Discover the 9 best managed WordPress hosting companies of 2024. I'll show you why each made our list and when to choose each one.
WordPress has played a significant role in democratizing the web space since 2001.
Today, you can create a blog or website in minutes without worrying about confusing technicalities.
However, issues with the WordPress back end affect your site, and managing the Content Management System (CMS) can be a hassle for many.
Fortunately, the best managed WordPress hosting can take care of that responsibility for you.
We explain what it is and why you may need it.
We also feature the top nine companies in the managed WordPress industry.
Website hosting involves making your site available on the internet and storing data.
Website hosts are third-party service providers who help make your site accessible to users.
Managed website hosting means you lease a dedicated server from the hosting provider.
The provider then handles the challenging tasks of maintaining a fast and secure server.
But how does this all work for sites running on WordPress?
Managed WordPress hosting maintains the security of your WordPress site by handling back-end tasks such as malware detection, caching, backups, and updates.
The service optimizes the WordPress CMS while solving potential and current issues to improve site performance.
The result is a reliable, secure, and fast website.
The best managed WordPress hosting offers a premium-type hosting service specifically for WordPress websites.
Such services include more functionality and performance optimizations.
WordPress hosting is a way of setting up your site and running it, while managed WP hosting goes beyond the minimum by offering features your business can use to get more out of the site.
Managed WordPress hosting offers more features tailored to your WP site, including site backs that reduce website downtime, early detection of plugin security issues, and automatic deactivation of plugins likely to harm your site.
The service also offers automatic updates for your WordPress website and responsive support teams ready and capable of assisting you.
Bloggingtips.com is an unbiased, independent resource, so trust us to reveal everything you need to know about hosting providers.
Finding reliable and genuine web hosting information online can be a challenge.
When we review and make recommendations for the best managed WordPress hosting services, we do so based on the experience of using one such host for the past five years.
We also run a portfolio of websites, so we need things done fast and at scale.
Over the years, we’ve been researching alternatives to ensure we aren’t overpaying for hosting.
We also follow the industry closely and always try to use the latest cutting-edge technology.
Managed WordPress hosting fits all types of users.
It will benefit anyone working at an agency, as a freelancer, or as an entrepreneur.
Managed hosting benefits e-commerce websites because security, performance, and speed are vital.
More importantly, managed WordPress hosting benefits WordPress website owners.
It’s especially suitable if you don’t want to deal with the technical WordPress site aspects and want to focus on the business side.
Some advantages of signing up for the service include:
Here, we reveal the six factors of a high-quality managed WordPress host.
These factors are what we use to evaluate the options you see.
The best managed WordPress hosting offers 1-click WordPress installation.
Using the process helps eliminate the tedious manual steps of installing the CMS.
Plus, you can migrate your current WordPress site from one host to another quickly.
Other hosts, such as WP Engine, have WordPress pre-installed whenever you add a website to your account.
This feature helps reduce the hassles that come with creating the CMS.
Managed WordPress hosting condenses the steps of setting up and configuring your new WordPress install into a few clicks.
The time it takes to download the latest WordPress version, upload to a server, and set up and configure databases is better used in designing your site.
Managed WordPress hosting ensures your new WP installation is ready in less than five minutes.
Quality services offer staging environments so you can test website functionality before deploying.
Speed is a killer, especially slow website speeds.
A well-managed WordPress host ensures their IT environment delivers fast, reliable speeds.
Site loading time is a critical user experience component.
It’s a crucial factor in your organic SEO efforts because Google wants its users to have an excellent experience.
Web pages should load in under a second or two.
Longer load times mean your visitors look elsewhere for the information they seek.
Statistics show that 53% of online users abandon a site when load time takes over three seconds on mobile devices.
A secure website is critical when potential customers engage with your site and helps you rank in search results.
WP Engine and Kinsta offer their customers an SSL certificate, so your users are safe while browsing the website.
WordPress is the most popular CMS for major business websites and personal blogs.
However, the popularity makes the CMS a huge target for hackers.
A massive 73% of the most popular WordPress sites in 2013 were using software versions with security weaknesses.
Hosts that provide their WordPress hosting customers with automatic updates play a critical safety role.
Further, free and configured SSL certificates encrypt data passing between visitors and your website.
Daily backups enable you to restore your website when it goes down quickly.
A managed WordPress hosting plan is perfect for businesses and individuals who want to get the most value from each dollar.
But spending more shouldn’t be an issue as long as you’re getting value.
However, how providers charge for resources varies considerably.
The biggest price differentiators are:
The WP Engine price plan reveals that the more websites, storage, and bandwidth you require, the more costs increase.
However, Pressable is cheaper and offers higher limits.
Look for annual contracts which offer a better bargain than buying monthly.
Plus, it’s also less stressful to stick with a provider for longer than having to migrate a critical WordPress business website when your needs grow.
So, look for a platform that offers tiered plans to accommodate your growing traffic.
Don’t make a purchase decision based solely on peripheral elements.
We also look out for managed WordPress hosting providers offering a few freebies.
However, we have to check whether the freebies are helpful, so you spend less money in the long term.
Some hosts only have discount codes for some popular services they make affiliate income from, but others are proactive by offering extra tools for the job.
Some additional features include offering free CDN to drop your website speeds further or a collection of the best WordPress themes.
As you build the website and improve the user experience, staging environments can help compare different ideas, layouts, options, and customizations.
Dedicated WordPress hosting providers, such as WP Engine and Kinsta, reduce the number of plugins you require on your site because you can do so much directly on the platforms.
Reducing the plugin number also decreases website issues, especially when scaling.
24/7 support can help fix issues with your website.
The best hosting providers also make it a breeze to contact their customer service teams through various channels.
All providers promise top-notch service, so we dive into online reviews and see what the reality is.
An all-day, all-night live chat facility is great.
But what happens if there’s a queue?
Sifting through reviews helps us figure out companies with the best customer services.
For example, Kinsta doesn’t offer phone support, but their live chat and ticketing are impressive.
We also look at the migration assistance you get.
While we rate WordPress migration plugins highly, service providers such as WP Engine have customized plugins that simplify the process.
This section offers a better understanding of why we chose the options we did.
WP Engine is a fast and reliable managed WordPress hosting provider and one of the most popular.
The provider offers features such as automated backups, disaster recovery, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, and handles all core WordPress updates.
We choose WP Engine as the winner because they also include a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve website load time.
Plus, WP Engine has a community of experienced users who love the loading speeds and security the host offers.
The provider regularly scans sites for hacking attempts and will fix the issue for free if hacking happens.
Pressidium earns a runner-up position among managed WordPress hosts due to its robust performance, unique high-availability architecture, and an impressive set of features.
Despite being relatively unknown, it competes with more popular counterparts through its superior reliability, advanced security measures, and user-friendly management features. Its automatic daily backups, one-click staging site creation, and managed updates simplify site maintenance.
Although Pressidium is priced around the same pricing as than other hosts, the advanced capabilities it offers provide strong value for money, justifying the investment for businesses seeking premium hosting solutions.
Pressable is the best budget managed hosting solution for WordPress sites.
Integrated CDN and caching services offer fast load times.
You get expert hosting support and use the staging site feature to improve your website.
Their daily backups offer uses a solid disaster recovery plan.
You get all these features and more at an affordable price.
The Pressable plans depend on the number of websites you’re running and the projected monthly visits level.
Purchase managed WordPress hosting plans monthly or annually, depending on your needs and budget.
The “WP” in WP Engine does, indeed, stand for “WordPress.”
So, what you get with WP Engine is a WordPress-dedicated service that does wonders for your hosting.
Managed WordPress hosting has been a WP Engine service since its creation.
Today, the host is one of the most popular options among businesses and offers you everything you require from a website host.
The price is high compared to other providers, but that’s because you get fast load times, secure servers, and excellent support.
A relatively unknown, yet very powerful, managed WordPress host.
Pressidium is a managed WordPress hosting service focused on providing a high-availability platform.
Unlike typical hosts, Pressidium’s platform is built on the same architecture used by big tech companies like Google and Facebook, ensuring your website is always accessible.
While the price might be a bit higher compared to other providers, you get fast load times, resilient servers, and expert support.
This is an all-rounder as you get everything from daily backups to excellent security.
What we love about Pressable is that the brand uses some of the best servers available called Rackspace Hybrid cloud. Because they pair this with SFTP access security.
Automattic, the same company behind WooCommerce and WordPress.com, owns Pressablem meaning it gets a unique position in the WordPress sphere.
The platform offers users excellent managed WordPress hosting services at a lower cost, making it a good option if you’re on a budget.
WP Engine is a popular web hosting company that offers many advantages, including:
WP Engine, however, may not be ideal for everyone.
Some disadvantages to using the provider are:
While it’s not perfect, WP Engine meets most requirements to become the best managed WordPress hosting provider.
You install WordPress as you do with other web hosts.
The CMS comes pre-installed.
After signing up and choosing your plan, you get an introductory email with login credentials and how to get started without excess setup procedures.
WP Engine also makes creating pages, posts, and galleries easy.
WP Engine combines NGINX web extensions, CDN, and SSD technologies to boost your website to the optimal speed.
CDN helps deliver content to visitors depending on location, decreasing page load times.
The provider can differentiate between bot requests and people visiting your site.
WP Engine prioritizes human traffic to ensure your website visitors get fast and efficient performance.
You get a 99.95% uptime guarantee from WP Engine, but this may go up to 99.99% when implementing their enhanced Service Level Agreement (SLA).
A page performance tool runs tests and suggests improvements you should make to improve website performance.
All plans from WP Engine come with a free SSL certificate.
You also get a firewall, and the host does daily malware scans to block threats.
The scans are vital if you’re running an e-commerce site that handles sensitive client information.
Enterprise-level firewalls detect threats in real-time, and experts perform free hacking remediation steps.
WP Engine offers four hosting packages to address the needs of different customers.
Differences between packages come with the storage amount, bandwidth, and number of visitors.
For example, the startup plan is for a single site with 25,000 visitors monthly, 10 GB storage, and 50 GB bandwidth per month.
Each plan gives you access to over 30 premium themes, free automatic migrations, and daily backups.
The plans also have one-click staging, free SSL and SSH, and advanced security.
The WP Engine Local Development Environment makes setting up your website simpler.
This tool lets your team use Xdebug and MailHog for debugging and testing.
Git and SFTP connections give you access to development tools they already know.
You can also choose from over 55,000 plugins to improve user experience and add custom website functions.
The host boasts a dedicated team of WordPress support experts and an over 97% customer satisfaction rate.
You can contact support 24/7 through live chat.
Phone support is available all days of the week and at any time for all plans apart from Startup.
WP Engine has an extensive library of knowledge base articles, tutorials, and how-to guides.
Pressidium offers many advantages, including:
Pressidium may not be the best fit for everyone. Here are a few potential drawbacks:
Despite some drawbacks, Pressidium excels in many areas.
Pressable is the best budget managed WordPress hosting solution that offers several benefits:
Pressable is a competitive managed WordPress hosting provider, but with a few downsides:
Pressable has affordable and flexible managed WordPress hosting plans, depending on your preference. Here’s our criteria rating for the provider.
Starting a new site is as simple as tapping the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner of the Pressable dashboard and following the prompts.
The platform sends an email once the deployment is complete.
This email contains instructions for logging into the new WordPress site.
You can also select an existing website on the dashboard to get a control panel for the specific installation.
Some controls and information include an overview, stats, users, and backups.
Customers get a 100% uptime guarantee from Pressable.
If the platform can’t fulfill this promise, you get a 5% monthly fee refund for each 30-minute downtime you experience.
You also get CDN to enhance website speed, regardless of the website traffic.
Pressable also has Automatic Failover, a feature that switches your website server to an alternate one in case of an issue.
Each Pressable website gets automatic protection by a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to ensure it’s unsusceptible to common cyber attacks, such as cross-site scripting and SQL injections.
The platform also has a security expert team that watches your website for malware, and free SSL certificates help keep your website visitors at ease.
Pressable has plans suitable for individuals, small to medium-sized businesses, and enterprise plans.
You can choose the plan depending on the number of WordPress installs you want and the expected monthly visitors.
The platform has free managed WordPress migration, or you can use their migration plugin if you want to make the switch yourself.
An easy-to-use dashboard makes managing your websites simpler.
And customers get a premium Jetpack Security Daily subscription free with all plans apart from the Entry level.
Use the Pressable staging environment to test your site’s functionality, design, and layout before it goes live.
The platform doesn’t offer telephone support.
However, the Pressable email ticketing system is accessible between 8 and 11 CST throughout the week.
The support team responds to emails within 60 minutes, but customers report longer weekend wait times.
You also get additional support via a knowledge base section, which includes help guides, tutorials, and FAQs.
Kinsta is a high-performance managed WordPress hosting option built on Google Cloud’s premium network.
Known for speed and reliability, Kinsta offers server-level caching, automatic scaling, and developer-friendly tools like SSH access and staging environments.
Its intuitive dashboard and dedicated resources make it an ideal choice for teams managing complex or high-traffic sites.
SiteGround is a budget-friendly managed WordPress host that balances performance, support, and affordability.
Built on Google Cloud, it includes daily backups, free SSL, CDN integration, and an easy control panel.
With tools for staging, caching, and collaboration, SiteGround is a solid choice for small to medium-sized businesses needing reliable hosting without the higher cost.
Wix provides a free website builder option, ideal for small projects or personal blogs.
While not a managed WordPress host, Wix includes customizable templates, a drag-and-drop builder, and SEO tools, making it accessible for simple websites.
Though limited compared to specialized hosts, Wix’s free plan is sufficient for basic sites with straightforward needs.
For those considering alternatives to WP Engine, Pressable, or Pressidium, Kinsta and SiteGround stand out.
Kinsta operates on a premium Google Cloud network, promising high speeds, reliability, and advanced security, positioning it well for enterprise and high-traffic sites.
Its robust caching, proactive security measures, and developer tools like SSH and staging make it a go-to for performance-conscious teams.
On the other hand, SiteGround balances affordability and functionality, particularly suited for smaller businesses.
It provides managed WordPress features such as daily backups, automatic updates, and a helpful staging tool, ensuring performance and security at a more budget-friendly price.
For users seeking a cost-free route, Wix offers a straightforward solution with a free plan, though it lacks the power and flexibility of managed WordPress hosting.
Wix works well for personal sites or small projects with basic needs, providing simple templates and a user-friendly interface ideal for beginners.
While it’s not tailored to WordPress, Wix offers a solid entry point into web publishing for those on a budget.
You should consider a hosting plan optimized for WordPress if you’re running a WP website.
The recommendations above are the best place to start your search.
But are some other notable mentions.
A2 Hosting is a high-powered Web Hosting provider that their fine uses its SwiftServer platform to decrease the load time of your website.
They offer a wide variety of hosting options like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, and VPS hosting.
A2 Hosting is one of the oldest web hosting providers that claim to offer fast performance.
The platform has shared hosting plans, domain names, managed WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, and Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting.
A2 Hosting offers plenty of options to boost your website, so visitors always have an easy browsing experience.
All A2 Hosting plans come with unlimited email accounts, while the cPanel application installer offers you access to multiple CMSs, such as Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.
The Startup plan provides customers with a 100 GB storage limitation, and other tiers have unlimited space.
Unfortunately, A2 Hosting isn’t a WordPress-specific hosting provider.
Installing WordPress in your A2 Hosting account means taking a few steps in the outdated cPanel to find Softaculous.
Further, a concurrent HTTP connections limitation is a deal breaker for websites getting more traffic.
Cloudways is an industry leader and innovator, providing consumers with several advantages over conventional web hosting services.
These include far higher availability, more scalability, and superior performance.
With Cloudways, you can put aside the time-consuming technical details and concentrate on making your website look great.
Cloudways is another popular way to start managed WordPress hosting.
The platform strives to offer accessible cloud hosting through the traditional cPanel while making pricing predictable.
Customers get a WordPress hosting solution that’s auto-installed and configured specifically for their cloud products.
Cloudways offers a wide selection of cloud providers, so you’re not locked into a single service.
You also get fantastic pricing flexibility.
Plus, the Cloudways support team is familiar with WordPress, and customers can get help setting up, configuring, and maintaining their WP websites.
However, Cloudways doesn’t technically offer managed WordPress hosting services.
Cloudways makes cloud hosting less confusing than getting the service directly from a cloud provider, but they use a lot of jargon and confusing terms you wouldn’t find in traditional web hosting.
Here are even more WordPress hosting options worth checking out.
Flywheel is one of a few managed WordPress hosts endorsed by WordPress.
It offers a range of options, rapid speeds, and a 30-day money back guarantee that lets you test drive the service before you buy.
Flywheel is designed for enterprise-level clients, although individual bloggers can still benefit.
Their services target creatives and designers, but also cater to individual site owners.
Nifty features that web designers love include:
WP Engine bought Flywheel back in 2019, but both companies still run separately and offer distinct features.
However, you’ll notice some price standardization and features, such as the local development tool.
Here’s your answer if your site needs help dealing with large amounts of traffic.
Or rather, not large, but massive. If you expect as much traffic as the Time website then you’ve probably found your hosting solution.
This high-end hosting platform serves large-scale enterprise firms and businesses with high daily traffic.
A glance over the websites the platform hosts shows its power.
These clients include Facebook, Spotify, Quartz, and USA Today.
The website doesn’t have a public pricing page.
However, research indicates that pricing starts from $2,000 to $25,000 a month.
The price includes unlimited CDN, storage, bandwidth, and dedicated support.
The platform also has strict coding standards and processes, which makes it unsuitable for many businesses.
DreamPress is a Dreamhost-managed WordPress hosting solution.
Some platform features include on-demand and daily backups, free automatic WordPress migrations, unlimited email, and 1-click staging.
However, DreamPress doesn’t have data centers outside the US, which can be a problem if most of your traffic is from other countries.
Further, you can only install one WordPress instance on your server and don’t get access to advanced features.
Live chat support at DreamPress is infrequent, and you may have to wait a long time before you get connected.
Finding a cheap WordPress hosting provider is a great way to save money in your early days.
When site traffic is low and you don’t need to update your site often, a cheaper service that provides minimal options will be enough.
However, over time, a few things might indicate it’s time to upgrade.
Websites require a lot of maintenance.
From content updates to security fixes and backups, a lot of leg work goes into maintaining a site.
When you first start out, those updates might not occupy much time.
But, eventually, ensuring your site is up to date might become too much of a time commitment.
At that point, a hosting provider will be a helpful way to free up time to focus on other business aspects.
Some site creators feel out of their depth from day one, while others might not feel overwhelmed for months or years.
Regardless of when you begin to feel like you’re in over your head, a comprehensive WordPress host can take the reins and free up time on your end.
Your provider will be able to handle all the complexities of your site, including security, updates, and backups.
A managed WordPress host provides significant convenience for site owners.
Your host will remove a lot of stress and work from your shoulders.
Unfortunately, the cost is one of the biggest reasons site owners avoid getting a managed host.
However, once your site revenue, and in turn, your budget, increases, a WordPress host will become easier to manage financially.
Do you still have questions about how managed WordPress hosting works?
Then, keep reading to check out the answers to a few common concerns.
cPanel is a web-based site manager.
It makes managing a website easier because you don’t need to have much technical know-how.
However, you won’t be able to access cPanel if you have a managed WordPress account because you won’t be responsible for maintenance.
You can migrate your WordPress site to a managed platform manually, automatically, or with a plugin.
Whichever method you choose will be pretty straightforward, although manually migrating might take a bit longer.
Most hosts provide free WordPress site migrations.