A Comparison ofWordPress Hosting Companies

by Bridget Wessel

My Hosting Background:

★ I do not participate in any hosting affiliate programs★ I advise my clients on where to host★ Currently manage over 50 WordPress client websites★ These sites are hosted at many places including:

○ Site 5○ Hurricane Electric○ Go Daddy○ Dreamhost○ SiteGround○ Client hosts their own

○ WP Engine○ Pressable○ Flywheel○ HostGator○ Media Temple

Things to Consider when Evaluating a Web Host:

1. Security2. Backups3. Support4. Speed5. Price

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Limit Comparison to:

1. Traditional Shared Hosts: HostGator, GoDaddy, Dreamhost

2. Pressable3. Flywheel4. WP Engine5. SiteGround

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Security: Why it’s number 1 on my list

Wordpress is like the Microsoft of CMS’s. Many people use it but not everyone secures it appropriately.

● Hackers can cast a wide net by targeting WordPress websites. WordPress powers over 20% of the web.

● When a vulnerability is released, everyone knows about it. Source code freely available.

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Security: Traditional Shared Hosts

You are largely on your own. You get hacked, you fix it. Up to you to install plugins, etc. to secure your site.

Shared hosts are usually on Apache so you can edit .htaccess files and install your own security plugins.

On traditional shared hosts, be sure to: http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPressandhttp://www.slideshare.net/perezbox

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Security: Pressable and Flywheel

● Include free malware scanning and removal.

● All use nginx so you can’t use .htaccess files.

● Flywheel uses Sucuri and proprietary software to monitor malware and usage. All their sites are on VPS. (Synthesis does this too.)

● I’ve had brute force login attempts on sites at Pressable and Flywheel. Probably want to use a plugin like BruteProtect to help stop brute force login attempts.

Photo from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cseeman/8503872020

Security: Limit Login Attempts

Security: WP Engine● WP Engine is most upfront about security on

their website.

● WP Engine has something in place to block IPs based off of their behavior. It's at the server-level and is made in house. It's intelligent enough to discern spikes of traffic vs. a brute force or DDoS so generally their system has you covered. (Response from chat with WP Engine.)

● However - I’ve had brute force login attempts on sites at WP Engine.

● Force Strong Passwords plugin installed in Must-Use plugins.

Photo from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cseeman/8503872020

Security: SiteGround● Includes site cleaning and restore from

backups.

● Does not include malware scanning, but can add on Hackalert for $12/year which emails site admin a weekly report and immediately notifies if a possible malware threat has been detected or your site is blacklisted.

● Free CloudFlare account can be turned on through cpanel.

● Probably want to add BruteProtect by Parka to protect against brute login attacks.

● Uses Apache so you can add double login authentication and other .htaccess security WordPress essentials.

● Security is not as automatic as others, but tools are available and easy to set up.

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Backups

Never assume you’ll never need a backup.

Things happen: hard drives fail, sites get hacked.

Never leave your website up to chance.

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Backups: Shared Web Hosts

Always check your hosts backup policy.

HostGator does not guarantee backups and only backs up 1x per week on a random day. They offer a Cloud Backup plan starting at $20/year.

Site 5 backs up every night and stores backups for 30 days. Fill out a form to request a restore.

Backups: Pressable

● Nightly file backups. Keeps 2 days of file backups and 14 days of database backups.

● No access through control panel to these backups. Have to submit a ticket to restore from backup. Restorations are included in monthly hosting fees.

● They suggest you also backup offsite to Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files and have a tool through their control panel to do so.

Backups: Flywheel● Data and files backed up nightly, stored for 30 days.

● You can manually create a backup at any time.

● You can restore data straight from their control panel - no ticket required.

● Files backed up: WordPress folder, including uploaded files, database dump.

Backups: WP Engine● Data and files backed up nightly, stored for ~40 days.

● You can manually create a backup at any time.

● You can restore wp-content, excluding uploads, and database from control panel.

● Files backed up: wp-content, database dump. Uploads folder is stored separately and you’ll need support ticket to restore.

Backups: SiteGround● Data and files backed up daily, stored for 30 days.

● You can manually create a backup at any time.

● Files separate from database backups.

Support

How quickly are servers brought back up when something goes wrong?

How easy is it to get ahold of someone on the weekend or at night?

Can you call and talk to someone?

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Support: Shared Web Hosts

Usually shared web hosts are big and have support staff available 24/7.

They try to be helpful, but their support staff has to support all kinds of websites hosted on their servers and are not WordPress experts.

Support: Pressable

● Extended email support from 8am - 10pm (CST) M-F and 24x7x365 email support for system wide emergency issues. (No phone support.)

● Have tech support during the weekend, however staffing is not as robust as during the week. After hours, support tickets are answered in the order received the next business day, unless a server goes down which is attended to immediately.

● Control panel has a web form to submit help request on every page.● Downtime is notified through http://status.pressable.com/

Support: Flywheel● Chat support is open from 9am - 5pm CST. Phone support is open from 9am-7pm CST

(888) 928-8882. Have 24/7 emergency email support, and someone is always on call.

● Control panel has chat box on every page.● Support through chat box has been very good. More complex issues can take a bit to

work through. ○ It took about a week to work through speed issues on a website with their support.

Flywheel did find a Wishlist plugin that was causing site to not cache though. ○ I noticed a site was under a brute force login attack on July 4th and received a response

quickly.

● Support is available over weekends/evenings through email. I had a site go down over a weekend and it took a little over an hour for the tech to get server back up.

● Emailing support puts you into their ticketing system.

Support: WP Engine

● Chat support is open Mon-Fri, 9am-8pm CDT. Phone support is only available on Professional plans ($99/mo). Have 24/7 emergency email support, and someone is always on call.

● Have ticketing system.● WP Engine is busy. I had to wait over 24 hours for a small

configuration change. They say support time will go down as they hire more people.

Support: SiteGround

● Bigger company (supporting any kind of website) so probably don’t have WordPress “experts” available. Chat and phone number listed in control panel.

● Also ticketing system.

Speed

Speed is important.

Nobody wants to wait for a slow site, especially on their mobile phone or tablet. Mobile and tablet is a fast growing audience - over 50% of visitors on some of my clients’ sites.

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Speed: Shared Web Hosts

Shared web hosts are usually slower and I’ve found caching plugins do not make much difference if the server is slow.

Your site may start off reasonably fast, but as the server is loaded with other sites, it can end up slow over time.

Speed: Pressable

● “Advanced shared hosting environment.” Servers specifically configured for WordPress to improve site performance. Added optimizations that improve speed and stability. Also, all sites are hosted on intelligent load balancers, so if another site gets a spike in traffic, your site isn't affected.

● CDN is set up on your site automagically. ● Caching uses batcache as a page cache and stores that in memcache. It's able

to rapidly serve cached pages to visitors of your site.● The 5 sites I host at Pressable don’t pass Google’s Server Response time test.

Pressable’s response to this is: “Some providers have a faster first byte time because they only send a small amount of data back. What we do is have the servers do some work before anything is sent back to make the overall site speed faster but of course that shows up as a ‘Slow Response’ times.”

Speed: Flywheel

● Every plan on Flywheel is on a VPS. No resources are shared which is why each site has its own plan.

● I have worked with Flywheel support to help speed up a busy e-commerce website. They were helpful and found a Wishlist plugin that was stopping the server from caching the website.

● Both sites I host at Flywheel report decent Google PageSpeed Server Response times of .47 & .30 seconds during my recent test. *One site did need to be upgraded to $75 plan to get this speed, but is a busy e-commerce website.

WP Engine consistently passes server response time test on Google Page Speed on all 6 client sites I have there - including one Multisite with 2 sites.

Speed: SiteGround

The one site I have at SiteGround passes server response time test on Google Page Speed. Site is on WordPress GoGeek plan with their SuperCacher turned on. I am impressed with how responsive the site is: www.midwestigrescue.com

Speed: WP Engine

Not one of the 30+ websites I host on a traditional shared host pass the Google Page Speed server response time test. Only sites that pass Google Page Speed server response time test are: 6 at WP Engine, 3 on DV server at Media Temple, and 1 at SiteGround on WordPress GoGeek plan. All these sites have caching turned on.

Speed: Additional Notes

Caching

● Pressable, Flywheel and WP Engine take care of caching for you. Caching is all set up and turned on by default.

● Purging the cache: Changes to external files like javascript and CSS require a cache purge. Flywheel, Pressable and SiteGround cache purge is in their control panel - which you have to log into separately. *WP Engine cache purge is available through the WordPress dashboard.*

● SiteGround’s cache needs to be turned on through control panel. Three different levels can be configured.

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Price

WordPress managed hosting and additional features comes at a higher price.

Usually clients are fine paying around $30/month if you clearly lay out the benefits ~ and the risks compared to a cheap shared plan.

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Price: Shared Web Hosts

Can range from $5 - $10/month.

Note: SiteGround starts at $9.95/month for WordPress hosting, but in order to get the same benefits as a host like WP Engine, you’ll need their $29.95/month plan.

*SiteGround does do email which Pressable, Flywheel and WP Engine do not do.

Price: Pressable

● Up to 5 sites on $25/mo plan. 15,000 Shared Pageviews.● SSL - Can get certificate elsewhere or through Pressable.

Pressable’s SSL cost is $200 for 2 years. Additional $10/month for SSL support, required for SSL.

● Price per plan goes up in stages for more sites on plan and pageviews.

Price: Flywheel● One site per plan, but sites are on VPS. No shared resources and higher

security.● Tiny plan at $15/month plan for 1 site, but only 5,000 visits/month.● $30 for 1 site 25,000 visits/month● SSL - cost of certificate plus $10/month unless on $75/month plan and above.● Higher priced plans get more resources on the VPS.● Flywheel does not have bulk plan pricing yet. Each site needs its own plan

unless use Multisite.

Price: WP Engine

● $29 for 1 site 25,000 visits/month.● SSL only available on Professional & up plans. 10 WP installs on

Professional $99/month plan. No monthly charge for SSL. Certificate through WP Engine is $45/year.

● Professional plan ($99/mo) has phone support, but Personal plan ($29/mo) does not.

● Can access server logs from control panel. Have to submit support ticket to get server logs from Pressable and Flywheel.

Price: SiteGround

● WordPress hosting plans: $9.95, $14.95 and $29.95/mo. $29.95 plan adds git pre-installed, 1 click staging and less accounts on server.

GIT

● WPEngine: Integrated into WordPress● Pressable & Flywheel: Nothing built in. They recommend

DeployHQ.● SiteGround: On GoGeek plan git is pre-installed and can use their

SG-Git to deploy: http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/siteground-git/github-siteground.htm - (SiteGround also has wp-cli pre-installed.)

CDN

● Pressable: Free on all plans.● Flywheel: +$10 on $15 and $30 plans. Free on higher priced plans.● WPEngine: +$19.95 on $29 plan. Free on higher priced plans.● SiteGround: Free CloudFlare on all accounts, but more options if

pay additional $11.95/mo. (This is cheaper than first paid level through CloudFlare.)

Wrap Up

Resource: www.uptimerobot.com

Follow me on twitter: @bridgetwes

My website: www.unboxinteractive.com

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