When it comes to web hosts who provide less than the best, however, there is a lot they would prefer their prospective clients didn’t know. Our COO, Ryan, knows this, so he’s spilling the tea. Here are ten dirty secrets of the web hosting landscape.

1. Three providers make up the backbone of the web hosting industry.

There are thousands of web hosting companies, nearly all of which are ultimately served by a primary cloud provider like Amazon AWS, Google GCP, or Microsoft Azure. What most people are buying when they say “hosting” is the marketing, engineering, support, and website management software, not the server resources themselves.

2. Hosting directly with one of the “big three” is a bad idea.

Savvy buyers know that many popular brands are built on these major cloud providers, so they have the idea to “cut out the middleman” for cost savings and try to host directly on one of these cloud networks. This is a terrible idea. AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure are incredibly complex systems. And they need to be configured with the proper permissions, ownership, or optimizations to deliver a WordPress website in the most efficient and secure way. 

Unless you have a person skilled in server management minding your web servers, it’s best to sign up with a host that specializes in WordPress.

3. There’s no such thing as “unlimited” in the hosting world.

Unlimited is a marketing buzzword. Every web host monitors your resource usage and will force an upgrade or shut down your website if it exceeds certain thresholds. Read the fine print about what’s actually included if you choose a plan that claims unlimited anything (bandwidth, storage, data transfers, etc.) because it’s usually too good to be true.

4. Almost all web hosting is “shared.”

Even for high-availability plans, it’s uncommon for you to have resources dedicated 100% to serving your website. You’re almost always sharing hardware with someone else. The one exception is when hosting is explicitly called “dedicated hosting.” Even in those scenarios, you should still clarify that no other customer websites are stored on the same hardware as your server. Words like VPS, Cloud, etc., are usually positioned as a tier above Shared. They have more resources available and, usually, technologies like containerization to help solve the noisy neighbor problem, but they’re rarely your own hardware.

5. Your web host will not help you diagnose or solve website issues.

Many web hosts may help point you in the right direction regarding a potential issue with your website application (WordPress). Still, almost none of them will actually help resolve WordPress issues. Their contractual terms won’t allow it because they primarily focus on the hosting infrastructure. You will still need a developer or service like SiteCare to provide support for WordPress itself.

6. Affiliate Managers are incredibly aggressive.

When our Best WordPress Hosting article ranked on Page 1 of Google for a valuable key phrase, Affiliate Managers from popular hosting companies were constantly calling in to have the brand they represent moved higher up in the rankings. They’d offer travel, spa retreats, higher commissions, or anything else I’d request to push their position from third on the list to first. But we never changed the results for a kickback.

7. Buying Windows Server hosting if you’re running WordPress is a bad idea.

Don’t get tricked; the Windows Server operating system isn’t built or optimized for serving WordPress and will add unnecessary technical complexity to your website. Linux is the best option for hosting WordPress sites.

8. Renewal costs are often higher than introductory rates.

Research renewal fees first when signing up for a web hosting service. You may find that although you’re currently paying an attractive, affordable rate as a new user, the lower price will only last a short while. Once you’ve already been enticed through the door, some web hosts will substantially increase their rates when you want to renew your contract. If you’ve researched your new web hosting provider and are happy with their service, sign up for as long a contract as possible.

9. Many hosts store backup files on the same server, which defeats the purpose if there’s a hardware failure.

Your web host must have a fall-back plan for your backups. Check that your backups are stored on separate servers and devices, as any system failure can also result in complete systems failure for your website. Systems can fail for many reasons, including the weather, so understand how backups work to ensure your web host is prepared.

10. Hosting your emails with your website isn’t a best practice.

Having your website and emails in the same hosting package might seem logical, but it’s not a good idea. Firstly, as they are specifically web hosts, email hosting is likely outside your host’s expertise. Because of this you may receive sub-par service. Secondly, as with secret number nine, if one goes, they all go. If a server drops, you could find both your website and email crashing, as opposed to just one or the other. Simultaneously losing your communication channels and website is disastrous, so keep email and web hosting separate and sleep easier at night. With this in mind, check the fine print and ensure you’re not paying for email hosting services you’re not using.

Web Hosting Worries? SiteCare Can Help.

So, there you have it, ten dirty secrets of the web hosting landscape. Keep these in mind when you’re taking another look at your web hosting contract or looking for a new provider. We don’t want to scare you (much!), but we do want you to be aware of the risks.

Know that there are many excellent web hosting companies out there, but as with every industry, some always try to take more by giving less, and we don’t want your website to be collateral damage. 

If you’d like to speak to Ryan further about your web hosting options or concerns, he’s always happy to set up a call. 

Are there any dirty secrets we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

The post 10 Dirty Secrets of the Web Hosting Landscape appeared first on WordPress Support & Optimization Specialists.

Why? Because the web hosting ecosystem is host to less than scrupulous players who pay their way onto listicles such as ‘Top Web Hosting Platforms’ that occupy the top of your search results page’s real estate. 

The problem with these featured companies is that their infrastructure doesn’t necessarily support their claims. Too many unsuspecting customers have fallen prey to unreliable web hosting providers, and the results can be costly and catastrophic. In short, beware of those who make big promises, as they frequently provide small yields. 

SiteCare is more than familiar with the common pitfalls across the web hosting landscape. After operating in WordPress maintenance for almost two decades, there is very little we haven’t seen. So, we recently picked the brain of SiteCare COO, Ryan Sullivan, to learn how to spot the red flags of unreliable web hosting providers. 

This blog is the first in a series unearthing the dirty secrets of the web hosting world, so stay tuned as we spill more tea on the murky underworld of web hosting.  

What is Web Hosting and Why Should I Care?

In a nutshell, a web hosting service stores your business website’s or web application’s files, databases, code, and images on a server space, allowing users to access your website via the internet from anywhere in the world. A web host is also responsible for maintaining your site’s performance, security, and reliability. In essence, when choosing a hosting provider, you’re putting your website’s performance (its uptime and speed), security, and user experience (UX) in their hands. You wouldn’t ask (or pay!) a random stranger to look after your tangible valuables without thoroughly researching them first. So, it’s just as crucial that your online assets receive the same degree of due diligence.

And, if that doesn’t convince you of the value of a reliable web hosting service, then the numbers should. 88% of online visitors won’t return to a website if they have a bad experience with it, and poor web hosting can definitely impact UX. So, if ever there’s a time to choose the right hosting provider to meet your website’s performance optimization needs, it’s now.

What Red Flags Should We Look Out For?

SiteCare’s team members know the ins and outs of web hosting after decades in the industry. Here are examples of some first-hand experiences we’ve had with poor hosting providers to help you spot those red flags.

Red flag 1: inadequate server storage and backups

Have you ever considered how your website could be affected by the weather? No? SiteCare’s Digital Marketing Director, Courtney, has. 

“I once had a client who hosted locally in Tennessee, a state not known for extreme weather and freezing temperatures,” she recounted, “But when a rare but entirely possible ice storm hit, the hosting provider’s server lost power. The result? All of my client’s websites shut down for four days – imagine the loss of web traffic and business!”    

What went wrong on this occasion was that the server was incorrectly stored without adequate backup. The web host had no provision for alternative power sources, and his system remained completely shut down. 

Switching to a cloud-based hosting service would help you avoid this situation and allow for greater flexibility and reliability. In addition, your website would no longer be hosted by a single server, which will also prevent any performance issues. When choosing a web hosting provider, research where they are and where their servers are located and investigate their backup strategies. 

Red flag 2: better-for-less deals

Ryan has some equally painful stories (although he’s holding some back for our next episode!). One occasion that particularly stands out is a glaring example of the adage, “If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is.” 

Here’s his story:

“In 2016, we had a client with over 3 million monthly pageviews looking to reduce costs on their hosting bill. They reached out to a web hosting company that promised them better performance for less than 25% of what they were paying each month.

“We warned them that it didn’t only sound too good to be true, but that it was absolutely too good to be true. We pressed the host to explain the resources they were providing and how they could possibly deliver the same performance for such a large amount of traffic for such a low price. We even went as far as to purchase the plan they recommended with our own money to try and show our client why the limited resources would be a problem.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t show how the site would perform at the scale of our client’s traffic, and the client ultimately chose to go with the web host’s recommendation over ours because the website ‘seemed pretty fast.’

“Within 10 minutes of the site being live on the new host, under the load of live traffic, the server crashed. We fully anticipated that happening, so we immediately switched back to the previous infrastructure.

“When we asked the new host to explain themselves, we were told the problem was “inefficient coding” and that “most sites with 3 million pageviews ran just fine on the same plan.”

“They could never point to a specific code bottleneck or share examples of other sites with the same traffic on the same plan. I was blown away by the casual bravado and lack of ownership from the hosting company.” 

The lesson here? Look out for those companies that promise the world for a suspiciously low fee; it’s often a case of ‘you get what you pay for.’ Plus, if the web hosting company doesn’t choose to be transparent with you regarding their backend set-up, there’s probably a reason for it, and it’s unlikely to benefit you. 

At the end of the day, research and investigation pay off

A bit of online sleuthing could reveal that a hosting provider doesn’t have the capacity to support your website’s visitors that it claims it has. Or, they don’t have a reliable backup strategy in place in case of an emergency. Have you checked how much downtime is reported by websites using the provider? These are all crucial factors to consider when choosing a web hosting service. 

So, we say leave it to the experts. SiteCare supports its clients in choosing the best hosting providers for their needs. Over the years, we’ve gathered a wealth of data on hundreds of web hosts, so we’re fully equipped to guide clients through the good, the bad, and the downright ugly web hosting providers. So, if you’d like to speak to Ryan about your web hosting options, contact him here.  

Have you had any terrible experiences with a web hosting provider? Leave your story in the comments below.

The post What NOT to Look For in Web Hosting in 2023 appeared first on WordPress Support & Optimization Specialists.

So, how do you know if you’re making the right choice? We can help. As top WordPress experts in our industry, the team at SiteCare knows a thing or two about how to choose the best WordPress hosting provider.

In this comprehensive comparison of the best WordPress hosting providers, we’ll identify the qualities of a great WordPress hosting service and will share tips choosing the best hosting provider to fit your needs. Our comparison data is rigorously reviewed and tested, so these recommendations aren’t just our opinion or based. The results are based on real performance data you can use to make the most informed decision you can.

All SiteCare plans bundle enterprise-level WordPress hosting, so if you’re looking for comprehensive management of your website, check out our plans.

How we review WordPress Hosting

We conducted comprehensive reviews of 13 web hosts. To guide our web hosting review process, we emulated the Wirecutter approach to consumer reviews. This allowed us to uncover the web hosting provider that is best for most people, as well as provide our top recommendations for budget-friendly options as well as the best option for developers. Take a look at our top 5 picks, though we recommend taking the time to read through all 13 hosting reviews — especially if you want to get a good idea of which companies to avoid.

Overall Best WordPress Hosting

Flywheel

Flywheel stood out among the competition with outstanding high performance benchmarks, 100% uptime during the 60 days we ran our tests, solid customer support, and a very easy-to-use customer portal with advanced functionality that didn’t feel overwhelming.

Flywheel Tiny Plan

• $13.00 per month hosting plan
• 5,000 Monthly Visits
• 5GB of Disk Space
• 20 GB of Bandwidth
• Free SSL Certificate via LetsEncrypt
• CDN provided by Fastly

Read the full review

Best Budget WordPress Hosting

GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks Hosting showed phenomenal performance at a very reasonable price point. Their commitment to being eco-friendly at this great value is another reason to look to GreenGeeks if you’d like to have a fast website without breaking the bank.

GreenGeeks Lite

• $2.95 per month
• 50GB Storage
• SSL Included
• Built-in Caching

Read the full review

Most User-Friendly Hosting

SiteGround

Headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, SiteGround hosting came onto the WordPress hosting scene and started to make an impact around 2012. Their platform has experienced significant growth and matured in lots of ways, providing really nice tools to WordPress website owners and a very quick path for getting a site up and running quickly.

GrowBig

• $4.99 per month
• 100,000 monthly visitors
• 20 GB Storage
• Free SSL Certificate
• SiteGround Supercacher
• Easy WordPress Installation
• CDN Included

Read the full review

Alternative Budget-Friendly Hosting

InMotion

Inmotion Hosting had a very strong showing at a reasonably low price point. At roughly half the cost of Flywheel, it stood up to the test with very respectable performance times and uptime and customer service that were definitely within acceptable ranges.

WP Core

• $3.28 per month
• 100 GB Storage
• Free SSL Certificate
• 2 PHP Workers
• Unlimited Bandwidth

Read the full review

Best Hosting for Developers

WP Engine

What really sets WP Engine apart from the pack is its robust set of developer tools, including the ability to create dedicated servers for development and staging automatically for each site on your plan. WP Engine also sets the bar for customer support among all the hosts that we evaluated.

WP Core

• $25.00 per month
• 25,000 monthly visitors
• 10 GB SSD Storage
• WordPress Staging Environments
• Free SSL Certificate
• 50 GB Bandwidth via Global CDN

Read the full review

Evaluating the Best WordPress Hosts

Over the years, we’ve evaluated dozens of WP hosting providers. We’ve seen hosting fads and features come and go, but there are five key qualities to look for in a provider that are just as important now as they were in the early days of WordPress.

1. Reliability

Having a web hosting provider you can trust is crucial. Having a fast website is nice but becomes less important if your website is regularly crashing or offline. When your website is down, your business and earning potential are too. Even if your customers or visitors get frustrated with slower load times, they’ll have a bit more patience than if the website is completely unreachable.

When evaluating a web host, an uptime goal to reach for is what’s known as five nines, or 99.999% uptime (also referred to as High Availability). This isn’t commonly met by any WordPress hosts across all their clients, but it is something to strive for. If you see weekly or even monthly downtime on your website, it’s time to start shopping for something more reliable.

2. Performance

How fast your website loads is also vitally important. Beyond providing a great experience for your website visitors, Google has also begun factoring their PageSpeed algorithm into search engine rankings. With this in mind, do you need a content delivery network? How many PHP workers are sufficient? Do you need a dedicated server, or will cloud hosting solutions be enough?

Navigating the WordPress performance landscape can feel overwhelming but suffice to say that if you’re running an online store, your website’s speed (or lack thereof) will directly impact your total sales. We want to help you find the best and most consistent WordPress hosting performance so you can delight visitors, rank well in search engines, and build your online business.

3. Support

Even the most well-structured and planned hosting infrastructure can still show cracks now and again. The internet as a whole can be fragile at times, and we all end up needing to submit support requests occasionally. A hosting partner with a knowledgeable and speedy support team can be the difference between constant frustration and peace of mind.

Even when things don’t go as planned, or there’s an unexpected outage, you can feel in control and know things will be ok when you have a trusted Support team who proactively communicates and puts together creative solutions on the fly.

4. Ease of Use

You shouldn’t need to be making changes with your web host regularly, but it’s nice to perform administrative tasks quickly and more efficiently when you do. Many hosting companies now provide a dashboard that’s well put together and helps you do things like assign domains, create backups, create staging environments, install SSL certificates, and reset passwords.

Each hosting company includes dashboards at varying degrees of quality, and some use stock dashboards like cPanel or Plesk to give system administration control to hosting account owners. If you are someone who enjoys tinkering or a power user, the Ease of Use component becomes a critical piece of the equation.

5. Pricing

Finding the cheapest or most affordable web host means you’re likely sacrificing one of the other hosting pillars, but the reality is the cost is always a factor in our decision-making.

If a hosting provider’s main value proposition is the lowest price, you can expect the reliability, performance, ease of use, and support will likely let you down. We recommend finding a few providers that score high in those areas and then using price as a tiebreak to determine which web host will give you the most bang for your buck.

OK, enough about how we evaluate a hosting company. Let’s get to the results!

Other WordPress Hosts We Tested

Along with our top recommendations, we also tested the following WordPress hosts which struggled to keep up with our top performers. Click each link to see our testing results:

• GoDaddy
• HostGator
• DreamPress
• MediaTemple (now part of GoDaddy)
• Bluehost
• Pressable
• A2 Hosting
• iThemes Hosting (now SolidWP)

Flywheel — Overall Best WordPress Hosting

After all the dust settled and all the testing concluded, there was a clear winner in our best WordPress hosting for most people.

Flywheel stood out among the competition with outstanding high performance benchmarks, 100% uptime during the 60 days we ran our tests, solid customer support, and a very easy-to-use customer portal with advanced functionality that didn’t feel overwhelming.

Getting started with Flywheel

The onboarding experience for Flywheel is incredibly smooth. We were up and running within minutes in a very straightforward launch experience. During onboarding, we were able to choose from several data centers across the world. Flywheel also boasts advanced billing features, like being able to add a website to an existing flywheel plan, or even transferring billing to a client before launching the website.

People are really going to like using the Flywheel customer portal and all that it has to offer.

Flywheel uptime

During our ninety days of testing, Flywheel had five minutes of downtime, compared to zero minutes during our previous testing period.

It had an average server response time of 457, and never took longer than 559ms to respond. These are very respectable first response times, and the tight range of response times is an indication of a stable platform, definitely something we like to see.

Flywheel customer support

Flywheel still seems to be getting their bearings a bit on the live chat side of things, but we’re definitely encouraged by the trend. Response times were faster than our previous 24-36 hour hold times (significantly), but in 2 different live chat scenarios our interactions were escalated to a traditional ticket.

We’re looking forward to seeing this part of Flywheel’s offering continue to grow.

Flywheel performance benchmarks

Flywheel was a web performance shining star. With all of the tests we used the default server/WordPress configuration provided by the web hosting, and what we saw out of the box from Flywheel was impressive.

Over ninety days we tested Google PageSpeed, DOM Load Time, Onload Time, and Content Size from 3 global data centers in Virginia, London, and Sydney.

There wasn’t any change to the content size during any of our testing since we didn’t modify the sites at all during the testing window. However, we did find that the default installations from one host to another did have different-sized footprints, so we’ll include the content size in the results.

GreenGeeks — Best Budget WordPress Hosting

GreenGeeks is our second new addition to the list for 2019 and they also had a really solid showing.

Getting started with GreenGeeks WordPress hosting

The onboarding experience with GreenGeeks was more or less forgettable, which is a good thing in my assessment. It was very straightforward and what we’ve come to expect from most cPanel providers. We were up and running in a short amount of time, and their server software was up to date with modern versions available.

GreenGeeks uptime

They have had two total site outages with a total downtime of 10 minutes in our testing, good enough for a 99.99% uptime. 10 minutes in a 3 month period is negligible for most sites and could be attributed to issues related to DNS or other environmental factors beyond the control of GreenGeeks.

Getting started with GreenGeeks WordPress hosting

The onboarding experience with GreenGeeks was more or less forgettable, which is a good thing in my assessment. It was very straightforward and what we’ve come to expect from most cPanel providers. We were up and running in a short amount of time, and their server software was up to date with modern versions available.

GreenGeeks uptime

They have had two total site outages with a total downtime of 10 minutes in our testing, good enough for a 99.99% uptime. 10 minutes in a 3 month period is negligible for most sites and could be attributed to issues related to DNS or other environmental factors beyond the control of GreenGeeks.

SiteGround — Most User-Friendly Hosting Setup

Headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, SiteGround hosting came onto the WordPress hosting scene and started to make an impact around 2012. Their platform has experienced significant growth and matured in lots of ways, providing really nice tools to WordPress website owners.

Getting started with SiteGround

The onboarding experience with SiteGround was good but not great. The billing portion of the sign-up process feels somewhat disconnected from the rest of the account management tools, but we still had a website up and running within an hour of signup. We did have to contact support to launch our website, but it was a misunderstanding on our part, and not the fault of SiteGround. They were quick to help us resolve the issue on a live chat.

The SiteGround dashboard makes everything accessible, but it does feel a bit dated. I believe the customer portal design is still the same as when we did our tests in 2013, so it’s probably time for an update. Overall, the experience with SiteGround was solid with no real issues to speak of.

SiteGround hosting uptime

SiteGround had 99.97% uptime in 3 months which was exactly the same as the previous quarter. This period that spread across 3 separate short outages as opposed to one longer outage last quarter. This is solid uptime, especially for a relatively inexpensive option.

The average response time was 695ms with a max response time of 846ms. This is slower than both Flywheel and Inmotion, but still a very strong showing. Again, the times didn’t fluctuate too drastically, which is a good sign in terms of platform stability.

SiteGround customer support

SiteGround support was very helpful and knowledgeable each time that we spoke with them. Their live chat typically had operators available in under five minutes, and we never had to escalate a case. The first person to answer was able to resolve our issues each time.

They have a strong knowledgebase of self-serve articles and considering the majority of their team is from Bulgaria, I’ve always been impressed with their English fluency. My only criticism of SiteGround’s support is that they bury the options for submitting tickets and starting live chats behind a series of confirmation pages and other visual tricks. Once you get used to their system then submitting a chat/ticket is relatively straightforward, but it’s not intuitive.

SiteGround performance benchmarks

While SiteGround wasn’t the fastest host in the bunch, it was still incredibly respectable at well below a 1 second load time.

Inmotion — Alternative Budget-Friendly Host

Inmotion Hosting had a very strong showing at a reasonably low price point. At roughly half the cost of Flywheel, it stood up to the test with very respectable performance times and uptime and customer service that were definitely within acceptable ranges.

Getting started with Inmotion Hosting

The onboarding experience with Inmotion Hosting is a bit clunkier than Flywheel, but it gets the job done. Inmotion had the most thorough account validation process of any hosts we tested, which required speaking with someone on the phone before the account could be activated. This was a relatively smooth process, and certainly makes sense as a spam-prevention measure, but it did slow things down.

Inmotion Hosting’s AMP dashboard is serviceable and I found it relatively easy to navigate, but it did lack the polish of Flywheel’s interface. Although that’s true of every hosting company we tested. Management of services on the hosting server itself occur on an extremely common cPanel interface.

Inmotion Hosting uptime

Inmotion had 99.99% uptime over the last 3 months compared to %99.70 in the previous quarter. It had 3 total outages that lasted a total of 15 minutes, a nice improvement over our last tests! Uptime was a place we saw room for improvement for InMotion last quarter and they came through.

The average response time was 261ms with a max response time of 363ms which is the fastest of any of the providers that we tested. The response times were blazing fast, even beating out even all of the managed providers in the space.

Inmotion Hosting customer service

Inmotion Hosting has an incredibly robust knowledge base, making the self-serve portion of their support extremely useful. Creating a ticket required a separate username and password, which I always find to be a point of friction, but once we were able to submit a support request, we received a quick reply (under an hour) with a resolution included.

This trend continued for three separate support tickets.

We also took advantage of Inmotion Hosting’s chat support, which has us talking with a support agent in under two minutes. They were very helpful and our issue was resolved within 10 minutes.

Inmotion Hosting performance benchmarks

Not only was Inmotion our top budget pick for WordPress hosting, but it was the fastest web hosting with extremely fast page load times.

WP Engine — Best Hosting for Developers

WP Engine is the first host we evaluated at a more premium price point, and honestly, it’s a tremendous value with a Starter plan at $35.00 per month. One thing that really sets WP Engine apart from the other hosts we evaluated is its robust set of developer tools, like the ability to create dedicated servers for development and staging automatically for each site on your plan. We didn’t really evaluate specific features of each host this time around, but in that regard, WP Engine really stands apart from its competitors.

Getting started with WP Engine

I really liked the onboarding experience with WP Engine. Like most processes on their platform, I found getting started was a clear process from beginning to end. I didn’t encounter any issues getting started, but I really liked how live chat help was available on every screen in the hosting environment in case I ran into issues.

I have previous experience with the WP Engine interface so I was able to get around easily, and I believe it’d be the same for any new users to the platform as well. Everything important is in a conspicuous place with more advanced options available by drilling deeper into menus.

Overall, getting started with WP Engine was a breeze. Maybe even a joy!

WP Engine uptime

WP Engine had 99.99% uptime in 2 months with two five minute outages reported. In fairness, the actual downtime was probably even less than 10 minutes, but the uptime check intervals run every five minutes. Overall the uptime on the server was extremely solid.

Even more impressive was the tight performance ranges, with an average response time of 524ms and a max response time of 621ms. An 80ms variance on either side of the average is fantastic.

WP Engine customer support

WP Engine set the bar for support among all the hosts that we evaluated. Every interaction we had with support was fast (first response was almost always under a minute), delightful, and closed with a resolution on our first try. It was clear that the support staff was well-informed around WordPress specifically, and not just hosting and servers.

With regards to customer support, WP Engine is in a league of its own.

WP Engine performance benchmarks

WP Engine was a small let down when it came to performance. It was still very fast, but I was hoping for better considering the really strong showing with the server response times and unmatched support.

GoDaddy

When we ran our benchmarks in 2013, GoDaddy had problems. Not just with our tests, but their hosting in general was in total disarray, with confusing offerings and outdated software/server stacks. It was really a mess.

Fast forward until now and GoDaddy has made some impressive strides with their WordPress hosting products. There are still gaps and room for improvement, but it’s important to acknowledge the progress they’ve made, especially at their size.

Getting started with GoDaddy WordPress hosting

This was the part of our evaluation that stood out the most to me. After signup, getting our first WordPress site setup was very easy. I definitely couldn’t have said the same of GoDaddy from five years ago. It was also refreshing to see that GoDaddy has support for the latest server software such as PHP 7.2.

We had our first site setup and ready to test in under 30 minutes, and the experience was very intuitive. It appears that GoDaddy has revamped their entire customer portal and it shows in how easy it was to use. One thing that really struck me in using their redesigned customer portal was how they keep the most critical actions easily available no matter where you are in the dashboard.

GoDaddy uptime

GoDaddy greatly improved their previous uptime going from 99.73% to 99.99%. It had two outages of five minutes.

Their page load times also significantly increased with an average response time of 392ms and 555ms max load time, respectively.

GoDaddy customer support

GoDaddy has instructions for live chat support in their documentation, but the two times we submitted support incidents, live chat wasn’t available. I’m not sure if it isn’t included in our plan, or if it wasn’t available at the time, but it would have been a nice addition.

With live chat unavailable, our only option was phone, which has pros and cons. We had an 18 minute wait time on our first call, and a more reasonable 6 minute wait time on our next call. Waiting on hold is never fun, but once the call begins, it is nice to speak with a human who can usually help resolve things.

For both of our support cases, the technician resolved the issue on the first attempt.

GoDaddy performance benchmarks

GoDaddy’s performance benchmarks improved over the last quarter but were still surprisingly slow considering the fast server response times. GoDaddy earned the reward for the second slowest page load times.

HostGator

HostGator’s WordPress-optimized offering is relatively new in this space as well. Their first iteration of Optimized WordPress hosting was released in 2015. The price per visitor (according to their claims of 100,000 visitors) is among the lowest of the hosts we tested.

Getting started with HostGator WordPress hosting

Where MediaTemple’s interface was minimalist, the interface for HostGator was almost non-existent. I respect the decisions, not options philosophy in programming, but this hosting environment’s dashboard had me feeling handcuffed.

I find the HostGator dashboard confusing. There are only eight possible choices to make in the dashboard, and three of them are upsells for other products and services. The whole experience feels very restrictive.

Confusing dashboard aside, we were able to get the site up and running without any issues.

HostGator uptime

HostGator did well in the uptime category, scoring a 99.95% uptime with 40 total minutes of downtime. Considering the downtime intervals are at least five minutes each, the total downtime may have been even less than 40 minutes.

The average server response time at HostGator was 916ms with a Max response time of 1.57 seconds. There’s a full second variance in server response time, and as you can see from the graph, response times were very inconsistent through the full two month period.

HostGator customer support

We contacted HostGator support on 3 separate occasions through live chat and each time the agent was helpful and quick to respond to our requests. I was impressed that HostGator offers a “share your screen” option for support. That isn’t something we’ve seen from any other host.

HostGator performance benchmarks

HostGator ended up toward the bottom of our performance benchmarks, but it wasn’t our worst performer.

DreamPress

Dreamhost introduced its DreamPress product a few years ago and have been working on iterative improvements ever since. There are multiple tiers of DreamPress and we used the entry tier at $19.95 per month for our testing. DreamPress is generous with their storage space at 30 GB.

Getting started with DreamPress WordPress hosting

Dreamhost has a totally unique dashboard and onboarding experience which I liked. It’s clearly a “from scratch” hosting platform, which is becoming rarer these days. Everything with the onboarding went smoothly except for the SSL certificate setup.

By default, Dreampress comes with a self-signed SSL certificate pre-installed. I had to manually toggle the SSL certificate to LetsEncrypt. It wasn’t a problem, but it was very different than anything I’ve experienced with other hosts. Now that I know that toggle exists I’ll breeze right through that piece of site setup next time.

DreamPress uptime

This quarter Dreamhost improved their uptime substantially getting to 99.79%, which was 11 hours fewer of downtime. It’s still much higher than it should be but it was encouraging to see some improvement.

When it was online, DreamPress’ performance benchmarks matched up really well against the competition, with a 501ms Average response time and an 615ms Max response time. This was a 24% improvement over their previous quarter.

DreamPress customer support

It was DreamPress’s support team that showed me the LetsEncrypt and self-signed certificate toggle so I could setup our testing site to load over https. They helped me in a live chat and were friendly and quick to reply.

Since our initial contact with DreamPress support, it appears that a new system has been put in place to guide users through documentation and other potential solutions before actually opening a ticket or live chat.

I understand that hosting companies need to put measures like that in place to help control the firehose of requests, but as someone who only contacts support when absolutely necessary, I really don’t like the trend of putting obstacles in front of customers to talk to support.

DreamPress performance benchmarks

DreamPress ended up right in the middle of the pack in terms of performance with page load times right around 1 second.

MediaTemple

Please note: MediaTemple is now part of GoDaddy so these tests are no longer relevant.

MediaTemple’s managed WordPress hosting boasts 250,000 monthly visitors, which is almost 10x the next closest host. We don’t know if it’s actually capable of supporting 8,000 daily visits or not, but that claim definitely stood out to us at this price point. MediaTemple is also very generous with disk space, providing 50GB.

Getting started with MediaTemple WordPress hosting

MediaTemple’s sign-up flow was very straightforward and they provide a very “bare bones” dashboard with just enough options to get things done, and no more. I’d describe their hosting environment’s dashboard as “minimalist.”

Launching the site was especially easy. All I had to do was add a new domain name, and then could easily toggle between the temporary URL generated by MediaTemple and the primary domain. It’s a really slick system.

MediaTemple uptime

MediaTemple had 10 outages lasting a total of an hour for a 99.96% uptime on our testing server. It’s a pretty significant improvement over the six hours of downtime they reported last quarter.

The average response time at MediaTemple was 374ms with a max response time of 508ms. This puts MediaTemple near the top of the list for server response times.

MediaTemple customer support

MediaTemple’s customer support was average. We had two conversations and one ended with us being directed to “our developer,” which was kind of comical, and the other had a long wait time before we received assistance from a very helpful support tech who helped us reset our SFTP credentials.

Obviously, these isolated incidents aren’t necessarily a reflection of their customer support as a whole, but based on our limited experience there are much better support departments at competitors.

MediaTemple performance benchmarks

I was beyond shocked when I saw the performance benchmarks for MediaTemple. I expected much faster load times. Initially I thought the test may have been broken, but we checked and rechecked. 4.27 seconds was the average load time based on 3 geographic locations and 4 checks per day for 60 days. Our Q1 of of 2020 benchmarks showed that while this time did go down, it was still taking 3.81 seconds to complete a full page load.

These benchmarks make MediaTemple the slowest web hosting that we tested. I know that GoDaddy and MediaTemple do share infrastructure, so seeing very slow times on both does make sense, but it was surprising nonetheless.

Bluehost

Bluehost is up next with their WordPress optimized hosting. In an interesting turn of events, the plan we chose for Bluehost was actually the most expensive of all of the hosting plans that we tested. Traditionally Bluehost has been near the bottom in terms of cost, and they still have some very budget-friendly plans, but we specifically wanted to try their more premium offering for these tests.

Getting started with Bluehost Optimized Blogger

After signing up with Bluehost, we ran into two pretty significant issues as we tried to launch our website. The first was probably due to our unique circumstances, but it’s also good to know. The site we were launching was at a unique subdomain, and we learned that Bluehost’s free SSL certificates don’t work on non-www subdomains. I confirmed this with their support chat. Because of this, I wasn’t able to serve this testing site over https like all the others.

The other issue I encountered during onboarding was a combination of challenges with the ‘Coming Soon’ plugin that Bluehost pre-installs and their caching. I “launched” the site, but the coming soon page generated by the WordPress plugin wouldn’t go away. After clearing the cache within WordPress and making sure my browser caches were empty, the ‘Coming Soon’ page was still showing. I contacted support again and was instructed to “wait for the cache to clear”. Several hours later, I was able to see the standard homepage, but it certainly wasn’t the onboarding experience I was hoping for with a WordPress-optimized product.

Bluehost uptime

Bluehost had 99.98% uptime which was a short fall from grace over their previous score of 100% uptime. Their uptime was still really solid.

When it comes to server performance the Bluehost service we purchased didn’t do well at all. The average response time of 1.3 seconds and max response time of 1.52 seconds are the slowest of any of the hosting companies we tested. It was exactly on par with their previous quarter. In fact, almost identical from a server response standpoint.

Bluehost customer support

We interacted with Bluehost customer support on several occasions for various items, through live chat each time. Bluehost has a nice self-serve documentation area, but unfortunately, it was missing documentation specific to the plan we chose. Or at least I wasn’t able to track it down.

When we contacted Bluehost support for live chat, we waited twenty minutes to speak to an agent on one chat, and twelve minutes on another chat. In both cases it required quite a bit of coaching from us to help the agents understand the issue so we could start working toward a resolution.

Bluehost performance benchmarks

The most surprising metric for me was Bluehost’s performance scores. I was very surprised by the slow performance especially considering the top-of-category price. My assumption is that the WordPress plugins and other items that ship in the Bluehost WordPress installer must slow things down. I could be wrong about that, but I also wasn’t able to come up with a better explanation for the slowness.

Pressable

Pressable was another early player in the Managed WordPress hosting space. It went through a few rough years and was acquired by Automattic in 2016. Since then, they seem to have improved stability quite a bit and are introducing more and more hosting products, such as specialized WooCommerce hosting.

At $25.00 per month, it all into mid-tier pricing, but certainly not the most expensive.

Getting started with Pressable WordPress hosting

The onboarding experience at Pressable was straightforward and I didn’t encounter any issues. The hosting environment’s dashboard feels plain and unfinished in some places. However, I didn’t ever feel lost or like I was in the wrong place. So if plainness translates to easier to use, I’m totally fine with that.

One thing that I saw from Pressable that was a nice touch is the ability to set MX records for email with one click for popular providers like G Suite. I’d love to see more hosts add that ability.

Pressable uptime

Pressable had 99.93% uptime with eight total outages that lasted a total of 2 hours. This was an improvement over the previous quarter so it was good to see. This score is pretty middle-of-the-road in terms of uptime.

The average response time was 650ms with a max response time of 825ms. The performance was good and seemed to be influenced very little by increases in traffic.

Pressable customer support

Pressable’s knowledgebase was fine, but I found it lacking compared to a lot of the other premium providers. Documentation was particularly lacking for more advanced WordPress topics. Even the articles referencing their own customer dashboard typically had screenshots of an old interface.

Pressable’s email and live chat support were both decent, but not overwhelmingly great. Our live chat experience was later changed to a ticket for follow up and resolution, and when we submitted an email, our first reply was roughly 2.5 hours later during US business hours. Not horrible by any means, but certainly an area where we’d like to see some improvement.

Pressable performance benchmarks

Pressable improved by an additional 30% over their previous performance benchmarks which was a really nice step forward. The improvements from the Automattic acquisition appear to be shining now.

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is a new addition in 2019 and they’ve shown early on they’re a strong contender in the space. We have them in the middle of the pack now but with what we’ve seen so far we won’t be surprised watch them continue to climb. Their first showing was impressive.

Getting started with A2 Hosting

Like many of the other providers on this list A2 Hosting using their own flavor of cPanel for site management, so we were familiar with the sign up process. We liked how during onboarding we were able to choose their optimized (Turbo) flavor of WordPress, or exactly what comes from WordPress.org. Many other hosts force their optimized stack on users.

We were up and running very quickly with no noticeable hiccups to speak of. It was a great experience getting started. Kudos to A2 for slick onboarding.

A2 Hosting Uptime

100% uptime (one of only 2 in the entire list) and impressive benchmarks.

Server response time was very good with a 680ms max response time and an average of 434ms.

A2 Hosting customer support

A2 has lots of avenues to get in touch with their support, including an extensive self-serve knowledgebase. They support email, phone, and live chat support.

We opened two separate support cases with A2 and the technician resolved the issues on the first attempt in both cases.

A2 Hosting performance benchmarks

As I mentioned earlier A2 did extremely well in our benchmarks and we’re looking forward to watching them continue to push the competition forward.

iThemes

Please note: iThemes hosting is now part of SolidWP

iThemes hosting just launched this year, making it the newest hosting company in our group. It’s built on LiquidWeb’s infrastructure and we decided to put it to the test because it was a very attractive price point for what seems like a strong value.

The platform showed its youth in our testing, both in terms of maturity of the customer admin area, as well as overall performance and stability.

Getting started with iThemes hosting

We had to do a decent amount of troubleshooting to get our site launched on iThemes. Our configuration was a bit unique since we were using Cloudflare, but it’s certainly not an uncommon configuration. iThemes wouldn’t allow us to change the domain name of our website in the customer area because it needed to detect that the IP address was pointing to iThemes first.

iThemes hosting uptime

After some back and forth with support (who was very helpful) we were able to change the domain name by disabling the proxy at Cloudflare. It wasn’t a big hurdle, but it did sour the initial experience.

iThemes scored 100.00% on uptime with zero outages. This is a massive improvement over the previous quarter when over six hours of downtime were recorded. This huge improvement paired with their high-performance overall has moved them up the ranks from their previous position.

iThemes is doing very well on the performance side of things with a max response time of 680ms, and an average response time of 538ms, iThemes was among our top performers in terms of pure performance. They also beat their own performance scores from the previous quarter by almost 20%!

iThemes hosting customer support

We had two different interactions with iThemes support and in both scenarios, we were helped by knowledgeable staff who were able to help us get to a resolution quickly. In both cases, we got a reply with a solution in under an hour. Unless I missed it, iThemes only has email-based support, which isn’t ideal. That said, if the team has made a habit of closing cases on the first reply, then it’s probably ok.

iThemes hosting performance benchmarks

iThemes performed very well, especially considering it’s $9.00 per month price point. To rank fifth overall in performance with the third lowest price is impressive. Once the platform has some time to mature, iThemes may end up being a heavyweight value.

So, which web hosting company is best?

Here are some of our key takeaways after evaluating all of these WordPress hosting packages:

• Today’s website hosting landscape is highly competitive, which is great for consumers.
• Flywheel is the best hosting provider for most people. Individuals and small businesses will find tremendous value in what they have to offer, and their hosting platform is truly a joy to use.
• WP Engine is the best web hosting service for developers of this testing group. WP Engine’s tools and support are both phenomenal.
• Inmotion Hosting and GreekGeeks are both fantastic, budget-friendly hosting options.
• Bluehost was a disappointment. Lackluster support and mediocre performance aren’t what we would have expected from the most expensive hosting option out there.

Need more guidance on choosing a WordPress Host?

If you’re still having trouble deciding which hosting company is best for your website and business needs, the WordPress experts at SiteCare are here to help.

Whether you run an eCommerce site, deal with high traffic bursts, or manage a membership website, someone from our team can point you in the right direction. Get in touch with us today.

The post Best WordPress Hosting Providers in 2024 Compared appeared first on WordPress Support & Optimization Specialists.

It’s a question that is asked more and more frequently as an increasing number of web hosts introduce their particular flavors of managed hosting.

Before I dive in, let me tell you a story.

Story time!

I remember the first time I tried Airbnb six years ago. After I got past the initial weirdness of sleeping in someone else’s bed and seeing their family photos on the walls, it ended up being a nice way to stay in a comfortable place at a pretty reasonable rate. I definitely still preferred hotels, but it was fine enough.

One of the biggest challenges was having three kids and being in someone else’s house. Not only was I unfamiliar with the layout of the home, I was super anxious about someone else’s stuff getting damaged. There was a general feeling of discomfort that I couldn’t really shake the entire time we were there. At any moment, my kids could pull the TV off the wall or run through a sliding glass door. There was an underlying sense of dread that I couldn’t shed.

To top it off, the host family was in an entirely other country, so if something did go wrong (thankfully, nothing did), I would have felt really helpless.

Let’s fast forward two years later when I tried Airbnb a second time. This time, our welcoming Airbnb host, Claire, lived right next door. If at any point during the stay we needed assistance, Claire was right there to answer questions or give us guidance. Claire gave us the inside scoop on all the best places to eat and the interesting places to visit (that won’t show up on TripAdvisor). And when we needed to know which urgent care was open on Sunday night without Googling every option in town, Claire knew right where to send us for that too (it was a bad tummy ache, nothing serious).

It was an infinitely better experience because not only did we have a great place to stay, but we had Claire serving as a concierge to help guide us along the way. Claire was a truly phenomenal host, and my kids still talk about that vacation and ask to go back all the time.

You Can’t Scale Claire

Now, imagine SiteCare is your website’s Claire.

While it’s true that a managed host can provide a framework or the physical place for your website to live, their ability to enhance the WordPress experience for you is going to be limited. Partially because it’s very hard to provide that level of service at scale, and partially because it doesn’t make sense from a financial or liability standpoint.

Think about what it would take for a web host with a million customers to provide Claire’s level of assistance. That type of 1 on 1 guidance at any kind of scale is essentially impossible to recreate.

Not to mention that even if a web host decided they wanted to pursue a true concierge experience, the amount of money and talented individuals required to make it a reality removes it as an option for most hosting providers.

And assuming those high-ranking C-level executives decide they’d like to pursue providing the best support experience in the history of web hosting, how do they convince a customer to spend over per month for an add-on, when the primary product is only? At best, there’s some pushback from the marketing department, and a mutiny is a lot more likely.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that all of these things get figured out; why would it still make sense to work with SiteCare when you have managed hosting?

Challenges Facing Managed Hosting Providers

I’d say the biggest challenge facing managed hosting providers is that most of their decisions must be made on a very large scale. From an organizational standpoint, they don’t really have the ability to provide a customized experience for their customers, even if they really want to. Some scrappy new providers are able to offer a more boutique experience, but those options inevitably end up fading away as their customer base grows.

One of the key components of providing a “platform” is that it’s the same for every customer across the board. Sure, short-term exceptions can be made, but accommodating the unique needs of every web hosting customer simply doesn’t scale. The burden of scale is a necessary evil in the web hosting world. Without a consistent focus on growth, it’s impossible to serve investors and their desires. And even for hosting providers that haven’t taken outside investment (there are very few), it simply isn’t feasible from a logistics standpoint to provide the “full Claire experience” for everyone.

Here are some of the other key challenges that face managed hosting providers:

• Scaling quality support is hard
• There will always be limited expertise on the front lines
• Hosting companies have no motivation to refer elsewhere, even when it’s better for the customer
• Lack of redundancy and any failsafes
• Managed hosts can’t spend time troubleshooting/debugging issues

Meanwhile, a service like SiteCare can help fill in these gaps and enhance the overall experience from a customer’s perspective (which is what matters most in all of this).

Not All Managed Hosting Providers Are Created Equal

This is an article for another day, but I see the phrase “managed hosting” being used pretty liberally these days. For the purposes of this article, we’ll say managed hosting is a provider that maintains not only the server software stack (PHP, MySQL, Apache, NGINX), but also maintains WordPress itself at some level.

The degree to which WordPress is supported varies greatly from one host to another. Some hosts claim to manage updates for themes, plugins, and WordPress core, but the majority don’t make any promises beyond the WordPress core.

And from what we’ve seen, the ones who offer the fully-managed experience have a good deal of caveats and exceptions, too. But, like I said, that’s an article for another day…

Scaling WordPress Support is Hard

I’ve consulted with several hosting companies who want to provide the “SiteCare experience” to their entire customer base, even if it requires additional investment. They see it as a great opportunity from both a goodwill and customer satisfaction standpoint, as well as a new revenue stream standpoint. If there’s one thing we all understand, it’s that web hosting companies love adding new lines of revenue.

One of the major sticking points is the talent acquisition piece. To match the level of service and quality that we’re able to provide at SiteCare, these hosting companies essentially need to have developers in all of their support positions. And even if they decide they can pay developer rates for support roles (I’ve never met one who was willing), finding a group of developers large enough that’s also willing to work support full-time is nearly impossible. Not to mention the internal investment in training and continuous education.

At SiteCare, we have WordPress pros with at least five years of experience in all of our customer-facing positions. More experience means we’ve “seen it all,” and the benefit for our customers is faster resolution times, true solutions (no duct tape jobs), and direct access to a true WordPress professional for all interactions.

Because we don’t have the burden of a massive customer base at SiteCare, slow and steady growth gives us the ability to find the right people to work on our support team without facing the same scaling challenges that would exist immediately with a large hosting provider.

Limited Experience on the Front Lines

I’m not really sure why this is, probably because of people’s inherent need to graduate in their prospective job roles, but in my experience, the most junior people are always on the front lines at a web hosting company.

To me, that’s a little counter-intuitive from a customer experience standpoint, but I also understand that the best opportunity for support agents to learn is on the front lines, too. It’s a tough balance to strike, no doubt.

Another major advantage of working with our support team is that we have direct Tier 2 or Tier 3 access to many of the major hosting providers. This means that if we identify an obscure issue with your hosting provider, we can jump directly into conversations with more experienced technicians for faster resolutions for our clients.

We “skip the line,” so to speak, which allows us to start working on fixes without a bunch of unnecessary back and forth. They know that if it’s the SiteCare team bringing the issue to the table, all of the troubleshooting best practices have already been exhausted.

What if You’re Not With the Right Web Host?

There are a number of factors that go into choosing the right web host, and in my experience, hosting companies are rarely the ones to recommend a change. They definitely don’t have Cole’s Santa Claus mentality of sending you to the best host to meet your specific needs, even if they’re not the right fit.

Most web hosting companies have just enough bravado to believe they’re the best option for pretty much anybody. If you’re having performance issues, “just upgrade your plan.”

Or if you’re paying an exorbitant amount of money in overages every month, you “just need to reduce the footprint of your website.”

Rarely, if ever, will your current web host make a recommendation to move to a competitor.

But the reality is there are very few “one-size-fits-all” providers, and we can help you navigate that decision process.

With our uptime and performance tracking, we can be a watchdog and advocate for all of our clients. If your hosting provider is price-gouging, has less-than-stellar uptime, or isn’t loading your website as quickly as another host can, we can make smart recommendations to help you find the best fit. We’re intimately familiar with the current hosting landscape (as well as its history), and call help you get to the host where your website is fastest, best protected, all while keeping your budget constraints in mind.

Infrastructure Concerns

Allow me to share a few horror stories from personal experiences I’ve had with managed hosting providers. I’ve seen everything from extended downtime to fatal errors, to total loss of customer data.

I still won’t forget the time a friend of mine sent me a panicked text message because his managed host was hit by a DDoS attack and was offline for the first 72 hours of a major product launch. They estimated losing roughly K per day because their website was offline. As I tried to help him get the site online elsewhere, we found that the backups for the website were stored in the same data center as the website that was under attack. That meant we couldn’t even download the site and restore it elsewhere. We just had to wait until the attack was mitigated.

Had external backups been happening, we could have had the site back online with another provider within 3 hours, not 3 days.

Of course, that’s an extreme example but there are plenty of similar examples that we see all the time:

• Web hosts made a big push for PHP 7 two years ago, and we saw a big uptick in new customers because sites had strange errors or were completely offline because of the PHP upgrade. Hosts made PHP upgrades across the entire platform, and if that upgrade broke websites, site owners were stuck until someone (us) could correct the issue for them. This resulted in lost sales and frustrated customers for the businesses we assist. Beyond assisting in crisis mode, our team helps our clients by staging updates for major changes like PHP versions before there’s a problem.
• Themes are frequently overwritten due to automated updates. This is usually due to ignoring best practices like child themes, but once the theme has been overwritten, the website almost always has display issues, and hosts are reluctant to get involved once things are in disarray. Our team can prevent automated updates from wrecking websites and can also assist with setting up child themes. We want to set you up so things don’t break in the first place.
• In 2017, we had a client hosted with a very popular managed host. Due to a support technician error, the server cluster where our client’s site was hosted was completely obliterated. Years of content and images were lost in one failed keystroke. One technician with permissions beyond their skill level could have ruined our client’s livelihood in an instant. It was an amazing feeling to confidently reply to our panicked client that we’d have their site up and running again in no time.

That’s why when people look specifically at the fact that we have some overlapping services with managed hosting providers and wonder why they should pay for them again, I’m quick to point out that it’s an additional level of protection. In the same way, I wouldn’t trust all my computer backups to iCloud, I won’t trust all of my website backups to my web host either.

A SiteCare hosting plan is another level of redundancy to protect your online business. Should your web host’s data center completely melt and disappear, you’ll still have a backup with SiteCare that can be restored at a new provider.

Support Is Always Going to Be Limited

One of the unspoken secrets of managed hosting is that support is always going to be limited. In fact, we have a number of customers who come to us because they were told by their hosting provider to “contact their developer for help.”

While it’s true that many providers have automated processes for updating plugins, and can restore your site should an update cause a failure, that’s typically where the support experience ends — with a recommendation to contact a WordPress developer for an actual solution.

I’ve assembled the help articles and FAQs from a number of major providers, and they all have pretty similar language. In Airbnb terms, if the faucet only puts out cold water, you need to call a plumber.

• WP Engine’s Scope of Support
• What GoDaddy’s Premium Support Won’t Do
• Where Does Pagely Support Draw the Line
• Bluehost Policy RegardingScripting, Coding & Third Party Produce Issues
• Pressable: What We Do, And How We Can Help

The gist of all of them is that their support typically ends with applying WordPress updates, with a few minor exceptions. The great thing about working with WP Site Care is that we can take care of much more advanced troubleshooting. You get two hours of development and troubleshooting time included in our Pro plan, and even on our basic WP Site Care plan, you can add as many hours as you need for resolutions of especially sticky issues. We’ll stay with you until the problem is taken care of for good!

Managed Hosting and SiteCare are Better Together

We recommend managed hosting to pretty much all of our clients these days. There are clear benefits to managed hosting over shared hosting and even most VPS options. It’s a great value and does solve a lot of common issues we see with other types of hosting.

But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t holes in what’s being offered to customers. We want to bring you the full Claire experience. We want to make the headaches of uptime, performance, support uncertainty, and the general frustration that can come with working with WordPress a thing of the past. Simply put, SiteCare and Managed Hosting are better together.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you get the most out of that managed hosting plan that you’re paying for, contact our team, and we’ll be happy to show you the way.

The post Why Choose SiteCare When You Already Have Managed Hosting? appeared first on WordPress Support & Optimization Specialists.

It depends.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are some of the major things that play into our web hosting recommendation.

• Does the user need email hosting?
• Does the user have a setup that requires a special server configuration?
• Does the user have a lot of traffic, or is their site traffic fairly light?
• How fast do they plan on growing that traffic?
• Do they run a food or photo blog that will require a huge amount of storage, or do they mainly write blog posts?
• What’s the user’s budget?
• How important is security?
• What would be the potential fallout if they were hacked?

It’s no wonder that people get confused by the world of web hosting. It’s a minefield of information, and it seems like most WordPress host reviews are either 1) a thinly veiled sales pitch aimed at earning affiliate income, 2) are based on the experience of one individual over a short period of time, or 3) don’t fully take into account the shopper’s needs. If you’re looking for some data-driven performance comparisons, our WordPress performance comparison post is a good place to start.

Affiliate Income Isn’t Evil

Earning money by recommending a service that you truly support and stand by is awesome. The issue with web hosting affiliate programs is that there is no “one size fits all” solution, and many affiliates paint their preferred provider as the end all be all in web hosting when that’s not the case.

As a developer, I understand the value of a WP Engine account, and for the most part, I’ve been extremely pleased with their service and support. Still, no matter how much I may want them to be the mother of my virtual babies, they aren’t going to be the only host that I recommend to people.

They don’t fit everyone’s needs. And in my opinion, that’s just great. A hobby blogger doesn’t necessarily need an optimized software stack that uses varnish caching or an Nginx web server running on an SSD with a 99.999% SLA. Twenty-seven daily visitors don’t require that level of optimization or attention, especially when twenty-five of them were your mom.

If you’re a writer of online hosting reviews, and your review is positive enough that you want to recommend a company to your readers, please make it a point to let them know which type of customer is going to be best served before you go cashing that affiliate check.

Glowingly Positive or Downright Awful

Have you ever read a web hosting review that said, “The service was pretty mediocre. I mean, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t particularly good either. I’ll keep using them, but only because I’m too lazy to move my stuff elsewhere.”

Probably not.

It’s for the same reason that very few people go to Yelp to write a review about their experience at a new Thai restaurant that didn’t underwhelm or exceed expectations. “It was about what you’d expect from a Thai restaurant. The curry was flavorful, but I’ve had better.”

The main difference between chicken dumplings and Cloud-based VPS is that people are insanely protective of their web projects. They can eat a bad dumpling and move on, but take their app offline for four minutes, and the rage of a thousand suns will pulse through their veins.

Reviews are left by people who are either extremely satisfied or extremely pissed off. There’s rarely a middle ground. People who have the ability to remain objective, especially when it’s their own code at stake, should make it a point to write hosting reviews. I’ll read your stuff. You are the chosen ones.

Ask Questions and Please Listen

It always scares me a little bit when a person or company evangelizes a particular web host for the masses. It’s dangerous territory. In many groups or forums I’m in, people will ask, “what do you think about X host?” and without fail, the first responders chime in saying, “I LOVE THEM SO MUCH THEY MAKE PUPPIES TALK AND FILL MY MOUTH WITH DELICIOUS ICE CREAM TREATS AND OH YEAH SOMETIMES I DO THINGS ON THE INTERNET THERE TOO HERE’S MY AFFILIATE LINK!!!“

Rarely, and I mean rarely, do people ask more questions about the individual or company. Or even make a recommendation with a qualifier like “They’re great if you plan to do X…”

Let’s make an effort to find out which problem we’re solving before we give a blanket “this host is the best” answer. Putting our own best interest aside for a few minutes will result in the best solution for the people around us and build long-term trust.

The Dangers of the “One Host” Recommendation

Not only does recommending only one host do everything for everyone to make sense, but it can also be dangerous. Take a look at a few examples:

For the longest time, the iThemes team recommended HostGator as their preferred web host, only to have HostGator throw BackupBuddy, iThemes’ flagship product, under the bus right along with their long long-term working relationship. That’s obviously not the iThemes team’s fault by any means, but it is something that can happen in this crazy world of business that we live in. For what it’s worth, iThemes now recommend Site5.

Joost de Valk of Yoast.com recommended VPS.net for the longest time, and many people signed up for their service due to that recommendation. Then, after a series of outages and no communication with customers, people started tipping over cars and lighting things on fire, at least in a virtual sense. Somehow, through all of this and due to his allegiance and affiliation with VPS.net, Joost found himself doing PR for VPS.net. He now recommends Synthesis.

Obviously, not every web host is going to purposefully sever a relationship or miss the mark when it comes to living up to an expectation that’s been set by our recommendation, but that’s a risk we take when we “put all of our eggs into one basket” so to speak.

If we diversify our recommendations based on the needs of the people we’re helping, we not only minimize the risk of having everything blow up in our face if the host decides to escape to the Bahamas and never talk to anyone ever again, but we also become a trusted resource for clients and friends, which is pretty awesome.

What has your experience been with web hosting recommendations or reviews? Good, bad, ugly? Chat it up in the comments!

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