In this post let me review WPX hosting, and also present you the reasons why I migrated to WPX hosting. I’ll also let you know whether this hosting is right for you.
Type | Managed WordPress hosting |
Starting price | $24.99/mo |
Features | 1. Free backups and website migration 2. DDOS protection 3. Staging area 4. Free SSL certificates |
Competitors | 1. Siteground 2. WPEngine 3. Kinsta |
I started my blog with HostGator hosting, later after getting tired of their slow load times, I decided to move my site to DigitalOcean.
There, I witnessed good page load times but the problem for me was that the DigitalOcean is an unmanaged hosting solution. If I run into any issues maintaining my server, there was only ticket system available for support.
Later, I decided to go for a good hosting provider with good technical support and also page load times. As hosting is the foundation of any online business, I decided to shell out some extra money to get a good host.
That’s when I came across WPX hosting. Many of the influential bloggers in the blogosphere were using it.
So, I thought why not give it a chance?
My first impressions…
As I was fed up with the technical support provided by DigitalOcean, I decided to go with WPX hosting as most of my competitors were using it.
Moreover, I had heard a lot about their security and speed at that time.
I bought the Business plan of WPX hosting which cost me $24.99/month. I needed my multiple websites to be migrated from DigitalOcean to WPX.
I just raised the tickets to get my sites migrated and all was done within 8 hours (they also offered me free SSLs for all the sites).
Now, after they replied me that the migration is completed, I checked the speed of my site. The site speed was lowered by 50% which I’ll discuss in detail later in this post.
The loading speed was super-fast.
If I run into any issues, I can always hit them up on chat. They are super-fast to reply. WPX calls them as “support ninjas”. And, it’s true.
I was impressed by the quick response time.
This is very impressive when compared to the 30 minutes wait time of HostGator or of 4 hours of ticket response time by DigitalOcean.
The support folks are like always online always eager to answer your questions. I mean, they are super-quick.
So, I decided to stick with them. I even renewed my hosting plan on black friday to get a renewal discount.
Make use of the coupon code – GOBLOGGINGTIPS to get 40% discount on the first month price of the WPX hosting plan you purchase.
WPX Hosting Review
Let’s dive into the review of the WPX hosting provider. Let me discuss the features, plans, and the support WPX has got to offer you.
After you complete reading this review, you’ll be clear whether to buy a WPX hosting package or not.
Speed
The speed offered by WPX hosting is excellent as I discussed earlier. My website was loading above 5 seconds. But after migrating to WPX hosting, I managed the get the loading speed of my sites to under 3 seconds and even below 2 seconds for some of my sites.
Here’s what I got!
Screenshot #1 – DigitalOcean + EasyEngine + Nginx WPFC cache.
Screenshot #2 – WPX + W3 Total Cache (No CDN).
Exact same plugins and theme. No changes. No optimizations.
This is quite impressive.
WPX suggests you to use W3 Total Cache plugin (unlike HostGator which bans you for using some cache plugins). Using a good cache plugin helps you to make full use of the high speed hosting that WPX offers you.
Apart from W3 Total Cache, you can also use WP Rocket plugin which is also a great plugin. But a caching plugin is really necessary to take the website speed to the next level.
Along with these things, WPX has partnered with Thrive Themes. That means, if you’ve previously bought any of the Thrive Themes products (you need not be Thrive member), you are entitled to get 1 year free MaxCDN on all your sites.
The MaxCDN is a winner for me as I use Thrive products on my sites.
Free website migration
WPX offers you unlimited site migrations. The business plan offers you to host upto 5 websites and also 5 migrations are done for free after the purchase of the plan. You need to create a ticket inside the dashboard to initiate the migration on their end.
When I migrated from DigitalOcean to WPX, I created the tickets to migrate my sites. They migrated my sites within 5 hours of me creating the tickets.
You can do manual migration yourself, but the downtime may be an issue. But the WPX manages to do the complete site migration with zero downtime.
Free backups
Unlike some of the other popular hosting providers, WPX won’t charge you for making backups of your site. They’ll backup your sites everyday. You can access the last 28 daily backups of your site inside your dashboard. These backups are stored in a separate server and are safe.
Nevertheless, I also suggest you to use plugins like Updraft or Backupbuddy if you are little paranoid.
At times you can also request manual backups if you are not quite familiar or not confident enough to do backups of your site.
Other notable features
Free SSL certificates: WPX partnered with LetsEncrypt provides your sites free SSL certificates and handle the renewal of these certificates every 3 months on their end. When the SSL is renewed you’ll get a notification email just to let you know that the SSL has been renewed.
SSL certificate is the most important thing you need to consider. Because, these days Google is marking sites that do not have SSL certificate installed as not secure.
Apart from the security perspective, SSL is one of the ranking factors in Google. Sites with SSL certificate have an edge overthe sites that do not have SSL certificate when it comes to rankings and as well as conversions due to trustworthiness.
So, how to migrate from http to https? You need not get your hands-dirty. You just need to contact the WPX support team and ask them to activate https on your sites. After the process is completed on their end, you’ll have perfectly migrated to https without any redirection errors.
DDOS protection: WordPress sites are vulnerable to DDoS attacks. Any hacker or your competitor can send unwanted flooding requests to your servers exhausting your server resources.
This may be made possible with the use of XML-RPC feature or any other plugin you are using in WordPress.
WPX is using the enterprise license of Incapsula DDoS protection to safeguard all the sites hosted under them for safeguarding you from DDoS attacks.
So, you don’t need to purchase a separate DDoS protection service to safeguard your sites.
Incapsula is the best when it comes to DDoS protection, and you’re getting it for free with WPX hosting.
Security coverage: Here’s the kicker. WPX offers Sucuri for its clients absolutely free. This includes HTTP/HTTPS security coverage, Malware scanning, Hack removal, and also DDoS protection.
The inclusion of Sucuri protection on their plans is a big winner as you need not worry about your site getting hacked or getting cleaned.
This feature gives you a peace of mind that someone is scanning your site to make sure that there are no malwares, and you can get your site easily recovered when something wrong happens.
Note: You need to also remember that the usage of cracked plugins and themes is prohibited on WPX hosting – you’ll get banned.
Staging area: WPX offers you a staging area where you can make modifications or development works on your site without altering the content displayed to your live visitors.
Email management
With WPX hosting you can create your domain email accounts, as shown in the above screenshot.
You can create as many email addresses as you want. You can forward the email addresses to your Gmail address if you want. You can also assign the storage for each of the email boxes so that they won’t use up all the web space provided to you.
If you want you can also access the mail app from the browser URL.
I prefer adding WPX SMTP details in Gmail to enable direct routing of my WPX emails to Gmail inbox which avoids the delay of the email delivery caused in case of forwarding the mails.
Plans and pricing
WPX hosting comes with 3 different plans – Business, Professional, and Elite.
Unlike other hosting providers like HostGator (which claims to offer unlimited space and bandwidth and loads up your website ultra-slow when you hit the cap) this is something you need to consider. There’s nothing called unlimited space or bandwidth for the price you pay.
- I personally have a Business plan which allows me to host 5 websites and offers total 10GB storage and 50GB bandwidth. The storage and bandwidth is enough for me as my sites are not AdSense websites that are traffic-heavy.
- If you are looking for hosting heavy traffic sites with WPX, you may need to go for their Professional or Elite plan.
You can use their free bandwidth checker tool to know which plan can handle your traffic.
When compared to other managed WP hosting solutions the price is reasonable enough. Do remember that they are offering you zero-wait-time support, enterprise-grade DDoS protection, and premium Sucuri protection.
FAQs on WPX Hosting
Does WPX Hosting provide CDN?
Yes. It comes with a built-in native CDN called the WPX Cloud which loads the content from the nearest server.
Can I get free SSL certificates?
Yes. You will get free SSL certificates with WPX. They have partnered with LetsEncrypt for offering these SSL certificates.
Do they transfer my site for free?
Yes. The support team will assist you with free migration services. If you are not tech-savvy, no need to worry as they will migrate the site for you just within 24 hours.
Is TrafficPlanet the same as WPX?
WPX was previous TrafficPlanet. Yes, both are the same.
How many sites can I host with WPX hosting?
It depends upon the pricing plans. With its lowest plan, you can host 5 websites. The highest plan supports 35 websites.
Wrap up
You can host your websites either in the US or UK. I have hosted all my sites on US servers. If the majority of your visitors are from the UK, then consider hosting in UK servers as the ping time would be quick for UK visitors.
I can say that the price you pay for WPX is justifiable. It is totally worth it.
Make use of the coupon code – GOBLOGGINGTIPS to get 40% discount on the first month price of the WPX hosting plan you purchase.
Hope you loved my review on WPX hosting. Make sure you share this post.