"Managed" is the most abused word in hosting. Four genuinely different products are sold under it, at prices differing by a factor of ten, and the marketing copy for all four is nearly identical. The original VPSLatch built its business on being clear about which one it sold. That is worth restoring.
The four things sold as "managed"
1. Managed hardware only
The provider keeps the node alive: hardware, network, hypervisor, and reinstalling your VPS if you destroy it. Everything from the operating system upward is yours.
This is what most budget hosts mean, and it is what "unmanaged" means at a good host. There is nothing wrong with it — but if a provider is charging a premium for "managed" and this is what arrives, you have paid for a word.
2. Managed operating system
They patch the OS, run updates, configure the firewall, and keep SSH sane. They will not touch your application. If WordPress is hacked through a plugin, that is your problem; if the kernel needs a security patch, that is theirs.
3. Managed stack
The above, plus the software you actually run: web server, PHP version, database, mail, control panel. They will tune MySQL, fix a broken PHP-FPM pool, and debug why your site is throwing 502s. This is what most people picture when they read "fully managed", and it is the level the original VPSLatch sold in 2010 with cPanel included.
4. Managed application
They take responsibility for your specific application running correctly — deployments, performance, sometimes the code. This is closer to a retainer with a systems administrator than a hosting product, and it is priced accordingly.
The questions that get you a straight answer
Marketing copy will not distinguish these. Support questions will. Before paying for "managed", ask exactly these, in writing:
- My site is down and I do not know why. What do you do? The gap between "we verify the node is healthy" and "we log in and find the cause" is the entire product.
- Who applies OS security updates, and do you reboot for kernel patches? If the answer is "you can enable unattended-upgrades", that is level 1 wearing a level 2 badge.
- Do you take backups, where do they live, and have you restored one recently? "Nightly snapshots" stored on the same node protect you from almost nothing.
- If my application is compromised, do you help clean it up? Frequently the honest answer is no, and it is better to know before it happens.
- What is the response time at 3am on a Sunday, and is it contractual? A target without a remedy is an aspiration.
Why the word drifted
Because it sells and it costs nothing to claim. "Managed" carries no definition, no certification and no legal weight, so the cheapest possible interpretation is competitively rational: a host offering level 3 at an honest price loses the click to one offering level 1 with better adjectives.
The industry mostly solved this once before, in the era the original VPSLatch traded in, by competing publicly on forums where customers compared notes and exaggeration was expensive. That check has largely gone.
What we sell, stated plainly
VPSLatch plans today are level 1 — managed hardware. We keep the node, the network and the hypervisor healthy. We will reinstall your server, take a manual snapshot before you do something risky, sort out reverse DNS, open outbound port 25 once we know what you are sending, and answer a ticket about a problem we caused.
We do not patch your operating system, tune your database, or debug your application. When we offer that it will be a separate, more expensive product with the boundary written down, not an adjective added to this one.
If you want level 3, buy it from someone who sells it properly and charges properly for it. Paying managed prices for unmanaged service is the specific bad outcome this page exists to prevent, and we would rather lose the sale than be the host you found that out from.