Are you struggling to stay on top of server management, up-to-date security, or maintaining adequate backups? These tasks are all part of the operations or “ops” workload for managing a website.
The ops workload often includes a long list of essential tasks including: server management, updates, security, backups, performance tuning, and troubleshooting. This is the less glamorous side of maintaining your own WordPress site.
A solution to all of these burdens is managed WordPress hosting, a specialized hosting solution that’s designed to handle these technical tasks. This article will explore how a managed WordPress hosting platform significantly reduces your ops workload, allowing you to focus on growing your business.
When you are hosting your own WordPress site or using a shared hosting platform, you have to take on many responsibilities.
Manual Updates: Core, plugin, and theme updates can be time-consuming and prone to breakage.
Security Vulnerabilities: With attackers constantly trawling the internet for targets, you have to remain vigilant against malware, brute-force, and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.
Performance Optimization: Maintaining peak performance requires tending to caching, the Content Delivery Network (CDN), setups, database optimizations, and image optimizations.
Backups and Disaster Recovery: Manual backups and testing restores require focused time and attention.
Troubleshooting: You have to be ready to diagnose and figure out server errors, plugin conflicts, and uptime issues.
Having to manage this heavy ops workload can be a time drain. There’s the potential of costly downtime if not handled correctly. You don’t have easy access to specialized staff or expertise.
It can be a major distraction from the core business activities that drive your business forward — literally, the weeds you get stuck in that keep you from growing.
While offerings vary from vendor to vendor, they generally offer similar services and support that relieves you of much of this operational workload burden.
Managed WordPress hosts will take care of any updates, often with intelligent rollbacks, preventing conflicts and security gaps. This means no more manual checks, installations, or troubleshooting of update-related issues.
Your provider will provide Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), malware scanning and removal, brute-force protection, DDoS mitigation, and free Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. This eliminates the need for in-house security experts or managing multiple security plugins. You get security peace of mind.
Managed WordPress hosting providers optimize their server architecture for WordPress (using NGINX, Varnish, or Redis). They will also provide built-in caching, CDN integration, and optimized Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP).
This allows you to eliminate the need for manual server configuration. You’ll have less need for complex, caching plugins. Your site will benefit from faster load times that don’t require constant tuning.
You can expect regular, off-site backups with one-click restore options from a hosting provider. This eliminates having to oversee manual backup processes, provides quick disaster recovery, and reduces the data loss anxiety that keeps many business owners up at night.
One of the great benefits of working with a managed WordPress hosting provider is that you gain access to highly knowledgeable support staff familiar with WordPress intricacies, themes, and plugins. This gives you faster troubleshooting of problems, less time spent researching solutions, and direct help with often complex WordPress issues.
Another key benefit of a managed hosting provider is access to staging environments. You can create a clone of your live site for testing updates, new features, or design changes. You no longer have to risk breaking your live site during development or updates, reducing stress and recovery time.
When you are able to hand off the ops workload burden to a hosting provider, the benefits extend and amplify into your business.
Improved Website Performance and Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Because your site is running faster, it will rank better and deliver a better user experience.
Enhanced Reliability and Uptime: All of the provider’s proactive monitoring efforts minimize downtime, which is crucial for supporting sales and your business’s reputation.
Scalability: Your WordPress site will be able to effortlessly handle traffic spikes without manual resource adjustments.
Cost Savings (Long-Term): You will have reduced need for dedicated IT staff and will avoid costs tied to downtime and security breaches.
Focus on Core Business: With site management basics handled, you will have time freed up to focus on content creation, marketing, sales, product development. These are the activities that directly grow your business.
When you make the switch to a managed WordPress solution, you are choosing to hand off the headaches and stress that come with managing a website. You are streamlining and optimizing your operations across security, performance, and maintenance.
This is a smart investment, though it comes with a cost. But remember you are investing in efficiency, reliability, and future business growth.
As you consider this next step in moving your business forward, evaluate managed WordPress hosting as a strategic decision that will significantly reduce your ops workload.
Pressable wants to manage your operations workload for you. Whether it’s delivering WordPress updates, removing malware, or troubleshooting problems that arise, we take on the detailed operations work for you. We oversee your operations workload so you can focus on the bigger picture of your business. Pressable provides a hosting foundation that delivers unmatched speed, security, and reliability. Your site’s page loads are optimized to deliver an efficient and reliable experience to your visitors. We give you the technical confidence you need to focus your attention on what will help grow your business.
Pressable—part of the Automattic family that also includes WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and WooCommerce—is staffed by experts with the skills and knowledge to effectively manage your WordPress site. If you’re thinking about switching to managed WordPress hosting, schedule a demo to see how Pressable can support your continued optimization and growth.
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