Hey Guys!  Alright, let’s just get it out of the way….hosting rates will be going up.  We’ve upgraded and have far superior hosting and cannot afford to keep our rates.  Don’t get too upset yet, because there is a silver lining.  Keep reading or jump down to ‘What Does This Mean For You.’  In my best efforts I’ve tried to think of everything to make this as easy and painless as possible.

There are also a number of you out there who have ‘custom / speciality’ hosting packages out there.  I will be contacting you in the upcoming weeks to go over if / how your plans will change.

The Short Story

The short story is that we’ve made a decision to upgrade our hosting to make it more WordPress friendly.

WordPress is a pretty big resource / CPU hog.  I’ve been monitoring sites ever since I’ve started and just wasn’t getting the performance I truly wanted.  In the pursuit of giving you the best hosting possible for your WordPress site, we moved to a much more powerful hosting server.  It was a tough decision to raise prices, but I didn’t want to sacrifice performance for price.  Our new prices are still pretty low to comparable hosting.  We’ve also added a new ‘tier’ to our hosting packages to make things easier.  View new hosting pricing.

 

 

What We’ve Actually Done

Last month we upgraded to “VPS” hosting, which is great for you.  A “VPS” is a “Virtual Private Server” which essentially means we got moved to our own hosting server (as opposed to a Shared Server.)

With a “Shared Server” we basically are allocated a certain amount of web space (and bandwidth) on a Server with a bunch (hundreds) of other websites.  While this can keep the cost down on hosting, it can also lead to some very serious problems down the road.  For example, if another website on the server gets ‘hacked’ (or gets a virus,) every website on that server may be susceptible.  Another example is if a few sites on a ‘shared server’ is using too much RAM or CPU then it will effect all of the sites on the server.  Yes, it can effect hundreds of sites.

Benefits With The Price Increase

First of all, your website will be faster with less hiccups.  Because we’re on our own server we have allocated CPU and RAM just for us.  This means that we’re cooking with some real fire.  Moving to a VPS means that we’re in our own little world.  Over the past month I’ve been monitoring and have seen sites loading anywhere from .5 seconds fast to 1.5 seconds faster.  Good for us!!!

In addition, I’ve completely restructured the hosting plans (as well as our maintenance plans.)  Some of the plans are getting a little more than what they had before.

Because we’re on our own server it’s super important that WordPress, Plugins, etc stay up-to-date on all hosted sites.  Therefore, monthly optimization and updates are now included in the price of hosting, rather than in the maintenance plans.  This will include:

  • Optimizing Databases
  • Clearing Cache
  • Updating WordPress
  • Updating Plugins

Finally, there’s a lot that I do ‘behind the scenes’ to make sure our servers run smoothly and without too many hiccups.  Most people have seen this first hand when they have a problem or need help determining where a problem might lie.

What This Means For You

Current Clients / Sites

In order to make the transition easier, I’ve decided to honor the current rate of hosting now through January 1, 2016.  So, if you’re a current client, you won’t see a price increase on your next invoice (in 2015.)

Any Potential Clients

While I’ll be changing the pricing on the sites over the next few days, the new hosting costs will start January 1, 2015.  So, if you wanna hop-on at the old rates (and be ‘grandfathered’ in) be sure to sign up before then.

Your Options

Option 1
I’ve added a new ‘tier’ to the hosting and you’re welcome to downgrade your account to the new Hawk Hosting (or a step below wherever you’re at.)

Option 2
If you’d rather move your hosting away from I Heart Sites I totally understand.  We’re making a pretty big shift and it might not be for everyone.  If that’s the case, we recommend a2 Hosting for your hosting.  Please be aware that if you move away from our hosting, you will be responsible (or charged) for any tech support you might need.

Conclusion

A lot is going on in the I Heart Blank camp.  Thank you for bearing with me through all of this.  I hope you understand that the purpose is to give you the service you deserve at the most reasonable cost.  Sorry if this is so long, I really wanted to give you an honest explanation of what we decided to do and why.  If you have any questions, please feel free to call or email me.