The difference between “managed” and “self-hosted” servers/providers.
Differences between managed hosting and “self-hosting” (Developer/SMB cloud/VPS) are big in many respects, some of which we will detail here, but it can be said from the start that probably the biggest reason for choosing one over the other is the level or skill and expertise in IT and server management and the readiness to accept more or less responsibility for their management.
That is why, in some instances, the price difference can be huge.
With the managed hosting, server management is in big part handled by the provider. This often includes backups and some security measures. It means that for people new to the field it may be much easier and more user-friendly to point and click in your browser in order to do some server-related tasks like installing TLS certificates in order to have safer encrypted HTTPS connectivity.
On the other hand, when choosing self-hosted/SMB cloud solutions, you are responsible for the server’s configuration, maintenance, backups, security. It is usually all done not from a beautiful interface, but from a command line by typing commands or running scripts, and this definitely requires some skill.
This skill, however, can be used to exploit the full control over how the server will be set up and configured, which cannot be done so easily with managed service providers where many of the things are already preconfigured and decided for you. In some cases this also means that the opportunity to customize is more limited (though, this shouldn’t be a problem for basic needs).
Then there is pricing. The managed providers/SMB clouds usually offer monthly subscription, but prefer fixed pricing plans (e.g. 1- or 2-year contract packages) and often include “free” add-ons like a free domain name. The pricing often is advertised as including service or customer support which can help deal with things such as issues or configuration of the pre-configured apps in your package.
The support of self-hosted/SMB cloud servers is much different. Here the provider usually accepts responsibility to keep the server up and running (called uptime) and not much more. If someone hacks you, or if you break something on your server, they usually will not deal with it. Software is your responsibility, hardware is theirs.
Since self-hosted/SMB cloud pricing is usually per hour, some providers allow you to run your server with 1 CPU (computer processor) core for a few hours and then restart it and scale it to 10 or 20 times faster server. At the time of this writing, Amazon AWS Cloud, which is one of the most popular hyperscale clouds, offers a virtual server called “u-12tb1.112xlarge” which has 448 vCPUs, 12288 GiB of RAM and 100 Gigabit network adapter. The performance of this wild beast is reflected in its wild price of around 110 USD per hour. The same cloud provider also offers the virtual server called “t2.nano” which costs around one half of a cent (0.0058 USD) per hour and has 1 vCPU and 512 MB of RAM.
There are 2 very big problems that newcomers can experience with such hyperscale clouds. First problem is that if someone hacks you, they can use your account in ways that can spend huge amounts of money very quickly (for example by running more than 1 powerful server to mine bitcoin). The second problem for a newcomer is that hyperscale clouds can be extremely difficult to set up properly due to the advanced knowledge needed for architecting the hyperscale cloud. This is not a problem with many managed hosting providers because you often don’t have access to such advanced configurations at all.
Apart from the hyperscale cloud providers there are smaller cloud providers (VPS or self-hosting providers or often called providers for developers or SMBs – Small and Medium Businesses) which allow you great flexibility with software part and they handle mostly hardware part. They are usually much cheaper and easier to configure due to lack of such a huge number of different services. They allow for per hour billing, easy and quick scaling to more powerful servers, but you still take more the responsibility for the servers’ security and maintenance.
So, who is using which option?
Hyperscale clouds are used by some of the biggest companies and corporations in the world because they require the ultimate power and flexibility and can pay for it and for the people who have the skill to configure it.
Developer/VPS/SMB clouds are usually used by those who still need powerful servers, great flexibility and either use the servers for testing/development or know how to maintain a few servers themselves for commercial purposes or they are ready to pay someone to maintain them.
The fully managed hosting is usually used by people who just need a website and don’t have much time or don’t care much about the intricacies of how all that works, or who simply need a small personal website.
Best self-hosted providers:
In our opinion the following 2 SMB clouds are the most competitive (and they are probably the most popular such clouds):
Linode
Linode was a popular SMB cloud even before it was acquired by Akamai in 2022. Akamai is one of the oldest, biggest and most famous CDNs (Content delivery network) which requires extremely powerful computer networking capabilities. That may be the reason why Linode’s networking is so powerful and probably has one of the most competitive pricing for networks (if not the most competitive SMB clouds pricing).
Linode offers shared (which are cheaper) and dedicated virtual servers, storage and backup services, as well as managed databases services.
Digital Ocean
Digital Ocean is also a popular and reputable SMB clouds which also offers shared and dedicated virtual servers (which they call “droplets”), storage and backup services, as well as managed databases services. It is in many respects very similar to Linode, and has recently introduced additional service called “GenAI Platform” that can be used by developers to programmatically use AI Chatbots/LLMs without maintaining the servers for it.
Best “managed” webhosting providers
It is hard to say which managed webhosting provider is the best due to many factors including different focus/niche/specialization and highly competitive affiliate programs. Some webhosting providers pay good money to some of their promoters through affiliate programs, especially if new customers sign longer contracts, which we don’t like and so we use self-hosted providers. However, using a self-hosted provider requires more knowledge, maintenance and accepting more responsibilities (e.g. for security). Here is the list of most commonly mentioned ones in the sources which you can find after the list:
- Hostinger (Times mentioned: 7)
- DreamHost (Times mentioned: 6)
- Bluehost (Times mentioned: 4)
- IONOS (Times mentioned: 4)
- GoDaddy (Times mentioned: 3)
- GreenGeeks (Times mentioned: 3)
- A2 Hosting (Times mentioned: 3)
- Namecheap (Times mentioned: 3)
- SiteGround (Times mentioned: 3)
- ScalaHosting (Times mentioned: 3)
- AccuWeb Hosting (Times mentioned: 2)
- Hostwinds Web Hosting (Times mentioned: 2)
- InMotion Web Hosting (Times mentioned: 2)
- HostGator Web Hosting (Times mentioned: 1)
- Liquid Web Hosting (Times mentioned: 1)
- Mochahost (Times mentioned: 1)
- Squarespace (Times mentioned: 1)
- TMDHosting (Times mentioned: 1)
- WP Engine Web Hosting (Times mentioned: 1)
- Wix (Times mentioned: 1)
Maybe a more interesting look is that of which of the providers host bigger number of websites. This cannot be known precisely, so here is an estimate of some of the managed web hosting providers by market share according to w3techs (if they have more than 0.1% marked share and we were able to find them on w3techs):
- Hostinger – 3.7% usage
- Wix – 3.5% usage
- GoDaddy – 2.5% usage
- Squarespace – 2.3% usage
- SiteGround – 2.1% usage
- WP Engine Web Hosting – 1.7% usage
- Namecheap – 0.6% usage
- DreamHost – 0.4% usage
- A2 Hosting – 0.3% usage
- InMotion Web Hosting – 0.3% usage
The list is based on the following sources which you can check directly (they probably may earn some money if their affiliate links are used):
Forbes’ best web hosting providers
PCMag’s best web hosting providers
CNET’s best web hosting providers
TechRadar’s best web hosting providers
ZDNET’s best web hosting providers