A complete review of the 7 best managed WordPress hosting in 2022.
WordPress has been the leading content management system for the blogosphere since it first launched in 2003. With over 60 million websites running on WordPress, it is no surprise that many of them are managed by a hosting service.
Managed WordPress hosting allows you to focus on your business instead of having to worry about server security and backups.
In this article, I will review 7 top managed WordPress hosting companies with their pros and cons. I will also share the advantages and disadvantages of managed hosting as it pertains to your business so you can decide which one is best for your website.
What is a managed WordPress hosting service?
A managed WordPress hosting service is a type of web hosting that provides and maintains your website on the Internet. This includes providing servers for storage, security updates, backups, an admin panel to manage content or themes without technical knowledge, etc.
Also, managed WordPress hosting uses their own CDN that helps to reduce the load on your host and provide a great server-level caching.
Advantages of managed WordPress hosting
There are many advantages of WordPress-managed hosting. I have listed some below.
- Speed is often better than shared hosting.
- Managed hosts will take care of all the technical aspects for you, which means less time spent learning or worrying about how they work.
- A managed host can help you with migrating or transferring your WordPress site.
- A managed host handles things like updates, security patches, and daily backups.
- Managed hosting is an all-exclusive package for your WordPress site which usually includes security updates, server maintenance, and other features that you typically need to purchase separately in the shared-hosted environment.
- A managed host will be able to scale up or down with demand so there are no worries about overages on bandwidth or CPU resources from sudden traffic spikes.
- Managed WordPress hosting provides expert customer support.
- A managed host can help you diagnose and fix problems.
- When things go wrong with your WordPress site, the hosting company is there for you.
- A managed host will be more knowledgeable about WordPress and the various plugins that are available for it, which can help you better tweak your site.
- This type of hosting provides automatic updates.
- You will not get any downtime issues.
- You can focus on your blog instead of focusing on server maintenance, backup & security updates.
Disadvantages of managed WordPress hosting:
Limitations: Some services might not provide enough control over what happens with your website when a disaster hits (firewall breaches).
This can cause problems during times like where sites could become inaccessible if they’re left without protection after a cyber attack. They may also lack backup generators in case of power outages.
Expensive: Managed hosts are often more expensive for what they offer, usually it costs a lot more than a shared hosting package. On average, a WordPress managed hosting package costs over $10-$30 per month where most of the shared hosting starts from $2-$3 per month.
Identify what you require for a site to be hosted on WordPress
First, you need a domain name and hosting space that is self-hosted or a third-party host. Then you need WordPress installation files, usually from WordPress.org (the origin).
The user will need to install the software on their own site before uploading content to it. The process depends on your hosting service provider and what type of account you have. Some examples below:
- If the user is using a hosting service like GoDaddy, they will need to install WordPress by uploading it via the FTP client software or File Manager in their control panel.
- For shared hosting services hosted with Bluehost, for example, users can go through the account cPanel and select Files, then upload the WordPress installation files. You can read how to install WordPress on Bluehost.
- If you use a third-party host, such as Wix or Weebly, they will need to go through their own process for installation and uploading content.
- If you use a managed WordPress hosting, you will need to contact their hosting service provider for help with installation. But top-rated WordPress hosting providers allow you to install WordPress directly from your managed control panel.
7 Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers
1. WP Engine
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting company that offers you to get your site up and running in minutes with its easy-to-use tools.
WP Engine offers a range of features that power your WordPress stack, including automatic site updates and comprehensive monitoring. With DDoS protection and expert support from the engineers who built WP-Engine. You can say goodbye to slow loading times or site downtime after hosting your domain to WP Engine. You will never have an issue with this host.
The site transfer wizard of WP Engine makes it simple to migrate any website from an old host to WP Engine, The process is fairly painless. It also includes a continuous website monitoring feature so that inevitable problem can be detected and fixed within a short time. For the peace of mind that comes with knowing your reign is in expert hands, there’s no better investment than WP Engine hosting.
Besides, WP Engine is one of the few hosting companies that offer SSL certificates at no cost when you buy their managed product (and it’s free with any plan).
The uptime is fantastic! You never went more than a few hours without your site being up, even when performing large updates or software upgrades on the server.
One thing I really appreciated about WP Engine was its “MySQL on demand” feature. It’s really easy to request additional resources for your database and caching memory, too.
The customer support is excellent! The team is available 24/365 so there are no worries of downtimes affecting your business.
As soon as you sign up with WP Engine, an agent will reach out via email from their Happiness Team to introduce you to the product and answer any questions.
Pros:
- Get your site up and running more quickly, with less stress.
- Higher conversions from a faster site.
- Gain access to a library (StudioPress library) of expertly designed themes that are simple to customize.
- Enjoy 24/7 monitoring for any potential security breaches.
- Automatic updates and backups for hassle-free management.
- Optimizing your site to be fast, efficient, and reliable.
- Taking care of your site automatically.
Cons:
- WP Engine provides excellent security and scalability, but it’s a high-cost solution for small budgets. If you need budget hosting that can scale up as your blog grows, then WP Engine may not be a good fit for you.
Price: WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting starts at $300/Year. With this cost, you will get all features of WP Engine for a single site hosting. It also has a SCALE plan that can support up to 30 WordPress sites if you want it to scale with your business. This starts at a yearly price of $2900.
2. Flywheel
Flywheel is another popular managed WordPress hosting service. It is very easy to use and has been really reliable for us so far, with no downtime or anything of that sort. So, you can move your personal site over to them with little time.
The features are great and it is super easy to use, even for someone who is not very tech-savvy. So you cannot wait until you have time to transfer everything over so that you can use Flywheel as your host completely!
Flywheel really takes the cake with their performance on speed tests. It is really fast which is exactly what you need if you often make changes or updates on your site via FTP because there aren’t any delays when uploading files onto WordPress sites hosted by them (at least from my experience so far!)
The customer support of Flywheel has been great so far. They definitely have phone support which is awesome because you just need to call them and ask for help rather than having to wait on an email response. Basically, this company has been amazing from start to finish.
Overall, I am really happy with Flywheel and would recommend them to anyone looking for a WordPress hosting service.
Pros:
- Automatic daily backup and one-click restore.
- Get your website up and running in minutes.
- Satisfy your customers with lightning-fast load times.
- Be confident in site security and uptime.
- You can add a CDN to your site with just one click.
- Your sites will fly!
Cons:
- Flywheel hosting is expensive.
- Flywheel website hosting has slow loading speeds for your site when you first load it up in a browser window. This issue can be resolved by running a WordPress cache plugin. I would suggest WP Rocket.
Price: Flywheel has the most competitive pricing in the industry. Its TINY hosting plan costs $150/year for a single site hosting. This package includes 5GB of storage and 5000 monthly visitors with all features except some. The good thing is that if you buy its one-year plan, you will get 2 months of free hosting.
3. Bluehost
Bluehost is a trusted name in the hosting industry with 99.9% uptime, server-grade security, built-in scalability for a surge of seasonal traffic, 24/7 tech support, and an army of search engine optimization professionals.
The scalability options offered by Bluehost allow you to easily accommodate any kind of growth without having to worry about how it might affect your server performance. It is expertise in web hosting with security features, along with the flexibility to use your desired CMS.
Bluehost makes it easy to create blogs, sites, or stores by automatically setting up WordPress and WooCommerce just as you need them. It offers an exclusive SiteLock malware scanning feature that blocks harmful scripts like SQL injection before they can ruin your site’s functionality.
It also offers free SSL certificates for your site so that all data is encrypted when transmitted between browsers and servers. This ensures the protection of passwords, credit card numbers, and other personal information.
Also, they offer scalable plans that are perfect if your site is starting out small but will only grow into something bigger in the future.
Bluehost provides excellent customer support for any issues you may have during your time on their servers. With around-the-clock customer service and unlimited chat support, you’ll be able to get any help you need within a few minutes.
Pros:
- 100% uptime guarantee.
- Fast and secure site hosting.
- No risk of losing data or customer info.
- Maximum speed and efficiency to your site, with custom caching.
- Protection from Web Application Firewall (WAF), DDoS, brute force attack protection, bot blocking.
- Test new design or copy without affecting the current website in a staging area.
- SSD storage for quick delivery of content.
- Daily backups mean you can restore lost data, etc.
- CDN of 200 global locations storing and quickly delivering content.
Cons:
- No control over caching or performance settings.
- You cannot use a custom domain name (unless you’re paying for its premium plan).
Price: Bluehost has three managed WordPress hosting plans. The BUILD plan costs $9.95/month with an annual commitment, the GROW plan costs $14.95 per month and the SCALE plan costs $27.95 per month. If you want to just start, you can choose its BUILD plan that is suitable for a single site with 50000 monthly visitors and 20 GB storage. With this plan, you will also get free SSL, CDN, daily backup, malware removal, and more features.
4. WPX
WPX is a managed WordPress hosting. It is good for security, which includes a web application firewall (WAF) that protects your site from common hacking attempts such as brute force attacks or DDoS.
There is also protection against bot blocking to stop spammy sites from loading up your site. The WPX hosting also provides a backup system that saves your data daily, weekly, and monthly for up to 28 days in case of an unforeseen event such as hardware failure or human error.
Finally, there is the malware scan which checks all uploaded files against sites known to host malicious content. This is to make sure you do not unknowingly upload any malware to your site.
Their customer support works 24/365 and they have a super-fast chat which you can use if you need help with anything related to hosting or design, including WordPress installation, troubleshooting plugins or themes, setting up email accounts, and more.
So If you are looking for state-of-the-art SEO hosting on a budget, then wpx host provides the perfect solution.
Pros:
- Peace of mind with 99.95% uptime guarantee.
- Free malware scanning and removal.
- Unlimited migration.
- High-speed custom CDN with 26 global edge locations.
- 24/7/364 live chat support.
- Free SSLs + staging areas.
Cons:
- The servers are not as fast as some of their competitors.
Price: WPX Hosting provides three different plans. The BUSINESS plan costs $20.83/month when you pay yearly. With this price, you can host up to 5 sites and get 10 GB storage space to store data on the server and 100GB bandwidth per month with all features including custom CDN. If it does not satisfy you, you can choose another one.
5. Kinsta
Kinsta is one of the most popular hosting providers as a managed WordPress hosting. Kinsta provides a managed server so you do not need to worry about installing and maintaining various software stacks on your own.
Kinsta was built from the ground up with scalability in mind. Scalable infrastructure and intelligent staging environments allow us to offer enterprise-level features that would be great for all levels of businesses.
The major benefit with Kinsta is that it is much more than just “hosting.” You will get help from expert engineers at all hours to help you with any problems that may arise and ensure your site is running efficiently.
So it is such a managed WP hosting platform that includes immediate client support, 24/hr monitoring, and proactive security defenses to keep your site protected.
It has been used with high-security protection like Kinsta’s WordPress firewall with AWS Shield. It also offers a few other premium features like the ability to run multiple sites.
Kinsta team also offers free site migration which is always a huge plus. It also has a built-in CDN, free SSL certificate, and SSH access with Kinsta’s “Krush.”
Overall, the site is fully managed so you can easily set up your WordPress blog or website with no technical skills required. You will not need to worry about updates because the Kinsta team takes care of that for you.
Pros:
- One of the most powerful hosting solutions for WordPress.
- It is able to protect the site from DDoS attacks.
- Daily automatic full site backup with an additional backup.
- Instantly, site repair and restoration by an expert team.
- Google Cloud Platform as its foundation.
- Built-in CDN with 25 global locations.
- SSH access is only permitted via SFTP or FTPS encryption protocols.
- Dedicated support team who will help you solve any problems 24/hours a day, every day.
Cons:
- The most expensive hosting solution for WordPress.
- There’s no free trial.
Price: Kinsta has 10 hosting plans. The STARTER plan costs $30 per month for one site. With this pricing plan, you will get 10GB disk space, 25000 monthly visitors with free SSL and CDN, and more features. Don’t worry, you can upgrade to any plan at any time according to your website’s traffic and resources.
6. Nexcess
Nexcess is one of the most popular WP-managed hosting companies for WordPress sites. It has nicely planned every package with enough bandwidth limit, disk space, and features.
Nexcess hosting has a lot of features for those looking for an all-in-one solution for WordPress, Woocommerce, and cloud hosting. However, there are many other hosts that offer just as much for less.
It offers near-instant asset caching that makes it easy to load small & medium resource websites, even the largest resource of websites. Also, it has an intuitive dashboard that makes managing your site a breeze from setting up SSL, to installing plugins and themes and many more.
Nexcess also offers high-end site security features to protect your site from hackers and unwanted malicious/script access. It also provides daily data/file backup that ensures you never lose any of your content or data by storing it in multiple servers and locations worldwide.
Moreover, you will get a single-click auto-scaling feature which is good for when the site traffic spikes or goes down. Also, it has an image lazy loading feature that images on the fly before they are served makes for a faster experience for your visitors and better load times as well.
Nexcess hosting has a WordPress caching plugin feature in all of their packages which is pretty cool. This can help improve page loading time by storing static copies of your pages.
With any package of Nexcess, you will get premium tools including Visual Compare, WP Merge, iThemes Security Pro, iThemes Sync, TinyPNG, and more. These will reduce your cost of being purchased separately.
It also offers a low-priced hosting service that is perfect for small businesses and new bloggers who are just starting out. The price varies depending on the features you need, but it can be an affordable option if you do not want to spend too much money upfront while still getting reliable hosting.
Pros:
- It has a built-in CDN with 22 locations
- The customer support is super first to inquiries within 24 hours (in most cases).
- Built with PHP latest version, MySQL, and Apache web servers which are all free of charge to use.
- Included free iThemes Pro plugin.
- No overage/hidden fees while renewing the package.
- Cost-effective than other managed hostings if you think about the additional features and iThemes plugins.
Cons:
- One major downside is the price. The cost is high for what you get when compared to features of other WordPress hosting services available on the market today.
- There’s no option for domain privacy protection at checkout.
Price: Nexcess hosting has average affordable pricing plans when it comes to managed WordPress hosts. The starting price point for this service at $152/year(Includes 4 months free! Use Code ‘4MoFree‘) and goes up from there depending on how many resources you need. This plan is for one site and you will get 15 GB SSD disk space, 2TB bandwidth, and all features of other plans.
7. Best WordPress Hosting Convesio
Convesio is a WordPress hosting provider based in London. It has been founded by the successful entrepreneur Tom Fanelli in 2018.
It is stress-free web hosting, which is a proven alternative to any other web hostings. You can eliminate the risk of your website crashing & security if you are hosting it on Convesio.
The hosts state that they provide the best possible user experience with the help of their hosting service. They also offer a free trial, which is an ideal service for any new website owner who wants to test the web hosting before they buy it.
Convesio is exclusively focused on WordPress hosting, which includes the sites with any domain LTD. The hosting provides feature-rich managed WordPress hosting, with included free SSL, Global CDN, Integrated Cache Purging, enough bandwidth, and storage.
In addition, you can get a free website transfer service from another provider. They also offer load balance protection to ensure 100% uptime.
When you compare website loading time with other hosting providers, you will find that Convesio does not lag behind. They claim to make your site more responsive and faster than any other hosting provider out there.
Overall, if your website is powered by WordPress, it can’t get any better than Convesio compared to the price range. They have a fantastic customer support team, and you can kill two birds with one stone by using their service.
Pros:
- 24/7 live chat, phone, and email support.
- Strong focus on WordPress hosting.
- Free trial period.
- Free website transfer.
- Insanely fast website page loading speeds.
Cons:
- Expensive.
Price: They offer four pricing plans. The foundation plan starts from $50/month including 10,000 Monthly Visits, 5GB Storage, Load Balanced, CDN, cache purging, and more features.
Final Words & Which One Is The Best?
I have reviewed the top 7 managed WordPress hosting with key features, pros, and cons that will help you choose the right one for you according to your website resources and visitors limit.
But after reviewing a total of 7 managed hosting providers, there is one clear winner that stands out from the crowd.
The company is Kinsta and their managed WordPress hosting service. Their team manages everything for you including security patches, backups, site migrations (including databases), malware protection/scanning services as well as website speed optimization techniques to make your site load faster than ever before.
If you have not enough budget to purchase a Kinsta hosting plan, you can go with Nexcess managed WordPress hosting. Their SPARK plan($19 $13.30 for 3 months and then $19/mo) is enough for starting a WordPress site with more advanced managed features.
I hope this article was helpful in narrowing down which provider might be best for your needs.