We’re a Digital Society, and we have no patience for anything that’s slow!
Remember when the internet was like this?
Back in the 2000’s it was a race to the bottom with web hosting. The internet was slow and sites were simple. Web hosting was an afterthought. We would chase cheaper prices with more inclusions. As long as the host didn’t turn out to be a complete lemon, we didn’t really care much about it. Everything was slow, if the host was a bottle neck, you’d be doing well to notice because we were conditioned to sluggishness.
Today it’s a different picture. Site’s are far more complicated and chock full of features. Luckily to accomodate more complicated sites internet access speeds are fast and getting faster – 4G is standard, 5G is coming, and the giant NBN snail is slowly getting there. Speed is now what we expect. Behemoths like Facebook and Google provide unreal speeds within their services, and we now expect it everywhere. In this environment it is painfully obvious if your site is slow, and your visitors won’t stick around to wait. There are many things you can do to improve website performance, but step one is definitely to put your site on a good quality host. That cheap host from a decade ago isn’t going to cut it.
WP-Engine = Fast
WP-Engine is a performance host optimised specifically for WordPress sites. It is really really fast.
For performance hosting iCreate has previously used our own Virtual Private Server (VPS) in a Sydney data centre that was considerably faster than standard shared hosting. But after talking to many other developers and hosting experts, we decided to have a good close look at WP-Engine. Our own benchmark testing totally blew us away, and after about six months of putting both our site and client sites on WP-Engine we have become strong advocates. It is super fast, and also ultra reliable.
Checkout this video for a good overview
But wait there’s more…
It also has a number of developer-friendly features, such as an included staging server feature, which allows us to create a temporary copy of your website in seconds. This site is accessed on a private URL, and allows us to make changes or develop new features without it affecting customers on your live site. Once approved, changes are instantly merged back in. This can be done with traditional hosting through manual methods, but adds considerable time and cost to the job. So if you are likely to have web developers working on your website, this feature alone will pay for any increase in hosting cost.
Ok it’s good. How much?
At $35 USD per month, WP-engine is naturally a bit more expensive than cheap hosting you may have used in the past, but it is excellent value compared with trying to get comparable performance through a managed VPS or other service.
How to get it.
If you’re an iCreate customer, or would like us to tell you more, just contact us. We can arrange moving you across to WP-Engine, as well as undertake all the technical steps involved in migrating a website.
If you are looking to learn more, or want to arrange hosting yourself. Visit the WP-Engine website