3 Free WordPress Managed Solutions

Web Hosting Podcast

Minimum options needed for hosting and hosting further explained.

• Space (disk space) Small plans normally start at about 10G of disk space. Roughly 200 hours of music per month.
• Bandwidth (network connections) Small plans normally accommodate up to 10,000 unique visitors per month.
• SSL free or paid option.
• A way to upload, add or modify files to your hosting space such as SFTP.
• Instructions for getting into your hosting space.
• Documentation – Online self service documentation that you can follow. Think Knowledgebase.
• Support – helpful and knowledgeable support that will NOT charge you for simple things. Does not need to be phone based!?
• One click installer. Click here to listen to a previous episode about one click installers.
• A way to serve your files.
• A script processor – php, ruby, python, perl…etc. customer preference.
• Database and databse connecticity -mysql/postgresql/oracle/mongo.
• Security mechanism Firewall or other intrusion detection system.
• Backups at least weekly – although the user should also have their own backups.

Not on the list

• Email – use google, wibble, outlook for hosted email.
• DNS services including domain registration.

Goes without saying

• Way to add domain to your hosting account.
• Way to add domain aliases; this might be known to some people as parked domains.

WordPress managed soloutions

What is managed WordPress?

A complete service package where all technical aspects of running WordPress is provided by your chosen host. This style of web hosting does and should cost more than web hosting that does not provide these services.

This includes:

• Security
• Speed
• WordPress Updates
• Daily Backups
• Premium support – this is handled by WordPress experts with lots of experience.

This is why the typical managed WordPress hosting plan is much more expensive than standard hosting.

Companies that do managed WordPress hosting

• kinsta.com
• wpengine.com
• flywheel.com
• siteground.com

What is WordPress hosting?

WordPress specific hosting, not to be confused with managed WordPress hosting, is specialized shared hosting with optimizations specific for WordPress sites. These changes often improve site speed and response.

Why/How is this different than regular hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting, WordPress hosting and shared hosting are all different and very specific to the needs of the customer. Shared hosting, the lowest level and most basic hosting is setup so there are many accounts on a single server. These shared servers will be serving many different websites, this makes it hard to optimize for a single application. WordPress shared hosting, or WordPress Hosting, is a shared server optimized specifically for WordPress web sites. Managed WordPress is all the benefits of a optimized server experience without having to also worry about updates, security, speed and support. These are handled for you as part of the hosting package.

How is this relevant?

Do it yourself managed programs you can use on your WordPress site.

• Infinite WP
• WP Remote
• Manage WP

All 3 add a plugin for remote management of

• core updates
• plugin updates
• theme updates
• And more features below.

Infinite WP

Infinite WP (IWP) is a self hosted free or paid product, although version 3 is suppose to provide for a managed install version (SAAS). The free version installs as a plugin that then installs a command interface where you can add your site to be managed, as well as others. It provides a simple backup and updater. The paid version includes a reported $2888 worth of add ons. This is all self hosted and you are responsible for updating and securing your install of infinite WP. The biggest drawback to Infinite WP is the support. For the free version, good luck getting any response. Even their website lists 96 hours for a response for free tier, and for the enterprise tier it can be 12 hours. This is just not acceptable if you are paying for this product.

Ease of Use rating from beginner to advanced?

This is more advanced than I would like. You have to not only manage your WordPress install, which is fine, but you also have to manage the install of Infinite WP. Installing the command interface could be problematic and if you have problems, good luck getting a reply back from support.

WP Remote

WP Remote is operated as part of maek.it, which is a full service client management portal. This is ideal for designers/developers or agencies that want one place to go for everything from invoicing to hosting. Features of WP Remote include.

• One click deploy.
• Simple Hosting (not sure what they mean by “simple”, they also advertise FTP but no SFTP or FTPS 🙁 ).
• Unlimited WordPress management.
• Invoices.
• CRM.
• Domain Management.
• Track sales & leads.

Ease of Use rating from beginner to advanced?

This is more simple than Infinite WP, but the interface may be quite confusing. Only thing to install is the control plugin which is quite simple to do. More options than a simple WordPress management interface. If you want to generate invoices, track sales leads and let Maek.it handle your hosting then this might be for you.

Manage WP

Mange WP is owned by GoDaddy which also owns Sucuri .
This is a cloud based software as a service application and Manage WP handles updates and security for the product. There is nothing the end user needs to install or manage except the control plugin. This is installed into your WordPress website. Manage WP is free for unlimited sites and certain addons are free. Premium addons are very reasonable at $1-$2 /mo. each, and you can purchase group bundles for multiple site activations. This means you can spend as little or as much as you need. I prefer this to having to pay $35/mo. for all of it. By only charging me for what I want/need it becomes very easy to turn on a few things that interest me or my customers.

Ease of Use rating from beginner to advanced?

This is super simple to install. The only thing to install is the control plugin which is quite simple to do and I think anyone can/could do it. The interface is very user friendly and easy to understand. The notices, billing, and alerts are very clear to see and understand. The only downside to Manage WP is that the basic backups do not allow you to download them or push them to another location. They maintain the backups for you on their S3 drive. Paying $2/mo. is the only way to get your backups sent to another location or be able to download them. Other than that, there are many wonderful and free features that I use everyday.

Free with Manage WP:

• Backup
• Sucuri security checks
• Performance check
• Client reports
• Google Analytics
• Maintenance mode
• Code snippets
• 2-factor authentication
• 1-click login
• Manage comments
• Manage plugins and themes
• Vulnerability updates
• Collaborate

Many paid options increase the functionality of the free options. For example, $2/mo extra will give you cloud backup destinations with scheduling, or you can use the free basic backup. Or for $1/mo. enable the SEO monitor feature to track the SEO of your site.

Listeners of the Web Hosting Podcast have been given a wonderful bonus, if you want to try Manage WP. You can use the code WHPOD and you will get $10 added to your account to try any of the paid features. This means you can get SEO monitoring for 10 months.