How Do Managed WordPress Services Compare in Terms of Performance?

Most web hosting providers nowadays offer managed WordPress services. However, these services can vary greatly in performance compared to a regular shared plan. WordPress requires specific steps to run well, and not all web hosting providers have these tweaks on their servers to ensure the best speed and performance. Because of this, you may find that although a web hosting review says a web hosting provider has great speed and performance, its managed WordPress may not perform nearly as well.

In this review, we are going to compare several managed WordPress services to see how they stack up in terms of performance and speed. While there are similar articles online, many of them wade through the details of testing without providing a comprehensive overview of each managed WordPress provider. This review is going to discuss each WordPress provider in plain English, so you will know which managed WordPress services are the best and which ones to stay away from.

Managed WordPress Services with The Best Performance

These managed WordPress services perform well even under the heaviest load. None of them experience any slowdown or downtime no matter what the circumstances are.

DreamHost Dreampress

Monthly price: $19.95

Monthly visitors allowed: Unlimited

Disk Space: 30 GB

Bandwidth: Unlimited

Sites Allowed: 1

DreamHost offers one of the best possible managed WordPress services around with their DreamHost plan. You get unlimited traffic and 30GB for one website for only $19.95, which while pricier than some other managed WordPress plans gives you more room for growth than the average. DreamHost’s managed WordPress plan also can handle even the heaviest web traffic without so much as a hiccup or any slowing down. Out of a 1000 hits, it only had 60 errors, and a 17 second load time under high stress.

Incendia Web Works Enterprise WordPress Ultimate SSD

Monthly price: $16.49

Monthly visitors allowed: Unlimited

Disk Space: 10 GB

Bandwidth: 750 GB

Sites Allowed: 1

Incendia Web Works offers a managed WordPress service that is slightly less expensive than DreamHost’s package, and puts a cap on bandwidth. Just like DreamHost though, IWW performs well under even the heaviest web traffic load without any slowing down. This plan is a great choice for those who don’t need the unlimited web traffic of DreamHost’s plan and want a cheaper solution to DreamHost’s managed WordPress offering.

LightningBase Personal

Monthly price: $9.95

Monthly visitors allowed: 10,000

Disk Space: 1 GB

Bandwidth: 10 GB

Sites Allowed: 1

LightningBase’s Personal plan offers very limited disk space and bandwidth, but at a much cheaper price than DreamHost or IWW. Like DreamHost and IWW, LightningBase’s managed WordPress service performs great under heavy load, without any slowing down. It only got 3 errors out of 1000 hits. It only had 5 errors out of 314439 requests, as well. If you want to host a WordPress site with very little traffic and disk space needed, LightningBase’s Personal plan is your answer.

SiteGround GrowBig

Monthly price: $14.95

Monthly visitors allowed: 25,000

Disk Space: 20 GB

Bandwidth: Unlimited

Sites Allowed: 1

SiteGround’s Growbig managed WordPress service also is a great alternative to pricier plans. It gives you lots of space to grow with up to 25,000 visitors and 20 GB of disk space. It can handle the heaviest web traffic without slowing down or producing any errors, so it is one of the best managed WordPress services you can get. While it showed stress at around 30 seconds, it didn’t have any errors even 50 seconds in to testing. It had 0 timeouts and 0 errors under a load of 328 hits per second. While SiteGround includes CloudFlare by default, it was not included in this testing.

Poorly Performing Managed WordPress Services</h2

These managed WordPress services are the worst of the bunch. They may be slow, riddled with errors, or have a high vulnerability to downtime. No matter what you do, stay away from these managed WordPress services if you want to avoid a headache.

A2 Hosting Turbo Plan

Monthly price: $9.31

Monthly visitors allowed: 30,000

Disk Space: Unlimited

Bandwidth: Unlimited

Sites Allowed: Unlimited

A2 Hosting’s Turbo plan seems like a great deal with its unlimited bandwidth, sites, and disk space. However, it seems that A2 Hosting’s Turbo’s WordPress crashes immediately whenever the site is put under a heavy load. This is no good. While A2 Hosting provides excellent shared service plans, stay away from their managed WordPress. They took 5.1 seconds to load a page at full load, and crashed immediately under testing. You are much better off setting up WordPress yourself with one of their shared hosting plans than you are using their managed WordPress.

Hosting Agency Agency P2

Monthly price: $22.50

Monthly visitors allowed: Unlimited

Disk Space: 30GB

Bandwidth: Unlimited

Sites Allowed: Unlimited

Hosting Agency’s Agency P2 plan is one of the most expensive managed WordPress services available at the entry level. So, it’s shocking that like A2 Hosting, its managed WordPress websites buckle under heavy load, and crashed immediately during testing. It seems that Hosting Agency is using a default WordPress installation without any optimizations or tweaks. Stay away from this managed WordPress plan if you don’t want to get ripped off.

GoDaddy Deluxe

Monthly price: $9.99

Monthly visitors allowed: 100,000

Disk Space: 15 GB

Bandwidth: Unlimited

Sites Allowed: 1

GoDaddy has one of the worst performing and slowest managed WordPress services available. Under a load of 829 hits per second, it had 685 errors and one timeout. Though GoDaddy had a very high throughput, it didn’t improve their performance. This is due to their heavy-handed security measures, which are sensitive enough to kick in under normal website traffic load and block visitors from accessing the website. GoDaddy would do well to lighten up a little. While this is one of the most affordable managed WordPress services available, it is no good for a growing website and can lose you traffic – and return visits. Stay away from this managed WordPress service.

MediaTemple Managed WordPress Personal

Monthly price: $20.00

Monthly visitors allowed: 400,000

Disk Space: 40 GB

Bandwidth: Unlimited

Sites Allowed: 2

MediaTemple has one of the more expensive entry level managed WordPress plans, but also grants you much higher limits on visitors and disk space. However, like GoDaddy, MediaTemple uses heavy security measures that can result in blocking legitimate web traffic. Those high limits mean very little when you run the risk of having blocked visits to your website. They got 640 errors out of 1000 hits. Don’t get ripped off by this managed WordPress service.

Traffic Planet Hosting Business

Monthly price: $24.99

Monthly visitors allowed: Unlimited

Disk Space: 10 GB

Bandwidth: 50 GB

Sites Allowed: 5

Traffic Planet Hosting also has an extremely expensive entry level managed WordPress service, but they offer much less for your money than other hosting providers do. So they have got to have one of the best managed WordPress services around, right? Nope, that’s dead wrong. Just like GoDaddy and MediaTemple, Traffic Planet Hosting also uses very heavy-handed security measures that can lose you traffic. Stay away from this managed WordPress plan if you want the best service at the best price.

Managed WordPress Services That Are Okay

These managed WordPress services performed okay with high traffic loads, with only a few hiccups along the way. None of them experience any downtime under the heaviest load.

BlueHost Blogger

Monthly price: $24.99

Monthly visitors allowed: 100,000,000

Disk Space: 30 GB

Bandwidth: Unlimited

Sites Allowed: 5

BlueHost is known as one of the best web hosting providers, and their managed WordPress service is also a good performer. While it did have some issues with errors and spikes during heavy load, starting to show stress around 40 seconds in and buckling around 47 seconds, it didn’t go down even once like the previously mentioned managed WordPress services do. Its security measures also limit traffic at a sensible 250 hits a second. With its generous monthly visitors allowed and unlimited bandwidth, it makes it well worth the pricey investment for an entry-levelw plan.

FlyWheel Tiny

Monthly price: $15

Monthly visitors allowed: 5,000

Disk Space: 5 GB

Bandwidth: 250 GB

Sites Allowed: 1

FlyWheel also has a pricier starter package for managed WordPress services, and it’s very small as well, with only 5,000 monthly visitors allowed and 5 GB of disk space. However, their managed WordPress service is solid. Except under the most extreme conditions, their WordPress hosting handles traffic well, and only spikes a little even in the worst-case scenarios. Out of 1000 hits, it only had 333 errors, even though during testing it spiked at the end causing an increase in load times. You still can’t go wrong with this web hosting provider’s managed WordPress service.

Pressed Starter Plan

Monthly price: $19.95

Monthly visitors allowed: 25,000

Disk Space: 5 GB

Bandwidth: 100 GB

Sites Allowed: 1

Pressed also provides a solid entry level managed WordPress service, even though it’s pricier and allows a lot less bandwidth and disk space than other plans. While it does slow down under heavy load, it doesn’t have any spikes or downtime in even the heaviest load conditions. Under a load of 730 hits per second, it only had 19 timeouts and no errors. It started to have a spike in response times, but it never had an error or time out during the test. This is a decent managed WordPress service, given the hefty price.

Conclusion</h2

It appears that the best possible bang for your buck comes from DreamHost’s Dreampress plan, which offers unlimited traffic and a generous 30 GB of web space for $19.95 monthly. If you are looking to save more money, SiteGround’s GrowBig managed WordPress service also will suit you well, and only costs $14.95 monthly. Lightning Base offers the cheapest managed WordPress plan, but at the price of severely limited traffic and disk space.

There were a few managed WordPress service providers that should be ashamed of their price and their performance. Hosting Agency and Traffic Planet both offer plans that are well over $20.00 monthly yet perform very poorly under high web traffic load. These managed WordPress service providers would do well to pay more attention to their competition and take some notes.

Despite the poor performers though, it seems most managed WordPress service providers do well in their performance, even under the heaviest load conditions. There are far more managed WordPress service providers that do well under heavy load than there are ones that do poorly.

Thanks to ReviewSignal for providing the test benchmarks this article was based upon. Without them, this article would have not been possible.

You can obtain more comprehensive, overall reviews of some of the best web hosting providers out there on hosting.review. There you will find professional reviews, up-to-date plan offerings and prices, as well as up-to-the-minute customer reviews and ratings.

It should be noted that besides a few exceptions, most of these managed WordPress service providers performed very well. Some just performed better than others, thus rose to the top of the testing process. By now you should have a good idea of which managed WordPress service provider you want to use for hosting your website. Good luck, and good speed to you!