I use WPX — a managed WordPress hosting service that allows me to host 10 websites for $49.99 per month. (There is a 5 websites plan that costs $24.99 per month.)

Considering $5 per month per website, it is not that costly, but overall, the pricing is way higher than the shared hosting services offered by Hostinger, Bluehost and others.

Hostinger, for example, allows you to host unlimited websites (terms apply) for a meager $4 per month.

Why is WPX hosting costly and Hostinger is not?

This is one of the frequent questions my readers ask.

When you first look at the price of most Managed WordPress Hosting plans, and not only WPX, you will find the starting prices 4-5 times that of Shared.

WPX is, to be honest, one of the cheapest managed hosting solutions.

So why are Managed hosts so expensive?

Did they slap WordPress to the beginning of their name and start charging more money?

Well, not really.

Managed WordPress Hosts actually offer a ton of value with additional features which do not come standard on Shared Hosting plans.

Here are a few of the major upgrades a Managed Hosts offers for free at one-off monthly/yearly charges.

• Daily Backups
• Top-level Security
• Built-in or Server Side Caching
• Content Delivery Network
• The most updated Server Software.

Looking at that list, you probably think, “So what, that doesn’t look like 4x the value.” But let’s break those items down a little more.

If you choose a Shared Host, and you follow all the best practices out there, you will have a backup system in place. That feature costs money. If you use the Jetpack plugin, it will cost you $5 per month for a backup once every day.

Then you will need to figure out where to store your backups because you do not want to leave them on the same server as your website.

Why? If your website server gets infected, chances are your backups will go down with it. And they won’t be much help to you at that point. Some cheap choices would be Dropbox or some other cloud storage provider. But top-level WordPress Managed Hosts use Amazon S3.

Amazon S3 is a cloud storage service offered by Amazon, and is billed monthly based on three criteria:

• The total amount of data stored,
• The total amount of data transferred in and out of S3 per month,
• The number of requests made to S3 per month.

Next, you will want some type of security in place. There are a number of reasons to have added security in place. Primarily because of the popularity of WordPress, it is prone to being hacked. And if you are running an e-commerce site, any downtime is money you’re not making.

Additionally, once your site is hacked, it will take even more money, to hire someone to clean it up. Which again means more downtime. So even if you go the cheaper shared hosting route, you will want some level of security.

A Managed WordPress Host like WPX uses custom security software, and if, for some reason, your website is infected, they will personally clean up your WordPress install for free. If you were to buy that same level of protection from Sucuri, it would cost you $89.99 per year.

Additionally, if your website becomes infected with malware, and Google detects this, your website could become “blacklisted” by Google, which is like a death sentence.

Google pretty much acts as if your website doesn’t even exist. It will also display the following, if people try to reach your website.

That is not the kind of PR you want to be sent to potential customers, especially if you’re running an e-commerce site. People are not going to trust you with their credit card information anytime soon. Other than the monthly cost of top-level security from Sucuri, it is hard to put a price tag on the hidden costs that you could incur, if your website is hacked or infected.

Next up is another very important aspect of a successful WordPress website.

Speed.

If you choose a Shared Host, you will want to use some type of Cache plugin, to increase your website page load times.

Why? Page load speeds are #SEO101, folks. The faster your pages load, the better you do in the rankings.

Lucky, if you choose a Shared Host, you can install a number of cache plugins that will really speed up your website.

But it will require you to set them up and the best one like WP Rocket may need you to pay for them.

And cache plugins are not the easiest things to mess with. But, if you go with a WordPress Managed Host, they have cache software and physical server hardware to do the job.

And on top of that, they actually do this for a living, and they personally optimize your website to run as fast as possible.

Additionally, most managed hosts have Content Delivery Networks (CDN), as part of their packages.

What is a CDN? A CDN is the process of having your website pre loaded on multiple servers worldwide. That way when people access your website, it will be served up to them from multiple locations, and it will use the locations closest to them.

That again increases speed, and is usually free with a WordPress Managed Host. But if you are on a Shared hosting, you will have to CDNs which start from $5 per month onwards.

I could talk all day about why Managed WordPress Hosting is worth the extra cost, and I kinda feel like I’ve been typing all day, but here is the deal.

Managed WordPress Hosting is built and designed from the ground up to do one thing.

Delivery of fast, reliable, and safe hosting for WordPress sites and WordPress websites only.

But to finish, let's look at the numbers. Below I am going to compare my two favorite hosting companies. For Shared Hosting, I will take SiteGround — one of the best out there, and for WordPress Managed Hosting, I am picking WPX — the one that I use. The numbers don’t lie.

All of these prices are as of this date and are based on the lowest-priced comparable options.

So, in the end, you could spend a little less for Shared Hosting and personally configure all the above features.

Or you could write a check each month, and let some of the best people in the business, do it for you.

So I would go with a WordPress Managed Host because you and your business will be better for it.

There are two WordPress-managed hosting options that I recommend: WPX and Rocket.net

Which hosting services are you using? And are you satisfied with what you are getting?