Every day, more and more interest is generated with Managed WordPress services, and with good reason. Web hosting is a highly competitive business, so hosting companies are always looking for ways to sell premium web hosting accounts. Web developers really need to increase Monthly Recurring Revenue to add stability to their income streams in order to scale their company and differentiate themselves. And organizations using WordPress to power their website are realizing that keeping WordPress core, themes, and plugins up to date is a task that all too often gets forgotten.

Managed WordPress services address these business needs by ensuring websites are properly managed, backed up, secured, and maintained.

What is the difference between web hosting and Managed WordPress maintenance?

With web hosting, your service provider is simply providing a server that can run your website. Ongoing maintenance is your responsibility. With Managed WordPress, your service provider is going to assume more responsibility for keeping your website online and operating in tip top condition.

When you sign up for a Managed WordPress maintenance service, your service provider is assuming additional responsibilities beyond just hosting your website. While providers will have their own package of benefits, you’ll often fine:

• An automated website backup solution with more frequent backups and faster restoration
• WordPress core and plugin updates
• Access to a bundle of premium WordPress Plugins
• Performance optimizations to improve the speed of your WordPress website
• Regular security audits

What are the benefits of using a managed WordPress maintenance service?

Better WordPress security, a faster website, advanced website features, and peace of mind knowing that a seasoned WordPress developer is ensuring the long term health of your website.

What tasks are included in a typical managed WordPress maintenance plan?

Inacom’s Managed WordPress clients receive:

• A premium web hosting experience, with more RAM, storage and processing power available.
• A Web Application Firewall (WAF) especially tuned for WordPress and your web sites features.
• Daily incremental backups that can be restored in minutes.
• Access to our favorite premium WordPress plugins, like ShortPixel, Fluent Forms, RankMath, and more!
• Regular WordPress core and Plugin Updates
• Hack Insurance – if your WordPress site is hacked under our Managed WordPress service, we will repair or restore your website at no charge.

Do I need technical knowledge to use a managed WordPress maintenance service?

Not at all. This is why our Managed WordPress service exists! You are choosing Inacom to handle your WordPress maintenance tasks for you. Let’s face it – most business managers and marketing staff are already busy folks. Adding the daily task of maintaining the company’s WordPress website is a task that is all too easily pushed off into the future. Inacom can manage your WordPress site for just a few dollars a day. It’s cheaper to pay our WordPress experts than paying your employees to do the job.

Can I migrate my existing WordPress site to a managed maintenance service?

Yes, but you don’t have to. Inacom will handle onboarding your WordPress website to our Managed WordPress service for free.

How often are backups performed in a managed WordPress maintenance plan?

Typically, daily website backups are sufficient for most WordPress websites. But extremely active websites and eCommerce websites can benefit from more often backups. Inacom can create a custom backup strategy for your WooCommerce website when it’s appropriate.

What security measures are taken to protect my website in a managed plan?

Inacom will perform a security audit of your website at the beginning of onboarding, before the site is even migrated to our servers, and we’ll address any issues discovered.

Our first layer of defense is Cloudflare, the popular website proxy service. This insures that all web traffic must traverse the Internet’s premium bot fighting network before they even arrive at your web host.

When we bring your site online with our servers, we have your site set up into an isolated computing environment. This means that no other website account has access to yours, eliminating the chance that a compromised neighbor can lead to you being hacked.

Next we deploy a server level Web Application Firewall, especially tuned for WordPress. This system ensures that your site is protected with industry best practices.

We also deploy a second firewall at the site level. It is regularly updated as new vulnerabilities are uncovered within the WordPress ecosystem.

As new vulnerabilities are exposed, you’ll find that the WordPress development team and WordPress plugin developers are constantly issuing updates to keep their products secure. Inacom will take on the task of regularly updating the WordPress core and WordPress plugins to keep your site as safe as possible.

Do Managed WordPress maintenance services include plugin and theme updates?

Yes! If your Managed WordPress provider is not updating the WordPress core, plugins, and themes they are not really managing your site.

When it comes to keeping your themes and plugins updated, keep in mind that many of these products come with a subscription. Many organizations are not told about ongoing subscription fees when the site is developed, or they forget internally that these subscriptions must stay current in order to get updates. If your site is using any of our covered plugins or themes, we’ll use our developer licenses to ensure the updates keep coming. If your site uses premium plugins or themes outside of our preferred list, we can work with you to bake the cost of your licenses into our Managed WordPress service, simplifying your cost structure.

What happens if a plugin or theme update breaks my website?

All of our Managed WordPress clients are backed up daily and prior to any update processes. If an update breaks your site, we can quickly roll back your website to the same state it was before updates. We’ll move a copy of your website to a staging environment and track down the problem with the update. Often that means working with the theme or plugin developer to identify bugs and get them squashed. We do this at no additional cost beyond our Managed WordPress subscription fee.

Is performance optimization included in managed WordPress maintenance?

Absolutely! In many Managed WordPress offerings (we’re looking at you, GoDaddy!), the server is so locked down and so heavily cached that the backend of your website suffers or updates are slow to make it to public viewing. We take a different approach to Managed WordPress – ensuring that your website has adequate resources to function at the highest level of performance.

We also offer several other performance optimizations, like:

• ShortPixel to optimize your website images
• Cloudflare to quickly route visitors to website resources
• A Content Delivery Network to efficiently distribute website resources closer to the user, on an ultra high-speed network close to the site visitor.

It’s not uncommon to see page load times improve by 30% – 50% after migration to our Managed WordPress service.

How quickly can I expect support and assistance with issues?

Nearly all of our Managed WordPress clients have their support issues resolved in the same business day. Our tech support pros would be serving as Level 3 help desk personnel at the big web hosts.

Are there any limitations on website traffic or storage in these plans?

We operate under a Fair Use policy. So long as your website is not monopolizing resources and operating within “normal” parameters, you receive our published rate for Managed WordPress. We do not charge you “per visitor” like many popular WordPress hosting services.

If your WordPress site requires high levels of RAM, Storage, or processor power, we’ll work with you to deploy a custom Virtual Private Server built just for your site’s needs.

Can I host multiple websites under a single managed WordPress maintenance plan?

We do not allow multiple websites to exist within the same web hosting tenant for performance and security reasons. But we’re happy to extend a discount on our Managed WordPress services for multiple websites.

Do managed WordPress maintenance services offer SEO support or services?

You might well find some SEO benefit from our Managed WordPress service. Google has often been cited as considering website performance as a quality ranking signal. But our Managed WordPress service in itself is not the same as SEO support. We’d love to help you develop a content marketing strategy to improve your website’s search engine rankings, though!

What happens if my website gets hacked while using a managed plan?

All Inacom Managed WordPress clients receive free restoration or repair if their website is ever hacked. There is no additional cost to this work – it’s baked into our Managed WordPress fee.

Are there any additional costs beyond the monthly service fee?

Content creation and other website development services are not included in our Managed WordPress offering. We do offer a Block of Service Program and ContracTech for ongoing web development needs.

Can I cancel my managed WordPress maintenance service at any time?

Yes! At Inacom, we believe that our Managed WordPress service needs to justify its value every month. If you’re ever unhappy with our service and want to end our Managed WordPress engagement, just give 30 days notice that you want to leave.

What happens to my website if I decide to cancel the service?

It’s your website. Take it to any web host or web developer that you want. We’ll offer all professional courtesy to ensure your new service provider has the access necessary to move your website. Just keep in mind that we will pull any of our developer licenses from your website during offboarding. You’ll need to obtain your own licensing if you wish to continue using those themes or plugins.