At the time of writing the website is hosted with a cheap and cheerful provider that isn’t a specialist WordPress host, and the experience thus far has been… just OK.
With a bit of luck we’ll manage to grow our readership quite quickly, and once we reach a decent audience we’ll need more solid underpinnings. Anyone running and eCommerce store knows that prospective customers start dropping off after you make them wait 3 or 4 seconds, and I would argue that the same is true for publications.
We love WordPress but as a platform it’s a bit convoluted
We’ll cover our choice of tech in a separate post but running a page builder, as we are, is a bit like laying a second CMS over WordPress. Plus you always need a bunch of plugins to fill the functionality gap. The end result is a system made up of many moving parts each demanding love, attention and CPU power.
I don’t know about you but I value my time and having freelanced a fair bit know exactly how much that is in terms of $$$. If a specialist WordPress hosting provider can save me an hour of my time each month then it will have paid for itself and then some.
Mission un-critical
Now, if you’re not running WordPress for anything mission critical, or have plenty of time on your hands, and the skill-set, to look after the technicalities, by all means, go for a cheaper, generalist option. If you’re a SysAdmin gun then you might as well get a bare bone VPS and go nuts.
The WordPress hosting market is growing and evolving. No doubt we’ll see new players launch their service and with that more plans to choose from, including lower cost options. We’ll also see more options at the higher end of the scale catering for the growing Enterprise market.
In the meantime, I better do my research to find the best WordPress host for PressHost. Feel free to recommend one in the comments below.
Jack G.