So many of you in our community have asked why we’re recommending Site5 for WordPress shared hosting now and I thought I’d answer that with this blog post.
In 2008, I bought a shared hosting plan with HostGator for iThemes.com and remarkably we survived and thrived on that small cheap plan for almost two years before going to a dedicated server (which we still have with HostGator to date but that is changing soon).
Since around that time, we have actively promoted HostGator to our community because it was THE most amazing shared hosting experience. Boxes weren’t overloaded. They were FAST. Chris and others on our team reveled at how they were about quality and optimizing their boxes for the customer experience.
I loved that too. But I also loved how I could tell people … “On Christmas Eve, if you have a question, go to the site and hit live chat and in seconds you’ll be talking to someone that can actually help you.”
But sadly, that’s changed. And honestly, we knew it wouldn’t be forever.
I had also developed some internal contacts at HG but those have grown very cold, or do not exist anymore.
So when for the last 6-plus months we’ve heard from customers that HG was shutting down sites and doing odd stuff that was NEVER the case, specifically with our main product — BackupBuddy — we were really concerned. And then it got beyond the point I could ignore it any longer.
In fact, the straw that broke the gator’s back was getting an email from a tech support blaming BackupBuddy for problems …. TO ME PERSONALLY.
Now I had proof of what our customers have been saying for months. And yes, it was most likely a copy and paste.
I think they’ve simply grown too big. And we’re out of touch with them now. Totally except when I’ve been forced to rant to them on Twitter (which I hate). And we’ve seen the customer experience (for us personally now with our dedicated and a shared plan I personally have) dwindle.
For whatever the reason, that’s the status and why we’re no longer promoting or recommending HostGator to our community.
We want the customer experience to be AWESOME. And I can’t, with any confidence, say that any longer about HG.
(It should be said … I do believe with their recent acquisition that they will make the appropriate adjustments and be one of the standards again, but for now, I’m done.)
So … enter Site5 and the actual reason for this blog post.
Why are we recommending Site5 now?
I will give you four quick reasons that really center around one big one — I have a relationship with people at Site5 that I trust.
1. I know the co-founder Ben Welch-Bolen.
We go WAY back, like even before iThemes. He was one of my first freelance clients. So I’ve known him for a long, long, long time.
We actually got to meet at Pressnomics in Phoenix in November for the first time in person. Matt Danner, our COO, and I had lunch with Ben. I expressed all our frustrations with shared hosting in general … and said, “We just want someone who we can talk to and work with for our customers.”
Knowing Ben this long … I believe that to be the case with him and Site5.
If someone runs into a roadblock with BackupBuddy and Site5, I’ll be emailing Ben directly … one founder to another about how our products work better with each other.
I can almost say I’ve NEVER had that with any shared hosting company like this.
Ben and I share many of the same values. And because I know his background and who he is, I believe in him and what they are doing at Site5.
By the way, Ben was also the first full-time employee beyond the founder at HostGator WAY back when they were based in Florida!
2. He assured me that when we run into issues with BackupBuddy or any other iThemes product that we’ll work together on a remedy for our mutual customers.
#BOOM
I’ve wanted this for a long, long time.
3. He’s offering a no-obligation free offer to our customers to see for yourself if their hosting works for you.
Here are the THREE offers good through Dec. 21, 2012:
- 6 Months Free Shared Hosting — Use coupon code ITHEMES toward any shared hosting plan
- 3 Months Free VPS Hosting — Use coupon code ITHEMESVPS toward VPS1 or VPS2 plans for servers in their Dallas location.
- 3 Months Free Reseller start plan – Use coupon code ITHEMESRESELLER for all locations.
4. Ben did a webinar on WordPress hosting for our community on Dec. 13 (Recording below).
He gave an overview of shared hosting and VPS hosting (virtual private server) and the pros and cons of each, along with why / when you should choose one over the other.
Here is the recording from the Webinar:
***
So there are my four reasons for recommending Site5 for WordPress shared hosting at iThemes.
Mainly in short, it’s about people and relationships. And I want to work with people I like and trust who know what they are doing. Period.
And YES, I believe there are a lot of other good shared hosting companies we still recommend, but none offer us the people part of this equation that Site5 does currently.
I hope that never changes. But sometimes things do and will change.
In the meantime, we’re pointing to Site5. 
I used to host with them and I agree they are good. I’ve now gone back to them because Hostgator now makes placing an order less straightforward. If they’re going to put obstacles in my way then they lose my business. Simple as.
You might want to clarify that the offer for 6 months of free shared hosting is only available if you pick the Dallas data centre. The coupon code is not available for the London data centre.
Thanks Gemma, yep the coupon is only good for Dallas but if you email management@site5.com we are happy to open a one month free account at any location for you to play with. Just reference this post in the email.
You can also test the speed of any location at the below (just click the location name):
http://www.site5.com/about/server-locations/
*IP + 30MB/250MB/500MB files to test with.
If you start in any location for any product we can migrate you at any point and we handle all that too.
Thanks, Ben
Thanks Gemma. Will do.
I’ve been using HostGator for a little over a year now with hardly any issues.
Funny how credibility makes all the difference in the world though. Here I am contemplating switching to Site5 because of Cory’s credibility. And Cory made the switch because of his acquaintances credibility.
Thanks for sharing.
Boom – thanks Josh.
Business is all about relationships. Over the last 5 years of running iThemes, I know how long it takes to build a good solid relationship … and how fast it can get ruined too.
These guys are great. (I’ve had a similar bad experience in the last year with InMotion and am hoping to move my clients off there to Site5.)
I don’t like to sling mud … but this is just stating the facts. Because I know Ben, I associate good things with their work.
[...] iThemes recommends Site5 for WordPress shared hosting (and so do I) [...]
I’m a big fan of Site5 too. I switched to them from Media Temple and have been with them for 18+ months and I have only good experiences with them. See how my site speed improved after I switched to Site5: http://blogjunkie.net/tag/site5/
Cory I would love it if you could ask Ben to look into these 2 issues:
* Increase the PHP memory limit. Hostgator’s standard is 256MB, Site5′s is 64MB. We can increase it with a custom php.ini file, but it would be great if we didn’t need to.
* Improve the SiteAdmin File Manager. When first launching the File Manager, it doesn’t know the current path. Only after clicking on the directory tree on the left will it realize the current path.
Other than these 2 minor details, Site5 is the best web hosting I’ve used.
David, thanks for this recommendation … it’s good to hear others have had good experiences to validate our feelings about it.
I’ll ping the Site5 team and ask those questions. Thanks!
Hi David,
Thanks for the comments! Glad to hear you’re a fan.
To answer your two points:
1) We’re actually doing that! We’ve sent notifications to our customers of an upcoming PHP update we’re doing on all servers. In that process, we’re increasing the default memory limit to 256MB.
2) The file manager is part of the underlying cPanel control panel, so I’m not too sure we’re able to make a change such as you’re asking. That said, can you open up a ticket to our support team (support@site5.com)? We can get it escalated to our engineers to look into it some more for you.
Hi Tom, appreciate you answering personally. I’ve created a support ticket within Backstage to report the issue. Glad to know that you guys are paying attention!
Hi everyone! Thanks for the kind words Cory!
I’m around if anyone needs any help too, you can always email me and other senior members of staff at management@site5.com (goes directly to CEO, COO, head of support, CTO/DCTO, etc). Or just ask on any ticket too. We always needing feedback and ideas to make our hosting better!
@David – Nice timing
, we are planning a rollout as we speak to move PHP 5.3 to default, add PHP 5.4, move PHP 5.2 to an option and remove PHP 4. Part of the delay is that there is some complication with custom PHP.ini that a lot of clients use and we are scripting out some cool stuff to make sure this upgrade impacts clients as little as possible. And a big part of that is expanding our PHP.ini limits to go higher (including your specific example).
And the file manager, that is part of cPanel so not something we can change easily but we are looking at a few options that might give our dev/designer audience some new editing/terminal tools. Can you email me at management@site5.com as I’d like to show you a preview and see what you think of it? It’s a little different than a file manager so I’m wanting to hear more what you are using it for too.
Please hit me up with any questions too, the harder the better
. I know one thing that often comes up is hardware resource limits in shared hosting, I’ve been in the hosting industry for a long time so hit me up with anything you are wondering and you will receive a wonderful BS free answer.
Looking forward to the webinar too,
Thanks, Ben
Ben, unfortunately you just lost a customer. We signed up because we found this page and needed a good WP host. We were using bluehost and were unhappy with the performance. I have a meeting in the am with a client who was complaining about bluehost and we needed to transfer the site over during the evening. About 2 hours after signing up and getting the confirmation from you that everything was fine, we had our developers log in and the account still was pending. I had an online chat with Dawn and she could not give me a time that the site would be up. The best she could do was to write a ticket for us. This was not satisfactory to me, but she could not do anything more. She couldn’t call someone, she couldn’t email/text while I waiting, is all she could say was that it will happen at some time.
This was not a good sign to me, and we needed a response. If a simple thing could not be dealt with in a timely matter with a better answer I could not risk actually using you guys if a time critical issue came up. Here is our chat:
Dawn M.
Hello scot. Please wait while we connect you to an operator.
Hi Scot
scot
hi, I just had my admin buy a hosting account with you guys
we need to set up the site tonight
but when I login, it says penidng
but we paid
Dawn M.
One moment while I check into that for you, please.
scot
[gave her account info]
Dawn M.
thank you
scot
[gave her copy of receipt and payment info]
Dawn M.
Thank you for waiting. The Order is indeed still processing and not yet processed. You have not yet been charged and will not be charged until that order is processed and the account activated.
scot
well the problem is that I need to transfer our site now
Dawn M.
I do apologize for the delay. Accounts are normally automatically processed within a few minutes but can occasionally take longer.
scot
wel can’t chance this
I have overseas developers and I need to give them instructions now
so they can do it and the site is ready in the morning for the client meeting
if I can’t know for sure, that we can access it now, I’ll need to find another solution
Dawn M.
I am sorry. I do not have a time frame for you.
scot
well what can I do?
I have never heard of signing up for a service via a CC and not having access immediately
so I need to know
I am sorry, your answer is not acceptable
Dawn M.
I will be happy to create a ticket for you with our sales staff to review this order for you. Is _____ a good email address for this?
scot
I cannot wait
I need to know now if the site will ready soon
if I cannot know, I need to get another host that will be ready tonight
Dawn M.
I am so sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I do not have a time frame for you.
** Good luck, I hope you guys get this straightened out. You sound like a good guy.
Hi Scott,
I’m sorry to hear that, and I’d be happy to explain more in more detail what happened and why.
Why did this account not get activated instantly?
Fraud is rampant on the internet, the dark side of the internet is full of criminals selling huge lists of stolen credit cards for a few cents per card which criminals then use to sign up for web hosting and create phishing sites to steal people’s bank and other vital info (as well as spam). We have to do an incredible amount of fraud screening which is constantly changing and adapting to new tactics to stop this. Unfortunately in rare cases a valid customer can be flagged due to these checks and this triggers a manual review which can take up to a day. Although we work very hard to get that activated as quickly as possible.
Why can’t our normal staff help activate you?
It requires a specialist who has a lot of experience with fraud and is trained to do it correctly. We used to let all our staff do this many years ago, but it created a lot of problems and fraud charges. For example in one of the worst cases we lost $40,000 dollars to a single criminal because one of our normal staff members made a huge mistake (very difficult to do).
How are we improving this process?
I would love to make this process easier and we are constantly evolving to improve the flags.
Why is this important that we are stringent for customers?
This criminals if they get on a server can get the mail server IP blacklisted, cause the server to crash and many other problems. So it is good for all our clients that we are stringent so as to prevent them from experiencing problems in the shared environment.
The wait should be 24 hours or less and we think that is a fair trade off in the rare case something is flagged for review by a fraud specialist, and it results in our customers receiving more dependable hosting,
Thanks, Ben
PS, I couldn’t find your order but I’m guessing it was because your billing address didn’t match the IP location of your admin possibly. Can you email management@site5.com and we would be happy to take a look and share specific info on what happened in this case.
When does the 6 month free promo end? I’d like to test it out, but need to know my deadline to sign up.
Hey Jeff – this promotion ends Dec. 21, 2012.
I’m so glad to have found this blog post today. I’m doing a lot of research on Site5. I found them initially because I looked up Dallas webhosts. They were one of the first search results. I then found out it was a virtual company with everyone working from home. Cool idea. I called their number and talked to someone in Salisbury, MD. Gave me a lot of answers and I didn’t hear the phrase, “I don’t know,” one time.
I tweeted earlier today that I heard that phrase once again from a Bluehost tech support rep and mentioned in the tweet that Bluehost tech support must have trademarked that phrase. Kind of think of it, I pay them a royalty every month to hear their tech support tell me that. I’d laugh if my Bluehost situation didn’t hurt so much.
To me, it wouldn’t matter if Site5 service was bad as Bluehost. At least with a little Googling, I found out the most important thing about Site5, they care about their customers. Bluehost has proven to me they don’t care.
Well, enough of my rambling. I’m going to contact Ben and ask to do an interview with him about Site5 and their great customer service. If he obliges, everyone will be able to see the interview at http://gotinterviews.com, but probably not until I switch to Site5 webhosting : )
I just signed up for a hosting plan with Site5 based on this recommendation. However, BackupBuddy does not work because they have http loopbacks disabled, and enabling ALTERNATE_WP_CRON in the WP config triggers a mod security alert. I contacted tech support to turn on http loopbacks and they refused.
So, I will be cancelling my hosting plan and I am rather disappointed.
Joce, I’ve just forwarded this to my contact at Site5 to investigate.
Thank you! I’ve got my ticket emails if you/they want to see them.
Let me know if you get a response. I was surprised that they wouldnt turn this on for me.
We fully support Backup Buddy so if you ever run into an issue just ask for a manager or you can always email management@site5.com. Same goes on phone or live chat, just ask for a ticket with a manager or management.
Thanks, Ben
CEO at Site5
Hi,
Ben,
I will move my host from DreamHost to Site5.
Hoping that I don’t make wrong move.
Thanks