At a Glance
Managed hosting frees IT teams from server maintenance, security, and optimisation tasks and redirects their focus to business growth. Yet many UK leaders make avoidable mistakes, from ignoring backups to underestimating scale. BlackBox Hosting offers secure, fully managed infrastructure with 24/7 support, delivering on performance, compliance, and resilience across operations.
What Is Managed Hosting, and Why Does It Matter to UK IT Leaders?
Managed hosting is a web hosting solution where the hosting provider takes care of all the technical aspects of running a server. It allows website owners to focus on their projects instead of handling server maintenance, security updates, performance optimisation, backups, and customer support.
Traditional hosting options, such as shared hosting and VPS, users are responsible for managing servers. However managed hosting offers you an optimised, fully maintained environment without the technical complexity. This is why managed hosting facilities are trusted by IT businesses with heavy API operations and to meet various compliance standards. The right managed hosting plan can help you improve your operational performance, meet digital sovereignty needs, free up internal resources, and improve site security.
Managed server hosting is great for businesses, but when you’re using this setup, it’s all too easy to make common hosting mistakes without realising how it’s affecting your business on a wider scale. In this guide, we’re discussing the eight common managed server hosting mistakes your business may be making.
8 Most Common Managed Server Hosting Mistakes IT Leaders Still Make
Even the most experienced people can slip up sometimes, however a mistake with your website or hosting can be costly to your business. The smallest oversights can impact your site’s speed, security, and overall performance.
Here are eight common managed server hosting mistakes you may be making without realising:
1. Choosing Based on Cost Alone
Even the most experienced business owners can get swayed by flashy marketing pitches that highlight only the cost benefits. Signing up for the first managed hosting facility solely on the cost benefits may not be the best choice.
Many of these providers don’t highlight the important features of managed hosting, including the flexibility to scale, staging environments, developer tools, uptime performance, and SLAs.
Avoid This Mistake By:
Doing your research and asking the right questions. Keep in mind that no two managed hosting providers are the same, and what may work for another business may not work for you.
2. Ignoring Backup and Recovery Options
Websites and applications can crash for the simplest of reasons, even after a software update. The last thing you want is to find yourself scrambling to get your site up and running without an automated backup.
Without a reliable backup plan, you’re not only risking your business’s data but also its reputation.
Avoid This Mistake By:
Switching to a managed hosting service with daily automated backups and one-click recovery. Reputed providers, including BlackBox Hosting, know the importance of backups, keeping critical information safe and easily recoverable in any emergency situation. We offer 3-2-1 backup service involving onsite, offsite, and archiving of data, BaaS, and DRaaS that support automated backups and quick recovery without significant downtime.
3. Overlooking Support Quality
Poor support is another common managed hosting mistake that businesses face. It’s not enough to have hosting support when your team gets stuck in a never-ending email loop. Slow, unhelpful support costs you time and might even cause you to lose clients. The real test of a good host is how quickly they take action and handle the issue you’re facing.
Avoid This Mistake By:
Moving your operations to a managed host with 24/7 UK-based hosting support, like BlackBox Hosting. Whether you need guidance to troubleshoot a minor issue or support for optimising performance, just raise your query, and our team of UK-based engineers will address it within the hour.
4. Not Testing on Staging Sites
Making changes on live sites can be risky. One small tweak can turn into a major disaster. This makes testing on staging sites absolutely essential.
Avoid This Mistake By:
Signing up for BlackBox Hosting’s managed service hosting that supports staging sites, along with other essential development tools like SSH and Git.
5. Underestimating Resource Needs
Whether you’re building SaaS products or an e-commerce website, traffic surges are common. But these spikes can leave your hosting struggling to handle the increased load and even downtime if you’ve not accounted for additional resources.
Avoid This Mistake By:
Upgrading to a managed hosting provider offering flexible scaling. You can use this approach to overcome this hosting mistake by allowing your site to remain operational during peak traffic times
6. Overlooking CDNs
Neglecting CDNs is a significant managed server hosting mistake, especially if you have a website with a global audience. Content Delivery Networks or CDNs store cached copies of your website’s content on servers around the world. This reduces latency while improving load times for visitors in different geographical locations.
Avoid This Mistake By:
Making sure your provider implements a CDN and amplifies your business’ reach and website’s performance.
7. Not Validating Provider SLAs
A reliable managed provider clearly outlines the deliverables in an SLA. But you need to watch out for providers that have hidden costs for renewals, migrations, and add-ons that you may overlook.
Avoid This Mistake By:
Carefully read the SLA when you’re signing up and ask about renewal pricing, bandwidth limitations, add-ons, and cancellation policies. We recommend choosing a managed hosting provider like BlackBox, which is upfront and transparent about pricing and SLAs.
Hear from our longstanding client, Ross Walker of Web Seller Pro, on how we continue to deliver on his company’s expectations.
8. Neglecting Security Credentials
Firewalls aren’t enough to protect your business from today’s sophisticated threats. The last thing any business wants is a misconfigured access right threat compromising confidential data. You need managed server hosting backed by reliable and resilient security that works round-the-clock.
Avoid This Mistake By:
Partnering with a managed host with a complete security solution to safeguard your business from every possible threat. This includes continuous monitoring, active threat detection, automated patching, vulnerability scanning, DDoS and ransomware protection, Fortinet Next Gen Firewalls, role-based access controls, and regular audits protecting your business from common misconfigured access right threats and data breaches. BlackBox Hosting not only offers all the above, but also keeps multiple in-house security measures in place, from annual penetration testing to security-cleared staff.
Is Your Business Ready to Upgrade?
Successful businesses are created on a foundation of smart choices, including their managed hosting infrastructure. Beyond choosing the cheapest offering or the biggest name, you need to select the right fit for your business.
Is it time to reassess your managed IT setup? BlackBox Hosting can help. When you partner with us for managed hosting services, you receive:
- Fully managed infrastructure
- Built-in security and compliance
- Backup and disaster recovery
- On-demand scalable resources
Learn more about our managed hosting solutions. Contact us today.
