You are fully entitled to ask that question as a customer shopping for web hosting services for your organisation. But the question could just as well be asked by an exasperated web hosting industry professional at the end of their tether.
You see, managed hosting is a bit like religion (bear with us). It means completely different things to different people and, depending on which web hosting denomination you happen to follow, you could find yourself signing up for a completely different set of rules.
Loosely, you can expect a managed hosting service to be one in which the hosting company takes responsibility for the management (and usually ownership) of your server.
But as we’ve been saying, the extent to which they do this and precisely what your role will be varies dramatically between hosting companies.
It might include services such as server monitoring, anti-virus protection, backups, maintenance and support. Equally, it might not include those things.
The only type of managed services we can talk about in definite terms are the ones we offer. Since we don’t really do off-the-shelf hosting packages and specialise in bespoke hosting setups, we apply the same principles to management of those bespoke setups.
Our private cloud costing, virtual private server hosting and dedicated 'bare metal' server hosting are among those that offer a la carte management options to ensure the type of managed hosting you get is precisely what you need. These are detailed below.
| Private cloud management and support options | |
| Rack space, switching and cabling | Dual feed UPS power |
| IP transit and tailored peering and routing | 24x7 proactive technical support |
| 24x7 monitoring (hardware and application level) | Firewall provision and security management |
| O/S and application patching | Daily Veeam back-ups (to off-site location) |
| Anti-virus protection | Developer and other 3rd party liaison |
| Archiving and roll-back services | Proactive technical steering |
| Review meetings | Version control |
| 24x7 Application monitoring and support |
| Included in all VPS services | Additional options (per month) |
| 24x7 monitoring |
Tailored web security management: £50 / €75 |
| Anti-virus protection | Proactive 24x7 monitoring & response: £90 recommended |
| Developer and other 3rd party liaison | Customised Veeam based back-ups (offsite): £75 / €90 |
| Daily back-ups | Security patching, O/S updates and version control: £75 / €90 |
| Firewall provision |
| Included in all Dedicated Bare Metal Hosting services | Additional options (per month) |
| Rack space, switching and cabling | Security patching, O/S updates and version control: £75 / €90 |
| IP Transit and tailored peering and routing | Tailored web security management: £50 / €75 |
| Dual feed UPS power | Proactive 24x7 monitoring & response: £90 recommended |
| 24x7 Monitoring (hardware and application level) | Customised Veeam based back-ups (offsite): £75 / €90 |
| Anti-virus protection | |
| Developer and other 3rd party liaison | |
| Daily back-ups | |
| Firewall provision | |
| Review meetings |
The best advice we can offer is to get full and written clarification of what is included within any given managed hosting service before committing to it.
As mentioned above, there is no consistent benchmark for what is included in a managed hosting package so it is important to sign up for one that is well matched to your organisation’s requirements and in-house technical knowledge.
In particular, you will need to check for:
