What is managed website hosting?

Understanding Managed Web Hosting

If you’re a business with a web presence and you’re looking into web hosting, you’ve probably come across the terms “dedicated web hosting” and “managed web hosting.” We’ve previously discussed dedicated web hosting, so in this post, we’re discussing managed web hosting.

What Is Managed Web Hosting?

Managed web hosting is when a hosting service provider leases you a dedicated server but manages the server themselves. The provider controls your server, conducts software and hardware maintenance, provides security, monitors activity, and takes care of backup services.

Though both managed web hosting and dedicated web hosting involve a dedicated server, with dedicated web hosting you manage the server yourself. This is not the case for managed web hosting, where the hosting provider takes care of server management with proactive support and notification of required updates.

Unlike virtual or shared hosting, which involves multiple users on a single server, managed web hosting offers a server for your exclusive use. Managed web hosting is similar to virtual or shared hosting in that the web hosting company works to manage the server. The difference is that with managed web hosting, the IT staff doing the managing need to understand a bit about your business and how it uses the server.

What Does “Managed” Mean?

With “managed web hosting,” the hosting service provider sets up the server and takes care of day-to-day operations, twenty-four hours a day. They troubleshoot technical problems, deal with software updates, handle security, and more. A great deal goes into management and upkeep of a server, and managed web hosting takes care of this.

Important Considerations

As you might expect, managed web hosting is typically more costly than dedicated web hosting. When you pay for managed web hosting, you pay for 24/7 IT support from the web hosting provider.

Your IT department will be a major factor in the decision about whether or not your business uses managed web hosting. Server management is a 24/7 job that involves many different areas of expertise, including architecture, configuration management, monitoring, backup technologies, security, and more. It’s worth mentioning security twice because it’s a big part of the reason server management is a 24/7 job. Is your IT staff proactive and reactive enough to protect your server all the time?

Even if your IT staff has the expertise to manage a server, it’s also important to consider their capacity. Is your staff big enough to do their regular jobs and add round-the-clock server management to their mandate?