Yes, we have been there.
When you first start your business, you try to preserve your limited startup capital. Unless you have an angel investor with deep pockets, you do everything on the cheap. You look for someone on Fiverr to maximize your SEO. You hire a goat herder in Timbuktu who moonlights to create infographics for you.
But after a while, you start to bring in a little bit of profit. You can stop tightening your belt and take a deep breath. It is time to dump your “bottom of the barrel” webhosting service and step it up a notch or two.
The Danger of Cheap Webhosting
Malicious hackers are becoming more bold every day. Security breaches affect your bottom line when your website is down for days because your webhost is attacked or is inadequate to handle your traffic should a promotion of yours becomes viral. It happened to Pat Flynn, Amy Porterfield, and others. It is only a matter of time before it happens to you unless you take steps to prevent it. We are contacted regularly by clients whose websites are taken down because of cyberattacks.
Even worse, you are vulnerable to a lawsuit if it is found you were negligent in protecting a client’s personal and financial data. Even if you are insured against financial loss, a lawsuit can be a huge blow to your reputation. Loss of reputation is a problem against which you can’t be insured. (See our blog post on business insurance here.
Optimizing Your Website with SSL
Recent changes to the algorithm Google uses to index sites means that your website will rank a little higher if you have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate and an “https://” URL. (https indicates a secure website as opposed to the ordinary http:// website.)
Google has called for websites using https:// or Transport Layer Security (TLS) to become the new standard for all websites, not just those that handle financial transactions. Their arguments are that thieves, hackers, and eavesdroppers can use a combination of seemingly benign pieces of data to build a database about your personal information that used together can be harmful to your privacy.
Why We Chose WP Engine for Our Webhosting
As we have added features to our website at The Bottom Line, it started to slow down. As you know, a slow loading website becomes worthless because of the high bounce rate for potential customers who just won’t wait for a slow site to load. If customers can hit the back arrow faster than your site can load, it’s a problem.
Once we made the switch to WP Engine, we immediately noticed an increase in the speed our site loads. The cool features we have added to the site pop up quickly and have a chance to catch the attention of the people we are trying to reach.
Since WP Engine is specifically built for WordPress, it works very well with our WordPress site. The architecture is highly scalable and will grow with us as our company grows.
Recover Your Site in Minutes When Disaster Strikes
Sometimes things go wrong that aren’t the fault of your webhosting service. There are natural disasters, hard drive crashes, and malware attacks that happen with no fault of the webhost. Should you become a victim of these types of problems, rest assured. WP Engine has your back and your backup. With a few clicks you can have your website restored and online again in about a minute.
WP Engine constantly takes snapshots of our website and is ready to restore the most current iteration should a problem arise. For premium members of the service, you also have a “hot standby” for your site. If your server crashes in the middle of the night, a backup server quickly restores your website automatically without your input or even knowledge that it happened.
We’re Secure with WP Engine’s Security
WP Engine takes the worry out of “what might go wrong.” They are vigilant so you don’t have to be. They automatically upgrade your WordPress site so that you always have the current version. If a major upgrade becomes available, it is thoroughly tested before a recommendation is given to upgrade or not.
Since WP Engine plays in the same sandbox with Fortune 500 companies, your Mom and Pop retail store benefits from the same protection developed for the big guys. WP Engine disallows dangerous and insecure commands or attacks that originate on your internal network. They protect you from yourself. They have proprietary software that guards against Javascript and SQL injection attacks, disk write imitations, and the garden variety DDoS and brute force attacks. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to know what they are to be protected from them.)
Should the unthinkable happen and someone does manage to break through all the firewalls and safeguards, you don’t have to pay an outside consultant thousands of dollars to fix the problem. WP Engine will repair your compromised site for free.
The Bottom Line
WP Engine costs a little more than the no frills webhosting many of us start out with. But if you want to have a professional website that loads quickly, runs smoothly, is backed up, and protected with state-of-the-art security measures, WP Engine may be exactly what you are looking for. If you aren’t ready to make the change now, talk to us after you helplessly wait a week or more for your website to be restored when your bargain hosting service is hit by a major cyber attack.