Fully managed hosting - what does it mean for your website?
There's essentially two different tiers of website hosting available in the marketplace: unmanaged web hosting, which is usually known simply as "web hosting". The pricing can be extremely low, in the range of a few dollars a month. The second is fully managed hosting, or just managed hosting, and it can be significantly more expensive. So what's the real difference, and why should you pay more?
The short answer is this: if you're 100% technically capable of managing your website yourself, and you have the time to invest into making sure it stays secure and up to date, then go for the cheap hosting! Otherwise, managed hosting is for you.
The REAL difference between the two types of hosting comes down to this: with unmanaged hosting, you're on your own. You get an account login to the server your site's going to be hosted on, and that's it. There's absolutely no obligation for them to assist you in actually getting your website running whatsoever - all you're paying for is the parking space, you have to park your own car in it.
Conversely, with fully managed hosting, the hosting provider takes care of every single detail for you. They ensure that it's set up and running correctly, they ensure that it is monitored and that downtime alerts are sent out, they ensure it's backed up and that those backups are secure, and they should be ensuring that everything is kept up to date and secure. Fully managed hosting is the equivalent of valet parking, your own personal driver, and a behind-the-scenes maintenance crew.
With unmanaged hosting, all that burden lies on your shoulders. How good are you at working with databases? Ever configured a cron job? All of this becomes exponentially more complex if you are moving beyond a simple cPanel account and on to your own Virtual Private Server. You can get a pretty cheap server from AWS, but you're entirely on your own with it. I've worked with clients in the past who managed their own hosting, and it was always a toss up as to whether their site was in good shape, or had been hacked several times over and they just didn't know it yet.
$5 a month might seem appealing, but you get what you pay for. If one of their staff have to spend even 10 minutes helping you with your website, well there goes six months worth of hosting fees. The absolute last thing they want to do is help you. If you have better things to worry about than managing the fine technical details of your website, leave it to the professionals. You won't regret it.
Assembler is a web design agency based in Perth, Western Australia. This blog is intended to be an informal, behind the scenes look into the web design and development industry. If you like our content, please follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook!