Best Web Hosting 2019 – WPMU DEV Review

WPMU DEV, a well-known WordPress management solution up until now has recently come up with its all-new WordPress hosting service. But that’s not it, they’ve integrated it with the WPMU DEV. If you’re already a member, then you get a plan for three websites at no additional charge.

Its complete WordPress hosting solution stands out from other providers. They do this by giving simplified access to the core features with much ease. Additionally, they’ve already been hosting Edublogs with over 4M sites since 2005 and CampusPress since 2006 that hosts sites of major universities such as Cornell, Penn State & RMIT and government’s State of Victoria Education Department.

To cut short, they were the single largest WordPress Multisite hosting provider since 2005. WPMU DEV has been around for almost 15 years in the hosting segment, and now they’re making it all public for us to enjoy. Enough of all this background, let’s get straight to the actual thing, i.e., WordPress hosting.

Today in this segment, we will be reviewing the core functionalities, features, and other miscellaneous information. While doing so, we will compare it with everyone else out there. So let’s commence the ritual.

WPMU DEV Hosting | Overview & Interface

You get a 30 days free trial to test the hardcore WordPress management and hosting features of WPMU DEV. As soon as you start the free trial, you’ll see a simple, neat, and easily accessible user interface. Firstly, there are two sections, one for The Hub and the other one is dedicated to hosting. 

In the hosting section, you have different tabs such as Domains, SFTP/SSH, Tools, Backups, Analytics, Logs, and Emails. It’s quite different in a much better way from regular CPanel. At first, you’re in the overview section where you can have a glance at everything at once.

You can overlook analytics where visitor count, page views, and bandwidth usage is displayed. It updates every 24 hours. Next, to it, you can see the total storage used out of the remaining one from the plans which you use.

Under Domains section, you can manage your DNS records, such as CNAME, A record and AAA record for optional IPV6 support. You can quickly add an SSH user or SFTP user with a single click by providing all the required credentials.

Under the tools section, there’s an option to protect the site, and you can enable it to hide your website from search engines during development or maintenance period. You can also convert your site to multisite within directories or subdomains. You can change the PHP version, manage database, flush object cache, reset WP-config, and migrate an existing website.

Analytics

Users can backup their site anytime they want or a standard backup after every 24 hours is done by default. Backups can be retained for up to 30days.  You can also download or restore the backup. Under analytics, you can see the live stats of the server.

It displays used ram, disk read-write speed, Net Inbound and Outbound, DB queries per second, PHP requests/sec, All web requests, and object cache usage. The storage section gives you overview storage used by different files such as Production files, Database, Staging files, and their database, Backups, and SSH, SFTP directories.

Staging Websites

From the staging section, you can create a staging environment. Here, a staging site (replica of the original) is there for you to make changes in real-time without affecting the original copy. After you’re done with building some upgrades, you can push the staging site to the original one. There are options to move files only and files and databases altogether. It will simply overwrite existing files. You can also reset or delete the staging site.

Log Maintainance & Email Forwarding

Logs tab is where you see all the happenings. It displays PHP Error log, and Access logs have the login details and other relevant information. There are a slow log and audit log tab where you can see all the significant changes done within the production and staging site.

Within the emails tab, you set email forwarding, and configure SMTP services such as AWeber, MailGun, MailChimp, etc. or any other mail sending service protocols. Do note that a cap of 150 emails per day is applicable for the bronze plan.

WPMU DEV Hosting Features

For a WordPress hosting to be reliable and robust, there are different factors which must be taken into account. Speed, Uptime, support, services, and other performance-related factors are checked during a hunt for a perfect hosting. With all other well-known options such as Hostinger, Hosting Ground, and many other services out there, why don’t you play safe? Why must even care to look after a new hosting?  Well, let’s find out.

Advanced Architecture

All we do is see the specs of the server which you’ll be working with and decide on how much traffic it can score. Well WPMU DEV doesn’t disappoint when it comes to hosting specs. Everyone regardless of the plan they choose will get – dedicated memory, CPU, and SSD storage.

All these resources are entirely independent of the other sites and even with different websites that you host within your account. It merely means that you get a highly containerized virtual private server for each site you host. It’s most advanced and based out of Digital Ocean architecture.

Highly Secure Servers

The problem with shared servers is, even if another website is vulnerable or someone hacks another website, the chances are that your site might also be in danger. Security is quite robust, as it is a clear fact that getting a dedicated server is always more secure, then any shared servers.

Furthermore, you get two-factor authentication and can also set a limited access account for any third parties within a click. Logs are always there for you to check if something goes south. It shows you everything that has happened to your website in your absence.

Additionally, a dedicated plugin Defender Pro, that is pre-configured and installed in all the websites. You can directly access its reports from the hub. It will regularly scan the core files of WordPress for any virus, malware infections.

If found it will notify you and quarantine them immediately for you to review.  Many times hackers inject code in WordPress, this can be spotted quickly as it also scans for any file changes and will notify you of the suspicious activity.

Blacklist IP and IP Lockouts

Blacklisting of IP addresses is another feature that comes with it. It locks out IP’s based on geographical location and suspicious behavior for login attempts. You can also mask the login area and change the default admin login from wp-admin to something not so familiar. It also changes the database prefix from standard WP to something else so the SQL injection, when attempted by anyone, is quite uneasy to perform.

Furthermore, you can disable trackbacks and pingbacks to avoid DDoS attacks. You can also manage login duration and can set it up to X amount of days. By default, it is set to 14 days.

It also has an active Google Blacklist reporting that lets you know if your website hits Google Blacklist. WPMU DEV provides a complete security solution to your website and accounts and actively keeps track of everything and is always prepared for any emergency that might occur.

Furthermore, you get a free site and server cleanup if you are hacked while using their hosting. Technical support is always available and answers your queries swiftly.

Simple Setup and Free Migration

You have to add at least one website to get started. You can choose to skip this procedure and head over to the hosting tab. Here you have an option to add a new website or create one from scratch. While creating a new website, you can have a temporary domain address with mydomain.wpmudev.host.

After setting up the credentials, choose the server locations ranging from Canada, Germany, Netherlands, India, Singapore, United States East /West. Some of us might want to change server locations as per their current traffic and viewership. It takes about a minute to configure and install WordPress. You get four plugins WPMU DEV, Defender Pro, Hummingbird Pro, and Smush Pro pre-installed by default.

If you are using any other service to host the site, and wish to migrate it, then select the migrate option. Select the website which you want to migrate. It’s quite simple by using the plugin that goes by Shipper. After you activate it, select the site from which you want to import and provide the FTP details.

It will replicate everything directly via FTP transfer. Additionally, if you feel all these things are quite technical or you don’t have time and want to hit the ground running, you can ask their support to do it for you, and they will be more than happy to help for no additional charges.

Hosting Panel

As seen earlier in the overview, you get tons of useful features. Starting with free Lets Encrypt SSL certificates for everyone. Unlike any other hosting, you don’t even need to configure it. WPMU DEV automatically sets it up for every website as soon as you add a domain.

Users also get SFTP and SSH support for when they want to do some heavyweight work remotely with their file system. All the websites support multisite functionality. You can use any directory or subdomain to make your website a multi-site architecture. You can create quite complex trees of multi-site with much ease and all by single clicks.

Database handling and management are quite simple. They provide a PHPMyAdmin to do all the magic. They do a complete backup every night, and it stays accessible for 30 days. You can also monitor resource usage with real-time server stats accessible from the analytics tab.

It shows all the resource usage which your server is facing currently. Storage stats are also available, which gives you a clear idea of how much space is utilized by backups, website, and other hosted content such as multi-media and other user-generated content if applicable. It also shows the bandwidth used and visitor count. All these info can give a precise idea on when you need to upgrade the hosting server.

Furthermore, you can set up a staging environment, and even Git integration is available. You can push the website when it is ready into production, all within a single click. It’s quite useful when you are developing something new and might want to test a couple of times before making everything live.

Email forwarding is also possible, and it supports almost all the popular integrations such as MailChimp, AWeber, MailGun for SMTP.

The Hub for Managing Everything from a single place

The Hub feature comes with hosting, and we’ll be giving just a short snippet on the additional abilities you get by signing up for WPMU DEV. It is quite a popular feature and has advanced settings for everything. Everything is so accessible and right in front of your eyes, waiting for your signals.

You can manage all your websites in one place, and it doesn’t matter if you host them with WPMU DEV or with anyone else for that matter. All you need to do is install WPMU DEV Dashboard in your other websites and add it into the hub. You can add unlimited websites.

White Label Client Reports

Generate white label client reports, and you can brand it with your own logo, branding, and colors. It contains almost all the information right from Server stats to SEO. Additionally, to make it look more impressive, you can add security reports containing audits, IP blacklists, and other things related to website security. It also has the site Uptime listed in the report. You can choose to include or omit any of the stuff in reports.

Automate Backups and Plugin Updates

When you manage multiple blogs and websites, its quite tiring and time-consuming to take backups and update plugins. It is a nightmare for any agency that handles about 100 sites. Performing the same ritual again and again for all the sites is a tedious process. With WPMU DEV, you can automate the plugin updates, theme updates and even update the WordPress core.

Additionally, to make sure nothing is missing after the updates, you can take before and after screenshots of up to five pages. You can always roll back to the previous versions if it doesn’t work out.  You can also manage snapshot backups for other websites.

Websites optimized for WordPress that gives Blazing Speeds

This one particular section holds the most important value and is a deciding factor when it comes to choosing WordPress hosting. We were particular while testing this one feature. Firstly, as soon as you import or create a website, three major plugins are already present.

One of which is Hummingbird pro. It is also accessible from the hub. Here, it provides you with a lot of features. You can enable GZip compression, browser caching. Perform regular performance audits and improve based on the obtained results.

You can also activate Page caching. More advanced features such as asset optimization are available for keeping you positive with every possible metric. Apart from all these, WPMU DEV provides you with their content delivery network (CDN) for no additional cost. It comes preconfigured with your website.

We even checked for more fancy tests such as page speed, latency, and even Time To First Byte (TTFB). We didn’t see much of a change in before and after optimizing results as WPMU DEV must have done the default, necessary and significant optimizations on its own. In case if you’re wondering, all these tests passed with flying colors.

Pricings

WPMU DEV claims to be the most affordable WordPress hosting provider out there in the market. We did try to prove them wrong and failed miserably. One thing that every service provider didn’t give us was a virtual private server! And to be more precise, everyone at WPMU DEV gets it as a primary element.

They have divided the plans under bronze, silver, gold, and platinum category.  Each of them only differs with the number of vCPUs, amount of ram, SSD storage, and available bandwidth. All the members get the first month free for three websites. You can add additional sites for 10$ each.

Please note that you can add unlimited websites in the hub to monitor them, you only need to pay for other sites under hosting as per your plan.

Dedicated Support and A huge Private Community

It doesn’t matter if you choose bronze or platinum plan, you always get priority support as per your requirement. You get a 27/7 and 365 days live support for any WordPress issues at all. Need someone to install the theme? Are you unable to figure out how to do some customization? Contact Support.

They claim to fix all WordPress issues and not just the plugins which they support. Furthermore, if any of the automated systems fail to get the job done, then the support team will help you thoroughly with anything at all. They also provide free migrations from any platform.

Site cleanup for the hacked website comes with the package at no additional cost. You get exposure to a large community with thousands of member who are active and known to solve, fix insane WordPress errors. So if you ever need some advice, you can also use the community forum to interact with everyone else, and users can even contribute by addressing others issues.

Plugins

Everyone wants free stuff. They provide quality premium plugins with all the plans. You get Smush Pro that takes care of all your image hosting problems. Hummingbird Pro for performance optimization, Defender Pro to check on with security arrangements, Hustle Pro to increase website engagement and do the correct marketing.

Forminator Pro that helps you create polls and customized forms. Smart Crawl Pro to check on with websites SEO. Branda to increase brand impact by customizing sites. Google Analytics+ (Beehive analytics) to gain insights right from the dashboard.

Verdict

WPMU DEV has made a robust WordPress hosting platform. It’s affordable, fast, and quite reliable. They also provide a ton of paid plugins with a value that surpasses your hosting cost. It’s quite ideal for Blog owners and small business that runs on WordPress.

Apart from all these, you can have access to the WordPress development training. Here you’ll learn to build themes, plugins and customize almost everything and be a pro in WordPress.

You get premium service at quite an affordable pricing. We encourage you to give it a spin by signing up for 30 days free trial and go nuts with WPMU DEV hosting solution.

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