The “cloud” in cloud hosting refers to the cluster of virtual servers that makes up the massive cloud hosting network. Unlike traditional hosting solutions where you are restricted to the resources of a single server, cloud hosting puts the multiple resources of multiple servers at your disposal. If one server goes down, other servers will pick up the slack.
Managed cloud hosting is any cloud hosting plan that includes server management as part of its features. Server management means the web host manages all the server’s technical aspects, including setup, app installation, upgrades, and security. Every managed hosting is a bit more expensive. Want to read more about Cloud hosting pricing? Check out our cloud hosting cost page.
Here Are The Top Ten Managed Cloud Hosting Providers
- Kamatera – Best Managed Cloud Hosting Provider for Developers
- HostArmada – Best Managed Cloud Hosting Provider for Customer Support
- Cloudways – Best Managed Cloud Hosting Provider Overall
- FastComet – Best Managed Cloud Hosting Provider for Speed
The Best Managed Cloud Hosting Providers of 2023 (Bought and Tested)
Kamatera is a great managed cloud hosting provider for developers who want the best server configuration for their projects. Their fully managed cloud hosting solution offers all the benefits of cloud hosting infrastructure that allow you to focus on other aspects of your business. Kamatera’s highly trained cloud experts handle the cloud management tasks.
- Overall score – 4.7
- Features – 4.7
- Support – 4.8
- User-Friendly – 4.5
- Pricing – 4.8
- Reliability – 4.8
Features: Kamatera offers instant server setup with instant scalability. You also get backups, server monitoring, multiple server locations, SSD storage, billing management, multi-cloud management, file sharing and SSH access, remote desktop images, a built-in firewall, and a load balancer.
Support: You get 24/7 customer support via email, live chat, and telephone. The support team will help with operating system installation, cPanel, and other associated services. You can also request them to resolve issues or problems. If you use the managed cloud hosting plan, the support staff will monitor your server and resolve issues before they get out of hand.
User-friendly: Kamatera’s managed cloud hosting plan comes with a full management service. The web host team will design, install, and configure your server based on your preferences, with regular upgrades and patches for OS, web and application servers, and database setup. They will also fine-tune your web servers and help you migrate from other servers.
Pricing: The basic cloud hosting plan starts at $0.005/hour ($4/Month). This basic configuration offers one vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB SSD storage, one public IP, and 5,000 GB/month internet traffic connected at 10 Gbit/sec. If you choose the fully managed service, this plan will cost you $0.074/hour ($54/month).
Reliability: You get top-tier hosting performance thanks to the cloud infrastructure and globally distributed data centers in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. All the data centers are built to provide 24-hour uptime using modern technology and solutions. The underlying network infrastructure gets its source from a network of tier-1 providers worldwide.
Additional Parameter: Developer–friendly: Kamatera offers excellent flexibility and customization for server administrators and project managers. While these might cause decision paralysis for beginners, it is the perfect setting for developers that want highly customized server environments. The pay-by-the-hour billing also allows developers to use top-tier hosting resources without paying for more than they use.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- All plans come with instant scalability
- Offers server images that include operating software, cPanel, and CMS
- Load balancer for handling loads of traffic
- Server management services for non-techie users and small businesses
- No questions asked, free trial for 30 days
Cons
- No free control panel
HostArmada is a great web host for all web hosting purposes. They offer fantastic speed and performance on all their plans. Both beginners and developers will enjoy the rich features that this web host offers. You get great prices for all plans with mouth-watering discounts for your first purchase. To cap it all, the hosting provider offers very helpful and knowledgeable customer support for all customers.
- Overall score – 4.7
- Features – 4.6
- Support – 4.8
- User-Friendly – 4.8
- Pricing – 4.5
- Reliability – 4.7
Features: HostArmada offers feature-rich hosting plans. For instance, the cloud shared/WordPress hosting plan offers SSD storage, free domain, free SSL certificate, daily backups, and web and server security tools. Other freebies include free website migrations, a cPanel control panel, 24/7 customer support, free web server caches, and server management service.
Support: You get round-the-clock customer support from the 24/7 hosting experts. The support staff will assist you with all issues, including website downtimes, application installation or updating, and upgrading your plan. The support communication channels include phone, live chat, and a ticketing system.
User–Friendly: HostArmada makes web hosting simple for both beginners and experts. They offer developer tools for tech users while making their plans and WordPress hosting solutions beginner-friendly. They include a cPanel control panel and 24/7 swift response customer support on all plans. Their fully managed service is ideal for anyone who wants superb website performance without having any technical skills.
Pricing: All HostArmada’s web hosting plans come at affordable prices with discounts on the first purchase. The cloud-shared hosting plan starts at $2.49/mo and renews at $9.95/mo if you go for the three-year term. This plan offers SSD storage, 2 CPUs, 2 GB RAM, free domain and SSL certificates, daily backups, and malware removal tools.
Reliability: All HostArmada plans come with a standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. If they fail to meet up with that guarantee, they will compensate you for every additional hour of downtime. They also offer on-demand website optimization for every client. This free optimization ensures that your website loads fast at all times.
Additional Parameter: Customer Support: HostArmada offers a dedicated technical support team to assist you with all web hosting issues and tasks. They promise fast case escalation and promise to compensate you for mistakes. In addition, you get free website analysis and optimization for all the websites you host on their servers. With an average 10-minute response time for ticket support and 99% case resolution, you are getting one of the best customer support in the web hosting industry.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Reliable web hosting powered by cutting edge Cloud Technology
- Free on-demand website optimization for every website
- Multiple layers of security firewalls
- 99.9% SLA-backed uptime guarantee as standard
- 24/7/365 customer support with an average 10 minutes response time
- Multiple data centers in international locations
Cons
- High renewal fees
Cloudways takes a practical approach to managed cloud hosting. They partner with leading cloud hosting companies such as Google and Amazon Web Service to create fully managed cloud hosting plans. The company provides server management services and a developer-friendly environment. They also offer tiered support plans for varying levels and a pay-as-you-go model to allow businesses to pay only for what they use.
- Overall score – 5
- Features – 5
- Support – 5
- User-Friendly – 5
- Pricing – 5
- Reliability – 5
Features: All Cloudways hosting plans are fully managed and run on cloud hosting technology provided by their partners. Key features include the option to choose from five popular cloud providers, unlimited app installation, free backups, 24/7 server monitoring and customer support, and a fully optimized stack with built-in advanced cache and Cloudflare CDN.
Support: Cloudways offer three levels of support. The standard support is free for all customers and includes 24/7/365 access to Live Chat. Advanced support starts from $100/mo and offers fast response time and a wide range of support. The Premium Support starts from $500/mo and includes fast response times, direct phone support, a dedicated Account Manager, and a private Slack channel.
User-friendly: Cloudways offers a simplified cloud hosting plan with full server management to allow you to focus more on your business. With one-click processes, you won’t have any hassle in managing your hosting environment. Developers also get a fully optimized stack and staging environment to develop, test, and deploy applications.
Pricing: The managed cloud hosting plans start at $10/mo. This low-budget plan runs on DigitalOcean cloud hosting infrastructure and offers 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB storage, and 1 TB bandwidth. If you want NVMe storage and a more powerful processor, go for the premium option of this plan.
Reliability: Although Cloudways doesn’t own the underlying cloud hosting infrastructure, they employ their Cloudways Thunderstack to provide fast server speeds and excellent uptime. The Cloudways Thunderstack includes NGINX, Apache, Memcached, MySQL/MariaDB, Varnish Cache, PHP-FPM, Redis, and PHP 8. Overall, you get impeccable server performance and stability.
Additional Parameter: Scalability: Cloudways shines when it comes to scalability. Scaling up is as easy as a few clicks. You will immediately get the added resources without downtimes or data loss. However, if you want to scale down, you have to clone the server. The support team is always happy to assist you through the cloning process. When you combine the ease of scaling with their excellent customer support, affordable pricing, and excellent server performance and management, you see why it is our top recommended managed cloud hosting provider.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Perfect for CMSs like WordPress and Magento
- Offers a fully optimized stack for developers
- Transparent pricing with a pay-as-you-go model
- Lots of great features, such as free backups
- Fully managed cloud hosting plans with 24/7/365 monitoring
Cons
- Premium support plans are too expensive
FastComet is a US-based cloud hosting provider that employs 11 enterprise-class data centers, 200 global CDN access points, and SSD storage to deliver fast loading times for all audiences. The hosting company has invested in server hardware and technologies to deliver fast server speed, security, and fast-response customer support.
- Overall score – 4.9
- Features – 4.9
- Support – 4.9
- User-Friendly – 5
- Pricing – 4.7
- Reliability – 5
Features: All FastComet plans include cPanel free of charge, allowance to choose from any of the 11 strategically located data centers, anti-DDoS protection, daily and weekly backups, free website migration, free SSL certificate, daily malware scans, 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7 support, free CDN, and NVMe SSD storage.
Support: You get round-the-clock customer support regardless of your plan. The support team has an average response time of 15 minutes. You can access 24/7 available support agents via live chat, email, phone, and ticketing system. The company also offers a vast knowledge base and step-by-step tutorials.
User-friendly: FastComet hosting plans come with full server management service, so you don’t have to worry about the technical aspects of your hosting. The dashboard is mobile-friendly so that you can manage your server on the go. You also get a custom cPanel for easy server management at no cost.
Pricing: The shared hosting plan starts at $2.49/mo and renews at $9.95/mo. This plan offers hosting for one website, free website migration, free domain transfer, cPanel, Softaculous, and 1 5GB SSD storage. The cloud VPS hosting starts at $23.98/mo (renews at $59.95/mo), while the dedicated servers start at $97.30/mo (renews at $139/mo). The shared hosting plan offers a 45-day money-back guarantee, while the other solutions offer a seven-day money-back guarantee.
Reliability: You get a 99.9% uptime commitment for hosting services. FastComet also promises to be upfront with all details that might affect your hosting experience. To ensure they deliver on their promise, the hosting company conducts regular server checks to ensure network performance. You will also get reimbursement for every additional hour of website downtime.
Additional Parameter: Speed: Regarding website loading speed, FastComet is one of the best web hosting providers in the world. With their 11 enterprise-grade data centers, FastComet can deliver fast page loading speed to all central locations in the world. They also pair their data centers with 200 global CDN access points to ensure all customers get fast websites regardless of the location of their target audience.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- High website loading speed, especially on the VPS and dedicated server plans
- Ample storage space on all plans
- Round-the-clock customer support and server monitoring on all plans
- Free DDoS protection, Cloudflare CDN, and website migration
- 11 globally-distributed data centers
Cons
- Expensive renewal fees
Best Managed Cloud Hosting Services: Final Recommendations
Ultimately, it is up to you to decide on the best-managed cloud hosting services. Our top recommendation is Cloudways because they tick all the right boxes. They offer impressive server performance and quality customer support and are affordable. You also get a lot of premium features for free and five leading cloud providers in the industry to choose from. Cloud hosting doesn’t get better than this.
However, there are a lot of worthy mentions, such as Kamatera. Kamatera regularly features in our recommendations because it has proven to be a reliable cloud VPS hosting provider. However, unless you are using the fully managed hosting option, using Kamatera requires you to have some technical knowledge. WordPress users should go for Nexcess’ fully optimized WordPress plans. Can’t afford any of these web hosts? Verpex has you covered with their cheap yet reliable hosting solutions.
Ranking comparison between the Top Providers
How do we rank, and how should you choose your Fully Managed Cloud Hosting?
We at HostAdvice have been reviewing web hosts for a long time and have even used some of these web hosts ourselves. We also conduct live tests on all leading web hosting providers. From our experiences and the reviews from our beloved readers (including you), we have formulated a list of essential factors in ranking web hosting providers for each category. Here is a brief rundown of the critical factors we consider when making this article.
- Ease of Use (15%): The idea behind using managed cloud hosting is to have a stress-free hosting experience. For us, that means the web host has to handle all backend operations, including server maintenance and updates. However, we award points to providers that offer complete control on the front end so users can configure their hosting environment to their taste. Most providers offer limited controls on the front end for security reasons.
- Uptime and speed (8%): Cloud hosting is synonymous with speed, but not all cloud servers’ speeds are the same. We focus on servers with at least a 99.9% uptime guarantee and CDN for global fast-loading speeds. Other factors include LiteSpeed caching for faster websites, DDoS protection to prevent attacks, and SSD storage for faster read/write times.
- Hardware resources (8%): The essential resource here is cloud hosting servers. However, the resource allocation on each plan also matters. We only recommend providers offering sufficient storage, RAM, CPU, and bandwidth for a small website on their entry plans. However, you should go for a mid-range plan as they often offer a fine balance of hardware resources and pricing. The entry plan is just a baseline.
- Customer Support (7%): All fully-managed hosting plans come with customer support by default. However, some providers offer a high level of support which comes at an extra cost even for managed plans. This higher-tier support typically makes the web host technicians a part of your in-house website management team.
- Security Features (5%): With a managed plan, the web host helps you to secure your plan. This security often comes with a trade-off, as some web hosts might restrict your ability to use third-party services and applications. Unless you have a 24/7 server monitoring and management team, we advise you to follow the hosting provider’s recommendations.
- Valuable Extras (12%): Here, we consider all the freebies such as white glove site migration, free SSL and domains, free CDNs, and other freebies the provider might offer to attract customers. A word of caution: some providers claim that server resources such as storage or bandwidth are unlimited. But there is always a limit. If you have a high website usage, you should contact support to learn of those limits.
- Pricing (15%): Managed cloud hosting costs more than regular cloud hosting. In some cases, it can be double the price. However, we recommend you focus less on price and more on quality. When you have found two or three web hosts that meet your hosting requirements, you can choose the one with the most affordable price. Remember to factor in renewal costs when comparing prices.
- User Reviews (30%): At HostAdvice, we place a premium on reviews from hundreds of thousands of readers. Our live tests rarely go on for more than a year, while our readers can use web host services for decades. So we compare their experience with the results from our findings to find a balanced perspective. Using the search function, you can also check the user reviews for each web host provider on our website.
A step-by-step process for choosing the best-managed cloud hosting procedure
Choosing a managed web host requires some thought and time. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you get the right hosting for your needs.
- Features: The first step is to check for features, support, and management levels, then pick a few providers that meet your needs. We have made things simpler by recommending different providers for different purposes/niches.
- Reviews: Read comprehensive reviews from other users to get a complete picture of the web host. Someone is bound to mention it if the web host has yet to live up to their promises. Notice how recently the review was done and if counter reviews have recently been done.
- Sign up: At some point, you will need to use the web hosting services to understand what to expect. Most cloud hosting providers offer a money-back guarantee, usually for 30 days. You have nothing to lose if you don’t like the service as long as you cancel your plan before the end of the money-back period.
- Support: We recommend speaking with the sales support of each provider on your list about your hosting needs, concerns, and budget. They will recommend the best plan for you and provide support for setting up your hosting environment.
- SLA: SLA means service level agreement. It defines what a customer should expect from a web hosting provider. Compare the guarantees in the documentation with what is advertised on the homepage to prevent unpleasant surprises.
- Choose on price: If you’re satisfied with the service during the trial period, choose the provider and plan that offers the most value for the cost. Remember to check the renewal prices, as some renewal prices can be twice or thrice the starting price.
What Is Managed Cloud Hosting, and who is it for?
Cloud hosting is a popular web hosting solution due to its speed, scalability, and transparent pricing. It is a hosting solution in which the web host uses a network (or cluster) of virtual servers to host your website data. You get faster server performance and scalability than you would with traditional hosting that relies on single servers.
In its pure form, cloud hosting requires you to handle some aspects of server management. The provider maintains the physical servers and the virtual environment. However, you are responsible for managing your hosting environment. If you are using a VPS plan, you must manage your server environment’s front and backends.
This type of cloud hosting, called unmanaged cloud hosting, is excellent for people who know how to manage a server or have a team of engineers behind them. It can be a nightmare for most people to keep their servers up, update software, troubleshoot issues, and fend off attacks.
Managed cloud hosting solves all of these issues. For an extra fee, the web host offers management services that include server setup, database administration, 24/7 support and monitoring, regular backups, and security.
It allows you to enjoy all cloud hosting benefits without the stress associated with it. It is the best option for:
- Small businesses
- Private users
- Up-and-coming online stores
- Beginners
- WordPress websites
- Small scale projects
- Brands without a full-scale technical department
The drawback is you have to pay extra for the management service, and you won’t get as much flexibility as you would with an unmanaged hosting solution. But the pros outweigh the cons for most people.