Glossary
Managed Hosting
Managed hosting is a service where the provider handles server administration, updates, security, and backups so you can focus on your site.
Managed hosting is any hosting plan where the provider takes responsibility for the underlying server administration — operating system updates, security hardening, backups, monitoring, and often performance tuning.
What the provider handles
- OS and software patching (
apache/nginx/litespeed,php,mysql). - Security: firewalls, a
waf, andddosmitigation. - Backups, monitoring, and uptime commitments via an
uptime-sla. - Frequently, application-specific optimisation (e.g. managed
wordpress).
Trade-offs
- Less effort and risk — ideal if you lack a sysadmin.
- Higher cost and less freedom — you may be restricted to supported software versions.
Why it matters for hosting
Managed plans exist across tiers — managed shared-hosting, managed vps, and managed cloud-hosting. The distinction is not the hardware but who keeps it running and secure.
See also
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting places many websites on one server that pools its CPU, memory, and disk, making it the cheapest but least isolated option.
VPS (Virtual Private Server)
A VPS is a virtual machine with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and disk carved from a physical server, giving root access and isolation at modest cost.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting runs your site across a pool of virtual servers that scale on demand, billed by usage for elasticity and high availability.
WAF (Web Application Firewall)
A WAF inspects incoming HTTP traffic and blocks malicious requests like SQL injection and XSS before they reach your web application.