Hosting

Let me break down the hosts I’m experienced in working with, and why I choose them for different situations/needs

Lightningbase.com

Lightningbase is one of the best deals you can get. Chris (the owner) will actually problem-solve WordPress/WooCommerce issues directly for you. I can’t even begin to explain how rare that is. When I use servers that are 300-2000 dollars per month I often am told “We are only required to problem solve server issues, please hire a developer to maintiain your site” (condescending as hell). Chris is just amazing and the speed/quality of the servers is simply put, enterprise-level. BUT. Support can take an hour or two, and might just take half a day to get from an outsourced support agent, directly to Chris. But let me reassure you, he WILL help you directly every single time you need him with a unmatched skill level.

They are FAST, and not stingy about things like “Php Workers”, etc. You just get a fast server, and the amount of space/traffic you pay for. With unheard-of level of support.

So, if that’s not an issue for your project, they are the only choice. As low as 9.95 a month and you have fully managed, lightning-fast service for your website. You might (depending on how big your site is) need to go up to the 20 a month level for staging.

Kinsta

Kinsta is reliable and truly capable of handling enterprise-level sites. Their support is nearly instant. Chat-based and more often than not, extremely helpful. If you don’t mind the cost (which mind you, is far lower than competitors such as wpengine.com), it’s some solid service. Expect to pay 40-90 a month as you begin, and like any real service, considerably more if you are successful. If you or your client need FAST support, and are ready to pay whatever is justified and needed, it’s a solid choice.

Here are the caveats:

Support quality is a crap-shoot. Some agents are just awesome. Some are frankly just terrible and condescending, nearly refusing to even suggest what may or may not be going wrong with your site. They WILL however always support the server itself with skill and speed.
They are STINGY with resources (namely PHP workers). As a result, if you have any decent level of traffic and are using plugins such as Elementor that are resource-heavy, it will perform dismally unless you select the single-site plan. Then it will FIRE.

Nestify

Nestify is a pretty solid deal. I would consider this to be a pretty mid-range level of skill/server knowledge needed. It’s basically a managed wordpress VPN. This site is actually powered by them.

I chose Nestify because I wanted a server where I could spin up unlimited websites, and increase resources as needed. Most WordPress and WooCommerce websites are really not THAT server intensive until/unless they get a large amount of traffic. Nestifty allows me to quickly spin up sites that are blazing fast with complete control. I am really growing quite fond of them. Support is fast but quality increases if your request gets pushed to tier 2. But tier 1 is instant (chat).

Really, this is my go-to choice now for a company that will need many sites. Be it a web agency, or a company that will require lots of sites, this is solid, fast, and the cost is justified.

The caveats of Nestify are:

They seem pretty new and support level 1 is not as good as level 2. But you WILL get pushed to level 2 when needed, so really no complaints.
I experienced a bit of bugginess (making me think its a pretty new company), but all of it was quickly resolved by support and the bugs have not repeated in new sites on my package.

Pagely

Pagely is not for the weak hearted or more accurately non-developers. However, if you are managing a project that is more of a wordpress-based web application, marketplace, or just expecting an absurd amount of traffic, this is a no-brainer.

The MAIN reason to consider them in my opinion is their implementation of de-coupled database servers. (WordPress hosts by default have the mysql on the same server instance as the web-application, which from a software developer’s perspective is quite unwise.) Pagely is using Amazon RDS by default. This is more secure and efficient. You can even spin up a dedicated RDS instance. Pagely also monitors your site to a frankly ABUSRD level and will take steps to correct any form of downtime faster than you realize it’s happening. They can seriously handle a viral level of unexpected traffic. And support is a super-nerd level of knowledge and experience.

The caveats of Pagely are:

Not even REMOTELY user-friendly. This is a developer’s hosting service and requires a deep understanding of SSH, wp-cli, etc.
Some support agents are better than others.
They were recently acquired by Godaddy, whom is one of the worst companies I would NEVER recommend. They take advantage of people’s naivety on a brutal level. But my experience is that the same people are still running Pagely as before and the service quality has not been downgraded.
Expensive. For a functional site expect to start around 250-300 a month and be prepared to get into the thousands.