What Is Managed Server Support? What Is Included and What It Costs in India

If you run a website, an online shop or an app on a VPS, someone has to look after the server. Patches need installing, backups need checking, and when something breaks at 2 a.m. somebody has to fix it. Managed server support means a professional team does that work for you for a fixed monthly fee.

What managed server support usually includes

• Monitoring. The server is checked around the clock for being online, running out of disk space or memory, and failing services.
• Security patching. Operating system and control panel updates are applied, so known holes are closed quickly.
• Backups. Copies of your data are taken on a schedule and kept somewhere other than the server itself.
• Hardening. Firewall rules, secure remote access (SSH keys instead of passwords, for example) and sensible default settings.
• Incident response. When something goes wrong, a person investigates and fixes it, and tells you what happened.
• Help with moves. Many plans include migrating your sites from an old server or host.

What it usually does not include

Read the fine print here, because this is where misunderstandings start. Managed support normally covers the server, not your application. That means:

• Bugs in your own website code or a plugin are your developer's job, not the server team's.
• Content, design and SEO are not part of server management.
• Third-party licences (a control panel, a security product) may be billed separately.
• Restoring from a backup is included, but data you deleted before any backup existed cannot be recovered.

Managed or unmanaged: which one do you need?

An unmanaged server is cheaper on paper, but the time and risk are yours. Ask yourself three questions:

1. Is there someone on your team who is comfortable with Linux and available at night and on weekends?
2. What does one hour of downtime cost your business?
3. How would you notice if the server was hacked quietly?

If the answers are "nobody", "a lot" and "I would not", managed support is usually the cheaper choice once you count your own time and the cost of an outage.

What does it cost in India?

Prices depend on how many servers you have and how fast you need a response. As a guide, our own managed plans start at ₹1,999 per month for one server, with a plan for five servers at ₹4,000 per month and an unlimited-server plan at ₹7,000 per month, plus 18% GST. An emergency malware cleanup on a hacked server is a one-time ₹9,000. You can see exactly what each plan includes on the managed services page.

When you compare providers, compare the same things: number of servers per price, response time, backup frequency and where backups are kept.

Questions to ask before you sign up

• Is the response time a promise to answer or a promise to fix?
• Where are backups stored, and has a restore ever been tested?
• Who can log in to my server, and is every login recorded?
• Can I stop at the end of any month without a penalty?

The bottom line

Managed server support is insurance and a time saver in one. It does not replace a good developer, but it makes sure the machine your business runs on is patched, watched and backed up. If you want to see how it works in practice, read about our managed services, or ask us a question and we will tell you honestly whether you need it.