A cloud server where our engineers hold the pager. OS patching, firewall, 24/7 monitoring, backups and the restore, tuning and incident response — all included. Root is still yours if you ask for it.
From £13.99/month Configured to your spec · ex VAT
Managed Cloud Server hosting is a private server where we administer the operating system as well as the hardware underneath it. Security patching, firewall and hardening, 24/7 monitoring, backups and restores, performance tuning and incident response are all done by InstaHost engineers in the UK. You get reserved CPU, RAM and NVMe RAID 10 storage without ever having to log in to keep it healthy.
Managed Cloud Servers starts from £13.99/mo, configured to the exact specification you need. Unmanaged starts at the same figure — what you're choosing between is who administers the machine, not the machine. Priority-one incidents get an engineer within 15 minutes. Running on 100% renewable energy since 1996.
Checks run every 60 seconds. A breached threshold wakes an engineer, not you — and on a P1 that engineer is working it inside 15 minutes.
The overnight loop →Every host includes backups. Far fewer will perform the restore for you at 2am on a Sunday when you've dropped the wrong table.
RAID isn't backup →Most managed platforms lock the OS entirely. We'll hand you root on request — managed doesn't have to mean shut out of your own server.
Where the line sits →Free, unlimited migrations done by engineers, not a tool. Your old site stays live until you've checked ours and approved the switch.
How the move works →Every hosting product is a decision about who fixes what at 3am. Managed moves that line up to just beneath your own work — and here it is, drawn against the unmanaged version of the identical server.
Ask, and we'll hand you root on a managed cloud server. That's genuinely unusual — most managed platforms lock the operating system entirely, and some won't let you install a different OS at all. The one condition here is honesty about consequences: change something at the OS level that breaks, and we'll still fix it, but that particular fix sits outside the management scope. Most managed customers never ask. The point is that you could.
Someone is doing the OS work, and that someone is on a payroll — that's what you're buying. If you'd rather do it yourself, that's an unmanaged VPS on the same machine, and we'll say so plainly rather than sell you a service you won't use.
"Managed" is a word every host uses and few will itemise. These are the six things that actually happen on a managed cloud server, on a loop, whether or not anything is wrong.
Identical specifications to our unmanaged plans, because it's identical hardware. Every managed cloud server is built in the configurator, so you price the exact machine you're ordering.
Managed Cloud Server Hosting
Cloud Server S
A first production server for someone who'd rather not learn iptables this year. Two months free when you pay for a whole year in advance.
Configure NowManaged Cloud Server Hosting
Cloud Server M
A live business site with a database beside it. Where most managed customers settle. Two months free when you pay for a whole year in advance.
Configure NowManaged Cloud Server Hosting
Cloud Server L
Several client sites on one box, fully looked after, with one invoice. Two months free when you pay for a whole year in advance.
Configure NowOn every managed cloud server, at no extra cost:
Prices exclude VAT and are shown in full in the configurator before you check out. Annual is ten months' price for twelve months' hosting. Whichever you choose is what you renew at — no introductory rate, no year-two jump. Insta Stack CP is included; cPanel/WHM and Plesk licences are available separately and we manage those for you too. Unmanaged plans carry the same specifications from £13.99.
There's a right answer per customer and it isn't always ours. Read the column that sounds like your week.
The server is a means to an end, and the end isn't sysadmin work. Pick managed if any of these land.
From £13.99/mo · you're on this page
You know exactly how you want the box configured, and any opinion we install is one you'd have to undo.
From £13.99/mo · same hardware
You can move between the two later without rebuilding the server or migrating any data — it's the same machine, so switching changes who administers the OS and what you're billed, nothing else. Plenty of customers start managed and go unmanaged once they've hired someone. A few go the other way after one bad month.
Included free on every managed cloud server. cPanel/WHM and Plesk are available as paid licences if you prefer them, and we manage those for you the same way — but nobody has to pay for the privilege of administering their own server.
Identical to our unmanaged platform, because it is the same platform. The management sits on top of this, not instead of it.
Your cores are allocated to you, not oversold across the node. Sustained load is what a cloud server is for, so we don't price one and deliver a burst allowance.
Enterprise NVMe, striped across mirrored pairs, behind a battery-backed write cache. You get the speed of the stripe and the survivability of the mirror.
Each node lands on a 20 Gbps connection into switches with redundant 100 Gbps uplinks. Headroom is the point: you never sit behind a saturated port.
Volumetric attacks are absorbed upstream in real time. Your instance never sees the traffic — and on managed, nobody has to tell you it happened.
A VNC console attached below the network layer. You'll rarely need it on a managed plan — it's how our engineers get in when the network won't cooperate.
Every server sits behind uninterruptible power in ISO 27001 certified, PCI-compliant facilities, with engineers on site around the clock.
Pick London or Dallas at checkout. Data on your server stays in that country — useful when a client contract says it has to.
More CPU, RAM or disk without migrating to another machine. On managed we schedule the single reboot for a time your traffic won't miss.
Published, contractual and measured against the network you actually sit on — not an aspiration in a marketing footnote.
Four hops. On a managed plan, all four of them are ours — including the first one.
They're routinely confused and they solve completely different problems. You get both — and on managed, you don't drive either of them.
DROP TABLE — that's what the 30-day timeline, and an engineer who'll run the restore, are for.Free, unlimited, and done by engineers rather than handed to you as a tool with a progress bar. From cPanel, Plesk, WHM, StackCP, SiteGround, Hostinger, Fasthosts, Heart Internet or anywhere else.
Not "two free migrations" and a quote for the rest. If you're moving forty client sites onto a Managed Cloud Server L, we move forty client sites — it's the same team either way, and charging you per site would just be a tax on switching to us.
A managed cloud server runs whether or not anyone is visiting it, which makes where its power comes from a fair question. Ours has had the same answer for thirty years.
It's a private server where we administer the operating system as well as the hardware underneath it. Security patching, firewall and hardening, 24/7 monitoring, backups and restores, performance tuning and incident response are all done by InstaHost engineers in the UK. You get reserved CPU, RAM and NVMe RAID 10 storage — without ever having to log in to keep it healthy. From £13.99/mo.
Where the line is drawn — not the hardware. Both run on identical InstaHost infrastructure. Unmanaged draws the line at the operating system: we run the hypervisor, hardware, network and DDoS, you run everything from the OS up. Managed moves that line to just beneath your sites and data — we run the OS and the stack on it too.
Both start from £13.99/mo and both are configured to spec. What you're choosing between is who administers the OS, not the hardware or the entry price. See the unmanaged page →
Seven things, all in the price: OS security patching and kernel updates; firewall configuration and hardening; 24/7 monitoring with an engineer response rather than an email telling you something broke; backups taken daily and restores performed by us; performance tuning of the web, PHP and database layers; incident response including emergency fixes; and free unlimited migrations.
Everything below the OS — hypervisor, CPU, RAM, NVMe RAID 10, network, power, DDoS, data centre — is covered as standard, exactly as on unmanaged.
Yes, on request — which is unusual. Most managed platforms lock the OS entirely, and some won't let you install a different OS at all. We'll hand you root if you ask.
The one condition is honesty about consequences: if you change something at OS level that breaks, we'll still fix it, but that fix sits outside the management scope. Most managed customers never ask. The point is that you could.
From £13.99/mo, excluding VAT. Every managed cloud server is built in the configurator, so you see the exact monthly and annual price for the specification you've chosen before you check out.
The annual price is ten times the monthly, so twelve months costs the same as ten. Whichever you pick is what you renew at — no introductory rate, no year-two jump. Unmanaged starts at the same £13.99/mo — the difference shows up in the specification you configure, not the entry price.
15 minutes on a P1 — server down, unreachable or under active attack — with a UK engineer, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Across all ticket priorities the average from ticket open to problem fixed is 24 minutes.
Usually you won't open the ticket at all: checks run every 60 seconds against CPU, memory, disk, services, certificates and response time, so the alert comes from a threshold rather than from a customer noticing.
Insta Stack CP, free on every managed cloud server. Sites, domains, DNS, SSL, email, databases, backups and one-click restores, staging and PHP version switching — with no licence fee.
Prefer cPanel/WHM or Plesk? Both are available as paid licences and we manage them for you identically. SSH-only with no panel is also supported.
Yes — and performed by our engineers, not by you with a tool. We move sites, databases, email and DNS from cPanel, Plesk, WHM, StackCP, SiteGround, Hostinger, Fasthosts, Heart Internet or anywhere else.
Your old site stays live throughout and you approve the switch once you've checked our copy. Forty client sites is still free — charging per site would just be a tax on moving to us.
Both included. 30-day timeline backups taken daily at platform level, and we perform the restore — you ask, an engineer does it. That's the practical difference from unmanaged, where the backup is included but you drive the recovery yourself.
RAID 10 solves a different problem: it survives a failed drive, not a mistaken command. You get both, and neither costs extra.
Yes, both directions, without rebuilding anything. It's the same machine on the same platform, so switching changes who administers the OS and what you're billed — not your data, not your IP, not your uptime.
Customers commonly start managed while a project is young and move to unmanaged once they've hired someone to run it. A few go the other way after one bad month.
No, and we won't say it is — including on managed, where every competitor does. Managed S includes 2 TB monthly transfer on a 100 Mbps port, Managed M 4 TB on 100 Mbps, Managed L 8 TB on 250 Mbps.
Every host advertising "unlimited" enforces a real ceiling in its acceptable use policy; you just don't find out where until you hit it. We'd rather print the number.
Yes. CPU, RAM and storage scale in place with a single reboot to pick up the new allocation — and on managed we schedule and perform that reboot for you, at a time your traffic won't miss. No migration, no re-imaging, no moving data. Downgrades work too, as long as the disk in use still fits.
Yes — 100% renewable since 1996. Data centres are ISO 14001 certified for environmental management and ISO 27001 for information security, PCI compliant, running at PUE 1.2 against an industry average near 1.5.
Pick a size, pick UK or US, and we'll move you in for free. If it turns out you'd rather run the OS yourself, tell us and we'll switch you to unmanaged — same server, lower bill.