Managed hosting is on every provider's price list, and it means something different on each one. Sometimes it means a human will restart your server. Sometimes it means a chat bot. Before you sign, it is worth knowing what the word should include and which questions reveal what you are buying.

Here is what managed means at ALCO, and what we think it should mean anywhere.

The server itself

Managed starts with someone owning the machine your site runs on. That means:

  • Capacity sized to your real traffic and data, not the cheapest plan that technically fits.
  • The operating system kept patched, on a schedule, with a record of what changed.
  • The database tuned, because a slow site is usually a slow query, not a slow server.
  • Disk, memory and load watched, so the server does not quietly fill up on a Saturday.

If nobody can tell you when the server was last patched, it is not managed.

The watching

A managed site is checked constantly, and someone is woken up when a check fails. ALCO checks every hosted service every minute. Two failed checks in a row confirm a problem and open an incident. You can see the same checks we see at https://alcohq.com/status with history, because availability you cannot verify is just a claim.

Watching includes certificates, backups, domain expiry and the things that fail silently until they fail loudly.

The backups, and the restores

Backups stored on the same server as the site are not backups. Managed means copies kept somewhere else, kept for long enough, and restored on a schedule to prove they work. When you ask when the provider last restored from backup, the answer should be a date, not a pause.

The front door

Every site ALCO hosts sits behind Cloudflare Enterprise. The server's real address is hidden, known-bad traffic is dropped at the edge, floods are absorbed before they reach the server, and the pages are cached close to your visitors. Certificates are issued and renewed without anyone noticing. We wrote about what Cloudflare does in plain words earlier this week.

Hosting without that front door is a server standing in an open field.

The application

Here is where providers differ most. A server can be perfect and the website on it a mess. Managed WordPress means core, theme and plugin updates applied and tested, not just available. It means a staging copy to try changes on. It means someone who will look at the site when a page breaks, not only at the box it runs on.

Ask: if my site goes down because of a plugin update, is that your problem or mine? The honest answer will tell you what you are buying.

The migration

Moving a site is where things get lost: a redirect, an email form, a scheduled job nobody documented. Managed means a planned move with a test, a rollback and a switch-over time you chose. Done well, your visitors never notice.

The people

A help desk that picks up. Not a ticket that gets a reply in two business days, and not a chat window with a bot in it. When your site is down at 7 a.m. on invoice day, you want a phone number and a person. ALCO's help desk is staffed every day of the year.

What it should not include

Honesty cuts both ways. Managed hosting does not usually include designing new pages, writing content, running your ads or building new features. Those are development and marketing work, scoped and priced separately. A provider who bundles everything into one vague word is either overcharging for hosting or under-delivering on the rest.

The scope should be written down: what is sized, what is watched, what is backed up and for how long, what is updated, what the response targets are, and what is outside. If it is not in the agreement, do not assume it is included.

Five questions for any provider

  • When was my server last patched, and how do I see that?
  • Where are my backups, how far back do they go, and when were they last restored?
  • Is my site behind a web firewall and CDN, and is the server address hidden?
  • If a plugin breaks my site, who fixes it?
  • What is your phone number at 3 a.m.?

The answers, and how quickly they come, tell you most of what you need.

What this looks like from us

See the sites we host at https://alcohq.com/work and the full scope of ALCO managed hosting at https://alcohq.com/services/managed-hosting Every item on this page is in the agreement, in writing, before the first byte moves.

ALCO. Always online.