Managed hosting is a web hosting service in which you don’t need to worry about the management part of the site. Managing a website by yourself can take quite a bit of time, and the reality is that many times you will need a dedicated IT team to help you manage it. Fortunately, by using managed hosting, all the management part of your website will be taken care of by the hosting company. Still, even this type of hosting has its own advantages and disadvantages. Here are the most important ones:
1 Advantages Of Managed Hosting
1. You don’t need to hire your own IT staff. Managing your own hosting can be costly. If your website is big enough and it needs constant maintenance by dedicated IT staff, it will add more to your payroll, and thus increase your overall business expenses. But when you use managed hosting, you can avoid hiring qualified IT personnel, because all the maintenance is done by the hosting company. Thus, you can focus your energy on growing your business, rather than spending a lot of time managing your website.
2. Lower costs. Of course, using a managed hosting service will cost you a monthly fee, just like the monthly paycheck for an IT professional. Still, the cost of a managed hosting service is a lot less if you compare it to paying the salary for your IT staff. The conclusion is easy to understand: managed hosting is a simple, intelligent solution that will help save your business a lot of money.
3. You can focus on your business. As an example, if you have an e-commerce website, you can focus your energy on attracting new customers and promoting your website. You don’t need to worry about whether your website will keep running tomorrow because of a server update or not. This way, you can concentrate your energy on growing your business, rather than worrying about the latest server security patch.
4. Improved website security. Since your website will be managed by highly qualified IT professionals from your web hosting company, you don’t need to worry about the security of your website any longer. Managed hosting has the potential to offer maximum security, ensuring that your website will run without you having to fear any security threats.
2 Disadvantages Of Managed Hosting
1. You don’t have full control. Since the web hosting company controls all the web hosting aspects of your website, sometimes you might not be happy with the result of their work. You may have to contact customer service in order to fix the things, rather than having them fixed right away by using the services offered by your in-house IT expert.
2. It might be useless for you. Managed hosting is useful if you have a big website, which receives a big amount of traffic and generates a big income. If you’re just starting out and only have a basic website that you can manage by yourself, a managed website hosting service will not be of too much use for you. In addition to this, it will add a significant expense to your monthly budget.
These are some of the most important advantages and disadvantages of any managed hosting service. If you have a fairly big website and want to start using managed hosting, it is always a good idea to think about its advantages and disadvantages before deciding to take action.
Bob Spiegel, the author of this article, is the COO at QuoteColo.com. QuoteColo offers a free service that assists SMBs and enterprise companies in finding qualified colocation services, dedicated servers and cloud hosting services. Bob resides in Massachusetts with his wife and four children and enjoys fishing, wake boarding and hiking.