Ever since I helped set up my first customer’s website back in 1996 I have always cared about the performance of websites.
I went against the trend of massive images, music, videos and such playing in the background (especially back then, when dialup was more a thing than broadband!) – loading pages was slow enough as it was!
These days, we’ve all got fast connections and we’re subsequently starting to ‘load up’ our websites with more content and functionality, it is amazing what you can do with a platform like WordPress.
However, it is all good having a fast internet connection to download those pages quickly, but what if the hosting platform that the website is on is struggling to keep up?
Well, believe it or not – it is an extremely common occurrence.
As the major web hosts seem to race to the bottom on price to compete with each other and people resell their outdated and poor technology we find something has to give. That something has unfortunately been website performance.
That’s why when I set up mintWP I had this vision of not just fine-tuning and tweaking people’s websites for optimal performance, but I wanted to make sure that everything from the foundation up was good. That starts with a rock-solid hosting platform.
The need for managed hosting
Hosting has changed so much in the last twenty years. We used to talk about disk space being in the Megabytes, rather than Gigabytes. SSL was expensive and only for big eCommerce sites and Microsoft FrontPage was totally a thing!
Now the need for high-quality hosting is needed more than ever. Precious seconds whilst your site loads can mean visitors turning away, becoming frustrated and using your competitor sites instead.
SSL, Automated Backups, Auto-scaling platforms are here to stay and are what we need as we move into the next decade of websites. Helping you to get new leads, sales and information to people.
I was thinking the other day – instead of simply telling everyone repeatedly they needed good hosting – why not just include it?
So, that is what we have done! We now include Managed WordPress Hosting with all our WordPress Care Plans – as standard. No increased fees or surcharges.
If your site is elsewhere and you want to take advantage of our included hosting – then don’t worry, we now provide totally free migrations too.
Choosing a Managed WordPress Hosting Platform
There are many Managed WordPress Hosting companies out there, but only a few really sit at the top and offer technology that I was happy to put our customers on.
But, I wanted more than that. I wanted a company that thought like us – had the same passion for blazing fast, super-performing websites. One that constantly has evolved to bring cutting-edge technology to the forefront.
That company I am pleased to announce is Kinsta!
Since we started using them, it was going to be a no-brainer. (Read our in-depth review!)
The fact they offer support in the same style as us (no first line, direct to a WordPress Expert instead) already was a good sign during the early days of us using them.
Additionally, they have their entire infrastructure built on the back of the Google Cloud Platform speaks volumes. Imagine hosting your site on the same backbone that powers giants like Google.com, Gmail and YouTube? Well, now you can!
Making Hosting Great Again
I wanted to keep it simple – one of the things that Kinsta does very well is auto-scaling of their platform – which means you don’t need to buy a high-end configuration that will sit there idle on weekends or equally a low-end package that will save you money but struggle when your next social media post goes viral.
Instead, we’re just asking you to choose the number of visitors you’ll get to your site each month and pick a plan based on that. Dead simple.
All plans will come with the following as standard:
- Dedicated Managed WordPress Install on the Kinsta Platform
- HTTPS with SSL Certificate by Let’s Encrypt
- 10GB Storage
- No bandwidth limits
- Nightly Backups (in addition to ours)
- Staging Platform for development
- FREE site migration from any other web host
- DNS Setup and configuration
- Hosted on Google Cloud Platform
- Choice of 20 global locations
- PHP 7.3 (or later)
- Hardware firewalls and security measures by default
- Full set up for new websites
- Access to myKinsta Dashboard
The number of visitors included to your site each month is as follows:
- Maintain Plan – 10K/Month
- Enhance Plan – 25K/Month
- Enhance Pro Plan – 50K/Month
Visits are counted as one unique IP address visiting your website per 24 hours. That means if you visit from your home broadband on your phone, iPad and desktop in the morning and in the afternoon – all of those are counted as just one visit. Additionally, search engine bots (spiders) from the major search engines are not counted!
Need more visitors? Disk space? Just ask us. If you happen to go over, don’t worry (in fact, well done – you’ve got a popular website!)
You’ll be able to see your visits via your control panel at all times. We’ll get in touch and work out the best option for you (more visitors or upgraded plan).
We hope this latest addition to our WordPress Care Plans shows you the commitment we have to offer the absolute best in website maintenance and support services for you.
For agencies, you’ll see that we now offer a full-service solution for your client needs. You can just contact us with a domain name and we’ll be able to provide the entire solution in one go for you!
As usual, we’d love to hear your feedback – either leave a comment below, catch us on Twitter (@askmintWP) or drop us an email!
