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Managed or self-managed: the same machine, a different second job.
A self-managed server is cheaper and gives you complete control. It also gives you an operations rota of one. Below is what each side covers, what the gap actually costs once backups are in the sum, and how the same six bad days play out on either.
The sum
Add the backups, and the gap is smaller than the headline price suggests.
Nightly backups on a self-managed server are an add-on at 20% of the plan price. Managed tiers include them. Once both columns have backups in them, this is what the comparison looks like.
| Self-managed plan | Specification | Plan | + backups | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPS-2 | 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 40 GB NVMe | $14.90 | $2.98 | $17.88 |
| VPS-4 | 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 80 GB NVMe | $23.90 | $4.78 | $28.68 |
| VPS-2 | 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 40 GB NVMe | $14.90 | $2.98 | $17.88 |
| Essential (managed) | 1 website · 20 GB NVMe · server included | $29.00 | Included | $29.00 |
Read this honestly, in both directions. The self-managed rows buy you more raw machine — more vCPU, far more disk, any workload you like, any of our regions. The managed row buys you less hardware and none of the work. Neither is a trick; they are different purchases that happen to land at a similar number, and the deciding factor is what you intend to do on a Tuesday evening.
Six bad days
The difference shows up when something goes wrong, not when everything is fine.
On a good week the two products are indistinguishable. Here is the week that is not good.
| What happens | Self-managed VPS | Managed plan |
|---|---|---|
| A security advisory lands for something you run | You find out if you follow the right list, and you patch it when you next have an evening. Nothing prompts you and nothing checks the patch worked. | Patched on a clock — within 24 hours of release on the Business tier and above — and verified afterwards, with a note to you rather than a question from you. |
| An update breaks the site | Yours to notice, diagnose and roll back, from whatever backup you have. If the update ran unattended overnight, you find out from a customer. | We applied it, so we check it, and we roll it back. The first you hear is the summary, not the outage. |
| The site goes down at 3am | You are the monitoring system unless you built one. Alerting, escalation and being awake are all on your side of the line. | Checks run continuously — every five minutes on Essential, every minute higher up — and an engineer is paged. The published first-reply window applies 24/7 from the Business tier. |
| You need last Tuesday's database back | Only if you turned on the backup add-on, and only as far back as it retains. Whether the restore works is a question you find out the answer to now. | Retained for 14 days on Essential and 30 on the tiers above, restored on request at no charge — and on Business and Scale we rehearse a restore every quarter and send you the result. |
| Traffic doubles and everything slows down | You diagnose it, decide what to resize, and resize it. The panel makes the change easy; knowing which change to make is the part that is not. | We are watching the graphs, so the conversation usually starts from our side, and moving up a tier happens in place with the difference on your next invoice. |
| You want to move the site in from somewhere else | Yours to plan and execute, including the cutover and whatever surprises the old host has left in the configuration. | Included in the tier — one migration on Essential, three on Business, unlimited on Scale — with a rehearsal on a private address before anything changes for visitors. |
If it is managed
What each tier commits to, in one row each.
These are the figures we hold ourselves to. They deliberately do not quote vCPU or RAM — on a managed plan, sizing is our problem.
| Tier | Websites | Storage | Migrations | First reply | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | 1 website | 20 GB NVMe | 1 migration, done by us | First reply within 4 business hours | $29.00 |
| Business | Up to 5 websites | 60 GB NVMe | 3 migrations, done by us | First reply within 1 hour, 24/7 | $59.00 |
| Scale | Up to 15 websites | 150 GB NVMe | Unlimited migrations | First reply within 30 minutes, 24/7 | $119.00 |
Questions
The ones that decide it.
Is managed just a self-managed server with a support contract stapled on?
No, and that is why we do not sell it as an add-on price. The managed product includes the server, the operational work and a stated response time, and the tier is scoped with you before anything is set up. A support contract on top of a machine you chose the size of would leave the sizing decision — one of the things people most often get wrong — on your side of the line.
Why does the managed plan have less storage than a similarly priced VPS?
Because you are not buying storage, you are buying the work. Compare the two on raw specification and self-managed wins every time — that comparison is real and we are not going to hide it. The question worth asking is what an hour of your time is worth and how many hours a month the second column of this page represents for you.
Can I start self-managed and switch later?
Yes, and plenty of people do — usually after the first incident that eats a weekend. Tell support what you are running and we will scope a tier; the migration in is part of the managed plan rather than an extra.
Can I keep root on a managed plan?
Yes, on request. We keep managing the server and simply ask that you tell us before you change things, so an update of ours does not land on top of a change of yours.
What if I am technical but short of time?
That is the case managed suits best, and also the one where people talk themselves out of it. You will do the work faster than we would explain it — the question is whether you want to be doing it at 3am on a Sunday. If the honest answer is that you would rather not, buy the managed plan and spend the evening on your own product.
Which is better value?
Self-managed, on paper, for as long as nothing goes wrong and your own time is free. The moment either of those stops being true the sum changes, and it changes fastest for the person who has not been keeping backups they have tested. We would still rather sell you the cheaper thing than the wrong thing — if you enjoy running servers, run the server.
Keep reading
Both sides, in more detail.
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