CMS Vendors
WordPress Foundation
Managed WordPress
Numerous service providers around the world offer managed hosting and security services for WordPress as an alternative to Automattic.
- These alternatives lie on a spectrum between the simplicity of Newspack and enterprisey-ness of WordPress VIP
- They are therefore best suited to mid-sized publishers with the resources and confidence to customise a WordPress solution on their own
- You can find a full range of customisation capabilities but typically a middling level of infrastructure, albeit at very wide-ranging price points
- Sample media and entertainment customers include Stanford Daily News, Thomson Reuters and Pandora
Likely fit
This sort of 'plain vanilla' managed hosting is suitable for medium-sized publishers with deep technical resources and a history of mastering the WordPress platform itself. It could offer a nice middling alternative in between Automattic's Newspack and Wordpress VIP options. Alternatively, it could suffice if you want to spend even less than Newspack but, in that event, you still need to consider the potential costs of customising the WordPress application itself (which will fall to you).
At a glance
Primary customer fit
Mid-sized independent news organisations
Secondary fit
Small independent news organisation
Most active geographies
Global
Official support hours
Email: Varies by supplier
Phone: Varies by supplier
Officially supported languages for user interface
EN
Third-party language support available?
Yes
Licence model
Mostly monthly/annual subscription; also varies by supplier
Scope summary
Publishing platform for those who have deep technical resources and aren't afraid of using third-party plug-ins for news-specific capabilities, including revenue/audience modules
Tech base
WordPress, PHP
Cloud model
Managed service (PaaS)
Headquarters
Depends on vendor
Head count
Depends on vendor
What customers report
- The broad and deep open-source community makes many third-party modules available to extend functionality and integrate with common digital marketing platforms
- You can find extraordinarily diverse hosting/cloud options for nearly any budget; in fact, you can readily find cheaper (if less packaged) alternatives to Newspack
- Many enterprise features (e.g. workflows, email, personalisation) are not part of the core; you will need to depend on external plug-ins
- This sizable number of plug-ins has the potential to wreak havoc with your site: security holes, malicious attacks and incompatibilities require someone to play close attention and you may need to pay for that
- Cheaper service providers have a tendency to use obsolete infrastructure
Background
- By some estimates, WordPress is the most widespread tool for managing and building websites. Consequently, numerous hosting companies around the globe provide managed hosting for WordPress. This is essentially your own installation of WordPress (commonly known as Wordpress.org to differentiate it from Wordpress.com hosted by Automattic).
- Originally a blogging tool, WordPress is universally admired for its simple setup and ease of use. This has caused the system to gain additional popularity as a more traditional web content management system. However, when it's used as a CMS, you could run into its limitations quickly if you need more enterprisey features like atomic content reuse and personalisation.
- Functionally, these providers provide editorial services that don't actually differ much from core WordPress. That means that you get a block editor for creating content and then basic capabilities around publishing. As with WordPress VIP, if you have more sophisticated needs — such as the ability to create different content types and workflows — you will not find them here. Your provider will point you to the vast collection of WordPress plug-ins that you can vet and deploy with a developer's help
- There are several levels of services that these providers offer. Some provide shared hosting where you could install anything, including WordPress. Others provide a dedicated WordPress hosting where there are some optimisations done to the WordPress install. In addition, some also provide automatic updates, security and patching of your WordPress setup. Some of the popular service providers are WPEngine, Cloudways, SiteGround and Dreamhost. There are thousands of others, in every geography and every price point. Many will offer you really cheap monthly plans, but beware and remain cautious. Those cheaper plans often rely on obsolete infrastructure, already overloaded with the number of sites getting served.
- Managed WordPress' pricing usually follows a monthly or annual subscription model. These prices depend on number of sites (or WordPress installations), bandwidth, storage, CPU and other requirements. Service providers of all types provide this service. These vary from shared hosting to virtual private servers (VPS) to dedicated hosting. You can get started at $5 (USD) per month for shared hosting but dedicated hosting will cost you a lot more, often 100s or 1,000s of dollars per month. The difference in pricing is not just because of infrastructure (shared vs dedicated) but also because of nonfunctional attributes (reliability, scalability, performance) and additional services (e.g. integrations or custom plug-ins). In general, a wide array of cloud hosting options have emerged, though you should stay away from the lower-end alternatives.
- In most cases, managed service providers do not get involved in implementations. You will need to bring an integrator on board or find internal WordPress resources for any customisations and extensions. The good news, though, is that you have full control of your setup and you can usually use most plug-ins and themes. You can also build your own plug-ins or themes. In this sense, these services are more similar to WordPress VIP than Newspack.
- Although the out-of-the-box implementation is really simple, extending the platform isn't. Several WordPress enterprise customers have underestimated the level of developer effort required for plug-in development and integration. The platform's DevOps services remain a bit crude and seem to favour the single WordPress developer rather than a larger team collaboration.
Package scope (as reported by vendor)
| Core platform - i.e., bundled in product (yes/no/beta) | Add-On (yes/custom/3rd party) | |
|---|---|---|
|
Content lifecycle: author / classify / edit / approve / publish / re-purpose / archive / dispose
|
Yes
|
|
|
Basic digital / voice / media asset management
|
Yes
|
|
|
Support print publishing
|
|
|
|
Simple social media re-publishing
|
Yes
|
|
|
Optional modules: forms / polls / social widgets / etc
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Connector library (OOTB connectors, APIs, etc.)
|
Yes
|
|
|
Bundled CDN (with DDOS protection)
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
User registration
|
Yes
|
|
|
Subscription management and fulfillment - digital
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Subscription or membership
|
|
|
|
Personalisation
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Ad management - digital
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Ad management - print
|
|
|
|
Content management
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Research
|
Yes
|
|
|
Content management
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Video management / OVP
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Audio management / podcasting
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Data journalism and visualisation
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Classifieds
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Commenting / community features/
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
Newsletter production and management
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Notifications and alerts
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
A/B testing
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
SEO
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Multi-title management with variable inheritance
|
No
|
|
|
Complex layout and subsite / subsection cloning
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
AR- / VR- enhanced services
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Audience segmentation
|
Yes
|
|
|
Online user / partner forums
|
No
|
|
|
Regular user group meetings
|
No
|
|
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