Managed Hosting: The Ultimate Guide

Whether you're an individual or an enterprise that needs the best hosting and support experience possible, there's no denying that a fully managed server simply runs better than a managed or unmanaged server. Your server will stay online more reliably, perform faster, and remain up-to-date. And with us, you don't even need to spend a dime extra to get that experience.

However, if you're unsure of what fully managed support and hosting can do for you and your business, read more below to find out how fully managed hosting can give you more time and peace of mind to run your business.

What is Fully Managed Hosting?

Fully Managed support is a service usually meant for servers and software. It provides a complete and comprehensive coverage over the functionality of the server and the software on it. Our servers come with fully managed support included, which provides you with a team of experts that are always available to perform a variety of tasks on your server. This includes but is not limited to:

Web Servers:

Reverse proxy setup and configuration
Setting PHP configuration
Installation of any supported web server
(LiteSpeed, Lighttpd, etc.)
Changes to .htaccess file
Apache optimization
Setup and configuration of Apache
Setup and configuration of Nginx
Multiple PHP versions with PHP-FPM
Nginx optimization

Database Servers:

MySQL optimization
PostgreSQL optimization
Inbound migration of databases
Installation and configuration of PostgreSQL
MariaDB optimization
Installation and configuration of MySQL
Installation and configuration of MariaDB
Adding/removing users and databases

Other Services:

Software installation and configuration
Package installation and configuration
Proactive monitoring & support for services
Attempting to fix failing services by analyzing
and diagnosing any potential problems
Updating software to the latest version
Email server installation and configuration
Control panel setup and management
Optimization of services for efficiency
and performance
Git integration
Git Automatic synchronization
Application stack setup (almost any stack)

Backup and Security:

Setting up database backups
Brute force prevention
Firewall setup
Implementing vulnerability patches
Backup recovery
Security hardening
Malware scanning and cleaning
Setting up local backups

Why use Fully Managed hosting?

The benefits of using Fully Managed hosting are best realized when you don't plan on it. It's like having an on-call support team that's waiting on standby to help in case anything goes wrong.

Using fully managed support gives you the best hosting experience that can be had - having the ability to get help from a team of experts whenever you need it is a priceless asset that can't be overlooked.

The ability to have an experienced Linux system administrator look into an issue and fix it at a moment's notice will likely save you time, money, and stress when compared to fixing the problem yourself or by hiring someone to fix the problem for you.

This is even more so the case when compared to using an unmanaged host, where one issue or mistake could cost hours of downtime where your services are inaccessible. This could cost more than the fully managed support ever would have cost.

Each support type can be explained simply in one sentence:
  • Unmanaged hosting: Provides the bare minimum for the server to function - everything else is on you.
  • Managed hosting: Provides some level of help, however they usually can't help with anything past a superficial level.
  • Fully Managed hosting: Provides an in-depth look into your server and its services, and proactively helps maintain your services so they run correctly.
fully managed support

How Unmanaged Hosting Affects Your Business

Slower Webpage
Loading

Webpages load more slowly as unoptimized services pile up on your server. This will affect your visitor's user experience and could lead to your bounce rates increasing over time, reducing overall conversions. 

Application Instability
and Crashing

Misconfigured configuration files, missing packages and add-ons, and other common mistakes can cause your services to perform unreliably. 

Weak Security
Practices

Not staying on top of the latest vulnerabilities and not keeping track of attacks and security holes means your server and its websites could get infected with malware, or malicious users could get access to your server.

Unexpected Maintenance
Costs

Needing an experienced server administrator to intervene when something goes wrong can cost a lot in a short period of time - not to mention the time needed to find such an administrator.

Incomplete
Migrations

Migrating data and services without knowledge of the software stacks can lead to inconsistencies that slow your business down and potentially cost you time and money.

Required Time
Management

Having to look after your server while also looking after an entire business can take up more time than you have available. Marketing, finance, business planning, and then adding server management of top of that can take up all of your time.

How is Fully Managed Support different from Managed Support?

When compared to regular managed hosting, fully managed hosting provides an additional layer of abilities and expertise that simply just is out of the scope of work that managed support can provide.

Fully Managed hosting is better in every way, and here's why:

Initial Setup

Managed support serves to provide a basic level of support for a server's initial setup and/or migration of services from a different server.
Fully Managed support aims to provide a comprehensive level of support that extends past initial setup and tends to be useful throughout the usage of the server.

Even with initial setup, usually the list of items that managed support is willing to help with is quite basic - a simple install of a popular application stack, general first-time setup of a database, and helping migrate websites through a file transfer or a control panel backup and restore.

Fully Managed support goes well past that. Not only do they perform all of the above, but they also can handle installation of more complex applications (such as Magento or ERPNext) that require more knowledge to be done correctly. On top of that, fully managed support can also migrate existing installations of complex applications over to your new server without issue.

Everyday Hosting

Managed support is useful for beginners, however its usefulness rarely extends past initial setup if problems start showing up after setup is done.
Fully Managed support on the other hand is designed to be useful for beginners, enterprise-level users, and anyone in between - its purpose goes into supporting the services and software/applications on the server throughout the entire lifetime of the server being hosted.

Say for example your Magento service suddenly stops working after you install a plugin, and now you need help with finding the root cause of the issue. Is the plugin causing an issue, or did the plugin expose a different issue with your Magento website? With managed hosting, they won't look into dealing with the problem for you. 

Instead, with fully managed hosting, we'll look into your Magento installation and debug the problem, and ultimately provide you with a diagnosis on why the problem is occurring. If it is something related to your Magento install, we'll do our best to fix the problem for you. If the issue is related to the plugin you installed for example, we'll let you know what the issue is with the plugin so that you can get in touch with the plugin developer and look into solving the problem. 

Personalized Support

With almost all hosting providers, and typically with other managed hosting providers, you, your server and its services are not much more than a statistic to the hosting provider. They don't pay attention to who the user is, they don't focus on past support interactions and what was done previously to your server, and they don't put in the effort to make your support experience personalized.

Our goal is to give you a support experience akin to having your own personal IT department. As time passes and you use our support system for various issues and requests on your server, we'll be able to keep track of what was done and make sure that we don't overlap or recommend actions that were already tried or implement solutions that were already implemented. Instead, we do everything we can to give you a unique support experience that looks after your server and its services as individually as possible.

Unique to Fully Managed Hosting

Using a Fully Managed VPS provides you with an unbeatable support experience that Managed hosting can't even compare to.

Fully Managed and Managed are only really comparable in name only. Managed support is very surface-level support in comparison to fully managed hosting. It all comes down to how in-depth the support experience is. Would the support team be willing to find the cause of the issue in your stack not loading? Or would the support team attempt to migrate all of your services, non-standard website setups and databases from your existing hosting provider, all completely for free? All of the above is something that simply doesn't exist anywhere else. 

The Cost of Fully Managed Hosting

Fully Managed servers, when used in an applicable environment, can actually end up paying for itself over time. Instead of needing to hire technical support to handle problems with the server's dependencies or performing maintenance on the system (disk usage cleanup, malware scans, etc.), all of the expenses associated with that are nullified when the VPS is Fully Managed.

The support isn't paid per-incident, either - there's no limit to the number of times that Fully Managed support can be used. Whether it's once a year or three times a day, we're here to help out as much as possible.

It's important to remember that unmanaged hosting (or even managed hosting) has features that usually need to be paid extra for, that are included with fully managed hosting. For example, data migrations - you may get one or two free migrations with a managed hosting provider, whereas a fully managed hosting provider can migrate an unlimited number of websites and services, and make sure that everything is set up as identically as possible, regardless of the amount of data being migrated.

In fact, the support isn't paid extra, period. Our support can be used an unlimited number of times, at any point, for free.
Simple as that.

Your Own Personal IT Team

Managing your own servers is time consuming, mentally labor-intensive at times, and most of all requires technical experience for both the operating system as well as the software stacks that run on it. Instead of running your servers on a fully managed Linux hosting provider, you decide to hire a dedicated IT person that has the knowledge and experience to run your services. The issue is, the cost reduction of running an unmanaged server is heavily outweighed by having to hire your own support team. Additionally, by outsourcing support, you also lose the vertical integration that is only possible through a fully managed hosting company. 

By using a fully managed hosting service, you'll get a team of experts that are experienced in several operating systems as well as a variety of software stacks designed to run on them. With our fully managed support, we will thoroughly cover your entire hosting stack from top to bottom. We'll do support on the data center, the server hardware, the low-level infrastructure that your operating system depends on, the operating system itself, and then on top of that we also do support for the services that you run on your server, including third-party services that you or we install on your server. This ensures that all aspects of your hosting are treated equally and gets the same level of attention that you would expect from a comprehensive support solution.

Not all Fully Managed hosting providers are created equal

There are several fully managed hosting providers to choose from nowadays - some include it for free, while others charge hundreds of dollars a month for the privilege.

It's important to know that while they share the same name, not all fully managed hosting providers are able to provide the level of support that is expected from a fully managed support service.

When choosing a hosting provider with fully managed support, it's important to look at the list of tasks they're willing to do. Additionally, asking their support team directly whether they're able to support the applications or platform that you use is a great way to find out which fully managed hosting is not really fully managed.

Supported Applications/Stacks

A fully managed hosting provider should be able to provide support for almost any application that can run on the server. This would include installation, helping make sure the base application is working, as well as migrating any existing content from an existing installation elsewhere.

It's important to note that fully managed support doesn't necessarily provide in-depth support related to the content inside of the application. That area is usually out of the scope that even fully managed support covers since that is user-specific data and content, and is not part of the application itself.

While not every case can be covered, we still provide you with a much broader range of support and stacks that are supported, which is far more than regular managed support, and is not even covered in any way by unmanaged hosting.

Best-effort Help

While we strive and focus on providing the best fully managed servers in the industry, there is no guarantee that we'll be able to fix a problem that is unable to be identified or solved. We however will always give our best effort in attempting to fix the issue while taking any precautions necessary. 
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RoseHosting's Fully Managed Support
is unlike anything you've tried before.

Once you use our support, there's no going back.
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Root Access

Root access and freedom over your server and its operating system is what we consider a basic feature. Other hosting providers will almost never include this with their fully managed VPSes, or with a control panel.
You can use any combination of the three with us, and we'll still provide support.
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Fully Managed Support

Benefit from having your server's operating system and its services completely managed by us. You'll still have complete control and access over your server, and we won't change anything without your permission. We cover your server from top to bottom. Best of all, it's included for free on every plan.
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Enterprise NVMe Storage

Improve your load times and improve your visitor's website experience by using superior hardware. We exclusively use the newest server processors with the fastest enterprise-grade NVMe SSD storage. Combined with our support team's unique optimization, your website will load faster than ever.
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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Fully Managed hosting safer than regular or managed hosting?

In almost all cases, yes, using fully managed hosting will keep you safer than if you were to use a regular or managed hosting provider. A fully managed support team can better help prevent you from being vulnerable - this is done through keeping your server up-to-date, setting up firewall rules and access lists, installing malware protection and anti-virus software, setting up brute-force prevention tools, and more.

Is fully managed hosting useful for individuals?

Single users of a server can get good use from having a fully managed server. Users typically have the least amount of time to manage everything since they are typically looking after almost everything else that runs on the server (e.g., a website, their business, projects, etc.). Having the convenience of a fully managed hosting provider can't be overlooked since it would help save lots of time from the user that already has their hands full with their business, development, projects, and so on.

How can Fully Managed hosting benefit a small business?

We believe that small businesses benefit most from fully managed support. With businesses having many moving parts and with employees already having tasks and jobs to focus on, adding another point of failure to the system can cause problems for the business looking to own their own data on the Internet. That's where our fully managed server hosting is designed to excel the most. With our team of experienced Linux system administrators on-hand, we'll ensure that your business operations stay online and perform well - you can leave the hosting in the background and focus on running your business instead.

Does your fully managed support include migrations?

Yes, we include a completely free migration process with our fully managed support. This means we'll migrate an unlimited number of websites, services, data, databases, files, and more, all at no additional cost across all of our plans. Want to learn more? View our migrations page to learn more.
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