The Best Managed Hosting Services of 2021

Reviews of the Best Managed Hosting Services

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting gives you access to affordable managed web hosting. They provide different types of web servers like shared servers, cloud hosting, and dedicated servers. Their managed hosting services give you access to their powerful array of servers.

A2 Hosting provides Windows and Linux-based web hosting. With plans starting as low as $2.99 per month, you get to build your company’s website without having to worry much about operating costs. Websites hosted by A2 Hosting load moderately fast according to HRANK at 949ms. Their servers are reliable with a 99.9% uptime.

Those who choose A2 Hosting for their hosting needs also get to enjoy some free tools and features that help to build their website. These include:

• Unlimited bandwidth and disk space
• Free domain name registration
• A free website builder
• An SSL certificate
• Free data backups

Pros and Cons of A2 Hosting Managed Hosting Services

A2 Hosting provides business and individuals with affordable managed web hosting that simplifies the process of building your website. Their plans come with a 30 money-back guarantee so there is no risk to try their services out. Their site loading speeds are good enough at 949ms.

What Customers are Saying

Many of those who sign up for A2 Hosting’s managed hosting services are happy with the extra support they get. “I just switched over to A2 Hosting, after trying to set up service at three other hosting vendors,” one user explains. “I was having trouble with getting my FTP setup. They quickly helped me get that straightened out.”

Cloudways

Cloudways specializes in providing managed WordPress hosting at affordable rates. Users get to choose between platforms like Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services. They offer pay-as-you-go hosting plans that start for as little as $10 per month and you can test their services for free without having to put down your credit card information.

Cloudways is on the lighter side when it comes to the features offered with their services. The company does not provide domain registration or email accounts.

The Cloudways platform is integrated with a variety of popular platforms like WordPress, PHP stack, Koken, Prestashop, Magento, Joomla, and Drupal.

Cloudways pledges to maintain 99.9% uptime and provides users with up to 5Tb of storage and bandwidth. Their friendly customer service team is available to help 24/7. All Cloudways plans come with a free web builder, an SSL certificate, and free database backups.

Pros and Cons of Cloudways Managed Hosting Services

Cloudways offers affordable managed hosting that is integrated with many of the popular applications used to create websites like WordPress and Joomla. Their plans come with automatic daily site backups and one-click restorations. Their pricing system makes building a website affordable for all businesses regardless of their size.

What Customers are Saying

Cloudways has many happy customers thanks to its easy-to-use hosting systems. “I use CloudWays to host our website,” one user explains. “Server performance is good and the website UI is intuitive and really clear. It makes me feel way more in control over what I am doing. Chat support is educated, fast, and helpful.”

FastComet

FastComet’s hosting services are powered by servers located in major cities around the world like Tokyo, Mumbai, Singapore, and London. While having servers all over the globe generally leads to faster loading speeds (since visitors can be served by the servers closest to them), FastComet’s page loading speeds were far from impressive, coming in at 1187ms.

FastComet provides reliable servers that have an average uptime of over 99.93%. Their customer service team is just as reliable. They are there to help customers 24/7.

Customers get to try FastComet’s services with no risk to them thanks to the 45-day money-back guarantee that comes with all of their plans. Other noteworthy features include:

• Free daily website backups
• Free Cloudflare content delivery network (CDN)
• Free migrations for customers with existing websites
• A free domain name you keep for life
• Shared, cloud, dedicated, and VPS servers available

Pros and Cons of FastComet Managed Hosting Services

FastComet might be one of the newer hosting providers around, but they already have a clear understanding of what website owners want. For $2.95 per month, users get access to everything they need to build and maintain a website.

What Customers are Saying

FastComet already has over 50,000 happy customers. “FastComet is an affordable, reliable, and very friendly service,” one user states. “Over the years, I’ve dealt with a lot of hosting companies. This is by far the best for helpful and knowledgeable service, competitive price, and ease of use.”

Hostinger

Hostinger has been around since 2007 and currently has over 29 million users.

Their rapid growth is not surprising, given the top-notch service they provide and the many perks that come with their hosting plans. Hostinger’s web servers are some of the fastest around with an average speed of 459ms. Their uptime, however, is below the industry standard coming in at 98.78% according to a third-party audit.

Great customer support is essential for managed hosting solutions since they are often the first point of contact when things go wrong. Hostinger has an experienced crew that works with their technical support team to ensure your website is running on the latest software and appropriate security protocols are being taken. Other important freebies that come with Hostinger’s services include:

• Live chat support and user knowledge base
• Website building tool
• Free domain registration
• Simple user interface
• Email services
• Managed, Cloud, VPS, Shared, and WordPress hosting available

Pros and Cons of Hostinger Managed Hosting Services

Hostinger gives individuals and businesses access to high performing web hosting at affordable rates. It comes with a simple user interface that makes it easy to navigate through the client. Plus great customer service and tech support team members that are happy to hold your hand when needed.

What Customers are Saying

Hostinger has many happy customers who are pleased with the performance of their websites. “The customer support is great,” a user explains. “They helped me set up my website and explained a lot of technical stuff that I didn’t know about. My site has been up ever since. Haven’t seen any downtime. Would highly recommend this web host to all beginners and novices just starting out.”

HostPapa

HostPapa currently hosts over half a million websites in its data centers in Canada and the U.S. They have established a reputation for their knowledgeable customer service teams that provide support to customers in English, Spanish, German, and French.

With prices starting at $3.95 per month, HostPapa provides reliable servers that have an average uptime of 99.95%. The page loading speeds of their servers are not as impressive at 954ms.

HostPapa takes the security of the websites hosted on their servers seriously, providing Panda Cloud anti-spam protection, intrusion detection, monitoring, and a server firewall with their hosting plans.

Hosting plans offered by HostPapa, give you all you need to build a web presence. Their plans come with two free domain names, a simple user interface, and a free SSL certificate. Other noteworthy bonuses that come with HostPapa’s plans include:

• Free CDN
• Integration with over 400 applications like WordPress
• Secure emails
• 100+ mobile-friendly templates

Pros and Cons of HostPapa Managed Hosting Service

HostPapa provides all the essentials needed for website building for only $3.95 per month. This includes two free domain names and one-click installation of popular apps like WordPress and Drupal. Their customer service teams are great at quickly resolving any issues that come up.

What Customers are Saying

HostPapa has many customers who are pleased with their reliable web hosting. “In terms of price to quality relationship, HostPapa gets this right,” one customer explains. “It is quite user-friendly and things have been running well for me. If you’re a newbie, they have a one-on-one training session that is free when you sign up with them. They are great! Highly recommended.”

InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting is one of the largest managed hosting providers around. They offer an assortment of server types like shared, VPS, WordPress, dedicated, and cloud servers. InMotion has been around since 2001 and they currently host over 300,000 websites from their data centers in Virginia Beach and Los Angeles.

InMotion Hosting also maintains skilled customer service and tech support teams. This makes it possible for users with limited knowledge about web development to use their platform with ease.

InMotion’s servers have an average uptime of 99.84% and their page loading speeds are somewhat slow coming in at only 1168ms.

InMotion Hosting is big on open source projects and their platform is integrated with over 300 applications like Joomla and WordPress. WordPress users will appreciate the free premium plugin Sucuri that automatically scans your website searching for security risks. Other noteworthy benefits that come with InMotion Hosting plans include:

• Free migrations
• Google Apps integration
• Smartwall Threat Defense System

Pros and Cons of InMotion Hosting Managed Hosting Services

InMotion is one of the larger web hosts around and their effective customer service and tech support teams are their biggest selling point. This makes them a great host for less experienced web developers who need a lot of assistance as they build their web presence.

What Customers are Saying

Many of InMotion Hosting’s customers are happy with the value they receive for as low as $6.39 per month. “I use InMotion for web hosting and email service,” one customer explains. “At peak consumption, I ran over 20 different websites with as many email accounts. My company is a residential real estate brokerage, so all of our websites are used for marketing purposes.”

KnownHost

Founded in 2006, KnownHost provides businesses and individuals with fully managed web hosting services. Their data centers are located all over the world in places like Amsterdam, Baltimore, Dallas, and Seattle.

KnownHost provides its customers with top-end infrastructure like RAID 10 protection and SSD cloud servers. Their plans come with a variety of features that simplify the process of building a website like:

• One-click application installations
• Free SSL certificates
• DDoS protected servers
• cPanel and WHM server management
• Free Cloudflare CDN
• Unlimited bandwidth and SSD disk storage
• Root access to servers

KnownHost provides different types of hosting services like fully managed VPS solutions, reseller accounts, cloud servers, and dedicated servers. Their systems are integrated with the most popular content management systems like WordPress. Offsite backups of websites and restoration points are provided for free.

Prices start at $3.45 per month for KnownHost’s managed hosting services and this includes free website migrations and a 30-day money-back guarantee for those who want to try out their services.

Pros and Cons of KnownHost Managed Hosting Services

KnownHost Managed Hosting plans provide you with great infrastructure and some of the tools needed to build a website. They provide free migrations to those with existing sites, free SSL certificates, and a free CDN.

What Customers are Saying

Many of those who have signed up for KnownHost’s web hosting are pleased with the value they have received. “Have been using their services for a bit over a year now with not even one complaint. No downtime, support is excellent and 24/7,” one user explains.

Liquid Web

Liquid Web is one of the industry leaders when it comes to managed WooCommerce and WordPress. With prices starting at $4.95 per month, Liquid Web provides moderately fast, reliable servers that have a solid average uptime of 99.97%.

Liquid Web offers a variety of server types like dedicated servers, cloud hosting, managed WooCommerce hosting, reseller accounts, and managed WordPress hosting. This makes them a great choice for organizations that are growing exponentially since you have the option of upgrading to one of their more powerful servers as the need arises.

Important features that are included as part of Liquid Web’s hosting services include:

• Free website builder
• Database backups
• 24/7 customer service and tech support
• DDoS protection
• Premium tools like Beaver Builder included for free
• Fully managed hosting solutions

Pros and Cons of Liquid Web Managed Hosting Services

Liquid Web provides top-end web hosting for affordable prices. Their services come with a 100% uptime guarantee that promises to reimburse customers if their sites ever go down due to issues on their side. Liquid Web provides secure tech stacks and SSL certificates that allow you to build a secure website with adequate protection from hackers.

What Customers are Saying

Many of Liquid Web’s customers could not be more thrilled with their services. “Liquid Web products are well packaged and fairly priced making them competitive in the market,” one customer explains. “Above all, their customer care and support are unmatched. They will go above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction. They leave us feeling valued and we have never regretted the move to use them as our sole cloud products provider.”

SiteGround

SiteGround is one of the more popular shared hosting providers and the company provides multiple server types like shared, WordPress, WooCommerce, and cloud hosting services. When it comes to the performance of their servers, SiteGround beats out most of their competition. These servers have an average page loading speed of 534ms and an uptime of 99.99%.

SiteGround also excels at customer service and tech support. They are available to help with any issues that develop with your site 24/7. Their reps are very knowledgeable about their systems and resolve most issues promptly.

SiteGround’s hosting services come with a variety of bonuses like a free SSL certificate, email accounts, and CDN. Their plans also offer free website migrations for customers who already have websites hosted by a different provider. Other noteworthy features that come with SiteGround hosting include:

• Integrations with popular apps like Weebly, WordPress, and Drupal
• Reseller and collaboration tools
• Unmetered SSD storage and bandwidth
• 24/7 customer service with Live Chat support system for quick access

Pros and Cons of SiteGround Managed Hosting Services

SiteGround’s servers are some of the fastest around and they are just as reliable. SiteGround provides a great environment for WordPress hosting and staging environments to try out new things.

What Customers are Saying

Many of SiteGround’s customers appreciate their high-performing servers and their transparency as a business. “You get a number of page views as a guide to your bandwidth, and a fixed amount of disk space on the server,” a customer states. “So you know what you have to work with. No hazy promises of ‘unlimited’ resources.”

WebHostFace

Founded in 2013, WebHostFace is one of the smaller hosting providers around, but their data centers are surprisingly well spread out all over the globe with servers in the U.S., Asia, and Europe.

WebHostFace provides users with everything they need to build and maintain a website like free domain name registration, free SSL certificates, and a free website builder. Higher tier plans also come with free DNS set up.

WebHostFace gives users access to unmetered storage and bandwidth at prices starting as low as $2.94 per month. Multiple server types are provided like shared, reseller, VPS, dedicated, and managed hosting. Their plans come with free website migrations for users with existing sites. Anti-virus and anti-spam services are also included with their plans.

Pros and Cons of WebHostFace Managed Hosting Services

WebHostFace provides individuals and businesses with many of the tools they need to get their web presence going. Their customer service team is adept at solving problems as they develop and scaling up as your website’s needs increase is easy.

What Customers are Saying

Many of WebHostFace’s customers feel they are getting great value for their dollar. “Great hosting provider with great support and offers,” one user states. “I have been using WebHostFace with most of my projects hosted online. I will continue to use WebHostFace for my future projects.”

What Are Managed Hosting Services?

In the world of web hosting, managed and unmanaged hosting services refer to who is in charge of a server’s setup, security, back-ups, and hardware and software maintenance — the hosting service provider or the user.

With unmanaged hosting, the user is responsible for these tasks, whereas with a managed hosting service, the hosting service provider takes care of them.

For most types of web hosting, like shared and VPS hosting, managed hosting services are included. The question of managed versus unmanaged services comes into play with dedicated hosting, when a customer leases an entire server for their own use.

In most cases, users who have a dedicated server plan can choose between managed and unmanaged services. Managed hosting services are recommended for users who do not have the time, resources, or technical knowledge to handle server set-up and maintenance themselves.

While managed hosting services can make life easier for users, as they do not have to deal with the day-to-day tasks required to keep a server running properly, they come at a price, as users are essentially paying for their own 24/7 IT team in addition to the dedicated server.

Pros & Cons of Managed Hosting Services

When deciding if managed hosting services are right for you, it’s helpful to look at the key benefits and drawbacks.

Pros

• Managed hosting services save the user’s time, as no one on the user’s end has to take time to service equipment, troubleshoot and repair problems, or upgrade software.
• With managed hosting, no one on the user’s end needs to have the advanced technical knowledge and skills needed to set up and maintain a server.
• Users have the peace of mind of knowing that regular updates and maintenance, as well as unforeseen problems, will be handled efficiently, so they can focus their energy and attention on growing their business.

Cons

• For users who want complete control over their server, managed hosting services are not the ideal option. Although users can request changes from their hosting service provider, there are more limitations than if a user has full access to their server.
• Managed hosting typically costs more than unmanaged hosting, as users pay for the convenience of outside IT help. Managed services may only be a few dollars more per month, but this can add up over time.

Must-Have Features of Managed Hosting Services

Managed hosting features vary slightly by provider, but here are some key features all hosts should provide:

• Hardware and software maintenance: The main selling point of managed hosting services is that the service provider will handle all of the routine maintenance for the server, including updates, repairs, and security monitoring.
• Backup and recovery: Your service provider should also have protocols in place for regularly backing up your site’s data, as well as a recovery plan in the event the server crashes or is damaged.
• Uptime: Your website’s uptime should be as close to 100% as possible. The industry standard is 99.9%, which is what most web hosting companies advertise. You can confirm their claims by checking with a third-party auditor.
• 24/7/365 support: Users with a managed hosting plan pay premiums for service, so they should get premium support. A hosting provider offering managed hosting services should guarantee customer support 24/7, whether it’s via phone, email, tickets, or live chat.
• Service level agreement: All of the features included with the managed hosting plan should be clearly outlined in a service level agreement (SLA) between the web host and the user.

Cost of Managed Hosting Services

Managed hosting services are usually the most expensive of all the different web hosting types. Not only are users paying for dedicated resources, they are getting a high level of support from IT professionals who are monitoring and managing those resources. The price can also vary depending on the amount of resources a customer uses.

On average, most users can expect to pay anywhere from $50-$250 per month for quality managed hosting services. For the most robust enterprise solutions, prices may go as high as a few thousand dollars a month.