Comparing hosting options?
This guide covers the real price tiers, what managed actually means, and when to upgrade.
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Last updated: August 2026
Shared vs VPS vs managed VPS, in plain English
Shared hosting puts your website on a server with hundreds of others. Cheap, but you share everything: when a neighbor's site gets busy or hacked, yours feels it. This is why cheap hosting is fast in the demo and slow in real life.
A VPS (virtual private server) carves out guaranteed resources just for you: your own CPU, memory and storage. Consistently faster, more secure isolation, and room to grow. The catch: someone has to manage it. An unmanaged VPS is a blank Linux server that needs security patches, web server configuration, firewall rules and monitoring. Miss a patch and you are the weak point hackers scan for.
Managed VPS hosting is the VPS with the "someone" included. The provider's engineers handle every server-level task: OS updates, security hardening, performance tuning, server-level backups, SSL and 24x7 monitoring. You get the speed and isolation; they get the 3 a.m. alerts.
What "managed" should actually include
A real managed VPS service covers: operating system and software updates applied on a schedule, a configured firewall and intrusion protection, server-level daily backups with tested restores, resource monitoring with proactive fixes before you notice slowdowns, SSL certificate management, and human support that answers in minutes. If a "managed" plan just means "we installed cPanel for you and here is a knowledge base," that is unmanaged hosting with extra steps.
Do you even need cPanel?
Here is a quiet truth of modern hosting: cPanel exists so that you can administer a server through buttons. If a team administers the server for you, the control panel becomes decoration you pay licensing fees for. That is why our own managed hosting ships with no cPanel at all: you tell us what you need in chat ("add an email forwarder," "point this subdomain," "restore yesterday's backup") and an engineer does it, usually within minutes. No panel to learn, no settings to break, no upsell ads inside your own hosting account.
Who should move to managed VPS
You have outgrown shared hosting if any of these are true: your time to first byte regularly exceeds 600 ms, traffic spikes take the site down or trigger resource-limit warnings, your store or lead forms make downtime genuinely expensive, or your host's support answers in days instead of minutes. A typical business site needs only a modest VPS: 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of RAM outperforms almost any shared plan.
Who should not bother: hobby sites, sites with a few hundred visitors a month, or anyone happy on a quality managed WordPress host already. Managed VPS is for websites that earn money and deserve their own engine.
What it costs, honestly
| Option | Monthly cost | Who manages the server |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | $5 to $15 | Nobody, really |
| Unmanaged VPS | $10 to $40 + your hours | You |
| Managed VPS (typical market) | $30 to $80 | The provider |
| Our managed VPS hosting | $29, or $19 with any care plan | Our engineers, via chat |
The bundle math matters: hosting and website maintenance are separate layers, and problems love the gap between two vendors ("that is a hosting issue" says the maintenance guy; "that is a website issue" says the host). One team running both layers means the finger-pointing gap does not exist.
FAQ
Is managed VPS hosting faster than shared hosting? Almost always, and more importantly it is consistently fast: dedicated resources mean your speed does not depend on strangers sharing your server.
Can you migrate my website from my current host? Yes, and a proper managed provider does it free with zero downtime: the site is copied and tested on the new server before DNS ever switches.
What about my email? Business email belongs on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, not on your web server. A good host will help you set that up and keep mail off the server, which improves both reliability and deliverability.
What happens if the server goes down? Monitoring alerts the engineering team within a minute and recovery starts immediately, usually before you have noticed. Ask any provider for their uptime target and average response time in writing; ours are 99.99% and 12 minutes.
Want hosting you never have to think about?
Managed VPS hosting at $29/mo, or $19 alongside any care plan. No cPanel to learn: you tell us what you need in chat and an engineer does it, usually within minutes. Free zero-downtime migration.