Managed WordPress hosting gives your website or online store a real boost. But what do you have to pay attention to as an agency, freelancer, for your blog or company? How much power do you really need? We clear the jungle for you.

In this article, you'll learn which web hosting variants are available and why you should rely on Managed WordPress Hosting for your WordPress projects.

What WordPress hosting plans are available?

With the success of WordPress and WooCommerce , the offer for suitable web hosting is also increasing. Today, almost all providers claim "WordPress Hosting" on their banners. However, the packages do not always deliver what they promise. In order to understand what the advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting are, let's first take a look at what types of WordPress Hosting exist at all.

WordPress Shared Hosting

With so-called shared web hosting, the projects of a large number of customers are hosted on a single web server. Sometimes a huge number of websites share the server. You can use a reverse IP domain check tool to check which other domains also point to your IP.

Many private bloggers are familiar with such webspaces or homepage construction kits from Strato, 1&1 Ionos, ALL-INKL or GoDaddy(DomainFactory & HostEurope). However, some of these also offer managed web hosting. See our WordPress hosting comparison with test results on performance and website speed.

If price is your main concern, cheap packages are the way to go. But you should keep in mind that these are at the expense of other points:

• Performance: The speed is usually significantly lower than with a professional hosting package. More about this later.
• Reliability: The performance of the package can also fluctuate greatly. I know this myself from my earlier blogs. Sometimes they loaded relatively quickly, but often they were also very slow. And there were longer downtimes. Your visitors, your clients (as an agency) and Google rarely forgive you for reliability issues and downtime.
• Scope: Many offers are severely limited in their functions. Low webspace, limited databases, PHP restrictions, poor caching or lame CPU power will quickly slow down your website. Especially when the traffic on your website increases.
• Security: Most web hosts have upgraded here. Nevertheless, it can be a security risk if a website on the same server is hacked.
• SEO: Does shared hosting have a negative effect on search engine optimization (SEO)? This topic is often discussed in specialist circles. Indirect factors, such as poorer performance, definitely play a role here, as Google regularly points out.

Flexibility is another point. With a low-cost package or even with a homepage construction kit, you can hardly set anything yourself. This is particularly important if you need special functions and therefore plugins for WordPress or WooCommerce. Or if you want to set up interfaces to third-party providers (CRM, ERP, payment, accounting, etc.).

I'll admit, shared hosting has given me my fair share of grey hairs over the years and it's mainly been due to the poor support, I received. It was not uncommon for me to wait up to a week or more for an answer, or for the support team to not help me. Companies and agencies depend on their website or shop and, in the event of an outage, they need help within a few minutes.

Large shared hosts often don't offer specialized CMS hosting in their standard tariffs, i.e. hosting that's optimized for WordPress and thus makes your website faster. Instead, they focus on providing simple solutions for all systems. It means they can do many things well, but nothing perfectly.

Most share hosts limit themselves to the one-click installation of the CMS and additional components, for example WordPress or WooCommerce. After that, customers are often left alone with the system instead of being supported with special WordPress tools for ongoing operations.

For these reasons, such offers are usually frowned upon by WordPress and WooCommerce professionals. Shared hosting may work for a purely private blog with a very manageable number of visitors. For professional sites and online shops, however, you need a different approach. Check out the following tips and our article Factors for WooCommerce Hosting.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

With this model, several virtual machines are housed on a physical server, each of which has its own operating system. The VPSs can be individually configured via a root access. In this case, you determine yourself which applications should run on the machine. This is especially useful if you're dependent on rather exotic systems or unusual configurations. Or if you are a hardcore developer and want to keep everything under your own control.

Running your own VPS is, however, time consuming. In addition, you must have very good technical knowledge to continuously check your system and also keep it up to date. Otherwise, individual components will play off each other or the virtual server could even become a security risk. Even if the web hosting providers seal off one virtual machine from the others, the full responsibility lies with you or your employees. In the event of damage, this can quickly threaten your livelihood.

For this reason, small and medium-sized enterprises shy away from the VPS model. Especially if they don't have an extensive in-house IT department with enough resources. For them, Managed WordPress Hosting is a good alternative, whether for WordPress or other content management systems.

Managed WordPress Hosting

A managed server combines the advantages of the other two models, it is continuously maintained by the web hoster. This includes the operating system and the complete technology in the background, but also components of your content management system (CMS), if required. You get a well-defined part of the hardware, which is only available for your website. You don't have to share it with any other site . This means that you can always access the same performance.

In most cases, managed servers are designed in such a way that you have hardly any work to do with managing your web projects.

• They are comparatively cheap.
• Managed updates from the operator protect against security vulnerabilities.
• Managed servers are sufficiently flexible for most content management systems and purposes.
• They are offered with support, ideally by a specialized team dedicated exclusively to WordPress and WooCommerce .

I'll come to the technical advantages – and what you should pay attention to – in a moment. Ideally, your managed server is specifically designed for the CMS of your websites. Like our special offers for WordPress or WooCommerce.

Managed Hosting for Freelancers & Bloggers

As a freelancer, the choice of hosting depends on the field in which you work. Are you a developer or a professional for WordPress and WooCommerce? Then it might not be difficult for you to set up and manage a server yourself. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Do you have enough time for ongoing maintenance?
• What would you do if you were deep in a customer project and your web server reported a critical update?
• What happens a new security vulnerability becomes known and it requires immediate action?

In all these cases, it's advisable to have central tasks running automatically in the background. Or if the administration of your WordPress instances works at the push of a button. More on this later.

Freelancers and bloggers from more creative fields will work with web hosting where they don't have to deal with technical details from the very beginning. And with hosts where they know can always rely on excellent support to answer all their questions directly and quickly, for example via chat. Shared hosting with its anonymous call centers is not a suitable alternative for them.

Managed WordPress hosting for agencies

Let's be honest - even agencies don't always have the expertise to manage a web server or dedicated server on their own. Or the know-how is there, but the relevant people are fully occupied with client projects. Technical expertise is a rare and expensive commodity in agencies. Fortunately, the responsibility for WordPress hosting can be easily outsourced.

The advantages of managed WordPress hosting for agencies:

• Everything from one source: With the right platform, you can create WordPress websites much more efficiently and collaborate with your clients. Finally, you seamlessly hand over the finished product to your clients.
• Develop without risk: Use a free account for agencies and WP professionals. Then you don't have to pay for new customers in advance.
• Handover: Hand over your project to your clients with just a few clicks as soon as it can go online. You don't have to write invoices, but you can remain an administrator if necessary.
• Commission: Receive a lucrative commission for your hosting recommendation.

If you have a web hosting partner you can always trust and rely on, you'll work with them regularly. On the one hand, you don't have to constantly search for a new hosting recommendation for your customers. Secondly, you'll work with a familiar interface and a single account for each new project. You can even reuse existing projects with pre-configured plugins and themes, more on that later.

These factors save you many hours of time per client project, especially when starting to develop the projects. If you offer maintenance contracts with your customers, your service packages can be calculated particularly well. With managed hosting, you know exactly what work you have to do and how long it will take.

Managed WordPress hosting for business

Companies often find it difficult to assess the quality of web hosting offers. Especially if they don't have access to an internal IT department. The requirements analysis can also prove a challenge:

• How much memory and storage space does the booked server require?
• How many CPU cores are allowed?
• And what do I do if suddenly a lot of visitors storm my website, for example if it gets a mention in the media?

I'll address these questions later on. See also our post on taking action when the WordPress load is high. There are four basic ways to get help here if you work for a company:

• Search for suitable freelancers for WordPress and WooCommerce. The WordPress community is a good place to start, see our resources and tips on the topic.
• Specialized agencies can also be experts in the area. Do make sure that WordPress or WooCommerce are part of their core business, however. Ask for references and contact them. You can't just take care of both systems on the side – it would be at the expense of quality.
• Ask other entrepreneurs you are friendly with: Do they use WordPress? Can they recommend suitable service providers or freelancers?
• Use recommendation platforms like Trusted Shops to find out more about the service quality of a host.

In addition, any new web host you choose should offer you a non-binding trial with a performance check. And help you with migrate your WordPress & WooCommerce sites. This is a great opportunity to assess the quality of the support team. Can they answer all your questions? How quickly do they respond to your enquiry?

Reasons for managed WordPress hosting

Speed, cost savings, support, security... Managed hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce offers some plus points. But only if you pay attention to the right features when choosing your managed WordPress hosting provider. We explain the most important details step by step. You still have questions? Or you have a different opinion? Then feel free to use the comment function at the end of the post.

Performance & SEO

Websites and online stores have to be fast, otherwise the visitors abandonment rate rises rapidly. But it doesn't stop there: a single second of additional loading time leads to a 7 percent reduction in conversion and 11 percent fewer page views. Negative user experiences also lower the recommendation rate. In other words, how much revenue you generate for your business via your website is directly related to its performance.

In addition, the loading speed is an important factor for search engine optimization (SEO). Google now punishes slow portals mercilessly. An optimized Managed WordPress Hosting takes the biggest part of the performance optimization off your shoulders.

For this, your hosting package should include the following building blocks:

• Server-side caching: A particularly efficient caching becomes active before WordPress takes over. This allows websites to be delivered extremely quickly. The advantage: You don't need a separate caching plugin for WordPress.
• Special infrastructure for WordPress: Your hosting should be specifically designed for WordPress and WooCommerce , not for other content management systems.
• Powerful servers: An important optimization measure for WordPress hosting is to increase the CPU cores. After all, the server must be able to handle more load with many calls and corresponding database queries. Here, your hosting provider should provide enough flexibility and corresponding high-traffic packages that you can switch to if necessary.
• PHP memory limit: A higher PHP memory limit is absolutely necessary for more complex sites and online shops. This is the only way the server can withstand large and simultaneous processes, e.g. with a high number of visitors. See our notes on WordPress load.
• SSD hard disks: Even with a large number of simultaneous accesses to your site, access times are significantly shorter with SSD hard drives. This makes SSDs the ideal turbo boost for all your WordPress projects.
• Resource compression: For even faster page views – ideally with the latest Brotli compression standard.

Regarding the CPU core factor: Imagine that the server of your WordPress website or your WooCommerce shop is a chip shop. Everyone working in the chip shop represents one CPU core each. If there's only one salesperson behind the counter, then only one request can be processed at a time. If there are only a few visitors, this isn't going to be a problem at first.

However, if the number of visitors becomes so high that the sales staff is overwhelmed with the requests, more employees (i.e. more CPU cores) are needed. The more of them there are in the chip shop, the more orders can be processed simultaneously. Imagine it looking something like this:

However, more CPU cores do not automatically improve the loading time of your site, after all, the individual cores work equally fast. Rather, increasing the cores ensures that more requests can be processed simultaneously and that your portal or store is not overloaded.

With shared hosting plans, average users have very little to no influence on the performance of their websites, because only the host or knowledgeable people can make the appropriate server settings independently, if they are accessible at all.

Managed WordPress Hosting is different. The WordPress websites of our customers run up to 400 percent faster after switching to Raidboxes. And that without additional optimization measures, because our hosting is specifically tailored to WordPress.

Time saving

Time is the most important resource for creative minds. We know this from our own experience - Raidboxes was created out of an agency ourselves. With a good Managed WordPress Hosting you save several hours of working time per month. For example, in the management and optimization of your WordPress websites. So you can focus on what you enjoy and earn money: the operation and development of websites, the optimization of your online store with WooCommerce or blogging.

But what exactly does managed WordPress hosting take away from you? Among other things:

• Installation: With your Dashboard, you can create or clone new WordPress websites in no time. Including SSL, caching, a backup system and tools for developers.
• Templates: Create permanent WordPress templates. This way your plugins, themes and favorite settings are always configured and ready to use when you start a new project. This is especially useful and time-saving for agencies and freelancers.
• Optimization: Caching, server-side compression or the use of HTTP/2 and the optimal PHP version are available by default in high-quality packages. There's no need to search for and configure cumbersome caching, backup and security plugins. See our article on the pros and cons of security plugins.
• Test environment: Make sure that a separate environment for WordPress staging is included. Because you should definitely test new plugins and themes before you put them live. Also new versions of WordPress, WooCommerce and their extensions.
• Update: Automatically update WordPress or plugins as needed. Manage plugins and themes directly in the hosting dashboard instead of having to switch to the backend of WordPress every time.
• Single Sign-On: Log in to the WordPress backend of your projects with just one click. This means that you can create secure, 64-character passwords and then "forget" them. This way you additionally protect yourself from brute force attacks.

At Raidboxes we also offer the 1-Click WordPress Installation: As soon as you click on "create BOX" in our Dashboard, a new WordPress website will be installed automatically within seconds. Together with cloning, your WordPress templates and staging, you have powerful tools at hand. They significantly reduce your time for setup, management and development. This pays directly into the next benefit of Managed WordPress Hosting, the reduction of your ongoing operational expenses.

Cost reduction

On paper, Managed WordPress Hosting looks more expensive than shared hosting at first. But that's a fallacy. Do a simple calculation, such as a tally sheet. How many hours do you need per month for the following items?

• Finding and solving web hosting errors. I will come to this point "Support" in a moment.
• Manually setting up databases and WordPress installations, picking out and installing the same extensions over and over again.
• Setting up plugins and themes, including setting the right options. Do you often do this for WooCommerce or SEO plugins? Then you know how much time is lost in the process.
• The cumbersome testing in a separate instance, then carrying out the changes again in the live system.
• Accessing and managing several WordPress projects at the same time, at worst with different hosts.
• Show your customers changes to the website without having to put them live. Or hand over a project to them.

Calculated over all your websites and projects, this adds up to quite a lot. Especially if you still work with shared hosting or a self-managed server.

Now multiply that by your hourly rate or calculate how much you could earn during that time. You will quickly arrive at a sum in the high three-digit range or more - per month. Then a high-quality managed hosting is suddenly much cheaper.

You can save even more money with a managed WordPress hosting:

• There's less downtime of your website and thus less loss of earnings. For example, through proper testing in the staging environment or by quickly restoring backups in an emergency.
• Avoid security risks through late updates of WordPress, WooCommerce, plugins & co.
• Increase your traffic with better rankings on Google, which you can achieve with a high-performance web hosting.
• Change to a higher package at short notice in the event of high visitor numbers – provided your host supports this.

At Raidboxes you can also save money on extra caching plugins, backup solutions, security plugins, SSL certificates or a separate test environment. Our rate calculator shows you which package is the right one for which purpose.

Support

Something's not working with your WordPress hosting? Is it affecting your website or even bringing it down it? This situation is probably familiar to all of us. If you can't get appropriate support within minutes, you're at a loss in such cases.

Shared hosting for WordPress usually deliberately saves on support, while a private server leaves the entire error handling to you. If you want to sleep soundly, you should look for a web host that demonstrably offers top support. Personally, in your language, in your country – and during your working hours.The support should also not be via anonymous email, but available on several channels. This is what our customers say, for example:

The extended support offered by managed WordPress hosting providers is often accompanied by free additional services. For example with

• Help with WordPress and WooCommerce migrations
• Support with page optimization to improve loading speed
• Plugin and theme recommendations for your individual system setup

In addition, managed WordPress hosts are able to respond flexibly to your needs. You can negotiate, for example, special security solutions or services that differ from your purchased plan more quickly and in a flexible way. With an anonymous mass host, the other hand, it's usually impossible to find the right contact person.

Specialization in WordPress

Through our own agency experience, we know which features you need as a WordPress professional to lead your projects to success. Our team lives WordPress 100 percent. This knowledge flows continuously into our product development. And since we don't have rigid hierarchies or long communication channels at Raidboxes, our product development is particularly flexible and agile.

A specialization in managed WordPress hosting is very important if your websites run with the leading content management system. Having these expertise allows us to react immediately to external influencing factors, such as WordPress core extensions. Through our connection with the community, we also know earlier than others in what direction WordPress is heading.

Our team comes from the WordPress community itself, so the answers to your questions are targeted and practical. We do not have a call center and no waiting loops, but only personal and individual advice from WordPress experts. In addition, our Dashboard with functions that were developed specifically for WordPress and WooCommerce , instead of "bending" them awkwardly for multiple systems.

Numerous tutorials and best practice examples ensure that you can read our knowledge at any time. Raidboxes explains WordPress in an understandable way - for professionals as well as for beginners. Use our WordPress Magazine wp unboxedour Helpcenter, our E-Books or our Newsletter.

Security

The security of your WordPress website or online store is extremely important. So is data protection. If your site is hacked or even customer data becomes public, this threatens your existence - no matter if you are "only" the service provider or operator.

Your managed WordPress hosting should offer the following to keep your risk to a minimum:

• Integrated SSL: SSL encryption is an absolute must for every professional website. Ideally, the SSL certificates would be included in the hosting package as this reduces the effort you need to put in.
• Hacker and malware protection: Each of your WordPress websites should run independently from other projects. This heavily minimizes the potential danger of attacks.
• Automatic and manual backups: These allow you to quickly restore a clean backup in the event of damage. The process for restoring the data must be as simple as possible.
• Logins: A built-in login protection is an effective means against brute force attacks.
• Extensions: Use as few plugins as necessary. It makes sense if important functions such as backups or caching are directly integrated into the hosting – and you have one less potential attack surface.

Automatic updates of plugins also make your WordPress installation more secure. Because then you don't have to become active yourself in case of critical security vulnerabilities. However, such updates are not entirely uncontroversial because you cannot test new versions in advance.

Entrepreneurial risk

Your websites – or those of your customers – are extremely important. That's why you need the highest performance, stability and competent support from your host. And you don't have to take care of the technology in the background yourself. Managed WordPress hosting is particularly suitable for companies, agencies and freelancers who don't have a very deep technical understanding. If there's a problem with the hosting, you need to be confident it will be taken care of quickly.

Are you a WordPress professional? Even then, you have more important things to do than to struggle with server configurations, ongoing performance optimization or managing your projects or backups manually. Jan Tissler writes in his guide for freelancers:

Freelancers should think of what they do as a business and treat it exactly that way. It may not feel like entrepreneurship, especially in the beginning. But the more professionally you approach your business, the better chance you have of making it work in the long run.

If you outsource your web hosting to a competent partner, it reduces the risk of your websites going down.

You develop projects for others and not yourself? Then it's especially important that your clients perceive you as a professional and reliable partner. Slow or unavailable sites are extremely counterproductive. And your client doesn't care whether the blame lies with you or with a bad host.

A reliable web host also ensures that your WordPress sites are protected from attacks by hackers. They monitor the servers for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and are also available on weekends or public holidays. No matter which hosting model you choose in the end, make sure that the servers are located in Europe. This ensures maximum speed and GDPR-compliant data protection.

Calculation & scalability

Prepare a website for thousands of visitors or thousands of page views per minute is no walk in the park. But your site could easily face exactly that sort of rush of visitors, for example due to a marketing campaign or when your project is mentioned in the media. Special high performance plans are designed to help your website withstand large visitor loads.

Right now you're still getting a manageable number of hits on your website or shop? But you think this could increase at some point? Then you should start with a small hosting plan. Look for host where you can switch to a bigger plan any time with just a few clicks and also downgrade again, if necessary.

As a service provider, you can pass on the costs of hosting to your customers, but you still have to include them in your own calculations. And you have to provide arguments to those who hire you why cheap web hosting is more expensive in the end. The arguments in our article WooCommerce for freelancers also apply to WordPress.

Efficiency, usability and handling

Not all managed hosting is the same. Besides the performance, your satisfaction stands and falls with how easy it is to use the web host's dashboard and supported functions.

The Boxes principle of Raidboxes, for example, allows a quick overview of all your projects - without the hassle of switching between different accesses and accounts. But that is by no means all that makes for good administration:

• Templates: Clone a WordPress website from an existing backup or save permanent templates to start new WordPress projects even more efficiently.
• Access to WordPress: Your team or clients should be able to access your WordPress projects with one click. In order to test or approve them, for example.
• Change of ownership: Your project is finished? Then you want to be able to easily transfer the sites to a new person or another company, e.g. your clients. And you still want to have access as an admin.
• Databases and FTP: You need direct access to the MySQL databases or the SFTP accesses of the websites when developing.
• Error Logs: It's also important for developers to have access to the log files such as the WP_DEBUG_LOG, ACCESS LOG or ERROR LOG.

Automated processes are just as effective. These include one-click WordPress installations, restoring data backups at the push of a button or support when switching from another project or host. Essential for developers: a free and safe Secure Shell environment (SSH) with pre-installed WP-CLI and Git (from STARTER plan at RAIDBOXES). All of this saves you valuable time when developing your websites.

Test environment and backups

Operating WordPress or WooCommerce without a separate test environment and backups is grossly negligent. It just takes one wrong setting in a plugin or a new extension that's not compatible with everything else and your entire website is paralyzed. Under certain circumstances, this sort of error cannot be easily undone.

Using WordPress Staging you can test changes on a copy of your site in a realistic server environment. And all this without the risk of causing damage to your active WordPress site. If you're satisfied with the result, you can transfer the changes to your live site with just one click. This is especially useful if you want to:

• try out a new WordPress theme or design for your project,
• make changes to the CSS,
• test different plugin settings,
• install a plugin that fundamentally changes your database.

However, a central error has crept into your live portal? Have you imported the wrong data records? Or your website is hacked? Then you need backups - GDPR- stored on secure servers.

At Raidboxes, a complete backup system is integrated in every Box. Your data is stored on a secure system.

• Save not only the database but your entire website or shop and all server settings. You have full access to all backup points at all times.
• Restore your backups in a few seconds and without any support.
• We make a fully automatic backup of your WordPress projects every night. Depending on plan, these are stored for between seven and 30 days – manual backups are also permanent.
• Download each backup free of charge if required. For example, if you want to save a version locally.
• You want to start another similar WordPress project? Just clone a new Box from a backup or use your saved templates. Then you don't have to start over and over again.

In addition, backup plugins for WordPress occupy additional storage space on your web space. With us, your backups are stored on our own server in Germany and not on your WordPress installation. If it was ever not possibel to log in to your WordPress, you can restore your website with one click, without having to search for the backup.

Central management of your WordPress projects

By developing or managing several WordPress websites at the same time, you can scale your business model upwards. What you don't want, however, is this to lead to an increase in your administrative tasks to the same extent. See our article How to manage 5 to 100+ WordPress project efficiently for more advice and tips.

A central Dashboard for managed WordPress hosting - like the one from Raidboxes - gives you more freedom here:

• Faster work: You and your team don't have to get to know different dashboards from each web host.
• Template management: Existing projects can be cloned or reused in parts.
• Website status: You have a quick overview of all your projects at any time. Including status, workload, changes made, pending updates or permissions.
• Integrated solutions: Functions like caching, backups, staging, SSL certificates or domain management are already integrated without the need for additional plugins. This reduces the effort you need to put in for maintenance.
• Rights model: You work in a team together with other freelancers? Then you should be able to add more admins for individual projects at any time.
• Accounting: You only receive one invoice from one service provider and don't have to deal with provider changes and complicated contract transfers on a regular basis.

You use our FREE DEV programme? Then even your commissions - which you receive when you hand them over to your customers or when you recommend Raidboxes - can be managed in a single place. Including statistics on how successful your recommendations and the advertising media used are.

More advantages of Managed WordPress Hosting

If you choose Managed WordPress Hosting from Raidboxes, you will also benefit from other advantages that at first glance are not directly related to hosting.

Multilingual WordPress

Do you need WordPress multilingual for your own project or for your customers? Your hosting needs to be optimized for this so your multilingualism isn't slowed down due to a lack of performance or functions.

There are different variants of implementation. In the form of a path within the URL (example.de/en), as a subdomain (en.example.de) or as a multidomain. In this case, each language receives its own domain. From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, the latter is usually the best option for multilingualism with WordPress and WooCommerce. Raidboxes supports the setup of WPML Multidomain with its own features. Have questions about this? Or about setting up WPML Multidomain in general? Our support will be happy to help you.

Migrating to managed WordPress hosting

Do you want to switch to our managed WordPress hosting with one website or all your projects? What about your WooCommerce shop? It's couldn't be more simple: we migrate your site for you and take care of everything in the background.

With our migration service, you site is with us within two working days. Your migration is 100% free of charge and and non binding, migrating your website from your current host to us is simple. Whether you want to move one or 100 WordPress websites, we have the right managed hosting infrastructure for you.

Hand over client projects

At Raidboxes you can transfer a website to another Raidboxes-users at any time, with a simple mouse click. Save yourself the hassle of administration, notices, cumbersome contract transfers or even the change to a new server or web host. How easy the transfer works, you can read here.

After each change of ownership, you automatically remain the admin of site as long as your customers wish. You still have access to the BOX's hosting settings.

Green managed WordPress hosting

This factor has only indirectly to do with managed WordPress hosting but it is still important to address the question: What impact do your websites have on the global climate? We don't usually consciously associate the Internet and web hosting with climate change and yet their effects are astonishing:

• If the internet were a country, it would have the sixth largest electricity consumption on the planet.
• By 2030, the share of the grid in global energy consumption is expected to rise to over 20 percent.
• When you run a website or an online shop, you consume a lot of resources.
• Currently, about 43 per cent of all websites worldwide are operated with WordPress. Put simply, this means that how well WordPress performs is one of the factors that will determine the future of our planet.

Simon Kraft deals intensively with the combination of WordPress development and sustainability in his blog. He also speaks regularly on the topic at WordCamps and WP MeetUps. What does WordPress have to do with the climate? Simon lists concrete measures we can all take:

• Remove unnecessary ballast from your websites. Especially those areas that send a lot of data through the network. For example, maps from Google Maps or social media integrations that connect to the networks with every page view.
• Do you really need image galleries and oversized post images? Or loads of animated .gifs? Simple still images can explain a topic professionally just as well – while minimizing load time.
• Clean out your plugins. This not only makes WordPress more secure, it also increases speed in many cases. Ideally, many functions are pre-installed on the server with your managed WordPress hosting.
• Do you develop WordPress plugins and themes? Simplify the code and update old code libraries or remove them. Every byte that isn't transferred saves resources.

On websitecarbon.com you can get a rough estimate of your websites' CO2 emissions:

WordPress developers in particular can have a much greater impact here than they realize because their source code is used on a large number of websites. The total traffic that results from sloppy development is simply multiplied!

As an agency or website owner, you can also make sure to use as few and particularly lean plugins and themes as possible. This makes your websites faster – and protects the environment. A particularly drastic example: Danny van Kooten develops the popular plugin Mailchimp for WordPress , which has over one million active installations. By streamlining the programming of this plugin alone, he manages to save 59,000 kg of CO2 – per month! How did he manage it? Read our interview with Danny.

Additionally, opt for a green hosting plan. But be careful: It doesn't always say "sustainable" when something is declared as sustainable. Make sure that the presentation is transparent. At Raidboxes, we attach great importance to making our contribution to climate protection. What this means exactly, we list in detail in our article Green Hosting for WordPress: How sustainable can web hosting be?

In general, we are working continuously to live up to our social responsibility. And we hope that the models mentioned above will find numerous imitators. We have one big goal: to establish the greenest WordPress hosting on the entire market. You can help us to achieve this.

Conclusion: managed WordPress hosting

Standard hosters are very cheap. But as soon as a problem arises - and that can quickly be the case with WordPress hosting - you're on your own. If you value performance and support, then you should definitely opt for a managed WordPress hosting with specialized support. Especially WP professionals and agencies save a lot of time and money with the included tools.

Maybe you want to give something back and contribute to society at the same time? Raidboxes provides not only climate-neutral, but even climate-positive hosting. You work in an agency, are a developer, WP expert, web designer or you blog professionally? Then you can do good and generate additional income.

You still have questions about the functions and performance that a good web hosting should contain? Or you are unsure whether all this works for your WordPress project? Contact us and test Raidboxes without any obligation. Based on your website, we will find out whether and which Managed WordPress Hosting is right for you. And how much faster we can make your project.

You want to pass on the knowledge from this article? Or would you like to have an overview of all the benefits, for example for your customers? You can also download our 13 benefits as an e-book here.

Contributing photo: Mateusz Dach