Does a Reliable WordPress Managed Host Exist?

January 17, 2019 3:11pm

I have written over and over again about WP Engine, about Flywheel, and have investigated half a dozen other Managed WordPress hosting solutions. They all tend to be expensive, and that is prohibitive for many people, but for myself, if a system is rock solid, super fast and support is absolutely stellar, it’s worth it to me to use these services.

I could easily host on a cheap server, run maintenance and security myself, and use one of the many caching plugins out there to achieve what these guys do — but it would take up my time, and while I’d still likely make a buck or two more with only slightly more headaches, I still believe it’s best to go with a managed WP hosting solution like one of the aforementioned folks.

However, support just seems so lacking with all of them. Take a recent conversation with Flywheel support I had today. It tooks six minutes to get Drew here on the line, which isn’t ideal (WP Engine used to be instantaneous, but even they take a few minutes these days) but it’s certainly something I can live with.

Drew 12:45: Hey there! How can I help you today?
Hey Nathan!
How are ya?!
Nathan 12:46: Hi Drew, I’m doing well how about yourself?
Drew 12:46: Life is good, we are doing a retreat right now 🙂
Nathan 12:46
Drew 12:46: How can I help?
Nathan 12:46: See the attached image
This is in Local by Flywheel app
Just wondering if you know if anything needs to be done to allow uploads to Local site in that app?
Drew 12:47

Let me stop the conversation there for a moment. Within a moment he was able to send me a link to a blog post on how to add additional file types to WordPress. Which shows he didn’t even look at my screenshot, because if he had, he’d have seen that it was JPG and PNG files I was trying to upload. When tech support doesn’t even bother looking at a customer’s issue, that’s a massive problem. Linking to existing tutorials on other sites is just bad form, but not particularly uncommon I suppose.

Nathan 12:47: Well they’re png and jpg files
So, not additional files
And I’ve already tried doing it programatically the same way I allow SVGs, etc.
Drew 12:48: This is an update to WP 5.0.2
I can build a ticket to allow my team to work out how they’d suggest moving forward as I have discussed this topic this past week specifically

I’ll end our chat here, though I thanked him and said that would be okay, and haven’t heard back in 17 minutes as of now. The problem here is that this is not an update to WP 5.0.2.

Yes, WordPress made file uploads and which mime types can be uploaded by default more strict…but they didn’t remove the ability to upload JPG and PNG files. That would be ludicrous. So again, instead of looking into my problem, he sent back what seems like some list of canned responses they must have readily available to copy and paste.

And what’s the point of a chat window anyway if the people are so low level they can’t research basic WP stuff like this? Every time I chat, I’m sent to a ticket, the ticket takes hours or days to resolve, often with more canned responses, “Due to security, we can’t…” or “Unfortunately, we can’t…”

I just need a host who can. Who can help me build my clients’ businesses. Who can resolve errors more quickly than days. Who just plain can.

Like WP Engine, Flywheel just isn’t that host.

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