Choosing a website hosting company isn’t easy. There are many hosting companies with quite a range in both pricing and the service they offer. And it can be such a pain to make the wrong choice and have to move your website. I’ve dealt with many different hosting companies from bad to fair to good. In this post I’ll give you my number one WordPress hosting recommendation and why I think they are worth their weight in gold.
Hosting Nightmares
Recently WordPress websites worldwide were under brute force attack. This caused a lot of problems for many hosting companies. Of all the websites I manage, my own site dandelionwebde.wpengine.com suffered the most.
Six times in as many weeks the host company took down my site saying…
“Your account, or a portion or feature of it, has caused an overload on one of our servers. As you are on a shared hosting environment, we must maintain certain levels of performance for all customers on the server. This is monitored by us and we send these notifications out when we notice that a certain account is causing a load on the server degrading performance for everyone else.”
I reviewed my site. Removed plugins. Read everything I could find on forums. I would then receive a message congratulating me on resolving the issue, only to have the site taken down the following week.
This was totally unacceptable. As a Toronto web designer, my website is the face of my company. It doesn’t look good to have my own website taken down. I needed to move to a different host and I wanted one that specializes in hosting WordPress.
Managed WordPress hosting solutions
Over the last few years as WordPress popularity has grown, hosts that host WordPress sites exclusively have appeared on the scene. These hosts have optimized their servers for WordPress offering the best performance and security possible.
One such host is WP Engine. I first learned of WP Engine and the whole concept of Managed WordPress hosting when WP Engine sponsored WordCamp Toronto 2012.
Pay more for hosting = get more from your host
Yes, managed WordPress hosting is pricier, we’re talking $29/month compared to low-end $6/month hosting. But the service is so worth it. Cheap hosting may offer support that is acceptable but they can’t match WP Engine for speed, security and peace of mind!
The WP Engine Difference
Speed
Just prior to the brute force attacks, I moved a client to WP Engine. She had tried two hosts previously but no matter what plugins we installed or uninstalled, or theme changes we made, the speed of her site was very inconsistent. Moving to WP Engine has made all the difference in the world. Her site is now consistently very fast. The difference was remarkable.
Page speed is a ranking factor for SEO. The faster a website loads, the better it is for user experience. I’m thrilled with my site’s improved page load speed since moving to WP Engine.
Security
It has happened time and again. Clients have failed to keep WordPress and plugins updated and their websites have been hacked. WP Engine won’t let this happen. The WP Engine guarantee: “We’ll do everything we can to ensure your site won’t get hacked. And if your site still gets hacked, we’ll fix it … at no additional charge to you.”
Restore Points & automatic nightly backups
After moving my site to WP Engine (before I set it live) I was playing with different plugins. I installed one and instantly regretted it. My heart sank as I realized my custom post types and posts were now all mixed together. I took a deep breath and thought about what changes I had made that day, as they were minimal, I simply went to the WP Engine user portal area and clicked to restore my site to the previous evenings automatic restore point. Within moments I was back where I started the day. I’ve now learned my lesson. Before adding a plugin (don’t ignore the prompt) — create a manual restore point.
There’s more …
WP Engine provides a staging area to simplify development. You can play around with site changes without worrying about impacting your live site.
And the WP Engine tech support staff know WordPress. Other hosting companies won’t address issues they consider to be caused by third party applications.
Get started with WP Engine
If you sign up through this affiliate link you will be able to use my discount coupon code. I really believe that WordPress managed hosting is the best solution available for hosting your WordPress site.
Let me know about your WP Engine experience by adding a comment below.
It is terrible when your website goes down. Having a website that is the face of your business can be a great thing (low overhead, convenience, etc.), but a reliable host is a must. Thanks for the recommendation.
Hey Ruth!
Thanks so much for the amazing review of WP Engine 🙂 We’re very glad your site is much happier and you don’t have to worry about uptime now that you’re hosting on our servers. Welcome to the family!
Let us know if we can ever do anything to help you out: austin@wpengine.com.
-Austin Gunter
Check out WPOven.com, I shifted from wp-engine to wpoven. I am really happy with the people at WPOven till now
Ruth, I was looking around at web hosting companies after having some trouble installing Jetpack on Bluehost. WP Engine came up and then I remembered the post you wrote about a great hosting company. Daily backups sounds sweet and the staging area where I can try new themes is also really cool. I hope to be able to give the site a try soon.
John
Great John. You’ll be amazed at how much faster your site will be. Please use my affiliate link to sign up 🙂
I’ll do that when I sign up Ruth. I can do that much for all the help you and your blog have given me.