Review of WPBeast
[eafl id=”565″ name=”WPBeast” text=”WPBeast”] is a WordPress hosting company that claims to provide premium WordPress hosting. I’ve used a range of suppliers in the past, from cheap shared hosting to fully dedicated and extremely expensive hosting, so I wanted to check out WPBeast and see where they fit in the market.
My conclusion? They offer some of the best WordPress hosting available for a great price and I’m sticking with them as one of my providers.
Let’s take a further look at what they are offering.
Dedicated VMs
Most hosting companies are quite opaque about exactly how their systems work. WPBeast just lays it all out there!
They use dedicated Virtual Machines to host each website. In reality, this means your website is hosted on its own virtual environment. This is not the same as a fully dedicated system, where your website is hosted on its own actual server, but it is a virtual equivalent which is far better value, with many of the same benefits.
Features
- One click WordPress installation
- Simple migration – it took me about 2 minutes and was completely free. The help guides are great).
- Free and automatic SSL certificates – for all installations and completely automatic so you don’t need to do anything.
- Staging system – you can create a carbon copy staging site in a few seconds. The best part about their staging system is the ability to deploy any set of files from one website to another. So you could deploy files from a staging site to another staging site, to your main site, to a new site. It’s really flexible.
- Great support team – I’ve had several interactions with the support team and they were great.
- Uptime reporting – from your dashboard you can monitor your uptime, and you even get an email notification to alert you to any changes.
- Free cache and CDN – makes your site even faster.
Pricing
WPBeast are offering 2 main packages and a bespoke solution.
Pro: Starting at 1 install, From 25k visits, From 10gb storage, SSL and CDN ready, Dedicated web server, Uptime reporting, Easy migration, Staging and backups. Starts at $29.95 per month.
Enterprise: Starting at 1 install, From 35k visits, From 20gb storage, SSL and CDN ready, Dedicated web server, Uptime reporting, Easy migration, Staging and backups. Starts at $39.95 per month.
Bespoke: Fully dedicated servers, Premium support times, Migration and onboarding, Unlimited capacity, Unlimited performance. Bespoke pricing plans.
Safety
- Security: WPBeasts use the latest server technology, including DDoS protection and an active Web Application Firewall, and their website is secured by HTTPS which means that their customer details are secure too.
- Dedicated VMs: Your WordPress website will always be hosted on its own VM.
- Backups: Regular backups will allow your website to be rebuilt if anything should happen to it.
- Money guarantee: You can feel happier knowing that your payment will be refunded risk-free if you’re not happy with the service within 30 days.
My Tests
I set up a new installation of WordPress and started tinkering. I wanted to test how it felt to use the dashboard. Oftentimes I’ll run speed tests and get all technical, and that’s great, but speed tests are only a snapshot of how it loads in a given time. When actually using the site, playing with page builders, adding plugins etc a strain is put on your hosting. I wanted to see how it would handle this strain.
And I was impressed. The site genuinely was fast and without any hiccups.
So I decided to migrate a site to this new install. I followed the instructions and using the WPBeast dashboard, copied a large e-commerce site over. The migration took about 2-3 minutes overall and I’m impressed with the user-experience (I am used to some quite clunky old hosts, so their system seems like a revolution to me! I can’t say how it compares to other newer hosts).
Before running a speed test I turned on the cache and CDN. This was easy to do but does take a little time to activate. I checked back in an hour and everything was running smoothly on the CDN. And holy **** was I impressed.
I have only seen these loading speeds matched by a fully dedicated hosting service I use for one of my largest projects. The thing is, WPBeast is a fraction of the price. For a large e-commerce site, to be achieving nearly 1s loading time on the front page is impressive, especially when its a run-of-the-mill site using a clunky theme. I can only imagine what would happen if it was a more lightweight site.
I highly recommend [eafl id=”565″ name=”WPBeast” text=”WPBeast”] to anyone searching for a premium hosting option at a reasonable price.
Max started The Responsive Agency in 2014 to help business owners to navigate the fast-paced world of digital marketing. With a focus on solutions that offer high-performance growth, clients have seen dramatic increases in turnover and profit.