There will be arguments for and against this option. Among the pros, it will be mentioned that 30% of all websites, all around the world, are built with WordPress. And among the cons, it will be argued that a large portion of the websites built on WordPress is tiny blogs and amateur pages. Also, when considering WordPress as an option, concerns about security, scalability, and enterprise support will emerge. When faced with those concerns, WordPress advocates will pull an ace up their sleeves: big names, such as The Walt Disney Company, The White House, BBC America, Vogue, and The New York Times hand over the management of their beloved content to WordPress. So the aptitude of WordPress for enterprise environments may not be so bad, after all. It’s just a matter of analyzing the benefits that these large companies get from WordPress and what actions they take to mitigate its risks are.
Benefits of WordPress as an enterprise CMS
There are traditional enterprise-grade content management systems (Umbraco, Sitecore, Drupal, to name a few) that are capable of integrating different business-critical platforms, like ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning) or CRMs (Customer Relationship Management). Guess what: WordPress can do that too if you combine it with the right tools. Besides, WordPress can act as a headless content management solution, which is critical for organizations getting into the IoT era, to harness non-traditional devices such as voice assistants and smart wearables. The ease of use and the existence of a huge ecosystem of plugins are arguments in favor of WordPress for all kinds of users, and large companies are no exception. Learning curves and the availability of trained resources are also important factors when considering the adoption of a tool in an enterprise environment. It’s easy to find employees with experience in WordPress, and you don’t have to tempt them with big salaries to grab them. In addition, a smooth learning curve reduces the training costs of existing resources.
Obstacles to WordPress adoption and how to overcome them
WordPress’s scalability concerns have to do with the fact that as a WordPress site grows in size, its complexity and maintenance costs also get bigger. Detractors of the popular CMS point out that, even in a site with a few plugins, you are faced with new issues to solve almost every day. In terms of security, the open architecture of the WordPress platform generates vulnerabilities that expose the contents of large companies to the actions of cybercriminals. The fear of companies that their CMS could end up being a house of cards is real, but luckily there are strategies to mitigate these risks and enjoy the benefits that a company can get from WordPress. And the cornerstone of such strategies is hiring a trustworthy managed hosting provider, with a service specifically designed to meet enterprise needs.
What’s enterprise-grade hosting, anyway?
You can find many managed WordPress hosting providers, even some that charge just a couple of dollars a month for their services. But what is expected of an enterprise hosting is not that it charges as little as possible, but that it offers a service that effectively meets enterprise needs. Those needs include:
An infrastructure designed for performance, based on state-of-the-art hardware and software that offer unsurpassed speed.Use of all possible measures to stop attacks and malicious intents, such as DDoS detection, firewalls, and 24/7 monitoring, among others.Fault tolerance and backups.Capacity to scale to whatever volume your site may reach.Expert WordPress support with a guaranteed response time.
Let’s take a look at the following list of managed WordPress enterprise-grade hosting providers.
Kinsta
Thanks to a set of hosting plans that feature automatic scalability and security measures for mission-critical websites, Kinsta has earned the trust of some of the world’s biggest brands — Ubisoft, Ricoh, Workforce, Flippa, Valicor, GE, Intuit, Elcome, and Michigan Aerospace — to manage their contents. The company relies on the Google Cloud Platform and its premium tier network to offer high performance, and you can choose between 24 strategically placed locations throughout the USA, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America to host your website and get the lowest latencies. Some of Kinsta’s clients claim they have the most trained WordPress experts, always ready to help solve their clients’ needs. Developers can freely play with one-click staging environments and freely test plugins, themes, and updates without risking the live website. In case an untested element crawls into the live environment and causes problems, a system of automatic, redundant, and isolated backups allows you to roll back the entire website with a single click.
Cloudways
Users who prioritize fast speeds, constant availability, and high-end performance should opt for managed cloud hosting. And in that category, Cloudways appears as the primary choice of SMBs, agencies, and individuals. Their managed WordPress hosting gives you a reliable and scalable hosting experience. With Cloudways WordPress hosting, you have the freedom to opt from any of the leading 5 IaaS cloud providers, i.e., DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Vultr, and Linode. Also, you don’t have to fear handling traffic spikes as Cloudways lets you scale easily anytime. And all of this and more is offered at a very affordable price. Thanks to their revolutionary PAYG plans, virtually any user can get started from as low as $10/month and pay for only the resources they use, saving all the extra costs. Their WordPress SaaS-optimized hosting offers elevated performance and is the right fit for high-traffic blogs and companies that want enterprise WordPress hosting. With features like automatic backups, Elasticsearch, multiple PHP versions, easy server management, MySQL & MariaDB support, and their most recent addition of Cloudflare, Cloudways enjoys favorable reviews from its customers. Shall you find yourself stuck at any point? Reach out to their active 24/7 support team for prompt help. Try Cloudways for free with their 3-day free trial, which, unlike other hosting providers, does not require any credit card details.
Nexcess
Enterprise hosting is an online infrastructure for web-dependent organizations. With Custom-built architecture, there are limitless ways Nexcess can improve your performance!
Custom Architecture – Fast, Flexible infrastructure.High Availability – Your servers stay lightning-fast, no matter how many people are online.Powerful Performance – Optimized global clusters deliver the performance you need, when you need it.Robust Security – Environments are PCI compliant, GDPR compliant and SOC I & II certified.100% Network Uptime Guarantee.Best-in-Class Enterprise Support – White-glove service from the Nexcess Enterprise Support Group.
Give it a try to see how it helps with your hosting requirement.
WordPress VIP
WP VIP offers a complete solution for big media and marketing companies so that they can focus on creating content while WordPress experts take care of the infrastructure, the performance, and the security issues. Many media giants, like News Corp Australia, PMC, Abril, and others, can attest to that. WP VIP is more than a hosting provider because it gets involved in your projects, from making initial recommendations on the best tools and models for your use cases to accompanying you to the launch and beyond. End-to-end consulting is one of the main services offered by WP VIP. They start working with you on the initial considerations and planning of your project, and stay by your side every step of the way, taking care of all the technical details and freeing you to focus on project oversight. Other services include project planning, requirements analysis, themes and plugin reviews, platform and codebase auditing in terms of your goals, and initial partner recommendations, among many others. WP VIP offers a cloud-based containerized infrastructure and has its own delivery network across more than 20 data centers worldwide, so it can monitor and optimize most of your site’s delivery path.
WP Engine
When you have a team of professionals dedicated to content creation on WordPress, you must do your best to keep them productive. WP Engine can help you with that, offering productivity features such as separate Dev/Stage/Prod environments, Git integration, and SSH gateways. Your hosting will always be properly configured for your business and kept safe, thanks to free SSL certificates, real-time security threat detection, proprietary caching technology, and a global content distribution network. Your team will never have to worry again about patching or updating WordPress or its plugins. Besides the infrastructure and support services, WP Engine also shares with its clients its extensive experience, in the form of training and knowledge bases. Big names, like Microsoft and FindLaw, are satisfied to use WP Engine services to keep their WordPress installations in good shape and get rid of the concerns associated with scale, security, and performance.
Pagely
Flexibility, reliability, and scalability are the three pillars on which Pagely bases its value proposition. Custom hosting solutions that match your needs provide flexibility, while an infrastructure built on AWS and engineered for maximum uptime provides the reliability and scalability to complete the recipe. The managed WordPress solutions provided by Pagely are divided into Business Class and Enterprise Class. The former start from $ 199 per month and feature developer-friendly tools, shell access, and Git integration. The latter starts from $ 2.500 per month and comprises a unique managed hosting service that includes multi-region redundancy, painless resource scaling, and robust security. The solutions offered by Pagely move away from the “one size fits all” approach that other WordPress hosting providers may offer, emphasizing the intention to solve big business challenges. An impressive list of well-known companies uses Pagely hosting: Visa, Booking.com, Comcast, Panasonic, Garmin, to name a few. Each one of them provides case studies that illustrate how Pagely helps them scale their WordPress installations.
Pressidium
Pressidium focuses on providing high-end system engineering for WordPress environments, offering some exclusive features such as N-Tier Enterprise High-Availability, a highly sophisticated security architecture, a load-balanced fleet of the system for unparalleled speed and a staff of seasoned engineers. Available 24/7/365 that solves almost every technical issue in minutes. No bots and no first-level support agents. Pressidium industrial-grade enterprise WordPress hosting offers many one-click features that simplify otherwise complex tasks, such as the creation of staging environments, WordPress site, and billing transfer, instant backups, restore SSL certificate management, and pushing staging sites to production. Many Fortune 500 companies use Pressidium infrastructure, leveraging its four main data center regions in North America, Europe, Oceania, and the Asia Pacific, and its 42 strategic edge locations spread over the entire globe.
Hire an ally
Businesses need more than service providers. They require partners to become allies when needs are pressing. It is important to compare features, benchmarks, service levels, and other aspects when choosing a WordPress hosting provider, but more important is to know in advance if it will be there to help you when you need it most. So, after making your shortlist of candidates, try to get opinions from other customers, satisfied or dissatisfied, to get a clear idea of what the relationship between your company and each potential provider would be like.
