How Is Managed WordPress Hosting Different from Shared Hosting?
Web hosting is an industry so popular that it sometimes seems like everybody owns a web hosting business these days. There are also many sorts of hosting companies, from small hosts reselling resources from larger hosts to global giants providing web hosting and domains to thousands upon thousands of customers. Competition is great, it keeps the prices from skyrocketing and gives the customers the possibility of finding a better solution in the event of unsatisfactory experience from their current provider.
But the sheer scale of the market does bring some negative side-effects with it. Overselling shared hosting servers is not unheard of in an effort to minimize costs and sell hosting so cheap it seems impossible, which it sort of is, hence the overselling of server resources. Customer support is sometimes outsourced to call centers and outsourcing agencies so that a promise of 24/7 customer support can be given and an image of a larger company behind the services is created, while the truth may be closer to a one man side business. One problem that hits closer to home for us here at Seravo is the rise of hosting providers selling WordPress hosting and not explaining the difference properly. Some shared hosting companies have now started selling “specialized” WordPress hosting, which in fact might not be no different from their generic cPanel hosting, except that it comes with WordPress pre-installed.
Generic cPanel Hosts
| Shared Hosting | Managed WordPress Hosting | Seravo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control Panel | ||||
| Control Panel | cPanel | Custom | No separate control panel needed | |
| Optimized for WordPress | ||||
| Optimized for WordPress | No | Yes | Yes | |
| Scalability | ||||
| Scalability | No | Maybe | Yes | |
| Customer Service Consists of WordPress Experts | ||||
| Customer Service Consists of WordPress Experts | No | Usually | Yes | |
| Overage Charges | ||||
| Overage Charges | Site access restricted after plan limits reached | Yes | No. We won’t charge you for occasional traffic spikes going over your plan limits. | |
| SSH Access | ||||
| SSH Access | No | Some providers | Yes | |
| Developer Tools (WP-CLI, Composer, Git..) | ||||
| Developer Tools (WP-CLI, Composer, Git..) | No | Some | Yes | |
The difference between professional managed WordPress hosting and shared hosting, whether it comes with WordPress pre-installed or not, is usually seen both in the server specifications and the customer support teams. Companies specializing in WordPress hosting, such as Seravo, Kinsta and WP Engine, generally have servers and software specifically designed for WordPress and the support team often consists of WordPress professionals. For shared hosting companies that provide a variety of different hosting services, a support team made of WordPress experts would make no sense.
cPanel WordPress Hosts
Aside from a pre-installed WordPress website these types of hosting packages don’t generally differ from generic cPanel hosting. Paying extra for a cPanel based WordPress website makes no sense in our opinion and therefore the same differences presented in the table above apply here as well.
How Are We Different from Regular Managed WordPress Hosting?
We here at Seravo provide premium WordPress hosting and upkeep for our customers. We don’t see ourselves as just another managed WordPress host, or a managed WordPress hosting provider at all to be honest.
However, sometimes we use the phrase managed WordPress hosting to describe Seravo’s services to help in comparing different providers, but take a look at the table below to see what makes us a great alternative for managed WordPress hosting.
| Seravo | Flywheel | WP-Engine | Kinsta | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yearly starting price | ||||
| Yearly starting price | 330€ | 192€ | ~360€ | ~312€ |
| Disk Space | ||||
| Disk space | 15 GB | 5 GB | 10 GB | 3 GB |
| Visitors per month | ||||
| Visitors per month | 9000+ | 5000 | 25000 | 20000 |
| Overage charges | ||||
| Overage charges | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Infrastructure | ||||
| Infrastructure | containerized | containerized | virtualized | containerized |
| Scalability | ||||
| Scalability | Can handle large traffic spikes and is suitable for high traffic websites | Scalable | Not clear | Not clear |
| Staging included in all plans | ||||
| Staging included in all plans | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSH access | ||||
| SSH access | Yes | No | Only on Enterprise plans | Yes |
| WP-CLI | ||||
| WP-CLI | Yes | No | On Enterprise plans | Yes |
| Developer tools such as Git, Composer and NodeJS | ||||
| Developer tools such as Git, Composer and NodeJS | Yes | No | No | No |
| Redis-cache | ||||
| Redis-cache | Yes | No | Yes | $100 per month extra per site |
| HTTP-cache | ||||
| HTTP-cache | Built-in | No | No | No |
| PHP-memory | ||||
| PHP-memory | 25 x 256 MB | Not clear | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Free SSL certificate | ||||
| Free SSL certificate | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free domain | ||||
| Free domain | Yes | No | No | No |
| 24/7-monitoring | ||||
| 24/7-monitoring | Yes | No | No | No |
| Security guarantee | ||||
| Security guarantee | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| The company contributes to open source and WordPress | ||||
| The company contributes to open source and WordPress | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The main difference here is our 24/7 proactive monitoring where we let you know if there’s something wrong with your site and help you look into the problem. We also provide a security guarantee if a site gets hacked in our care and it’s not due to poor passwords or negligence. This is why we call our service premium hosting and upkeep for WordPress.
Upkeep – the cost or process of keeping something in good condition – Cambridge English Dictionary
The Seravo Difference
Compared to all other types of hosting, the Seravo way of doing things is easy. Sign up, receive all the needed login information and a fresh WordPress installation, all ready and waiting for you to start building fresh or migrating an existing site. We’ll install an SSL certificate on your site automatically when delivering your site, so you don’t have to worry about anything. No separate dashboards, no additional hassle.
The Seravo WordPress installation is a customized and performance optimized one, but it still behaves exactly like a normal WordPress installation would. You can migrate your site normally, install plugins and themes, upload media files and so forth. We don’t place any unnecessary restrictions on what you can do with your site.
What you won’t be needing, however, are separate caching and security plugins. We handle security and caching for you with our customized WordPress environment and installs, meaning that you don’t need to have any additional plugins slowing down your site. Backups are also done automatically and stored offsite on your behalf for 30 days. If you’re not sure how to restore a backup, don’t worry. Just send us a message and we’ll help you out.
Managing databases can be done by using Adminer, which is in many ways a better and faster alternative to phpMyAdmin. You can read more about Adminer in our knowledge base. You can also check out the rest of our security features, and take a look at all of the features included in our plans by visiting our plans page.
The way we update our customers’ sites is also unique to us. We use our proprietary WordPress update system that runs in three phases, making it the most secure way of updating WordPress core, themes and plugins. We recently upgraded our entire testing system, which is now available to all of our customers.
We also provide SMTP out of the box for our customers, meaning that your WordPress site won’t be sending emails from a shared IP, waiting to get caught by a spam filter. You don’t have to install an SMTP plugin and sign up for an email delivery service yourself either as we’ve setup everything for you.
With plans starting from 30€ per month, all our plans include developer tools and access, such as SFTP, SSH, WP-CLI and Git. Managed WordPress hosting companies do offer SSH access to their clients as well, but even the most popular managed WordPress hosting companies offer SSH only for clients on plans costing up to six times as much. Sure, we don’t offer free migrations, but that means we won’t charge you monthly for that free migration.
Containers instead of virtual machines
Virtual machines are convenient and we use them ourselves for testing different compatibilities and operating systems as well as for local development, but to provide scalable, sustainable and secure WordPress hosting we use containers. Each site gets its own files and resources, without the limitations on scalability that come with virtual machines.
No Resource Limits or Temporary Suspensions
Some companies, especially in the shared hosting business, temporarily suspend your site or limit access to it if you reach your plan limits, unless you pay them extra of course. We never limit your site or access to it as long as you pay your invoices in time. We won’t force you to upgrade by shutting down your site.
No Overage Charges
Sudden traffic spikes? Overnight popularity? No worries, we won’t charge you extra for going over your plan limits. Occasional traffic spikes are perfectly fine with us. If you regularly go over your plan limits we’ll reach out to you and explore the different options to guarantee you the best possible service at all times.
24/7 Monitoring and Upkeep
We proactively monitor all sites hosted with us for errors and insecurities. If we notice anything wrong with your site we’ll let you know and help you fix it.
Security Experts
Our security experts follow the latest news regarding security vulnerabilities and critical patches, fixes and updates are typically applied only hours after they’ve been discovered
WordPress and Open Source Enthusiasts and Active Contributors
From our systems administrators to our customer success agents, we all live and breathe WordPress. We regularly sponsor and attend WordCamps, actively organize and attend local meetups right here in Tampere, Finland, and contribute to WordPress and the open source community.
WordPress Professionals
We’re not web hosting technicians. We don’t do level 1-3 support agents. And we definitely don’t outsource our support.
Our Customer Success team consists of experienced WordPress professionals who work closely with our clients each and every day to ensure they are getting the most out of their WordPress sites. Need help installing plugins? We’re happy to help you. Want advice about NGINX domain redirection configurations? We’ve got a whole page on configuring NGINX in our developer documentation. Our customer support always includes advice, but there are times when you don’t want to waste time learning NGINX configurations or spend time speed optimizing your website. We’ve got you covered with our WordPress expert services. From complicated configurations to troubleshooting difficult errors and speed optimization, there’s little that we cannot handle.
We Practice What We Preach
Some companies are all talk and no action. Not us.
In addition to our active community engagement and open source contributions, we also look to improve our WordPress skills every day. From attending courses and seminars to experimenting with new technologies and features, we make sure to stay ahead of the curve.
One of the experiments we did led to a 300% faster WordPress load time of our own website, so it’s not just playing around without any concrete results either. We share all of the best tips and practices on our blog regularly.
By the way, do you want to receive content like that 300% load time increase directly to your inbox? Subscribe to our developer newsletter and stay ahead of the competition with the latest and greatest WordPress development tricks, tools and techniques.
When it comes to hosting designed specifically for WordPress, the difference between Seravo and other managed WordPress hosting companies is that we offer more than hosting. We provide upkeep.
Take a look at our plans today or contact us to learn more about partnership opportunities. Or you can head straight to selecting a plan and getting your brand new WordPress site up and running within a few moments.