Managed hosting
Consider fortrabbit a good alternative to manually managed hosting - especially when you care about your budget.
# About managed hosting
This is yet another somehow blurry hosting category. In a sense all hosting services are managed. Many hosting services provide great level of abstraction where almost all parts are managed. In most cases however, a highly automated service with a standardized solution is offered.
Managed hosting on the other side is more service oriented approach to this. It's a premium service that provides a highly personalized approach to hosting. You will contact sales (cloud experts) and discuss your requirements to get started. The hosting service is then set up and managed either in a data center or a public cloud by the provider on your behalf. You can buy training and consulting for your engineers as well.
As you can imagine, this a more expensive type of hosting. But it's also more professional. It can make sense if your are really looking for multiple nines uptime guarantee, for a successful e-commerce site. Instead of a standard 99,99% SLA, you can get 99,999% uptime or even more. It may offer superior performance, reliability, and can be tailored to meet your unique needs.
There are some good managed hosting providers out there. Managed hosting providers are usually addressing local markets. For Germany SysEleven and AnyNines are examples. For the US Rackspace offers managed hosting.
# Why fortrabbit
If you are looking for an affordable yet professional and reliable hosting solution, you should consider fortrabbit. fortrabbit is also managed, but in an automated way, offering a standardized solution. Unlike with many big hosting providers, direct developer support is included.