Has anyone tried Wordpress hosting?

[MyronGainz]

Came across these sites:

http://wpengine.com/
http://websynthesis.com/
http://www.dreamhost.com/dreampress/

They claim they specialize in hosting Wordpress sites and claim better performance, they charge more as well...wonder if the claims are actually true.

Anyone have experience using Wordpress-specific hosting?

 

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[harerace]

It doesn't matter. WP is highly optimize for whatever.

 

[Darius]

I say use any hosting you like & use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) such as Amazon AWS to speed it up to the extreme.

 

[100k]

http://trafficplanet.com/index.php?...ese-hosting-companies-for-money-sites-part-1/

 

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[Lauryn]

From what I understand, they don't have Wordpress hosting. They own their own servers, and have their own Wordpress themes. You have to use their themes or agree to use Wordpress in order to host with them.

In exchange they promise better speeds and premium service. In a nutshell, as Darius says:

I say use any hosting you like & use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) such as Amazon AWS to speed it up to the extreme.

 

[MyronGainz]

Amazing responses, thank you guys! Those sites are very well marketed and quite convincing.

 

[pinekoan]

Unless you know you're going to be saturated with 10,000 concurrent requests or something (which you're not, since you're asking about WP hosting) don't even worry about "performance optimization". The only resource you should be optimizing at this stage is your time. Pick the service which does that the best, i.e. you the one where you spend the least amount of time getting your needs met.

 

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[TJPB]

I am using Synthesis hosting for my WordPress eCommerce site and so far it's been awesome. One major thing to consider is customer service....I get responses to any questions I submit within minutes. Also, these guys are WordPress experts themselves. If I'm having any issues with WP, I first ask the Synthesis guys as they normally have an answer (even if it's unrelated to hosting).

All of their hosting is optimized for WP. You get backups and W3 Total Cache (and config) included. These guys really know what they're doing. Also, they take care of installing WP for you and even migrating your site if you need.

And no, you don't have to use any customized themes with Synthesis (not sure about the others).

I like them so much I just upgraded to their VPS service.

Fyi...they have an unpublished VPS service they offer for $47 to customers on their starter plans that want to upgrade.

 

[MyronGainz]

From what I understand, they don't have Wordpress hosting. They own their own servers, and have their own Wordpress themes. You have to use their themes or agree to use Wordpress in order to host with them.

In exchange they promise better speeds and premium service. In a nutshell, as Darius says:

I think it's more or less, you pay more money than regular hosting companies and you get better performance for Wordpress sites.

I just want to substantiate this claim, I don't mind paying more as long as the claim of better performance is true

 

[MyronGainz]

I am using Synthesis hosting for my WordPress eCommerce site and so far it's been awesome. One major thing to consider is customer service....I get responses to any questions I submit within minutes. Also, these guys are WordPress experts themselves. If I'm having any issues with WP, I first ask the Synthesis guys as they normally have an answer (even if it's unrelated to hosting).

All of their hosting is optimized for WP. You get backups and W3 Total Cache (and config) included. These guys really know what they're doing. Also, they take care of installing WP for you and even migrating your site if you need.

And no, you don't have to use any customized themes with Synthesis (not sure about the others).

I like them so much I just upgraded to their VPS service.

Fyi...they have an unpublished VPS service they offer for $47 to customers on their starter plans that want to upgrade.

Have you tried hosting Wordpress sites on regular hosting companies before? Do you find the load times on Synthesis noticeably faster? Could you send me a link to the VPS service you use from Synthesis?

Thanks pal.

 

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[youngtrep]

As a complete beginner on wordpress (although I have now learned a ton) I went with bluehost for my site. So far I couldn't be happier. They have one click install for wordpress, super simple webmail setup and everything else you could want on a very clean control panel. I was also able to integrate cloudflare on my site with one click which has made a noticeable speed improvement for free.

 

[MyronGainz]

As a complete beginner on wordpress (although I have now learned a ton) I went with bluehost for my site. So far I couldn't be happier. They have one click install for wordpress, super simple webmail setup and everything else you could want on a very clean control panel. I was also able to integrate cloudflare on my site with one click which has made a noticeable speed improvement for free.

Most hosting companies provide 1-click WP installs via cPanel. Cloudflare is a CDN, correct?

 

[The-J]

I've been working with a fellow Fastlaner who is using WPEngine. Their service is actually really solid.

I will say a couple of benefits to it that we use daily:

1) The support, number one. They have live chat, they are extremely responsive on the phone (they don't automatically try to transfer you AND they'll write you up a ticket on the phone!) and they really do give you the vibe that they want to help. You could call 3 times in a day and they'll help you all 3 times.

2) The 1-click staging environment. Most development enviroments are confusing, require FTP access, all that bullshit. There's none of that bullshit here. We do changes in the staging, roll the changes out with one simply click.

3) It's blazing fast. We ran WP on a local web host and after a bit of optimization it ran pretty nicely but still not fast enough. We switched to WP Engine and the site literally went zoom, with very little optimization needed.

It's not without hiccups, though. There is, of course, downtime and we've had some issues with the staging environment (it sometimes doesn't do what you want it to do).

It's also very (very!) expensive as far as hosting is concerned. For their price you can get dedicatedhosting and do everything yourself.

EDIT: I forgot to add: they have their own CDN, their own caching, and their own on-site speed optimization. You don't have to lift a finger.

 

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[TJPB]

Have you tried hosting Wordpress sites on regular hosting companies before? Do you find the load times on Synthesis noticeably faster? Could you send me a link to the VPS service you use from Synthesis? Thanks pal.

It's not listed on their web site. But it's exactly the same as their Professional VPS play here...

http://websynthesis.com/pricing/

But with slightly lower technical specs. Scroll down the list of what you get and it's obviously they offer a lot more value.

I have used other hosting services that are cheaper, but none of them provide the speed and service I get with Synthesis.

 

[TJPB]

Most hosting companies provide 1-click WP installs via cPanel....

http://websynthesis.com/demise-of-cpanels/

 

[MyronGainz]

I've been working with a fellow Fastlaner who is using WPEngine. Their service is actually really solid.

I will say a couple of benefits to it that we use daily:

1) The support, number one. They have live chat, they are extremely responsive on the phone (they don't automatically try to transfer you AND they'll write you up a ticket on the phone!) and they really do give you the vibe that they want to help. You could call 3 times in a day and they'll help you all 3 times.

2) The 1-click staging environment. Most development enviroments are confusing, require FTP access, all that bullshit. There's none of that bullshit here. We do changes in the staging, roll the changes out with one simply click.

3) It's blazing fast. We ran WP on a local web host and after a bit of optimization it ran pretty nicely but still not fast enough. We switched to WP Engine and the site literally went zoom, with very little optimization needed.

It's not without hiccups, though. There is, of course, downtime and we've had some issues with the staging environment (it sometimes doesn't do what you want it to do).

It's also very (very!) expensive as far as hosting is concerned. For their price you can get dedicatedhosting and do everything yourself.

Thanks for sharing our experience!

Just read through this:

http://trafficplanet.com/index.php?...ese-hosting-companies-for-money-sites-part-1/

And it looks like there are a few limited capabilities such as no email creation?

 

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[MyronGainz]

http://websynthesis.com/demise-of-cpanels/

Great read. I am truly one of those people that is so attached to cPanel, jsut because that is what I'm so used to and never had a problem with it, that I could not imagine using something else.

 

[TJPB]

...And it looks like there are a few limited capabilities such as no email creation?

Correct. "Pure" hosting companies are dropping support for email accounts.....if they ever had them. I prefer email hosted separately from my site. I personally use Google for $5 a month.

 

[MyronGainz]

Correct. "Pure" hosting companies are dropping support for email accounts.....if they ever had them. I prefer email hosted separately from my site. I personally use Google for $5 a month.

I wasn't aware that google had paid services for this. How does it work? You're not talking about gmail right? Your email address is still yourname@yourcompany.com?

Thanks for our posts, very helpful!

 

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[TJPB]

I wasn't aware that google had paid services for this. How does it work? You're not talking about gmail right? Your email address is still yourname@yourcompany.com?

Thanks for our posts, very helpful!

Yes sir...they do. And correct....its myname@mycompany.com.

https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.html

 

[Phones]

I recommend SiteGround, best value/price out there. They have their own tools for Wordpress and Magento Caching. And their support is ubber awesome, I posted a low priority ticket at 2am, they fixed the issue and replied in under 3 minutes.

 

[MyronGainz]

Yes sir...they do. And correct....its myname@mycompany.com.

https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.html

Thanks for this, looks awesome!

 

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[healthstatus]

Unless you know you're going to be saturated with 10,000 concurrent requests or something

actually it is closer to 150 concurrent requests, but you are correct if you aren't doing 15,000 visitors a day average, any stock hosting will do well as long as your theme is well designed and you use some of the basic WP cache plugins. If you are doing that much I can point you at a few things that will help speed you up, or just Google optimize wordpress and you will get most of the things I would suggest.

 

[Mugen]

@MyronGainz - I would recommend Traffic Planet hosting if you want a hosting company that's truly optimized for WP performance.

@The-J - You may want to check out these articles:

http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/reviews/webhost-trusted-wp-engine-hijacked-business-avoid-them/
http://auditwp.com/wp-engine-seo-failboat/

 

[Mmoore28]

Came across these sites:

http://wpengine.com/
http://websynthesis.com/
http://www.dreamhost.com/dreampress/

They claim they specialize in hosting Wordpress sites and claim better performance, they charge more as well...wonder if the claims are actually true.

Anyone have experience using Wordpress-specific hosting?

HostGator.com has some great hosting and reseller packages. Try them out.

 

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[rcdlopez]

If you want a better performing site the best thing to do is setup a CDN. I use WP Engine for a high traffic site of mine but I didn't sign up for it because of any performance claims. The biggest reason why I choose it was because WP Engine has an easy to use staging environment which I really liked. I never heard of WP Engine until I started working as a developer for a small start up that hosted their site on it. After working with it I decided to try it out myself for a site I wanted to launch and I've never had problems with them. The company I worked for had hundred of videos and received over 6,000 visitors a day and we never had any issues with performance. They did however use amazon Cloudfront CDN which improved reliability substantially.