website, you’d still be the one to have to interact with their support team rather than having someone who can take care of those situations for you.
Not only do we offer free SSL, daily backups, CDN, and staging sites, but we also take our website management a step further by keeping your theme and all of your plugins up to date. In addition, we provide general website support on a retainer basis which is included with your monthly plan.
Let’s say you want to add a new blog post or page to your site or change around some of the words or menu items. With our hosting plan, you can submit a support ticket, and we will make those changes to your site for you, allowing you to focus on your business while we focus on the technical aspects of your site. Beyond website updates, we also provide free monthly reports that include your traffic, SEO rankings, keyword tracking, show the plugins and themes that got updated that month.
Third-Party Support Services for Designers and Developers
We not only provide our hosting and maintenance services to individuals for their websites, but we also offer this service to web professional freelancers and agencies who don’t have the time or inclination to provide ongoing care and support for the websites they build. In addition to ongoing hosting and support, our professional partners can contact us when they need to start a new website. We will create a new WordPress website on Pressable, preloaded with your desired starter plugins including Elementor, ready for you to log in and build out the site. You can be confident that your websites are safe and performing optimally and know we are there for you if you or your clients ever need assistance with websites hosted and maintained by us.
Are you interested in finding out more? Contact us today!
