What Does a Managed Hosting Package Offer - Part 1

For any individual or business looking to set up or move the hosting of their website or IT infrastructure, the number of different options facing them and the jargon used by each hosting provider, can appear bewildering. The idea of managed hosting crops up frequently across the market but unfortunately it has no recognised industry definition. It is therefore worth taking some time to consider what the term has come to represent amongst hosting providers.

In general the label Managed Hosting designates a hosting package where the provider will offer a certain level of assistance with the set up and maintenance of your website’s or business’s server(s). In practice, because there is no industry standard for the term, the level and nature of the support you receive will vary from one provider to another. It is also common for providers to offer differing scales of support within different managed hosting packages.

Managed Hosting Services
However, full managed hosting will benefit you, as the client, with the expertise of the hosting provider to ensure that the set up and configuration of your website best meets your objectives whilst providing optimum performance. The services offered can typically include the installation and maintenance of software and operating systems, antivirus and security monitoring, performance monitoring and improvement (including load balancing) and DNS configuration amongst other things.

Support
Moreover, a managed package will likely include 24/7/365 monitoring and support (usually ‘human’ telephone support) so that, in worst case scenarios, if your site goes off-line you are notified (or equally you can notify them) and there will be a technician working to get it back on line as soon as possible. If there are more subtle performance issues with your site and the hosting platform could benefit from configuration changes, you will also have access to a technician to both advise and make the necessary changes for you.

In fact many hosting providers will offer very high uptime (site availability) guarantees to back up their support claims if you take up their hosting options. You may see guarantees of up to 99.99% or even, in some cases, 100% uptime.

Self Managed
To confuse the picture, however, the term managed hosting can also be employed for hosting packages which in truth are more self managed; where the provider gives you access to an online control panel so that you can fully manage the server configuration yourself.

It is certainly worth checking the details of what each package offers before signing up for it. The devil is often in the detail and as mentioned above, one hosting package is unlikely to be directly comparable to another.

Ultimately, if you want or need to have high levels of expertise available to you around the clock (and receive the guarantees that come with it) you’ll need to be willing to pay out a little bit more. Although if the uptime of your site, an e-commerce site for example, is key to your business’s success, a comprehensive managed hosting package may be worth the investment.