One of the most popular hosting options for WordPress websites is Managed WordPress Hosting.

There are many options and companies that offer a web hosting service and Managed WordPress Hosting is more expensive than non-managed hosting. Therefore, is Managed WordPress Hosting really worth the cost? In this article, we might help you with the answer.

First, let’s make sure we understand the main difference between managed WordPress hosting and non-managed.

With managed WordPress hosting, the provider takes care of most of the technical tasks and measures of installing and operating WordPress. With non-managed plans, on the other hand, the host will only be responsible for providing and maintaining the server resources, leaving you with the task of setup and maintaining the WordPress installation by yourself.

Let’s take a look at some of the main advantages and features that come with managed WP hosting:

Setup and Migration

Managed plans do all the work regarding setting up a brand new website from scratch or migrating an existing website from another web host. A new WordPress installation is usually done automatically and only takes a few clicks! Managed hosting should include free and complete migration assistance from a skilled team.

User-Friendly Control Panel

Shared hosting services typically come with cPanel which comes with many features and tools that could be a little confusing for users who have little experience working with this panel. Moreover, managed WordPress plans often come with an easy-to-use custom control panel that only includes tools and functions needed for WP management.

Performance and Speed

Managed WP hosting is sold with its servers’ software and architecture optimized to work specifically with WordPress and no other content management system or software. This is translated into significant performance and loading speed improvement.

Caching and CDN

Caching and CDN make a big difference when hosting a large e-commerce website that receives thousands of visitors a day.
By serving static, cached pages that don’t eat up your server’s CPU & RAM, server-side caching can dramatically improve your website’s loading speed. With non-managed plans, you will need to install and configure a third-party plugin in order to achieve this. However, with managed plans, this is already integrated and configurated.
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) also comes pre-installed and ready to use with fully managed plans. The CDN ensures the fast loading of your website to visitors from around the globe.

Staging Environment

A Staging Environment includes a copy of your website that only you have access to. You can use this to design your site, make customizations, add code, test plugins, etc. before applying them to your live website.
You can find this standard feature included with managed WordPress.

Advanced Security

Being the most popular CMS can also mean it is the most targeted by spammers and hackers. That’s why security is a big concern when working with WordPress.
To help keep your website secure, the first thing to do is to keep installations up-to-date. Managed hosting saves you from doing that manually by enabling automatic updates to the WordPress core, as well as themes and plugins.
Besides automatic updates, other security features and protection for your server and website normally include DDoS and brute force protection, malware scanning and removal, file access restrictions, and more.

Experienced Support Team

When searching for a web host, the most important thing to keep in mind is having an expert support team that can fix any sort of technical issues on your server or WP installation.
Managed WordPress hosting should come with a dedicated technical support team.

What about Disadvantages?

As we stated before, managed hosting solutions are expensive. It doubles the average amount you’d pay for non-managed services, and a premium service even much more.
Another important disadvantage is that you will have to deal with much less access to your server environment and software because most of the server-side configurations will be controlled by the host.

In order to answer this article’s question, ‘’is Managed WordPress Hosting worth it?’’ We should think about the main difference, which is that you get a lot more services with managed hosting that can save you a lot of time and can be more helpful. Managed hosting is worth it if you need those features.

Fast loading websites improve user experience, increase your page views, and help with your WordPress SEO. How to speed up WordPress is one of the most important topics nowadays. Luckily, there are various ways to speed it up!

It’s important to take your WordPress performance seriously. If you’re facing this kind of issue with your site, we’ll tell you the common reasons for why your website is taking time to load, and ways to fix them.

Why is it so important to have a fast-loading site?

With a slow-loading site, your customers will be disappointed and leave the website when it takes more than 4 seconds to load.
The faster your site is, the longer a user will stay on it. This will reduce your bounce rate and increase conversions on your site. Every user retained on your website is a chance for potential conversion.
When listing search results, your WordPress Site Speed is one of the ranking factors that Google takes into account when listing search results.
This is because Google wants its users to have the best user experience possible, and the speed of a website is a huge part of that.
The first look at your business that visitors get is your WordPress website. If they visit a website that is slow to load, it’s like going to a shop and find out it’s closed.
The patience of customers surfing the internet is very low.
Woocommerce websites can lose sales within a matter of seconds if their website isn’t fast. Just a 2-second delay could mean up to 87% of cart abandonment.

Why Your WordPress Site is Being Slow:

There can be diverse reasons why the WordPress site is taking too long to load, and below you’ll see a list of the most common issues that you may encounter. As many reasons there can be, the impact is always on user experience.

1. Issues with the Web Host.

You can be having issues with the WordPress slow server response time. The web host is fundamental to how your website performs.

For instance, if you sign up for a shared hosting plan, you will share server resources with other websites. If you expect less than 100 visitors per day, this may not be a problem. However, if you’re hoping for more visitors, it will affect the performance of your WordPress.
When it comes to hosting services, there are numerous options, including managed hosting, VPS hosting, shared hosting, etc. You should carefully understand the features of each type before choosing one.

2. Unoptimized Images.

When the website is overloaded with content, it will likely fall apart. This is what happens in the case of using lots of images and other media, although they’re highly important for engaging visitors, if you use a lot of them, your WordPress site will load slowly.

The same goes for overloading the site with content. Text content does not take up too much space, but videos do. A smart alternative is to embed a Youtube link on your website instead.

3. Theme with Poor Quality.

Picking the right theme for your website is essential, as it affects more than just how your website looks.

Poor quality themes or nulled themes may mean the theme is bloated and will not be a high-performance theme. Moreover, nulled themes have backdoors and vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers.
If you want to speed up your WordPress, do some research before selecting the theme and make sure you update it regularly.

4. Too Many Plugins.

The plugins also affect your WordPress performance, just like the theme does. Of course, the more plugins you have, the more space they take up, but the important issue is that if the plugins you use are not built for performance, your WordPress site will suffer.

5. WordPress is not Updated.

In order for your website to run smoothly, updates are highly important, including updating WordPress regularly.

This will offer protection from any threats that may have been presented in previous versions, and updates often fix bugs that slow down websites.

6. Hidden Malware.

There are many times in which website owners don’t realize that malware is hidden within their site.

Malware can weigh down the website and slow its performance by using up server resources and make it vulnerable to hacks and attacks.

7. Too Many HTTP Requests.

HTTP requests are a protocol through which any action on a web server is taken.

A client or a user makes a request to a server, and if the request is accepted, an action is triggered on the server. If your website server is occupied with too many HTTP requests, it can adversely affect your WordPress performance.

8. Not Leveraging Cache.

The cache saves files from the server onto your RAM or disk, so that the next time you load the webpage, it is much faster.

If you want to speed up WordPress, you want to leverage cache, and use it to boost your website performance.

9. CSS Not Optimized.

CSS, better known as Cascading Style Sheets, is a language used to control the presentation of a website, in other words, is responsible for the look and feel of the website.

Unoptimized CSS can cause sites to load objects in the incorrect order, with pages displaying improperly, or worse, showing up blank.

10. Unnecessary Redirects.

Too many redirects can affect your WordPress site’s load time.

That’s why it is important to optimize your WordPress redirects so that your website keeps running smoothly. Clean up redirects through old or broken URLs in order to optimize your website performance.

11. Not Using a CDN.

A Content Delivery Network is a network of servers that distribute content from your website servers across the world so that the load time of your website is reduced.

Not using a CDN may affect your WordPress site performance in certain geographical areas.

12. Too Many Ads or Pop-ups.

When you host ads on your website, there are more external servers involved, and if these ads are not optimized or are hosted on slow servers, it can bring down your website load speed considerably.

How to Speed Up WordPress Site:

1. Secure Your Site From Malware.

To confirm that your site has been infected, you should scan your website with a security plugin.

2. Choose a Good Web Hosting Service.

Make sure that you have an efficient and compatible web host and a managed hosting solution.

3. Optimize Images.

Reduce the size of the images you use on your website.
This will improve the performance of your site and speed up WordPress.

4. Use HTTPc2 over HTTPv1.

Securing your website with an SSL certificate will shift your website to HTTPS which is a secure extension of HTTP.

This will not only add to your website security but will also optimize your WordPress so that browsers can support HTTP/2 for your website more easily if your web host is compatible. As HTTP/2 is better equipped to handle multiple requests, this will enhance your WordPress performance.

5. Cache your Website.

Cache your website with a caching plugin. This will save a lighter version of your website on your server.

6. Optimize CSS on Your Website.

Optimizing CSS can speed up WordPress vastly.
You can load your CSS inline by placing it in the site’s HTML code itself. Or you can load it asynchronously by identifying the most critical aspects of the site and making them load first.

7. Choose the Right Plugins.

Don’t weigh down your website!
Install only the necessary plugins to speed up WordPress. Remember to update your plugins regularly so that they run smoothly.

8. Update Your Site Regularly.

Update WordPress, themes, plugins, and all parts of your sites regularly.
This will help your site maintaining a fast loading time.

9. Use a Content Delivery Network.

A CDN will leverage the network of servers across the world to make sure that visitors can access your website content fast.

10. Use a Lightweight Theme.

If you want your WordPress site to load fast, make sure that you are using a lightweight theme on your website and that there aren’t any additional bulky themes on your WordPress that take up server space.

11. Leverage Lazy Loading.

Lazy Loading is a loading technique that uses the concept of inertia to optimize your WordPress for speed.
With lazy loading, your web pages are created with a placeholder for images and other files. This makes the page a lot lighter than it would be otherwise. When the user needs the resource, the placeholder is replaced with actual content. This technique is known to optimize web apps and websites for a faster loading time.

12. Enable Gzip Compression.

Compressing the site for a faster load speed is a great way to deal with a lot of content.
Gzip compression is a method through which you can compress your site’s HTML pages, stylesheets, and scripts as the data is being sent to another server.

The Negative Impact of a Slow Loading WordPress Site

The first look at your business that visitors get is your WordPress website. If they visit a website that is slow to load, it’s like going to a shop and find out it’s closed.
The patience of customers surfing the internet is very low.
Woocommerce websites can lose sales within a matter of seconds if their website isn’t fast. Just a 2-second delay could mean up to 87% of cart abandonment.

The Importance of a Fast-Loading Site.

Besides disappointing your customers, there are more issues that can be presented when having a slow site:
When listing search results, your WordPress Site Speed is one of the ranking factors that Google takes into account when listing search results. This is because Google wants its users to have the best user experience possible, and the speed of a website is a huge part of that.
The faster your site is, the longer a user will stay on it. This will reduce your bounce rate and increase conversions on your site. Every user retained on your website is a chance for potential conversion.

The editor is not finished yet, but it’s far sufficient in the development cycle that many decide it to be useful already (in fact, there are many WordPress themes available that support being edited with the Gutenberg editor).

There are many benefits in using the Gutenberg editor, and one of them is that it can result in lighting-fast websites.

The development plan for Gutenberg consists of a four-phase development plan, and WordPress is currently in the second of four phases.

“’Gutenberg’ is a codename for a whole new paradigm for creating with WordPress, that aims to revolutionize the entire publishing experience as much as Gutenberg did the printed word. The project is following a four-phase process that will touch major pieces of WordPress — Editing, Customization, Collaboration, and Multilingual.”

-Gutenberg’s plugin page describing what Gutenberg is.-

NATIVE SITE LOGO EDITING

Earlier to Gutenberg 11.6, a writer or publisher would have to edit their logo before uploading. Now, they can upload the logo and edit it if they need to.
Other available editing functions are zoom, cropping, and rotating the image.

The workflow shown in the WordPress Gut Hub example shows a person who selects the site’s logo block, then selects the media library from which the image is selected.

BLOCK LEVEL LOCKING CONTROL

This is another new characteristic that will make it easier for theme designers as well as WordPress site designers. This feature has the ability to lock a block to keep it from being moved or eliminated.

Below, is the WordPress announcement describing the new feature:
“Block-level lock takes priority over the templateLock feature and currently, you can lock moving and removing blocks.
The toolbar of locked blocks will have the movers hidden, and the Remove block option won’t be available either.”

FUNDAMENTAL SUPPORT FOR CHILD THEMES

Child themes allow publishers to make style changes to the theme that will not be overridden when the theme is up to date, this is a highly important update to Gutenberg.

With a child theme, a publisher can change as much as they want, and don’t be afraid to lose changes when the theme is updated.

Take a look at some of the benefits and functions available with the new child theme support:

The site editor is available when the child theme is active.
Theme.json is inherited.
Parent theme template parts can be overridden in the child theme.
Parent theme templates can be overridden in the child theme.
Theme.json can be overridden in the child theme.

EDIT THE TEMPLATE SECTION

This is an important site design feature: a Template Part Focus Mode.
This is a way to click into a menu that then gives options for customizing just a part of the template, like the world above the content material space, and even the widget space.

WordPress described what it does as follows:
“Template Part Focus Mode refers to the view that lets you focus and work on a single template part, like a header, and is available for any template part.
This isolated template part editing is now accessible from the ellipsis menu in the Template Part toolbar.”

Automattic, the company running WordPress, has recently announced that it is enabling Google’s “AMP” by default for all WordPress blogs. WP has also made a plugin available for self-hosted websites Automattic, the company running WordPress, has recently announced that it is enabling Google’s “AMP” by default for all WordPress blogs. WP has also made a plugin available for self-hosted websites


Automattic, the company running WordPress, has recently announced that it is enabling Google’s “AMP” by default for all WordPress blogs. WP has also made a plugin available for self-hosted websitesAutomattic, the company running WordPress, has recently announced that it is enabling Google’s “AMP” by default for all WordPress blogs. WP has also made a plugin available for self-hosted websitesAutomattic, the company running WordPress, has recently announced that it is enabling Google’s “AMP” by default for all WordPress blogs. WP has also made a plugin available for self-hosted websites

It is very common for us as a WordPress development firm to take over existing sites, and some of the most frequent questions we receive from new clients are related to plugins: “how many WP plugins should they keep in our site ?  how many are just too many? Is the site safe or vulnerable? scalable? Some people seem to be addicted to plugins.

They enjoy finding the right plugin to solve a particular need. With more than 50,000 free plugins in the Plugin Directory alone, it’s easy to feel the thrill of trying them all, but what kind of result, can an excessive plugin addiction cause to your site?

It is not always about quantity but quality:

> Each plugin is different and some could be poorly coded, outdated or use more resources than needed. This can affect the site in many ways (security, performance, load time, among others)

Not all WP plugins are safe to install: 

> Wp critics often say that WordPress is not  a safe platform, but the truth is that, like with any other CMS, WP is as safe as the component developers install. Yes, there are many plugins  with  serious vulnerability problems, and those may affect the site greatly. In particular, stay away from plugins that do not offer regular updates, or have reported vulnerabilities in the past. Read the reviews, before adding to your site, and test that the site works properly after activation.

Compatibility Issues: 

> Some plugins with outdated versions or not tested with the  current WordPress version, may affect greatly with anomalous functions. It is key to  test that each plug is compatible with the theme and WP code.

Load time & Performance: 

> There are plugins that may affect site’s performance. Some plugins may add  extra Javascript/jquery code impacting the site speed while backend plugins may effects the site by overloading with too many database calls and queries. Plugins that require querying large amount of data should be carefully vetted and tested on a regular basis.

In sum, there is is not really any exact number of plugins that may be too much for a site. You just have to make sure you are using just the tools you need, choosing effective plugins those will help rather than adding a  burden for your web site . If you notice that the site is slowing down, that would be a clear red flag that something is not ok, and plugins would be one of the first place to look for the solution.

Security breaches to WP have been for the most part related to plugins. However, this week a Finnish researcher has disclosed some details on a zero-day vulnerability he discovered in the WordPress 4.2 and earlier core engine that could lead to remote code execution on the webserver.


Security breaches to WP have been for the most part related to plugins. However, this week a Finnish researcher has disclosed some details on a zero-day vulnerability he discovered in the WordPress 4.2 and earlier core engine that could lead to remote code execution on the webserver.Security breaches to WP have been for the most part related to plugins. However, this week a Finnish researcher has disclosed some details on a zero-day vulnerability he discovered in the WordPress 4.2 and earlier core engine that could lead to remote code execution on the webserver.

In sum, there is is not really any exact number of plugins that may be too much for a site. You just have to make sure you are using just the tools you need, choosing effective plugins those will help rather than adding a  burden for your web site .

If you notice that the site is slowing down, that would be a clear red flag that something is not ok, and plugins would be one of the first place to look for the solution.In sum, there is is not really any exact number of plugins that may be too much for a site. You just have to make sure you are using just the tools you need, choosing effective plugins those will help rather than adding a  burden for your web site . If you notice that the site is slowing down, that would be a clear red flag that something is not ok, and plugins would be one of the first place to look for the solution.

In sum, there is is not really any exact number of plugins that may be too much for a site. You just have to make sure you are using just the tools you need, choosing effective plugins those will help rather than adding a  burden for your web site . If you notice that the site is slowing down, that would be a clear red flag that something is not ok, and plugins would be one of the first place to look for the solution.

Automattic, the company running WordPress, has recently announced that it is enabling Google’s “AMP” by default for all WordPress blogs. WP has also made a plugin available for self-hosted websites Automattic, the company running WordPress, has recently announced that it is enabling Google’s “AMP” by default for all WordPress blogs. WP has also made a plugin available for self-hosted websites Automattic, the company running WordPress, has recently announced that it is enabling Google’s “AMP” by default for all WordPress blogs. WP has also made a plugin available for self-hosted websites