The untold story of managed hosting: how proactive support saves companies millions

It’s hard to imagine a modern company without a website. From shopping and entertainment to business and banking, almost everything is online today, so a digital presence is a must-have. But for a smaller firm with no IT team of its own, creating and maintaining this online space can be a real challenge. Doing it yourself would also pull focus from your core business goals.

Fortunately, things don’t have to be done this way. You don’t have to juggle security, monitoring, and updates yourself, as managed hosting also exists. In fact, it’s often the preferred way of handling the online side of business, as it lets companies offload their IT tasks to experts who also offer proactive support.

Backed by Cybernews researchers, I dug into managed hosting to see what the benefits of such an arrangement would be. We also explored the different types of servers and put managed hosting against colocation and self-managed services to help you find the right fit.

What is managed hosting?

Managed hosting is a type of web service where the provider takes care of the technical side of things. This typically involves a third-party hosting company handling the setup, security, management, and monitoring of a web server, site, or online app.

Such an arrangement allows businesses (and individuals who need their own server) to focus on their goals while outsourced experts handle the IT stuff. In such a scenario, the hosting company is your IT department, so you don’t need in-house professionals or entire IT teams.

This type of service also acts as an add-on to any kind of web server. Let’s say you were already leasing server hardware to host your WordPress blog. If you ever decide you’re done dealing with server maintenance, monitoring, and updates yourself, you could easily add the management service on top of your existing plan.

Top hosting providers like Liquid Web also allow you to customize the level of management. For instance, if you just want to stay proactive about potential issues instead of waiting for something to happen, Liquid Web’s Core managed service has you covered. It adds expert monitoring to your plan, which lets you stay on top of system health without going all in.

Types of managed hosting

Most web hosting providers offer managed versions of all their hosting options, as the hardware is the same for both managed and unmanaged hosting. Non-tech-savvy users can, thus, get access to management services for all of the following hosting types:

• WordPress hosting. Whether you’re running a single WordPress blog or an entire multisite network, handling security, optimizations, and maintenance can be a real challenge. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it yourself, as you can always opt for managed WordPress hosting and outsource these technical tasks to the provider.
• Shared hosting. Most smaller businesses can get away with shared hosting, an affordable option where a provider places several websites on the same server. In this case, each client has access to an allotted amount of processing, memory, storage, and bandwidth. However, the hosting provider can also maintain the site on your behalf.
• VPS hosting. A virtual private server (VPS) combines the efficiency of shared hosting with the improved security of isolated server resources. While we’re still talking about sharing the same physical server hardware here, your site would be running on a dedicated virtual machine on said server. It’s like owning an apartment in a building that is shared between multiple tenants.
• Dedicated server hosting. If you want your own building, which translates to having an entire server to yourself, dedicated hosting plans are the way to go. Opt for managed hosting here, and you'll get high performance, clusterization capabilities, enhanced security, and better reliability compared to shared environments.
• Cloud hosting. If we stick to the living situation analogy, cloud hosting is like owning rooms in multiple houses. Your website would essentially be running on multiple servers that are part of the provider’s cloud. In this case, management would involve the standard setup, security, and maintenance, as well as scaling.

Benefits of managed hosting

Whether IT isn’t your forte or you just don’t want the hassle of handling server stuff yourself, managed hosting is the way to go. These expert-backed plans might even save your business in certain situations. That said, let’s take a closer look at the benefits these hosting arrangements bring.

Reduced risk of downtime

Regardless of the amount of training, there’s always a chance that an employee will click on a suspicious email, run an unscanned file, or plug in a virus-infested USB drive. These are all mistakes that can bring down your entire network infrastructure. And for companies where every minute of inactivity costs money, this downtime would make a significant dent in revenue.

While you can’t entirely prevent these situations, you can significantly reduce the risk of such errors causing server downtime. In fact, that’s precisely what managed hosting is all about.

By taking a proactive approach and having your hosting provider monitor your server(s) 24/7, you ensure IT experts can identify potential issues and prevent them from escalating.

Improved security with up-to-date servers

One way to prevent phishing, malware, and cyberattacks is to ensure your site is running the latest software. In a managed hosting situation, the hosting company’s IT experts would take care of the updates and security for you.

This way, you’d have the latest patches and your firewall would be configured and optimized for security without your intervention. Depending on the hosting provider and the management plan you choose, you may also benefit from active virus and spam protection.

Seamless industry compliance

The best hosting providers also help businesses stay compliant with various industry regulations. For example, Liquid Web offers both Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant hosting.

Whether you’re running a healthcare business or want to offer seamless Visa and Mastercard payments on your site, managed hosting isn’t enough if your provider is compliance-ready. Make sure your managed hosting provider can enable you to adhere to technical and operational guidelines for secure data handling.

Expert troubleshooting and support

In an ideal scenario, your online business will always run flawlessly. In reality, however, things can go south in a number of ways and for a myriad of reasons. While you can’t prevent these problems, you can ensure they go away quickly.

Managed hosting gives you access to the provider’s professional support team, which can quickly and efficiently resolve any issues that may arise. This can be particularly valuable for smaller businesses that lack in-house IT specialists.

Resource optimization and scaling

Sometimes, your business will be swarming with users. Other times, you’ll only have a few site visits. Both situations are part of the online presence game, and managed hosting can help in both cases.

By working with your provider, you can actively manage and optimize your server’s resources to adjust to these fluctuations. This way, you won’t be paying for more than what you’re using. More importantly, you won’t have to deal with slowdowns due to higher levels of traffic.

And as your business grows, so too will its IT department, without you ever having to worry about scaling.

Managed vs unmanaged hosting

If you’re having trouble deciding on a hosting plan, it’d be a good idea to go over the key differences between managed and unmanaged hosting arrangements:

Type	Managed hosting	Unmanaged hosting
Server setup and configuration	Done by the provider	Done by the user
Security	Automatic malware scanning, DDoS protection, and active threat monitoring	Complete control over the system’s security, but requires technical skill
Updates	Regular and automatic	Manual and handled by the user
Support	Exclusive hands-on support with 24/7 technical assistance	Minimal support that’s limited to network maintenance and hardware replacement
Scaling	Simpler and quicker expert-assisted scaling that automatically adjusts to your growth	User-handled upgrades that depend on manual server reconfigurations and resource allocation
Pricing	Higher	Lower

Ultimately, the type of hosting you choose depends on how much control you want over your server(s). Keep in mind that your ability to manage the server(s) depends on your expertise, time, and IT staff.

Managed hosting vs colocation

While the primary division is between managed and self-managed hosting, some users also get confused about colocation. So, let’s also see what that one is all about.

On the one hand, managed hosting is an arrangement in which you lease hardware from a hosting provider. The host handles the setup, management, and maintenance of your server. This way, you get to run a website or an app without doing anything you’re not comfortable with.

On the other hand, colocation refers to using your own server hardware, but physically storing it on the hosting company’s premises. In this case, setting up and maintaining the server are entirely your responsibilities, as you’re only leasing the space and not the management service.

While different, these two services aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, some hosting providers opt for a combination of the two, known as managed colocation. This boils down to you owning the hardware while leasing the space for it and the management service from a hosting provider.

Summary

Managed hosting is a service that can be added to almost any regular hosting plan. It allows businesses to offload their IT tasks to the same company they’re already leasing server hardware from. This boils down to letting a provider like Liquid Web handle the technical side of things for you.

The management service is all about being proactive, with the hosting company’s IT experts actively identifying and handling threats to your site. Such an approach reduces the risk of server downtime, which could have a catastrophic impact on revenue for larger companies.

Beyond that, managed hosting also offers enhanced security, automatic updates and patching, simplified compliance, and seamless scalability. Together, these benefits can make managing your business’s online presence much easier.

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