Automattic (the company behind WordPress) announced a few days ago that the company is now offering a service called WordPress Enterprise.

Partners

• Amazon on the Polly plugin

What is Enterprise? A step in between WordPress.com and WordPress VIP. Enterprise is a wholly managed hosting option for businesses seeking something more than WordPress.com but far less expensive than WordPress VIP.

Pricing and Details

WordPress Enterprise doesn’t come cheap at $500 per month, but Automattic reps say that the level of managed hosting will be so high that the price is justified. Is it? It all depends on what you want in a hosting company. For sure, $500 is far more than most other hosting companies charge for managed options, but getting a completely managed hosting plan with other companies is also challenging.

So, is WordPress Enterprise not a contender in the managed hosting scene? It might be. If you sign up for WordPress Enterprise, you’ll get everything you would get with WordPress.com, plus some features from WordPress VIP plus Chartbeat and Flipboard integration. In short, WordPress offers the best in one excellent package – well, one expensive and excellent package.

Managed Hosting Is Worth It

Whether or not you decide that the $500 Enterprise plan is right for you, there’s no debating that managed hosting is where it’s at, and it’s what you want when choosing a dedicated hosting option. Without managed hosting, you’ll be left to your own devices, and that’s never a good idea unless you know exactly what you are doing. No idea? Don’t go without managed hosting!

WordPress must break into the managed hosting space since the company deals with a lot of pressure from other hosting companies (and sites like Tumblr). But it will be interesting to see if companies want to pay $500 monthly for what WordPress offers. Would you pay this much for a managed hosting plan that’s as simple to use as any other WordPress plan and has some VIP advantages?

How to Choose

The best way to select a dedicated hosting plan is to find one that offers everything you want for the right price. If what Automattic offers sounds like what you’ve been looking for, you can justify that $500 monthly price. If not, it’s probably out of your budget for now, and you can find cheaper packages.

Compare what Automattic offers regarding managed hosting with what you find elsewhere, and you’ll soon see whether or not that price is crazy or just right. Would you sign up for the new WordPress Enterprise managed to host for your small business? Or do you feel better about paying less? It will be interesting to see which one this one goes!

What for Customers?

• Creating content without needing a developer or designer aligned with brand guidelines and code standards is easy.
• Mobile-first design philosophy: Most traffic to a website comes from mobile devices. Also, Google uses ‘mobile-index’ for SEO.
• Easy and automated core and plugin updates to fix vulnerabilities, hence gaining the trust of visitors and businesses.
• Free & Open source
• Extensible, flexible and easy technology integrations.

Next Version: WordPress 5.0 release (“Gutenberg”) release estimate date is April 2018

WordPress 3.7 ‘Basie’ in honor of Count Basie

It features reliable and secured automatic version updates in the background with dozens of new checks and safeguards.

More robust password recommendations: enables complex, long, and unique password creation.

Better global support for automatically installing and keeping the correct language files current.