Pagely Hosting Review: Pricey, but Worth It for WordPress Users?

Pagely features

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system so it comes as no surprise that many web hosting providers offer hosting solutions for this specific platform. While these days there are a ton of web hosting companies each claiming to offer supposedly good managed WordPress packages.

Pagely was among the forerunners back in 2009 in managed WordPress hosting and the company has lasted until today. This speaks volume on the dedication the Pagely team has to their work.

One decade later in the industry, Pagely still gets rave reviews from website owners who use their hosting services.

Try Pagely. 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s risk free.

Main features

Most managed WordPress hosts offer a few common features across all their plans. For example, it’s common for WordPress hosts to provide a free migration service, automatic updates for WordPress and its plug-ins, as well as daily site backups. Pagely is no exception, since it offers all of these services and more. However, what sets Pagely apart include:

» 1. Server Level Caching

Pagely’s patented PressCache is a standard caching mechanism designed to speed up the delivery of your WordPress site. PressCache can be turned on and off from your WordPress admin area. When turned on, it operates like most cache plug-ins by serving cached content from the nearest POP (point of presence) to your viewers.

» 2. Integrated CDN

Most managed WordPress hosts support CDN integration. The advantage that Pagely offers is that you won’t have to pay a third party service for CDN services. Pagely’s own PressCDN is an in-house service that comes free of charge on every managed WordPress hosting plan.

» 3. SPDY Support

Another unique feature that Pagely offers for every WordPress site is SPDY support. SPDY is Google’s open networking protocol that manipulates HTTP traffic and transports web content to improve web security and reduce page load latency.

Plan Specific Features

Pagely imposes various limits on disk space, bandwidth, and CDN usage depending on the chosen hosting plan. Here’s a list of the unique features that various Pagely managed WordPress hosting plans offer:

Business/Professional

These plans are perfect for hosting 3 to 10 sites but they lack WP-CLI interface for multi-site support.

VPS 1-4

In addition to providing pre-installed WP-CLI, Pagely’s VPS hosting plans for WordPress allow you to host anywhere between 30 and 60 websites on one hosting account. These plans come with a host of extra features such as dedicated IPs, staging mode, SSH access, HHVM support, and GIT/SVN.

Enterprise

This is the highest hosting tier that Pagely offers under their managed WordPress hosting services. Enterprise plans offer greater control over security, CDN as well as complete customization of distributed load balancing and nodes. These plans are ideal for large enterprises and they offer direct and dedicated support to both system engineers and account managers.

On Pagely’s pricing page, you can find a nice side-by-side table comparison that allows you to evaluate how the different managed WordPress hosting plans stack up against each other in terms of features.

Performance and Uptime

Pagely serves some of the fastest loading WordPress sites in the world. Much of this can be attributed to the company’s server caches and robust CDN. In fact, the blazing fast speed that this web host offers is something you won’t find when hosting your WordPress website on a traditional shared server.

When it comes to uptime, Pagely doesn’t disappoint either. They use Amazon Web Services to host WordPress sites. This is the same kind of hardware and network infrastructure used by fortune 50 sites and top of the line tech startups.

With Pagely, you can be sure that you website will experience extremely minimal downtime. The company promises 100% uptime in their Service Level Agreement, which goes to show how confident they are about their network infrastructure.

Security and Backups

When it comes to server security, Pagely takes on a more proactive approach. They have developed their own comprehensive security architecture known as PressArmor, which addresses vulnerabilities and security concerns surrounding the WordPress platform.

Pagely deploys core upgrades for WordPress and plug-in updates automatically in order to eliminate loopholes within outdated software that hackers might exploit.

In addition, they provide server level security features such as firewall protection, malware prevention, controlled admin level access, as well as mitigation of brute force and DoS/DDoS attacks.

Since nothing is 100% hack proof, Pagely automatically backs up all your sites using Amazon S3 technology at no additional cost. The support team also provides free assistance to restore and clean any compromised sites.

Help and support

Getting help on Pagely is quite simple because all you have to do is submit a support ticket, which can be done directly from the Atomic dashboard or on the company’s “Submit Request” web page. You can monitor the status of any open tickets by logging into your Atomic dashboard. Although there’s no phone or live chat support, Pagely’s ticketing system is in operation 24/7.

Pagely provides help to customers in other ways as well. For example, their Atomic dashboard has plenty of FAQs and several “how-to” WordPress videos. There are plenty of searchable knowledge base articles and FAQs on the company’s support pages too. With all of these support resources, it becomes easy to resolve common problems or find answers even without having to contact the customer service team.

Pros and cons

Is managed WordPress hosting from Pagely any good?

Pros

» Value packed managed WordPress hosting plans with features such as site staging, GIT, SPDY support, and WP-CLI.

» Hosting accounts protected with firewalls and Pagely’s own PressAmor Advanced Network Security system.

» State of the art data centers that use Amazon S3 technology.

» Free migration service for those wishing to move a WordPress site.

» Nightly backups at no additional cost.

» Free automatic core WordPress and plug-in updates.

» Access your hosting account with the easy to use Atomic dashboard.

» Plenty of training materials for beginners and reliable email ticketing system.

» 30 day money back guarantee.

Cons

» As of writing this Pagely review, the company does not yet provide phone and live chat support.

» Hosting plans are a little pricey compared to other companies offering managed WordPress hosting.

Summary

Pagely offers a deep set of features that allow it to compete with top contenders in the WordPress hosting market. It would have been great if the company offered phone and live chat support.

However, in spite of these drawbacks, Pagely is reliable web host that you can count on to deliver great managed hosting services for WordPress sites.

Try Pagely. 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s risk free.

Pagely frequently asked questions

Pagely plans & prices

Pagely let’s you choose between a range of managed WordPress plans and you get the option of paying monthly or yearly (you get a discount if you pre-pay annually). Here below is an overview of their plans and current price list (using monthly pricing). For latest and most up to date prices visit Pagely’s website.

Try Pagely. 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s risk free.

Best Pagely alternatives

If you want more information about hosting with Pagely, click over to our sister site, WhoIsHostingThis.com for a different perspective.