The Ultimate Guide to the Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers for 2020

While general WordPress sites should be fine with typical WordPress hosting solutions, the bare minimum for online stores is managed WordPress hosting.

But, here’s the thing about it. Compared to other types of services, managed WordPress hosting doesn’t come cheap at all. It would cost you anywhere between tens of dollars to thousands of dollars a month.

Now, going by this cost range, it certainly wouldn’t make sense settling for any random hosting provider. Let’s leave that to novice merchants for now.

A serious WordPress-based ecommerce website, on the other hand, should go for nothing but the best managed WordPress hosting services. The type of hosting that’s truly optimized for WordPress, offering specialized capabilities that are indeed worth every single penny.

Sadly, finding a perfect provider can be challenging. Since WordPress is the most popular CMS platform today, you can bet the number of hosting in this space is overwhelmingly large. So, of course, identifying the best managed WordPress hosting providers from such a huge collection sounds like the stuff of nightmares.

But, here’s the good news. We’ve done the homework for you by researching extensively and trying out numerous hosting solutions. It has taken us years of hard work to come up with conclusive results but finally, here‘s the whole truth.

In essence, this is a complete guide to the best managed WordPress hosting solutions today, featuring providers that have been carefully chosen after painstakingly analyzing all the critical parameters. It gives you insights to not only their basic features, but also the accompanying performance capabilities, as well as service pricing.

But first, what exactly is managed WordPress hosting? And what’s the difference between regular WordPress hosting and WordPress managed hosting?

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

To explicitly define managed WordPress hosting, we have to first explore what regular WordPress hosting is all about.

Now, typical WordPress users tend to purchase shared web hosting packages, on which they install the CMS, and then proceed to create their sites. All it takes is a one-click WordPress installer, and voila!

Pretty simple and straightforward. But, as it turns out, managing such a site can become hectic. You need technical skills to keep up with the frequent WordPress core and plugin updates. Plus, since it’s considerably cheap, shared WordPress hosting doesn’t offer advanced performance capabilities.

And that’s where managed WordPress hosting comes in. It’s a specialized service that takes the cumbersome technical bits of WordPress off your hands. The tasks are then assigned to real WordPress experts, leaving you to focus on building your business.

The types of tasks we are talking about here are related to WordPress security, maintenance and optimization. More specifically, with managed WordPress hosting you get to benefit from regular WordPress core and plugin updates, high level expert support, regular backups, as well as security patches.

Most importantly, managed WordPress hosting comes with increased performance capabilities. The providers avail specialized server resources like VPS containers and caching technology to not only speed up your page loading, but also maintain optimal uptime.

So, in short, managed WordPress hosting is like hiring your own in-house team of developers to maintain your site, while leveraging dedicated server infrastructure at the same time. The only difference is, a managed WordPress hosting company charges you much less than it would cost to hire a full-time developer.

That said, here are 7 of the best managed WordPress hosting providers today. And to sum up everything, we’ve featured our overall best pick as well as the budget pick.

No time to read? Here's our no.1 pick when it comes to the absolute best WordPress Hosting in the market:

🏁 Our pick:

WP Engine is, hands down, the best you can get for your managed WordPress hosting service. This is no ordinary web host. It has goes beyond the typical WordPress hosting standards to offer exceptionally powerful AWS-based infrastructure at a considerably reasonable rate.

Now, remember the reason why we are seeking a perfect managed WordPress hosting service? Yes, that’s right, high performance is the principal focus here. So, what would be better at that than an enterprise-level hosting environment?

The problem with enterprise hosting solutions, however, is their expensive pricing. Take Pagely, for instance- it’s just as fast alright, but it’ll cost you at least $199 a month.

Now, compare that with WP Engine, which for as low as $35 a month, offers the same level of hosting services. We’ve done numerous tests already and we’ve seen first-hand what WP Engine is capable of.

To sum it up, imagine what you’d get if you combined the extensive global network of Amazon Web Services data centers with proprietary performance-optimization features, along with a dedicated security engineering team, plus competitive pricing.

Well, that’s WP Engine for you- admittedly the best managed WordPress hosting solution for 2020.

Overall rating: 10/10

💰 Budget pick:

SiteGround, in all fairness, is the best when it comes to cheap managed WordPress hosting. While its performance matches up with what you get from some of the enterprise-level providers, SiteGround maintains low prices on all its managed WordPress hosting plans.

SiteGround essentially grants you specialized infrastructure that runs optimized managed WordPress hosting resources for as low as $3.95 per month. If you’ve read our cheap WordPress hosting guide, then I bet you can already tell that the package is almost as cheap as shared hosting.

Then get this. If you alternatively choose to go for the most advanced managed WordPress hosting package, SiteGround is generous enough to start you off at $11.95 a month.

Now, guess what? This favorable balance between pricing and features is so outstanding that it even caught WordPress.org’s attention. And just like that, SiteGround earned a recommendation that only two other hosting providers enjoy.

If WordPress.org applauds your efforts, then you certainly have to be doing something right.

Overall rating: 7/10

The Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers for 2020

Best Managed WordPress Hosting #1 – WP Engine

If you’ve read a couple of our hosting reviews already, you might have noticed that we rarely talk about WordPress hosting without mentioning WP Engine.

Well, WP Engine happens to be one of the few web providers that are entirely focused on managed WordPress hosting. So, if you’re thinking about running a different application here, forget it. Every single resource on WP Engine is geared towards optimizing WordPress sites.

The company itself is relatively new, considering it came into the scene in 2010. But, it seemingly hit the ground running, owing to its well-provisioned enterprise hosting environment. Consequently, it only took a few years for WP Engine to establish itself as one of the best managed WordPress hosting providers.

So, what’s impressive about WP Engine’s services?

Well, overall, WP Engine is renowned for its excellent uptime record, cloud platform flexibility, real-time threat detection, daily backups, site staging, WordPress-specific security, and a host of other great features. In short, therefore, WP Engine is built to holistically support WordPress sites.

One thing you can bet you won’t have to worry about is taking care of your WordPress plugins, installs, or security patches. WP Engine has a professional team of expert WordPress developers for handling that while you grow your business.

Sadly, the common misconception about WP Engine is that it’s a costly service for small businesses. However, when you come to learn about its capabilities, it turns out that WP Engine is actually a budget option for users seeking enterprise-level performance.

For as low as $35 a month, you get to run your site on a hosting environment that’s similar to what large enterprises commonly leverage. The average site loading speeds here are, in fact, about four to six times faster than what you get from standard providers.

Then guess what? On WP Engine, you’re granted access to the famous Genesis framework for free. All thanks to WP Engine’s recent acquisition of StudioPress, the company that created that along with over 36 attractive premium themes.

So, combined, WP Engine provides free access to WordPress themes that would, otherwise, cost you about $2,000. Sounds like a great value pack for startups.

Another thing that WP Engine has perfected is WordPress security. While most managed WordPress hosting providers usually rush to update their websites as soon as any new cores are released, WP Engine has to thoroughly test them before updating your site.

Then to prevent possible vulnerabilities from add-ons, WP Engine blacklists and blocks off all unstable WordPress plugins. That means you won’t be able to install just any random add-ons.

And in case you’re worried about other types of threats, you can rest assured that WP Engine will protect you accordingly. It relies on a proprietary security framework to detect and prevent system intrusion from JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attacks, DDoS attacks, malware etc.

Then to reinforce all that, WP Engine has partnered with reputable third-party security firms. Their main job is auditing security as well as reviewing code.

And as a sign of confidence in their system security, WP Engine even offers a security guarantee. Basically, if your site is hacked, they will fix it for free.

WP Engine Managed WordPress Hosting Performance

One thing you can expect from enterprise-level hosting is increased performance. And that’s precisely what you get from WP Engine.

Its infrastructure, to begin with, rides on an extensive network of Amazon Web Services data centers. They are spread out across tens of different locations to collectively maintain favorable latency.

Despite its impressive set of data centers, WP Engine went ahead and partnered with MaxCDN to avail CDN capabilities for free. Consequently, you get a range of supplementary proxy servers in multiple locations across the globe. Enough to expand your website’s footprint, as well as minimize each page’s load time.

And speaking of which, you might notice a GeoTarget add-on on WP Engine’s platform. It should help you automatically optimize your website for different regions in the world.

Now, in the event your WordPress site experiences severe traffic spikes, WP Engine’s EverCache kicks in to maintain optimal performance. This proprietary caching technology happens to be one of the best when it comes to auto-scaling. And that, of course, means you can also bank on WP Engine to deliver the best managed WordPress hosting uptime.

WP Engine Managed WordPress Hosting Customer Support

Considering WP Engine is one of the best WordPress hosting providers, you should be able to run your online store without any major issues over the long haul.

But, in case something arises along the way, you might want to first refer to WP Engine’s knowledge base. It’s pretty expansive, with loads of helpful information about the entire platform. You can also check out the resource center for additional guides.

Or alternatively, simply reach out to WP Engine’s customer support staff through email, phone or live chat. You just need to log into your dashboard at any time of the day or night, since they are available 24/7.

To learn more about WP Engine and what its best managed WordPress hosting features can do for you, check out our detailed review here.

WP Engine Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing

• Startup- For as low as $35 per month, Startup targets regular WordPress sites. Some of its features include; free page performance, free site migrations, global CDN and SSL, 24/7 chat support, 50GB bandwidth, 25,000 site visits per month, StudioPress themes, Genesis Framework, 3 environments per website, and 10 GB storage for 1 WordPress site.
• Growth- For as low as $115 per month, Growth plan targets typical small business WordPress sites. It comes with 24/7 phone support, imported SSL certificates, automated SSL certificates, page performance, free site migrations, global CDN, 24/7 chat support, 200 GB bandwidth, 100,000 site visits per month, StudioPress themes, Genesis Framework, 5 environments per website, and 20 GB storage for 5 WordPress sites.
• Scale- For as low as least $290 per month, this plan is ideal for fast-growing business WordPress sites. Apart from 24/7 phone support, you get the privilege of leveraging imported SSL certificates, automated SSL certificates, page performance, free site migrations, global CDN, 24/7 chat support, 400 GB bandwidth, 400,000 site visits per month, StudioPress themes, Genesis Framework, 15 environments per website, and 30 GB storage for 15 WordPress sites.
• Custom- For a custom quote, WP Engine offers personalized WordPress hosting features to enterprises. Apart from specialized customer support, you can leverage managed onboarding, high-level server performance, dedicated environment for up to 25 sites, more than 400 GB monthly bandwidth, millions of site visits per month, as well as storage space between 100 GB and 1 TB.

Who Should Consider WP Engine Managed WordPress Hosting?

WP Engine might seem like one of those pricey web hosts. But, it really isn’t. Rather, it’s a good budget option for all types of businesses seeking managed WordPress hosting with enterprise level infrastructure.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting #2: SiteGround

Founded in 2004, SiteGround is one of the most established web hosting services so far. And although it takes the overall best budget managed WordPress hosting crown, it’s actually a multi-faceted hosting company.

More specifically, SiteGround provides web hosting, managed WordPress hosting, WooCommerce managed hosting, cloud hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated hosting, and enterprise hosting.

Well, if you compare the packages accordingly, managed WordPress hosting turns out to be the most favorable balance between pricing and features. You can purchase it for as low as $3.95 a month for 1 website, or $5.95 a month for an unlimited number of websites.

If you’re seeking the best managed WordPress hosting features on SiteGround, however, I’d advise you to try out the GoGeek plan. It’s slightly costlier since it starts at $7.95 a month, with a regular price of $34.95 a month.

But get this. The type of resources you get in return make $35 a month sound like one of the best WordPress managed hosting bargains. SiteGround essentially comes with everything you’d expect from such an experienced provider.

Site maintenance, for instance, is handled by SiteGround’s WordPress experts. They keep your entire WordPress ecosystem secure and up to date by applying regular updates as well as patches. You even get an auto-update manager for configuring your preferences.

And if you’d fancy going beyond that, SiteGround provides a flexible site staging environment. This feature comes in handy when you need to safely test various tweaks on a cloned offline version of your site.

Another feature you might like here is the automatic daily WordPress website backups. Very admirable, but I guess you won’t need it at all since the chances of losing your site data on SiteGround are very slim. The security measures here are pretty solid, with provisions like malware scanning, plugin restrictions, third-party post-hacking cleanup services, etc.

SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting Performance

SiteGround is one of the few web hosts that are truly effective when it comes to website performance. As a matter of fact, you don’t even have to subscribe to its managed hosting package to get a taste of the performance benefits. Even the shared web hosting package boasts of a couple of solid performance-optimization features.

But, as we’ve said already, managed WordPress hosting is the sweet spot. It offers the full set of features you need to maintain supersonic fast loading speeds and constant uptime as well.

Take the SSD drives, for instance. SiteGround doesn’t hold your site data on standard HDD drives because that would only mean basic storage performance. So, it chooses to place all its WordPress sites on faster SSD drive servers.

And you know what? The servers themselves are not centrally positioned in one central data center. SiteGround allows you to choose between five data centers in different locations across the globe- Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Milan, and Singapore. That translates to reduced data transmission distances in the three core traffic continents.

But, since you can only choose one of the locations, SiteGround goes ahead and avails additional proxy servers through a third-party CDN application. More specifically, you get to use Cloudflare, which has a ton of servers placed in more than 180 cities worldwide.

Then to supplement that, SiteGround leverages its SuperCacher technology, as well as HTTP/2 and PHP 7. They work hand in hand with NGINX plus a host of other resources to maintain high WordPress performance.

And get this. Because of availing such an impressive hosting infrastructure at reasonable pricing, SiteGround is one of the only three providers that have earned a recommendation from WordPress.org.

You can find out more about its services from our detailed SiteGround Review.

SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting Customer Support

If you happen to experience an issue, you can get in touch with SiteGround’s WordPress experts through email, live chat, and phone. They are accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days per week.

And since you’d probably hate to wait, SiteGround ensures it maintains minimal response times across all its support channels. It will only take you a minute or so to receive a valid response.

SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing

• StartUp- This managed WordPress hosting plan is ideal for beginners and startups. For a special starting price $3.95 a month and later $11.95 a month, SiteGround grants essential WordPress provisions like free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, free installation of WordPress accompanied by a shopping cart application, 24/7 phone, chat and online tickets support, automated daily backups, Spam Prevention, regular updates and patches, anti-hack systems, fast server monitoring, account isolation, LXC-based stability, hardware redundancy, power redundancy, level 1 SuperCacher, HTTP/2 support, free CDN, customized server setup, 10GB SSD storage, pre-installed WP-CLI, WordPress advanced security, WordPress auto-update, free automated WordPress transfer, unlimited sub and parked domains, unlimited MySQL DB, free drag and drop builder, plus unmetered data transfer. It accommodates one WordPress website with a traffic volume of more than 10,000 per month.
• GrowBig- Suitable for growing WordPress sites. At a starting price of $5.95 a month and then a regular price of $19.95, it combines the essential WordPress features on the StartUp plan with premium WordPress features like one-click staging, free site transfer, advanced on-demand backup, WordPress special cache, plus 20GB SSD storage. It supports an unlimited number of websites, with a monthly traffic volume of 25,000.
• GoGeek- targets established businesses. The starting price here is $11.95 a month, which then changes to a regular price of $34.95 a month. In addition to essential WordPress features on the StartUp plan, premium WordPress features on the GrowBig plan, it comes with Geeky WordPress provisions like pre-Installed Git, white-label hosting, advanced priority support, plus 30GB SSD storage. You can set up an unlimited of websites, but the monthly their monthly traffic volume should not exceed 100,000.

Who Should Consider Using SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting?

SiteGround’s managed WordPress hosting package is built for personal, professional, and business sites that would like to take their WordPress performance to the next level. The features here are perfectly optimized for WordPress sites and they all come at unbelievably cheap prices.

So, you might want to consider SiteGround if you need managed WordPress hosting services on a budget.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting #3: DreamHost

Interestingly, a lot about DreamHost reminds me of SiteGround.

First of all, it’s a veteran in the web hosting industry, owing to the fact that it was founded in 1997. Then secondly, it’s an all-in-one platform that offers different types of hosting solutions- shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated server hosting, and cloud hosting.

That said, the most outstanding thing DreamHost shares with SiteGround is WordPress.org’s recommendation. It also happens to be recognized as one of the best WordPress hosting providers by the CMS platform itself.

And it’s exactly that. As a matter of fact, DreamHost has also proved to be one of the best managed WordPress hosting solutions today.

Now, while its regular web hosting began during the Dot-com bubble, DreamHost held off managed WordPress hosting until 2013. And although this service started off with a couple of hitches, subsequent versions of the package have since proved to be exceptional.

Currently, DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting package is officially known as DreamPress. And because of its robust features, plus the fact that site migration is free, it has managed to attract a wide range of users, including online businesses, merchants, creatives, web developers, and web designers.

Well, typical WordPress sites should be comfortable with DreamHost’s generic managed WordPress hosting package, while businesses would rather subscribe to DreamHost’s WooCommerce hosting. They are both DreamPress packages, with the only difference being the fact that the latter is better optimized for WooCommerce.

If that sounds like something you’d want to try out, WordPress managed hosting here costs as little as $16.95 a month. Seemingly costlier than SiteGround, I admit, but get this- DreamHost is pretty confident about its capabilities that it allows you to try it out for three months risk-free.

Yes, I know. That’s extremely generous, especially for a provider who’s ranked among the best managed WordPress hosting services. While money-back guarantees for most web hosts today only go as far as 30 days, DreamHost’s stretches up to 97 days.

And with that, you get to host your WordPress site on two virtual private servers. This is a standard provision for every single managed hosting user on DreamPress, with the principal objective being increased reliability, scalability, and performance.

Basically one VPS server is availed for your MySQL database, while the other facilitates your WordPress website’s frontend.

Another notable benefit that comes with DreamPress is a free subscription to Jetpack Premium. If you haven’t heard about it yet, Jetpack is a robust WordPress plugin that dynamically optimizes your website. More specifically, it protects against brute force attacks and monitors downtime, among other things.

Then to seal any potential vulnerabilities, DreamHost’s WordPress developers regularly update your site’s core, as well as the accompanying WordPress plugins.

But if at any point you’d prefer handling any of that yourself, you can take advantage of DreamHost’s one-click staging. It’ll clone your site for safe testing of all upcoming changes.

Apart from that, your managed WordPress hosting account provides pre-installed WordPress and SSL certificate, along with daily backups, one-click restore, WP website builder, and unmetered bandwidth.

DreamHost Managed WordPress Hosting Performance

Considering WordPress.org continues to recommend DreamHost, it’s pretty obvious that this is no regular service.

And while all the hosting plans here come with high performance capabilities, DreamPress is on another level. It combines the two VPS servers with several other infrastructural resources to achieve the best managed WordPress hosting performance.

The servers themselves use solid state drives (SSD), instead of regular hard disk drives (HDD). That essentially makes data storage and retrieval much easier and faster.

The servers also leverage NGINX and HTTP/2 for reduced loading time, as well as dynamic memory scaling when your site experiences abnormally high traffic.

One thing you won’t get, however, is an extensive network of data centers. It turns out DreamHost runs its cloud services from only two data centers, both of which are located in the US.

But, on the bright side, at least the hosting service has built a great Cloudflare integration. It comes in handy for caching your WordPress site’s static content on numerous proxy servers spread out across the globe.

And speaking of caching, DreamHost additionally uses Memcached and Varnish caching systems to further boost your website loading speeds while minimizing server requests.

Then to cap it off, DreamHost avails OPcache and PHP 7 for enhanced WordPress performance, plus facilitating integrations with third-party WordPress plugins.

DreamHost Managed WordPress Hosting Customer Support

Subscribing to managed WordPress hosting on DreamHost automatically qualifies you for dedicated customer support. You are basically given priority access to DreamHost’s elite expert support team, which is usually made up of WordPress developers. So, of course, they know everything there is to know about WordPress.

You can easily get in touch with them through the DreamHost control panel or the main site. And yes, they are available 24/7 on live chat, as well as email. Direct phone calls, however, are not possible at this time. But, on the bright side, you can request a callback.

That said, you can find out more about all the packages from our comprehensive DreamHost review.

DreamHost Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing

• DreamPress – Starting at $16.95 a month for annual billing, or $19.95 a month for monthly billing, this plan offers pre-installed Jetpack Free, pre-installed storefront theme as well as WooCommerce, 24/7 WordPress support, Daily Backups, one-click restore, SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth, 30GB SSD storage, plus up to 100,000 monthly visitors.
• DreamPress Plus – Starting at $24.95 a month for annual billing, or $29.95 a month for monthly billing, this plan avails unlimited CDN, one-click staging, pre-installed Jetpack Professional, pre-installed storefront theme as well as WooCommerce, 24/7 WordPress support, Daily Backups, one-click restore, SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth, 60GB SSD storage, plus up to 300,000 monthly visitors.
• DreamPress Pro – Starting at $71.95 a month for annual billing, or $79.95 a month for monthly billing, this plan comes with unlimited CDN, one-click staging, pre-installed Jetpack Professional, pre-installed storefront theme as well as WooCommerce, 24/7 WordPress support, Daily Backups, one-click restore, SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth, 120GB SSD storage, plus up to 1 million monthly visitors.

Who Should Consider DreamHost Managed WordPress Hosting?

All things considered, DreamHost’s DreamPress targets the same group of users as SiteGround. These are standard WordPress sites and WooCommerce online stores that need the best WordPress hosting capabilities at inexpensive pricing rates.

And while the hosting plans here are slightly costlier, they offer more features than SiteGround. But then again, SiteGround’s WordPress managed hosting performs better than DreamHost’s.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting #4: Kinsta

There are three types of managed WordPress hosting users.

The first group is pretty fine with any decent web host. The second one, on the other hand, seeks the best managed WordPress hosting companies they can get at the lowest rates. And then we have the elite group of users who don’t necessarily consider pricing to be a priority. They want nothing but the best managed WordPress hosting that money can buy.

Now that’s precisely where the likes of WP Engine and Kinsta lie. While DreamHost and SiteGround target the second group of users, WP Engine and Kinsta are more concerned about WordPress sites that need enterprise-level hosting environment.

Kinsta has been providing this since 2013, and its primary asset is the Google Cloud Platform. Yes, you’re right- Kinsta partnered with Google to offer one the best managed WordPress hosting infrastructure for growing businesses.

Now, there’s a lot about the Google Cloud Platform that makes it an excellent hosting environment. The main feature, however, is its containerized approach to WordPress hosting. Subscribing to Kinsta’s hosting plans means you won’t be sharing resources with other websites. Your site gets its own container, complete with isolated server resources.

And you know what? Every single container even comes with its own MySQL, PHP, NGINX, etc. So, it makes sense why companies like Coca Cola, Philips, Best Buy, HTC, Snapchat, and Spotify chose Kinsta as their home.

Quite remarkable, I must admit. But, make no mistake. Although enterprise managed WordPress hosting is the main focus here, Kinsta still attempts to woe standard businesses through its competitively-priced hosting plans.

Kinsta’s Starter plan, for instance, costs only $30 per month. And yes, it’s worth every penny since it provides solid optimization features for 1 WordPress website.

And as a result, your site stands to benefit substantially from Kinsta’s performance capabilities. You can expect fast page loading speeds without any service interruptions or downtime.

That said, Kinsta is a full-on managed WordPress hosting provider. That means its expert support team can’t focus on anything else apart from WordPress. All they eat, sleep and breathe is WordPress.

So, of course, you can depend on them when it comes to maintaining your WordPress site. They take care of all the critical tech stuff such as backups, updates, caching, and security.

But, that notwithstanding, you still get staging capabilities in case you’d like to try out some changes on your site. Even something as small as a plugin update can be tested on a cloned version of your website.

And when it comes to daily backups, Kinsta is sure to conduct them automatically without fail. But, you don’t have to wait for 24 hours to back up your site files. It’s possible to configure six-hour backups as well as hourly backups. But, that comes at an extra cost.

On the bright side, however, there’s also a manual option for those urgent backup instances required after rolling out major changes on your WordPress website. It’s as simple as a single click and voila! All your data is backed up immediately.

That said, I highly doubt you’ll ever need backup restoration. Kinsta is not one of those ordinary hosting providers that may lose your data at some point. Its entire system is well-protected by a host of strong security measures.

Apart from full encryption and an SSL certificate, Kinsta grants you two-factor authentication, DDoS scanning, and GeoIP blocking. They also proactively monitor their network to prevent malware intrusion or any form of attack.

And that’s not all. Kinsta goes ahead to guarantee that in the unlikely event of a successful attack, its WordPress experts will fix everything for free. So, another thing you don’t have to worry about here is recovering from a hacking disaster.

Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting Performance

Kinsta is many things alright. But, high performance is the one thing that made it one of the best managed WordPress hosting solutions.

Now, as we’ve established already, it rides on Google’s state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure. That translates to over 20 data center locations spread out evenly across the globe. You’re free to pick any based on your core traffic sources.

Another great thing about the Google Cloud Platform is its resource-scaling efficiency. If your website suddenly experiences traffic surges, Google automatically adjusts its resources to maintain a smooth user experience.

That’s a great deal so far, but it gets better. In addition to the Google Cloud Platform, Kinsta provides free CDN services. Its partnership with KeyCDN awards entry-level users 50GB of static data caching every month, with higher plans getting larger allocations.

You can also take advantage of Kinsta’s Redis add-on if you need extra object caching. Then for server-level caching, Kinsta uses full-page caching.

Other notable performance-optimization features include NGINX, HTTP/2, as well as PHP 7 support. In fact, you can easily shift your WordPress site between PHP 7.2, 7.1, and 5.6.

Then get this. While the Google Cloud Platform is pretty reliable when it comes to web uptime, Kinsta employs an extra layer of assurance by checking your website every five minutes. Consequently, they should be able to notice even the slightest indication of downtime.

Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting Customer Support

Since WordPress is the only CMS platform Kinsta has got going, you can bet its customer support team is sufficiently knowledgeable. We’ve even contacted them a couple of times to confirm and they’ve always proven to be extremely helpful.

The only problem here is this- you can’t reach out to them through a phone call. Kinsta seemingly favors live chat and ticketing over phone support because of their record-keeping capabilities.

Well, I don’t know about you, but those two options are more than enough for me. Besides, Kinsta’s support team is quite responsive 24/7.

Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing

• Starter Plan- At a cost of $300 per year or $30 per month, Kinsta provides 1 WordPress installation, 20,000 monthly visits, 3GB of SSD storage, 50GB on the free CDN, no white glove migrations, 14 days of backup retention, and 2 PHP workers per site.
• Pro Plan- At a cost of $600 per year or $60 per month, Kinsta provides 2 WordPress installations, 40,000 monthly visits, 6GB of SSD storage, 100GB on the free CDN, 1 white glove migration, 14 days of backup retention, 2 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, and a white-labeled cache plugin.

• Business 1 Plan- At a cost of $1,000 per year or $100 per month, Kinsta facilitates 3 WordPress installations, 100,000 monthly visits, 10GB of SSD storage, 200GB on the free CDN, 1 white glove migration, 14 days of backup retention, 2 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, white-labeled cache plugin, and SSH access.
• Business 2 Plan- At a cost of $2,000 per year or $200 per month, Kinsta comes with 10 WordPress installations, 250,000 monthly visits, 20GB of SSD storage, 300GB on the free CDN, 2 white glove migrations, 4 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, white-labeled cache plugin, SSH access, and 14 days of backup retention.
• Business 3 Plan- At a cost of $3,000 per year of $300 per month, Kinsta avails 20 WordPress installations, 400,000 monthly visits, 30GB of SSD storage, 500GB on the free CDN, three white glove migrations, 20 days of backup retention, 4 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, white-labeled cache plugin, as well as access to SSH
• Business 4 Plan- At a cost of $4,000 per year or $400 per month, Kinsta accommodates 40 WordPress installations, 600,000 monthly visits, 40GB of SSD storage, 500GB on the free CDN, 4 white glove migrations, 20 days of backup retention, 6 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, white-labeled cache plugin, and SSH access.

• Enterprise 1 Plan- At a cost of $6,000 per year or $600 per month, Kinsta allows 60 WordPress installations, 1,000,000 monthly visits, 80GB of SSD storage, 1,000GB on the free CDN, 5 white glove migrations, 30 days of backup retention, 8 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, white-labeled cache plugin, as well as access to SSH
• Enterprise 2 Plan- At a cost of $9,000 per year or $900 per month, you get 80 WordPress installations, 1,500,000 monthly visits, 120GB of SSD storage, 1,000GB on the free CDN, 5 white glove migrations, 30 days of backup retention, 10 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, white-labeled cache plugin, and SSH access.
• Enterprise 3 Plan- At a cost of 12,000 per year or $1,200 per month, Kinsta avails 120 WordPress installations, 2,000,000 monthly visits, 150GB of SSD storage, 1,000GB on the free CDN, 5 white glove migrations, 30 days of backup retention, 12 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, white-labeled cache plugin, as well as access to SSH
• Enterprise 4 Plan- At a cost of $15,000 per year or $1,500 per month, Kinsta offers 150 WordPress installations, 3,000,000 monthly visits, 200GB of SSD storage, 1,000GB on the free CDN, 5 white glove migrations, 30 days of backup retention, 16 PHP workers per site, multisite support, site cloning, white-labeled cache plugin, and SSH access.

Who Should Consider Kinsta Best Managed WordPress Hosting?

Just like WP Engine, Kinsta is the type of hosting provider you’d consider if you’re willing to overlook cheap pricing and instead, prioritize on enterprise-level performance. You can think of it as an enterprise managed WordPress hosting solution with prices that can accommodate small and growing businesses.

To discover more about Kinsta, feel free to check out our detailed review of its managed WordPress hosting here.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting #5: Pagely

While Kinsta is a WordPress managed hosting service for growing businesses, Pagely takes it up a notch by focusing entirely on enterprises. More specifically, it offers VPS managed WordPress hosting.

Well, this is not a provider you’d consider if your business is small because its hosting plans are considerably pricey. The entry-level package costs $199 a month. But, if you can afford that, the hosting services you get in return will be exceptional.

That said, Pagely’s rise to the top began in 2009. It was, in fact, among the first providers to introduce managed services. And since then, Pagely has successfully held its position as one of the best managed WordPress hosting providers for enterprises.

All this power is derived from Amazon Web Services, which happens to be Pagely’s infrastructure provider. And yes, it’s as reliable as the Google Cloud Platform used by Kinsta. In fact, it’s the same infrastructure that huge tech brands like Amazon and Netflix are riding on.

Well, the consequent benefits are many. But, above all, AWS provides increased redundancy, dynamic scaling and enterprise-level performance.

Therefore, you should be able to proceed with your business comfortably even when you’re experiencing an extremely high traffic surge. Pagely monitors your traffic flow in real-time so it can automatically scale its server resources if need be.

And in case your site’s server fails, Pagely will provide an immediate replacement. All thanks to its well-duplicated network, which is built to prevent service interruption in the event of a system failure.

Speaking of which, one thing you can be almost certain of is that your WordPress website won’t be failing anytime soon. Pagely is the real deal when it comes to VPS managed WordPress hosting. Its developers are WordPress experts who know even the smallest stuff about the CMS.

They’ll take charge of all the technical aspects of your WordPress site by consistently updating its plugins and core, securing it accordingly, as well as optimizing the whole hosting environment to maintain minimum load time and maximum performance.

Pagely also offers daily backups to all its users, and the files are subsequently saved on Amazon S3. Every single backup instance is then kept for 14 days, during which you can easily restore or download.

Then to cater to developers, Pagely avails database access, SSH access, WP-CLI, GIT, and staging.

Pagely Managed WordPress Hosting Performance

If there’s one asset to thank for Pagely’s dominance as one of the best managed WordPress hosting providers, then it has to be Amazon Web Services. Its specialized infrastructure is comprised of a global network of servers that are placed strategically in 13 locations worldwide.

That translates to great server response times if you choose a data center located conveniently close to your primary traffic sources.

Another resource you get to leverage is Pagely’s PressCache. It tends to function just like a CDN, but with page caching for WordPress sites.

Closely related to that is PressFormance, which is yet another tool provided by Pagely. This one, however, is more of a performance and security analytics feature. It goes above and beyond Google Analytics info to generate metrics on your WordPress site’s loading performance, and security parameters for each visitor session.

My personal favorite, however, is PressThumb. It solves the reduced quality problem that commonly develops after you’ve compressed your site’s images. The tool manages to optimize images accordingly without interfering with their pixels.

Another Pagely feature that comes in handy for accelerated WordPress performance is Redis. But that’s not all. You can also capitalize on proprietary NGINX or OpenResty HyperProxies to further sharpen your WordPress capabilities.

Then to top it off, Pagely supports PHP 7 and HTTP2, just like other best managed WordPress hosting providers.

Pagely Managed WordPress Hosting Customer Support

Well, it turns out Pagely is not that great when it comes to customer support. Although all the three major support channels are available, live chat and phone calls are only possible during normal working hours.

That leaves you with ticketing, which, thankfully operates 24/7. And based on our assessment of Pagely’s support staff, you can rest assured you’ll be getting assistance from actual WordPress experts.

To learn more about this service, here is our comprehensive ecommerce hosting guide.

Pagely Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing

• Vburst-1: At a cost of $199 a month, Pagely gives you limited VPS capabilities plus basic features for staging, development and caching. You can set up a maximum of 5 WordPress sites on 1 node plus a shared database.
• Vburst-2: At a cost of $299 a month, Pagely provides entry-level managed VPS solutions with standard workload capabilities. You can proceed with a maximum of 15 WordPress sites on 1 node plus a shared database.
• VPS-1: At a cost of $499 a month, Pagely offers a WordPress optimized VPS with SSD storage, 3.75GB of RAM, database access, staging, as well as Redis features. It supports a maximum of 35 WordPress sites on 1 node plus a shared database.

• VPS-2: At a cost of $999 a month, Pagely avails a WordPress optimized VPS two times the resources offered by the VPS-1 package. You can set up a maximum of 60 high concurrency WordPress sites on 1 node plus a shared database.
• VPS-1+: At a cost of $1249 a month, Pagely provides two separate VPS-1 servers with distinct availability zones. Consequently, you get to host a maximum of 30 WordPress sites on 2 nodes plus a shared database.
• VPS-2+: For $2249 a month, Pagely comes with two separate VPS-2 servers with distinct availability zones. That means you can host up to 60 WordPress sites on 2 nodes plus a shared database.

Who Should Consider Pagely Managed WordPress Hosting?

Pagely is essentially a VPS managed WordPress hosting provider with high-level solutions for enterprises. Sadly, the pricing places its services out of the reach of typical small businesses.

But, make no mistake. The performance levels you get here are worth every penny. Undeniably some of the best managed WordPress hosting capabilities.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting #6: FlyWheel

Kinsta is not the only service in our best managed WordPress hosting list that boasts of the Google Cloud Platform. It turns out Flywheel has also partnered with Google to leverage the cloud platform for increased WordPress managed hosting performance.

And interestingly, it was founded around the same period as Kinsta. The precise year is 2012, in which Flywheel hit the ground running, and later rose to the top as one of the best managed WordPress hosting services on the web.

Well, of course, you can thank the Google Cloud Platform for that. Not entirely though. Because Flywheel happens to be one of the few services that purely focus on WordPress managed hosting. That means its engineers and developers have all the time in the world to perfect their WordPress optimization capabilities.

The types of packages here, however, are not your ordinary managed WordPress service solutions. Flywheel essentially caters to creatives like web developers and web designers. Its managed WordPress hosting services are specifically tailored to the needs of freelancers and agencies that handle client sites.

You can, for instance, collaborate extensively with team members after adding them to your WordPress projects. Flywheel will automatically hand each team member their own login credentials and collaboration capabilities.

More specifically, they should be able to work on all the WordPress site projects you grant them access to. And when they are done, you can withdraw their access and keep all the project privileges to yourself.

Don’t get me wrong though. While web developers and web designers are the principal target users, they don’t make up the entire Flywheel user base. Flywheel’s managed WordPress hosting can also accommodate WordPress ecommerce sites and, most importantly, WooCommerce stores.

How?

Well, you see, in addition to its packages for creatives, Flywheel offers an extra custom one for other types of WordPress sites. Basically, you get to choose the type of features you’d want for your website, and Flywheel handles the rest.

This approach is perfect for small businesses that would love the same level of feature flexibility as enterprise sites. Plus, of course, many would consider the package to be economical since you’ll only pay for what you need.

Speaking of which, the managed WordPress hosting offered here is no joke. Flywheel places your WordPress website on the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, which in turn isolates it from other sites. That translates to adequate resource allocation, as well as constant security and stability.

If you’re thinking of setting up new WordPress sites, Flywheel attempts to make the whole process much easier through its Blueprints tool. The feature essentially gives you the power to directly apply popular theme and plugin configurations on multiple WordPress sites. So, you don’t have to worry about reinstalling your components over and over again with each new site.

Another thing you won’t have to bother yourself with is WordPress update. Flywheel’s WordPress experts take care site core updates, as well as plugin updates, and WordPress security.

But, if you happen to know your tech stuff, you can use Flywheel’s staging environment to run various plugin tests before applying them on your WordPress website. The platform is designed to facilitate one-click pushing, pulling and merging of site changes.

Apart from that, web developers would appreciate Flywheel’s local WordPress development environment. Some of the features here include SSH access, SSL support, shareable demo URLs, etc.

And in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes- it’s indeed possible to share demo site URLs on Flywheel. As a matter of fact, Flywheel allows you to create full demo sites for free without submitting credit card details. The goal is to help you get a clear picture of what managed WordPress hosting on Flywheel is all about.

FlyWheel Managed WordPress Hosting Performance

The Google Cloud Platform should be sufficient assurance that Flywheel is not a regular web host. With such state-of-the-art infrastructure, you can bet WordPress sites here achieve, at the very least, enterprise level performance. The servers avail isolated resources for increased loading speeds, dynamic auto-scalability, and great network security.

It’s also worth noting that the Google Cloud Platform has one of the most extensive server networks in the world. Consequently, you get the privilege of choosing your precise server location from multiple countries and territories.

Flywheel further reinforces this system with a content delivery network managed by Fastly. As a result, your site visitors get better loading times, thanks to the CDN delivering your site’s static content from the nearest servers.

Then to top it off, Flywheel has developed its own powerful caching system called FlyCache- a far more reliable and efficient server-side cache compared to generic WordPress cache plugins.

FlyWheel Managed WordPress Hosting Customer Support

In case of any technical issues, all Flywheel users should be able to get in touch with WordPress experts at any time of the day or night. 24/7 live chat support is available on each pricing plan, including the entry level option.

Phone support and dedicated account management, however, can only be accessed by users paying at least $266 a month.

FlyWheel Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing

• Starter- For $23 a month for annual billing, or $25 a month for monthly billing, you get 24/7 chat support, free migrations, site cloning, collaboration capabilities, free demo site, site staging, local development environment, billing transfer, Blueprints, auto-healing capabilities, globalization, Simple SSL certificates, Fastly CDN, and FlyCache. This plan supports a single site, with a bandwidth limit of 50 GB, 25,000 monthly visits, plus 5 GB storage space.
• Freelance- For $105 a month for annual billing, or $115 a month for monthly billing, Flywheel grants you support for third-party SSL certificates, full-time chat support, free site migrations, site cloning, collaboration capabilities, free demo site, site staging, local development environment, billing transfer, Blueprints, auto-healing capabilities, globalization, Simple SSL certificates, Fastly CDN, and FlyCache. This plan supports up to 10 websites, whose collective bandwidth limit is 200 GB, 100,000 cumulative monthly visits, plus 20 GB cumulative storage space.
• Agency- For $266 a month for annual billing, or $290 a month for monthly billing, Flywheel grants offers you a dedicated account manager, phone support, migration dashboard, support for third-party SSL certificates, full-time chat support, free site migrations, site cloning, collaboration capabilities, free demo site, site staging, local development environment, billing transfer, Blueprints, auto-healing capabilities, globalization, Simple SSL certificates, Fastly CDN, and FlyCache. This plan supports up to 30 websites, whose collective bandwidth limit is 500 GB, half a million cumulative monthly visits, plus 50 GB cumulative storage space.
• Custom- Flywheel’s Custom Plan can host more than 30 WordPress installs. It allows you to choose custom WordPress hosting features for a custom quote.

Who Should Consider FlyWheel Managed WordPress Hosting?

Going by the collaboration and workflow tools offered here, Flywheel is perfect for web developers and web designers. They should be able to work on multiple client projects while leveraging the high performance capabilities that come with the best managed WordPress hosting providers.

Another group of users that would find Flywheel enticing are owners of growing businesses. The platform allows them to specify the features they need in their custom managed WordPress hosting packages.

Find out more details about Flywheel hosting from our ecommerce hosting guide.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting #7: Bluehost

And finally, Bluehost sums up our list of the best managed WordPress hosting providers, with pretty much the same approach as SiteGround and DreamHost.

In fact, you can think of Bluehost as a close cousin of the two since it’s also an all-in-one platform that offers the entire range of hosting solutions- shared hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress hosting, Shared WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and dedicated hosting.

Building such an impressive set of packages has taken Bluehost over two decades now, considering it was founded in 1996. Since then, it has managed to grow its portfolio to hundreds of thousands of websites, most of which happen to be WordPress sites.

The WordPress connection here is particularly strong as Bluehost continues to specialize in WordPress optimization. In fact, WordPress.org eventually noticed the company’s efforts as early as 1996, consequently making Bluehost the earliest recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Moving on, all the WordPress hosting packages here are configured to provide value options. Managed WordPress hosting, for instance, starts at $19.95 a month and the costliest it can get is $45.95.

Now, one thing you can expect from Bluehost’s managed WordPress hosting is unique architecture. Each site is hosted on VPS infrastructure optimized for WordPress. And since such technology comes with isolated server resources, expect fast website loading speeds, as well as dynamic scaling.

Then to keep your site functioning properly, Bluehost has hired WordPress experts for specialized support. They maintain WordPress sites 24/7 through core and plugin updates, as well as advanced optimization for security and performance.

Some of the security features include spam protection, free SSL certificate, daily backups, plus malware detection and removal. Basically the standard stuff we’ve seen with other providers in our best managed WordPress hosting list.

What you won’t find on other providers, however, is Bluehost’s marketing features and generous resource allocations. Managed WordPress hosting users get a range of tools for enhancing their SEO, plus performance tracking.

Then when it comes to resource allocations, Bluehost’s managed allows you to create as many websites and subdomains as you want without worrying about storage space or traffic restrictions. In other words, it grants you unlimited websites, subdomains, web storage and traffic flow.

Bluehost Managed WordPress Hosting Performance

Bluehost, to begin with, uses VPS servers to power managed WordPress hosting websites. Every single site gets an isolated section, complete with its own resources.

This is where Bluehost employs its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor for isolated virtualization. And the end result is, of course, reduced site loading time and favorable latency.

The servers themselves are held in multiple data center locations. While the primary ones are in Utah, USA, there are a couple more in London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Mumbai.

Very strategic locations, I must admit. But sadly, it turns out you can’t specify your preferred data center, as Bluehost chooses to keep the information hidden.

Well, on the bright side, at least it avails Cloudflare CDN for free. Consequently, you get to hold your site’s static files on more than 180 proxy server locations worldwide.

Bluehost Managed WordPress Hosting Customer Support

Customer support is available 24/7 via live chat or toll-free phone calls. And yes, Bluehost’s support staff is made up of genuine WordPress experts.

Bluehost Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing

• Build: At the starting price of $19.95 a month, followed by a regular price of $19.99 a month, Bluehost gives you entry-level essentials like domain privacy protection, malware detection and removal, daily scheduled backups, more than 100+ free WordPress themes, marketing center, as well as the basic version of Jetpack Site Analytics.
• Grow: At the starting price of $29.95 a month, followed by a regular price of $39.99 a month, you get to grow your site by combining the Build plan features with Blue Sky Ticket support, 10GB video compression, Jetpack Ads integration, Bluehost SEO tools, business review tools, and Jetpack Premium.
• Scale: Bluehost provides advanced online store features at the starting price of $49.95, followed by a regular price of $59.99. In addition to the Grow plan features, Bluehost provides Blue Sky chat support, elastic search, unlimited video compression, PayPal integration, unlimited backups and restore, plus Jetpack Pro.

Who Should Consider Bluehost Managed WordPress Hosting?

Bluehost is a value managed WordPress hosting option for small businesses on a budget. It accommodates an unlimited number of websites and subdomains without storage or traffic restrictions, and all that comes with reasonable pricing rates.

Discover more from our detailed review of Bluehost.

The post The Ultimate Guide to the Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers for 2020 appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.

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