WordPress Managed Hosting. Is this a SAAS? 

That SaaS, “Software as a Service,” in the title sounds like a buzzword inserted to attract your attention, but …

Not at all! Let me change your mind and help you discover one of the latest advances in hosting services.

We could say with almost absolute certainty that hosting is the oldest business on the Internet, yet it is also true that it has been one of the last to specialize. However, something has happened in recent years.

Tools such as WordPress have become tools for the masses.

WordPress is managing 39.1% of all Internet websites. And has a market share of 63.8% as a Content Management System. (https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all)

With this WordPress penetration in the market, the creation of sophisticated hosting services exclusively specialized in this tool began to increase rapidly.

We have well-known company samples. The first ones in the US were: WP Engine (with WordPress) and Pantheon (with Drupal) around 2010. Somehow later, in Europe in 2013, they were followed by Paggely, Flywheel, Kinsta, and somehow later Wetopi in 2015, among others.

But where is the added value of these specialized services? What problems do they solve?

As site managers, we have unconsciously assumed many tasks.

Those of us who work in web design, web development, and web maintenance, with time, have assumed many system administrator tasks almost without realizing it.

Are you in front of tasks like these?

• You have a website Demo. You have to deploy a database and a new VirtualHost with an FTP account in a Test server. Oh, and password protection! The web is a demo and cannot be visible.
• This site goes to production: You must migrate from a Demo/Staging server to a Production one. Remember to set up the production domain, request the HTTPS certificate, install the certificate, and rename content URLs.
• Set up and schedule backups. And do it the right way, with storage in your cloud. You don’t want to store the backup copies on the WordPress server.
• Get rid of many WordPress pending updates. Make a clone to test first. No one wants the “Blank Screen of Death” on a production server.
• Check backup engines. From time to time, you have to double-check your backup system. You have to review whether backups are working and whether copies are stored and safe.
• Verify backup copies. You don’t want surprises, so each Monday, you deploy a backup and check that everything is ready for disaster recovery.
• Get rid of those non-legit requests damaging Page Load times. Installing a WordPress WAF plugin adds more load to your site. WordPress is not designed to be a Firewall, but alternatives are complex.

Probably several of these tasks have been incorporated into your routine. Don’t worry! You are not the only one. It’s common:

What happens is that you design or develop websites and are a Dev-ops and Sys-admin!

You can get one more week of vacation!

To make it simple! Let’s take one task and count the amount of time we spent!

1h reviewing backups/week * 4 weeks/month * 12 months = 48h !!!!

That’s Six Business Days!!!!!

Automate this routine, and you’ll have one more week of vacation!

Remember, all those previous tasks were routines.

If you need more time, WP Managed Hosting is for you!

The key is in the Specialization. Mastering one peace like WordPress allows Managed Hosting to automate routines around your daily tasks as dev-ops and sys-admin.

Solving the complex with single clicks

As a sample with wetopi.com, we solve lots of tasks with single clicks like:

• One-click to start a WordPress server with one click.
• One-click to clone Production to Staging / Testing.
• One-click to move Staging to production.
• One-click to create a cert and serve your site with HTTPS.
• One-click to restore a backup in your Staging server.

“Managed” means tasks we don’t have to do

More interesting are those tasks we don’t even have to do, those tasks behind the “Managed” term:

As a sample with wetopi.com, you get:

• One server per WordPress site. Thanks to the specialization and automation, having each WordPress on its own server is affordable.
• Server maintenance. In shared hosting, updating a server often implies migrating your site. The alternative, having a dedicated sys-admin, is something for a few pockets.
• Goodbye to profiling and tuning services. Nothing is better than serving thousands of WordPress to understand the optimal configuration. A hosting specialized in a product has the advantage of having all its services well parameterized.
• Traffic filtering to protect your WordPress is one of the most expensive tasks to tackle individually but is much more effective when approached globally.
• Hack cleanup. At Wetopi, for example, we take care of security and traffic filtering. However, if we do not do this well, we take responsibility by cleaning up the affected website.
• Specialized support. Being dedicated to a single product allows us to have WordPress Specialized personnel.

Conclusion

We are in a time of change. New services appear everywhere. Almost without realizing it, we have subscriptions to Film, Series, Music, and even online parcel services!

Things will change in the Specialized hosting sector. Little by little, we’ll be shedding ungrateful routine tasks in exchange for more competitive subscriptions that will free up our agendas.

Author Bio: Joan Vega

I am just a techie passionate about WordPress. With wetopi.com, a specialized WordPress hosting company, we want to go further and offer professionals and agencies a platform to work efficiently and effectively.

CEO at wetopi.com