Following up on The Podcast List – not another list of hosting companies you think to yourself but wait, this isn’t a rundown of best WordPress hosting or top 10 managed WordPress hosts. All of the hosting companies below are ones I am actively using, evaluating, or have used . I’ll tell you which ones and why. You should not be surprised that none of these are shared providers with cPanel or Plesk. As much as those might be good for a certain set of users, I’d rather pay a bit more for a streamlined user interface that keeps a site running without all the extras of cPanel – so managed WordPress hosting is the theme. I run email and calendaring elsewhere. This is not a complaint of website admin platforms like cPanel, just not a need.

Convesio

Let’s start with who is running RobertJacobi.com today for WordPress hosting, Convesio. I’ve been looking for the simplest and fastest platform for a while. My workflow has become much more simplified than when I started. The site’s performance is blazingly fast, using Supervisor.com I am in the sub 1 second load time. Perfect. Plus I can add any plugin, and FTP if something calls for it.

Pantheon

Let’s say this straight away, I really like Pantheon. I started hosting this site at Pantheon. It’s more expensive than Convesio but a developers dream. That was the ultimate problem, white it was a bit more expensive the workflow was just too much for a really simple site. I loved the development / staging / production environment based on Git but a simple separate staging environment elsewhere is just easier for what I need.

FLATsite

This is in the full on evaluation stage. FLATsite is a WordPress static site generator with an interesting twist, you can FTP the final files anywhere. I really like the flexibility of this and if I were to ever go full steam ahead with a static site generator this is an awesome feature. The concern is I really like to test and evaluate a wide variety of plugins in a production environment. While FLATsite supports many plugins, it still isn’t always possible due to the fundamental nature of many plugins requiring database access.

Strattic

I evaluated Strattic heavily when in the process of moving off of Pantheon. Strattic was the first WordPress static site generator I had come across and the idea was (and still is) very compelling. At the time their plugin support was very limited, it has grown considerably, and it was also when I realized the entire site needs to be republished – this is also a FLATsite consideration. I expect both FLATsite and Strattic to incorporate differential publishing at some point so the process becomes quicker. I like where the platform is going but the static files can’t be pushed outside the platform.

The Rest

There are many hosting companies that are still on my list for solid run throughs and I don’t want to leave them out for other people to evaluate in the interim. In the short term WP Engine and Kinsta are on the radar.