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Managed WordPress Hosting Providers comparison: Kinsta vs GoDaddy Vs Namecheap Vs WP Engine Vs ZNetLive

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It’s becoming more like a norm today with more people, especially millennials venturing out in the world to put their idea into action, beginning a startup, breaking off from their traditional safe salaries at large corporations. New startups pop up every day all around the world, each of them hoping to make it big in their own right, but another side of the coin reveals that there are thousands of startups that fade into obscurity at almost the same rate.

Small Biz trends recent research shows that about 90% of the new startups fail.

But there’s no need to be scared!

Failures and success both have reasons, we just need to find them and act accordingly. Indeed, in most cases, people do the right things —but fruitlessly. What accounts for this apparent paradox? Let’s find out.

Why do so many startups fail? What makes startups succeed or fail?

No doubt, having a great idea is the first step to startup success, but remember, it can’t be the entire foundation. There are some common set of reasons and consistent set of factors that make startup companies successful or lead to their failure.

No market need for the idea, running out of cash, getting outcompeted or high pricing are the reasons which people actually feel are the causes for the failure of startups. But these may not be so.

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.”

– Peter Drucker

As the purpose of a business is to create a customer, marketing and innovation are the two keys that draw the customers to a business.

So, to succeed:

  • Startups need the best resources and tools to help them in marketing their products/ services.
  • They need the most user-friendly, but professional website. For it, they should use the best content management system- WordPress (WP), as that’s the fastest growing Content Management System (CMS) powering 30% of the web.
  • Startups should use tools to increase collaboration and team productivity to manage their work and to remain connected with their team, on the go.
  • Above all, they should give their business the power of managed hosting that facilitates innovation by helping them to avoid all complexities of managing a business website and be focused. (Because running a website is actually a lot more complicated than you think, if you’re just beginning.)

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Successful startups get things done on time and work steadfastly until something is complete. They work most of the time productively and have the ability to move much faster than their competitors.

With managed WP hosting, startups can focus more on their business, rather than wasting time on complexities like the security of the site, it’s speed, updates, migration, backups etc.

gives you high website speed, reliability and peace of mind. It enables a business to focus on building its brand instead of focusing on the back-end, security and infrastructure issues. Above all, it is intelligently tailored and optimized to run WordPress blogs and websites.

Managed hosting for WordPress providers work exclusively with WordPress. To deliver optimal performance, they can tailor all their servers — from command line tools to the file systems to the operating system.

There are plenty of companies promising the best-managed WordPress hosting services, but it is difficult to find – What is the best WordPress hosting site? What is the cheapest managed WordPress hosting sites?

In the latter half of this post, we have provided a managed WordPress hosting comparison of the top three managed WordPress hosting providers, per us.

Related read: How to improve your Website Marketing?

What should one look out for in managed WordPress hosting?

It is important to know what your company needs in order to accomplish milestones, so while choosing a managed WordPress host, check out the below-mentioned features of top managed WordPress hosting. Their delivery is the must for a successful and seamless journey of your startup website.

  • Business Startup tools to be professional and productive, even on the go
  • Staging environments
  • Automatically managed updates and backups
  • Expert and quick WordPress support
  • Finely tuned dashboards
  • Advanced security
  • Go to market support

Which WordPress Hosting Provider is the best – Kinsta vs GoDaddy Vs Namecheap Vs WP Engine Vs ZNetLive

Here is a quick yet comprehensive comparison of the top managed WordPress hosting providers in 2020.

1. Kinsta

Built on the Google Cloud Platform, Kinsta WordPress hosting is managed, and it offers the same core infrastructure across all plans, from Starter plan to the Business to Enterprise plan. Their auto-scaling infrastructure is capable of handling sudden traffic surges and loads. It uses Nginx, PHP 7, LXD software containers, and MariaDB for speedy website uploads.

Features – Optimized for WooCommerce and easy digital downloads, Kinsta Managed WP hosting offers complete resource isolation i.e. they do not offer shared hosting. All plans from Starter to Enterprise come with SSH access, Git, and WP-CLI to help you automate your workflow and create a better developer environment.

Plans and pricing – Their plan starts at $30 per month, which supports 20K monthly visits, 5 GB SSD storage, 10 GB disk space, free SSL and CDN.

Security network – Kinsta WordPress hosting plans offer both active and passive measures to stop attacks and malicious intent. It offers DDoS attack detection, continuous uptime monitoring, daily backups, software-based restrictions, and hardware firewalls.

Business startup resources – None.

Expert support: Kinsta support team comprises WordPress developers and Linux hosting engineers, hence expert advice is assured.

2. GoDaddy

GoDaddy is exceptionally popular at providing streamlined, optimized hosting space for developing and managing WordPress sites. The platform is built to provide your business with secure and fast running WordPress sites. Their basic WordPress hosting plan comes with pre-built templates to help easily create your own online store.

Features – GoDaddy offers a wide variety of services when it comes to managed WordPress hosting. Their basic WordPress hosting plan offers one year of free business email and domain service, SFTP access to your servers, daily malware scans, automated backups, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration. Load balanced servers are included in their platform so that your website can handle traffic spikes with ease.

Plans and pricing – Their plan starts at $6.99/month, which supports one website hosting, 30 GB storage, and up to 25K monthly visitors. They also offer a free business email plan for the first year.

Security network – GoDaddy WordPress hosting plans provide you with measures to prevent cyber-attacks. They offer free SSL, daily updates and backups with 1-click restore, malware detection and removal.

Business startup resources – Free Business Email plan.

Expert support:

GoDaddy provides good quality support. They are available for you 24/7 throughout the year. You can contact a specialist via phone or through live chat.

$2.99*/ mo Managed WordPress hosting

3. Namecheap 

Namecheap offers managed WordPress hosting service under its range, named, EasyWP. They let you set up your WordPress website effortlessly in just a few clicks. You not only get a quick website set up but also a quick and fast running website along with a user-friendly dashboard. You get multiple domains and unlimited bandwidth with most of their hosting plans. Namecheap offers decent capacity storage powered by SSD drives.

Features – Namecheap promises its customers super-fast, one-click WordPress installation, multiple domain names for the first year, unlimited bandwidth, secure and automatic backups, and free SSL with advanced plans. The company also claims 100% server uptime (with 14 days money-back guarantee) which rarely any other hosting provider offers.

Plans and pricing – Their most basic plan starts at $3.88 per month. (They charge $1 for the first trial month) Their basic plan includes 10 GB SSD storage, one website hosting, and unlimited bandwidth.

Security network – Namecheap considers your online privacy very important. They provide a commitment to your data security in all its products, including EasyWP.

Business startup resources – None.

Expert support: The support service provided by the company is quite impressive. You can get in touch with them through email, live chat, phone, or ticketing system.

4. WP Engine

Considered as the pioneers of managed WordPress hosting, WP Engine provides you with a range of affordable, enterprise-grade solutions and deliver blazing fast, highly available, scalable and secure experiences. They optimize AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for WordPress.

Features – WP hosting comes with one-click tools and unlimited workspaces to simplify the staging, testing, and deployment. They manage WordPress patches and updates too. Their all plans include 35+ StudioPress Themes, Genesis Framework, free CDN and SSL, suitable dev, stage and production environments.

Plans and pricing – WP Engine offers 4 managed WordPress hosting plans – Startup, Growth, Scale and Custom for all business needs. Their starter plan starts at $25 per month which supports 25K visits per month for 1 installation, 10 GB local storage, 50 GB bandwidth and free migrations.

Security- They offer real-time security threat detection, free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates, EverCache proprietary caching technology, and a global CDN.

Business startup resources – None.

Expert support– Their support claims an average less-than-three-minute response time on chat. They provide assistance with technical onboarding and launch readiness assessments and partner in resolving critical site issues that may arise.

Suggested reading: Different Types of SSL Certificates: How to Choose the Suitable One?

5. ZNetLive

With over 17 years of experience working with WordPress, experts have poured all their know-how into creating the best WordPress hosting solution, available today.

The mission of their WP hosting is to provide powerful resources to startups, SMBs and individuals alike and to enable them to achieve a world-class digital experience.

Features – WordPress hosting at ZNetLive is specially optimized for the WordPress environment. It comes with the powerful Plesk Onyx control panel that facilitates easy management and configuration of your WordPress site. You get multiple extensions and features within the hosting control panel.

Their speed obsessive architecture is ready to handle traffic surges. ZNetLive has built its tools and dashboard with WordPress developers, designers and agencies in mind. Their managed WordPress hosting empowers you with various features to help get the best performance.

Plans and pricing: They offer both shared and dedicated environments and their plans are good for startups or a business of any size. Their all plans include website creation and promotion tools, productivity, management and collaboration tools.

Their Beginner Plan starts at $6.94 per month which supports 25k visits per month, 10 GB SSD, 50 GB bandwidth, free SSL, daily backups, and includes unparalleled productivity and management tools, powered by Microsoft.

Security Network – All are secure. ZNetLive offers website security tools for startups. They offer SSL certificates, antivirus tools and scheduled daily automated backups. With all managed WordPress hosting plans, you also get basic DDOS protection, free Let’s Encrypt or Cloudflare issued certificate, threat blocking and privacy protection.

Business Startup resources – Startups are an indisputable innovation engine, and to help propel their business growth, ZNetLive offers a growth tool, Start-up IT Kita balanced bundle of domain names, secure WordPress website and productivity tools.

It is a complete package of must-have tools every startup business needs to succeed. The bundle includes:

Website creation and promotion tools:

  • A domain name for a start-up’s website from .com, .net, .in or .co.in.
  • WordPress platform with drag & drop website editor to create a website for your start-up and customize its themes and content.
  • SEO Toolkit for real-time insights into your current search engine rankings and site optimization recommendations.
  • WordPress Toolkit 2.0 – a single management interface to install, configure and manage WP instances and secure and manage all plugins, installations and themes.
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered smart updates for intelligent WP instances, themes and plugins, updating.

Best collaboration tools for startups:

  • SharePoint for seamless collaboration across your organization.
  • Microsoft Teams to connect better with teams in one place.
  • Yammer for the internal social network.
  • Kaizala chat interface to connect and coordinate with your team, partners, and customers.

Must use productivity tools for startups:

  • A professional email ID, set up on your domain name.
  • Video or audio conferencing with Skype for Business to connect with your team and customers on the go.
  • Office suite including Office tools- Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.
  • OneDrive online storage for anywhere access to all files.
  • Digital storytelling with Sway to create interactive web-based reports, engaging presentations, newsletters, training and more.

Best startup management tools:

  • Task Manager – the Planner to organize and assign tasks, create new plans, and get updates on progress.
  • An Appointments manager to schedule and manage appointments.
  • Outlook customer manager for your customer relationships growth.
  • Microsoft StaffHub, scheduling and connecting tools for first line workforce management.
  • Microsoft Flow for Workflow automation between apps.

Note: If you buy a startup plan –Beginner/ Advanced/ Pro, your WordPress plan- WP Starter/Standard/Professional is included in the bundle, accordingly.

Expert support– ZNetLive WordPress team monitors your site and offers proactive support round the clock. The technical team efficiently manages WordPress servers and blogs and their customer support gives instant solutions for both basic and pressing issues. They also maintain a strong knowledge base for their customers.

A quick comparison of Kinsta vs GoDaddy Vs Namecheap Vs WP Engine Vs ZNetLive

Features Kinsta GoDaddy Namecheap WP Engine ZNetLive
Basic Plan Price (USD per month) Starter Plan-$30/month Basic plan $6.99/month Entry-level plan $3.88/month Starter plan -$25/month Beginner plan- $6.94/ month
Visits per month 20k/month 25K/month 50K/month 25K/month 25K/month
Storage 10GB 30 GB 10 GB 10GB 10GB
No. of sites that can be hosted 1 1 1 1 1
Website Creation Tools WP page builder plugin Pre-built sites, drag & drop page editor None  

None

Domain, Drag& Drop website editor
Website Promotion Tools None SEO optimizer None None SEO toolkit, WordPress Toolkit with smart updates
Productivity Tools None Business email None None Professional email, online meetings, Office suite, online storage and Digital storytelling tool
Collaboration Tools None None None None SharePoint, Internal social network, Teamwork tool, chat interface
Management Tools None Dashboard for website management Single dashboard for building and managing sites None Task manager, Appointment manager, Customer & Work manager, Workflow automation
Security Tools Automated Daily Backups, SSL certificate SSL certificate,
Backup protection, malware scans, malware removal
Automated daily backups, PositiveSSL from Sectigo Automated SSL certificate Automated Daily Backups, SSL certificate, Antivirus tool
Expert WP Support 24×7 24×7 24×7 24×7 24×7
Staging environment Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
CDN (Content Delivery Network) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

So now the ball is in your court! Choose your managed WordPress host as per your needs.

If you have any feedback for this write-up, please share via comments.

Read Next: CDN comparison: AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, IBM, Alibaba Cloud

Disclaimer: The above comparison is based on the offerings of these providers as of 20th Feb 2020. The offerings may change over time and you are advised to check them on their official websites. Moreover, this post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. 

Update: This article was updated with new information on 18th Nov 2021.

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