I’m seeing an interesting development in the hosting world and that is the rise of specialised managed WordPress hosting. If you are having trouble with hacks, slow performance or poor support from your hosting company read on…
What Is Managed Hosting?
This is where a hosting setup is created and optimised just for WordPress sites.
There are 1001 different types of hosting and website packages, a commodity hosting company like Godaddy or even the one I use Bluehost, is configured to keep as many people happy as possible.
WordPress managed hosting companies focus on WordPress, and WordPress alone. They provide a highly optimised service just for good old WP.
Here are the ways managed hosting companies are optimised:
Security
Hacking of WordPress sites is a major problem, I’m called in all too often to tidy up hacked WordPress sites. It’s expensive, time consuming and embarrassing for site owners.
These hosting companies monitor for and repair any hack attacks as they happen. They are also very tightly secured to stop the hackers getting access in the first place.
All of the services I mention below also offer a full backup and recovery services. There is no need to manage your own backup it’s done for you. Peace of mind in a working archive of your site is priceless.
Performance
Many commodity hosting platforms are slow, they are slow because they share resources (often limited resources) with a large number of sites. The web servers are not optimised or cached for WordPress requests.
Once your site begins to get some traffic you need to upgrade and this begins to costs.
These hosting services are optimised and performance tuned just for WordPress. They are all very fast.
Load time matters both to your site visitors and Google.
Support
Have you ever contacted your hosting support only to be treated like an idiot, or find that they have no understanding of your site config?
WordPress managed hosting companies are staffed by WP techies who understand how WordPress works. They will be able to help you solve your problems because they understand your platform.
Plus there webservers are optimised for WordPress and only run WordPress so they will do exactly what it says on the tin – host a WordPress site correctly.
Managed Migration
All of the companies below offer a managed migration service, they will take your site and migrate it into their platform (for a fee) so you know the migration will go smoothly. This is a sticking point with many people they don’t know how to move hosting so they stick with the shitty old system they are used to.
The Downside
Specialisation costs, these managed hosting companies have created a none standard environment. Expect to pay 2-3 times the amount you would for a commodity hosting package. If you have a more advanced hosting package you will find these companies comparable.
Charge per domains is a common model whereas a standard hosting company lets you host as many domains as you like.
The Players
There are three key players that I can see at the moment and they are:
- wpengine.com – my preferred company
- page.ly (no link added I do not recommend this company see below)
- websynthesis.com/ – this is operated by the people who built Genesis theme, and as a result it is super optimised for
My Recommendation
I was pretty blown away by what I saw at wpengine.com, I migrated a client’s site into their environment and immediately it was super fast and optimised for WordPress and their support was great.
I’ve seen a lot of hosting companies and I am very, very reticent to recommend one but wpengine.com comes with my stamp of approval.
When my Bluehost hosting is up for renewal I will probably be moving over to wpengine.com.
If you have been hacked, your site is running slowly and want technical support from people who understand your site go for a WordPress managed hosting solution.
A word about Page.ly – I had nothing but trouble working with their technical support and the domain getting “domain provisioning errors” this may just be my experience, but when someone is joining your premium hosting for the first time I expect it to work first time you dropped the ball Page.ly guys. I’m more than happy to heare positive page.ly reviews from people in the comments, but I cannot recommend something that fell over (several times) during the migration.
Image by bluesparrowhawk2008
20 thoughts on “The Rise Of WordPress Managed Hosting”
I’m about to move my new website to WP Engine later this week. Met the guys this past weekend at WordCamp Austin. Good people behind a good company sounds like a winning combo.
My experience with WPEngine could not have been worse. They wanted $300 to migrate my site (WTF?) so when I tried to migrate using BackupBuddy (which I have used many times to migrate) their environment would not allow it to load properly. Their tech support consisted of a guy telling me that no one was available to help me until Monday morning (this was Saturday).
Even after I got the site finally loaded, none of my images appeared (and still no help). However, I immediately began getting SPAM comments… so, ummm, yeah, people found the site right away, just not the right people!
I canceled the free trial after about 2 weeks of failure, that was a month ago and I am STILL receiving emails that I have comments to moderate, all of which are SPAM!!!!
I loved what they had to say and was willing to pay the premium price, but for what???? What a waste of my time and energy!!!
Kevin
Hi Kevin
Thanks for the other side of the argument – I see this a lot with hosting, for example I really like bluehost, but other people hate them with a passion.
I used the self migration route rather than their migration path so thanks for providing info about that
Neil
Neil,
I am so sorry to hear about bluehost. I have been recommending them and using them for years. Are you or were you having issues with them? I love their live chat folks too. I will have to check out this new firm you are referring to on a test site.
Thanks,
Linda
Hi Linda
I’m not saying bluehost is bad, rather wpengine is much better if you are having issues with poor performance or are having issues being hacked – thanks for the feedback
Neil
Neil, I recently changed my site to be hosted on wpengine.com. I find it just as you said and am glad I switched for improved performance now that my site gets a lot more traffic. I too am a Bluehost fan. And I still suggest them for brand newbies for three big reasons.
1. They answer the phone and are very willing to discuss WordPress issues. 2. Their ProBackup is extremely handy.
3. Their price is a good starting price for people to get their feet wet.
But I totally agree with you that at the point where you need and want improved performance and caching then WP-Engine is the cats pajamas.
By the way, something is wrong with your site that I am not seeing the styling only the text. Maybe its time to move now?:-)
J
HI Judi
Thanks for the heads up about my site, you could be right, time for a move. Cacheing issues I think
Neil
Lots of good information, so thank you. However, this article must have been thrown together in a hurry as I’ve never seen so many misspellings. Very unprofessional.
Sigh – the grammar police are after me again
Hi Neil, thanks for this-
And also your very prompt reply to my email query, I will take a look at wpengine and run a trial using your link…
Thanks again.
Hi Neil! We have been using page.ly for almost two years now and I love them – we have over 20 sites (our’s and client sites) with them and I get responsive support (even at 2am sometimes!). They also have gone the extra mile at no cost when the issue with the site was not their issue & that truly built my loyalty. We have been very pleased – I will also take note of wpengine – always good to have options!
Thanks!
Hi Kimberly
Thanks for your positive viewpoint about page.ly. This is the thing about hosting some people love them and have zero issues, whereas someone else will be hosted on a server with hardware errors and it’s a nightmare.
For the record Page.ly are the best value of the three services.
The service looks great but I had so many issues trying to migrate into their services I was completely put off by them
Thanks for the article. As a current user of Page.ly I should say to everybody to never ever try their services. Really bad support, long down-times and really low quality is something you receive.
I am not advising them at all.
Thanks Neil for the great article.
Wordpress managed hosting companies may be great, but I think these days there is also great value in services like http://www.inmotionhosting.com/hostingplans.html where they limit the number of sites you host with them, have additional security features and optimized speed connection options.
In fact, these guys seems to have the best hosting rating out there. Also highlighted on this review: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/hosting-reviews
Thoughts?
Thanks, Neil, for this timely article. After more than a dozen years developing and hosting small business sites, we switched to a managed WP hosting model at the beginning of 2012. We are much smaller than the companies mentioned, but have both shared and VPS hosting using leased equipment in three data centers around the U.S.
We pre-install WP along with a premium theme framework and set of vetted security and productivity plugins that we know from experience work well and play nicely together. Our service includes web and email hosting, all software updates, malware scanning and scheduled backups, plus phone and email support, starting at $33 per month.
For those who have a site running, we’ll set up your new site on a temporary IP address until everything is migrated and checked out, and then you just update the name servers when you’re ready to go live. If you want us to do the migration, there is a relatively small fee, depending on the complexity of your current site. We’ll provide a firm quote before starting.
How Carson, US Server Net
http://www.wpserver.us
Thanks for the information… a trend worth watching, no doubt. I’ve been with Hostgator since the start and have been very happy with the service… they’ve helped with WordPress issues on several occasions even though it was a bit outside the box.
I would say that most support is about as good as the person you happen to talk with… it does seem that some companies have more winners and others have more losers.
I just glanced at the programs and pricing, but my initial reaction is the price/value consideration suggests I stick with what I’ve got! I might look at things differently if I had more sites, more traffic, etc. but for a basic user I’d have trouble justifying those sort of fees. I would guess that as this idea catches on competition may make for some better pricing.
I too am a happy BlueHost customer, host dozens of sites there. Availability is awesome and not only is support easily available via phone or chat 24×7, but they are US-based and surprisingly knowledgeable about WordPress.
I checked out WPEngine and was disappointed to learn that support isn’t 24×7 and base package doesn’t include phone option. They don’t offer things like CDN or dedicated IP address as a la carte add ons so you get walked up into their $250/month package even if you only have one low-traffic site to host. : (
Speaking of that, the one “domain” included with their $29/month package means one instance of wordpress. I have a second instance set up at my main domain for a techie blog and they said that counts as a second domain.
Disappointing, but good news for BlueHost!
WPEngine.com is an appealing option (on the surface), but I signed up, migrated a site while following their less-than-concise instructions, and it wold no longer show the theme. No phone support for $99/mo. I had to post a support ticket on another website. It was replied in kind with a templated ‘well get to you when we can’ type message. Remember: the site was down. I wrote back saying it was unacceptable, and also created a second ticket the next day. A day after that I get this response, from their ‘director of customer happiness’: “We’re not really able to help with Theme configuration issues unless there is a server side issue that is causing the problem.”
The underlying issue has to do with serialization and database migration, but of course, this is not communicated at all in their tutorials. So, the site can’t and won’t work, unless remigrated with the host file on the customer’s computer altered and on and on….
Needless to say: if WPEngine.com would be more upfront about the risks involved, or even make the offer of migration services easy and affordable to find and use on their site (it’s there, it’s expensive, and I’m sure it’s full of caveats), maybe you’d be happy there.
I, personally, think they are selling snake oil over there, and am cancelling my account and chalking up the three lost days of my life as yet another lesson learned about the young entrepreneurs of today, and how they do business.
Hi John
Thanks for passing on your experiences.
I too switched to WPEngine — about a month ago — and have been quite happy. I didn’t (and still don’t) like that there’s no “real-time” (chat or phone) non-emergency support even at $99/month, and I have encouraged them to change that policy, but I’ve been able to get prompt support via their ticketing system, and when I had an outage situation during migration (DNS propagation problems) they answered the phone at 1:00am pacific and helped me through it.
I migrated 5 sites built with 5 different themes and they all migrated totally seamlessly. I’ve been impressed with availability and performance.
I’ll continue to host most of my personal and client sites at BlueHost despite the fact that their support has gone to crap in the last couple months, but for important or high-traffic sites I’ll probably go with WPEngine.
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