Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting – Which One is Best?

Shared vs managed WordPress hosting, which one should I choose for my website? This is a commonly asked question. When it comes to choosing a hosting option for your website, it’s a good idea to know the difference between shared hosting and managed hosting. There’s a few confusion surrounding both of these types. So in this article, we are going to explain the differences between shared hosting and managed hosting. We hope this will help you decide which one is the better option for you.

First, we are going to understand what shared hosting is and then learn about managed hosting. We are also going to discuss the pros and cons of shared hosting and managed hosting. Because knowing the strengths and weaknesses of both options will definitely help you make up your mind. So, let’s begin.

What is Shared Hosting?

As the name suggests, shared hosting is a web hosting solution where your website shares the resources of a single web server along with multiple websites. One of the biggest advantages of shared hosting is, it’s available at an affordable price.

Since multiple websites share a single web server, companies can sell shared hosting plans at a much cheaper rate than managed hosting. The price of shared hosting generally ranges from $2 to $10 per month. However, there are more expensive hosting plans but those actually for a lot more benefits such as free domain, pre-installed WordPress, etc.

This is a very affordable approach. Any website that is just starting out can consider this type as it will help them keep their costs down. Shared hosting is perfect for websites with low traffic, personal sites, portfolios, blogs, small businesses, etc.

We will discuss the pros and cons of Shared hosting in detail, but now let’s talk about managed hosting.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

By now you might already have guessed what Managed Hosting for WordPress is. It’s the type of hosting service that utilizes the most powerful technologies to give you the best hosting experience possible. Managed hosting provides you with the ultimate security and performance.

The companies that provide managed WordPress hosting also take care of daily activities such as backups, security checks, WordPress updates, etc. So you don’t have to worry much. The only thing that you need to do is build your WordPress website and put content in it. Every managed WordPress hosting has a premium support team. So if you’re ever in a pinch, you can contact the support team and they will solve your issue as fast as possible.

So managed WordPress hosting is for those who only want to focus on the business and don’t have time or intention to perform the technical tasks. 

Managed hosting sounds really great, right? But this option is not viable for every business. Because managed hosting is really expensive when compared to shared hosting. Some of the managed hosting plans start from $16 per month and can go upto $200 or even more. The allowed number of visitors can also be limited here.

Therefore, managed WordPress hosting is for those who are not proficient in technical activities or don’t have time for that.

Pros and Cons of Shared Hosting

Now that we understand shared vs managed WordPress hosting differences, we can discuss the pros and cons of both options. First off, let’s see the pros of shared hosting.

Pros of Shared Hosting

• Affordable: As we discussed earlier since multiple websites will be sharing one web hosting, the shared hosting plans are relatively cheap. 
• Manageable: Shared hosting plans are actually user-friendly. It comes with pre-configured options that make it easier for you to manage your website. Many shared hosting providers give you access to cPanel. A cPanel dashboard is a place where you can manage your website, domains, emails, and much more.
• 99.9% uptime: Most of the reputed hosting providers guarantee a 99.9% uptime. They also provide 24/7 technical support.
• Business email account: With shared hosting, you can also get professional email service for free. You can set up business emails like [email protected]. This makes your email look more professional.

Cons of Shared Hosting

• Limited resources: Since you are using shared web hosting, it’s possible that you will have limited server resources.
• Slow response time: Even though many hosting companies guarantee a fast response time, the reality is your website might be slow to visitors.
• Not suitable for high-traffic sites: Shared hosting is for those websites that don’t have high traffic. It is meant for small blogs, portfolios, small businesses, etc.

Pros and Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting gives you the best performance, services, as well as added security. But enough of that, let’s dive into the pros and cons of Managed WordPress hosting.

Pros of Managed WordPress Hosting

• Powerful performance: Managed WordPress hosting uses the latest technologies to ensure that you get the best performance. Your site is super fast and the managed hosting team takes care of your updates + security.
• Automatic updates: Managed WordPress hosting takes care of your core WordPress updates to ensure maximum security and stability. Some companies also update your themes and plugins as well.
• Good support: Managed WordPress companies have premium support teams. You can reach out to them and they will take care of any problems you are having with your site in a flash.
• Regular backups: It is important to always keep a WordPress website backup. Managed WordPress hosting takes care of this and keeps daily backups of your WordPress site. Otherwise, you had to do it manually or use any WordPress backup plugin.

Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting

• Expensive: As managed WordPress hosting gives you the best WordPress performance and services, it is a bit expensive. Therefore it isn’t suited for smaller blogs and businesses.
• Limited plugins: Managed WordPress hosting is focused on making your website run as fast as possible. So there are limitations on which plugins you can use. Because some plugins might slow your website down.

Only WordPress sites are allowed: Managed WordPress hosting only allows you to host WordPress sites on their server. So if you have a non-WordPress site, you will not be able to host it on their server. (But there are other managed hosting services for them.)

Best Shared Hosting Providers

For many small and medium business owners, shared hosting is an excellent choice to host their websites. But which hosting provider should you go with? That is why it is important to know some of the best shared hosting providers. So here’s our list.

HostGator

HostGator has been providing hosting services for many years now. It has special WordPress hosting plans as well as normal web hosting. In the WordPress hosting plans, a WordPress site is already installed. You don’t have to install WordPress from scratch. It also has a website builder that you can use to build your site. 

The HostGator WordPress hosting plans are as follows:

• Starter plan: 5.95/month for 1 site
• Standard plan: $7.95/month for 2 sites
• Business plan: $9.95/ month for 3 sites

Also, HostGator gives you a free domain for 1 whole year along with a free SSL certificate. You also get access to cPanel and HostGator’s a special dashboard as well. HostGator also provides dedicated and VPS hosting.

BlueHost

Bluehost is also an amazing hosting provider. They provide you with special WordPress plans and also have dedicated VPS hosting. Like HostGator, Bluehost also provides you with a free domain for 1 year and also a free SSL certificate.

Some of the WordPress plans of Bluehost are:

• Basic: $2.95/month for 1 website
• Plus: $5.45/month for unlimited websites
• Choice Plus: $5.45/month for unlimited websites
• Pro: $13.95/month for unlimited websites

The prices mentioned above are discounted price plans. Currently, Bluehost is giving you a 50%-70% discount on all of the WordPress plans. These plans also have many other benefits such as the basic plan giving you a free SSL certificate for 1 year and the Plus plan giving you a free SSL certificate with no time limit.

Hostinger

Hostinger is a very popular web hosting company. They provide shared web hosting, cloud hosting, special plans for WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, etc. If you’re wondering how the service of Hostinger is, then let me tell you, you have nothing to worry about. Hostinger has served thousands of happy customers and has 4.5-star ratings on Trustpilot, 4.8-star ratings on Google.

Hostinger has one of the most affordable WordPress plans. In fact the basic WordPress plan starts at $1.99/month! Some of the WordPress plans of Hostinger are as follows:

• Single WordPress: $1.99/month for 1 website
• WordPress starter: $2.99/month for 100 websites
• Business WordPress: $3.99/month for 100 websites
• WordPress Pro: $11.59/month for 300 websites

Hostinger has a large list of features for all WordPress plans. For example, the WordPress starter plan gives you unlimited free SSL, 100GB SSD storage, Free domain ($9.99 value), SSH access, WP-CLI, and much more.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

If you have a website with high traffic, and you have the budget, then you should go for managed WordPress hosting. Let’s look at some great managed WordPress hosting.

WP Engine

WP Engine is one of the best-managed hosting for WordPress websites. Your website will be kept secure with proactive threat detection, WordPress core updates, and daily backups. You will also get advanced security with a free SSL certificate, data encryption, and much more.

With WP Engine you don’t have to worry about performance. You will also get access to tools like Local, Site Monitoring, and Atlas which will speed up your development process and monitor your site easily.

The WP Engine plans are as follows:

• Managed WordPress: $23/month for 1 site
• eCommerce Solution for Woo: $56/month for 3 sites
• Advanced Solution: $600/month

These are the plans that you’ll find on WP Engine’s plan page. There’s a horizontal scroll bar on the Managed WordPress plan and eCommerce plan. You can scroll these if you want to build more websites on these plans. Then click on the ‘Buy Now’ button to purchase a plan.

Cloudways

Cloudways is a unique hosting company that offers you freedom in cloud hosting options. You can choose your own cloud service provider for hosting your site. You can choose Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google Cloud. Don’t worry, you don’t need separate accounts for those cloud providers. A simple Cloudways account is enough.

Cloudways gives you amazing performance so that your website loads super fast. You will also have added security. If you want, you can also have a 1 on 1 chat with the support team of Cloudways.

Cloudways offers affordable managed hosting for WordPress which might be suitable for many medium-sized companies. The price of each plan depends on which cloud service you choose. For Digital Ocean, the starting price is $12/month and the highest plan is $96/month.

Bluehost

Bluehost provides managed hosting as well as shared hosting. With Bluehost, you get a free domain, free CDN, free SSL, and also a money-back guarantee. It has a 4.2 rating on Trustpilot. Bluehost is also one of the top recommendations from wordpress.org.

For managed WordPress hosting, you have to look into Bluehost WP Pro. There are 3 plans for fully managed WordPress hosting. These are:

• Basic: $19.95/month
• Grow: $29.95/month
• Scale: $49.95/month

You will have access to some really exciting features such as site analytics, a marketing center, 100+ free WordPress themes, Bluehost SEO tools, etc. The all-in-one marketing center and dashboard are special features that you can use. Your website will have the optimized performance to ensure high load speed.

Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting – Which One is Suitable For You?

Now that you know the difference between shared and managed hosting, the question is, which one of these options is suitable for your website?

Well, the answer depends on a few factors. If you’re just starting out, then it would be a good idea to go with a shared hosting plan. For any small businesses, new blogs, portfolios, personal sites, startups, etc. we recommend purchasing a shared plan. As you’ve seen, the cost of managed hosting is steep. This might be too much for any business at the initial stage.

You can check out our post on best WordPress hosting services for more details.

Now on the other hand, if your website has a high traffic and you can’t seem to find the time to perform all the technical tasks, then it would be best if you select managed WordPress hosting. With managed hosting, you will receive the best possible performance along with added security. All the maintenance such as updates and daily backups will be performed by your managed hosting vendor. This will give you time to focus on your business only and all the technical tasks will be carried out by your hosting provider.

Conclusion

That brings our article to a clouse. We hope that after reading this article, you are clear on shared vs managed hosting. Hopefully you’ve also decided which option is better for your website.

Choosing a hosting service is very important. Because, a lot of things depend on the host like how fast your website is loading, its availability, etc. So take your time and choose the hosting service that is best suitable for you. If you require any assistance, you can ask us in the comments section and we will try our best answering it.