High-performance managed hosting
Hosting and Support
From $38/mo
Our hosting is like an armoured car built by Tesla. Fast, secure managed hosting on Australian servers specifically configured to host the sites we make.
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Our hosting is like an armoured car built by Tesla. High-performance, secure, managed hosting on local servers for your peace of mind
Our fully-managed hosting platform is built for the fastest speed in a secure environment specifically configured to host the sites we make.
Performance
Site speed and security are crucial. If your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 40% of users will abandon the site, and for each additional second in response time, you lose 7% in conversions. Also, site speed is critical to Google’s search engine rankings.
Security
Much worse than just your site being hacked or used for spamming, your user’s private data, payment details and your private business information are all at risk.
Our hosting service is focused on these two factors. It also includes nightly off-site backups, 24/7 monitoring, Free SSL security certificates and Cloudflare CDN.
What is managed hosting?
Most hosting is unmanaged. This includes anything using cPanel, Plesk or FTP. In these cases, the host gives you space on a server; the site running on it is your responsibility. Unmanaged hosting puts you at risk of hacks, spamming, downtime, poor performance, accidentally breaking the set with untested updates or plugins and total data loss due to inadequate backups.
Our managed service mitigates these threats. We lock down the WordPress installation, plugins and updates in a WordPress-dedicated environment that maximises security and reliability.
Plugin installation
Plugin installation via the admin is restricted to prevent an admin or a hacker from intentionally or accidentally breaking your site. All plugins we use are reviewed for security and performance. We will install approved plugins at any time on your behalf.
Upload protection
Files are only uploaded to the media library, and code can’t be run for this location, preventing sneaky hacks where code is uploaded that pretend to be images. This means there is no FTP or cPanel access. If you need to change your site, we will help.
File editing restrictions
The website code and templates are all kept in source control using Git so that we can track all changes. The admin can’t edit them. This stops malicious changes.
Spam protection
We use Akismet on all contact forms to stop spammers without making things difficult for users with Captchas.
Hack prevention
Fail2ban blocks attempts to hack login forms or get access via brute force.
Remote backups
We perform daily remote backups of the database, uploads and site code, kept for at least 60 days. We can also back up to your chosen cloud storage.
Hack recovery
We will fix any site hacks caused by a lapse in our hosting systems at no charge.
Two-factor login
Weak admin passwords or password reuse is the biggest threat to your site.
Two-factor login is available on all our sites. We strongly recommend you use it on your site.
Support
Our sites are built to be easily managed and updated by our clients. When things go wrong, or you’d like to work with us on improvements, we oer three levels of ongoing support:
- Ad-Hoc – Email, phone and real-time chat support, direct to our experienced development team.
- Time Blocks – Discounted time blocks for flexible and accountable ongoing support and updates.
- Retainers – Support retainers for clients requiring guaranteed availability of our team resources.
Our servers
We use Brisbane-Based servers at NextDC in the CBD with a 99.9% uptime SLA. We also provide managed services in Sydney, America and Europe on Amazon Web Services and Digital Ocean as needed.
Our servers use Trellis by Roots, a managed hosting platform built for WordPress and Laravel sites using the Ansible server management tool. It uses has automated deployment and parity from development to staging and production, which means that updates to your site can be applied safely and reliably. This approach leads to faster sites that are easy to manage and deploy on a hosting setup that is hardened and resistant to hacks and security breaches.
Maximum performance
The speed and reliability of your site is essential to your conversions, user experiences, search engine optimisation and overall online success. Our fully-managed platform is built around getting the fastest possible speeds. We use:
- 3 levels of caching – PHP opcode cache, Redis object cache, Nginx full page cache
- Cloudflare CDN – For sites whole DNS we manage, you get global Content Delivery performance
Built for reliability
Monitoring and alerts
24/7 Server monitoring ensures we are on to any issue as soon as it occurs.
Email deliverability
Emails are logged, and sent via Amazon SES to ensure reliable delivery.
SSL encryption
There is no need to purchase or manually renew an SSL certificate. We issue, configure and renew them at no charge.
Analytics
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager tracking is set up as standard and can be enhanced with goals, eCommerce and conversion tracking.
Patches and updates
Install required server security patches included.
Source control
All sites are maintained on Source Control using git separately from the hosting service, with a full history of all updates.
Cloudflare security
We can manage your DNS at no charge, using Cloudflare to protect from Denial of Service attacks and an additional layer of protection.
SSL encryption
Purchasing or manually renewing an SSL certificate is unnecessary. We issue, configure and restore them at no charge.
Hosting plans
Where additional storage, bandwidth and speed are required, we will customise plans to fit your need.
High performance managed hosting – Level 1 – $38/mo ex GST
For landing pages and standard websites. 2GB Storage, 50GB bandwidth.
High performance managed hosting – Level 2 – $68/mo ex GST
For eCommerce, login-based and multisites. 5GB Storage, 200GB bandwidth..
High performance managed hosting – Level 3 – $98/mo ex GST
For high-traffic sites. A dedicated server. 10GB storage, 400GB bandwidth.
Site Migration
We can migrate your existing WordPress site to our managed platform. This includes backing up and transferring the site content form your existing site, plus a full audit along with patching and updating plugins. Have a site built by us? Then no migration is needed, it is already good to go.
Included in the migration:
- Backup the site and perform an initial audit
- Patch and update the plugins to the latest versions where possible
- Substitute plugins with safer equivalents where recommended for ongoing performance and security
- Review the theme, uploads and directories for security issues and clean out as necessary
- Put sites on source control
- Deploy to staging for your testing and review
Not all sites are created equally, depending on the age of the site and plugins used, there may be extra work involved, for example:
- Updating a theme to the latest version, including reapplying modifications.
- Additional costs to purchase commercial themes or plugins.
- Updates to Google Analytics tracking/events.
- This is not normally an issue, but if required, we will work with you to resolve.
Migration process
- Admin access & backup Wordpress admin and hosting logins (cPanel, FTP, SSH, etc) are required for each site. We can often use backup plugin to work around a lack of server access.
- Site conversions & setup
- Staging and QA – We will set up the new servers and provide staging urls for each site for your testing and QA.
- DNS setup – Move the site domains over Cloudflare and setup domain verification for email sending. If you want to retain DNS management, we will coordinate the updates with you.
- Go live – We will make any adjustments identified in the staging timeframe and put the sites live. There will be no downtime as they will just switch from one server to the other.
- Content updates – There should be no content updates during the transition period. If your site is a store, or this is necessary, we can coordinate the process with a maintenance window.
Site Migration – $652 ex GST
We can migrate your existing WordPress site to our managed platform. This includes backing up and transferring the site content form your existing site, plus a full audit along with patching and updating plugins. Have a site built by us? Then no migration is needed, it is already good to go.