Seeing a particular hosting need that wasn't being filled, Pagely was founded in 2006 and was the first to offer managed WordPress hosting. The web host leverages the power, security, and scalability of Amazon Web Services to provide fast, reliable hosting for WordPress. Disney, Microsoft, PetSmart, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and Vonage are just a few of the companies Pagely lists as clients. Read our Pagely review below.
OverviewAs a WordPress Managed hosting company, Pagely does not work with any other type of website. If a plugin does not work with WordPress, it will not function on Pagely.
By partnering with Amazon, and concentrating only on WordPress, Pagely can offer features that even very large businesses find attractive.
Pagely offers six defined plans, and one called Enterprise that is custom tailored (and custom priced). Pagely does not differentiate between plans by the number of visitors – all plans can have an unlimited number.
Plans are, instead, set up with storage and bandwidth as the defining feature. Even though it may not seem so from the name, the Business plan is the basic personal plan for smaller sites.
The Professional plan is the next step up and is suited for mid-sized sites or those that need features such as WooCommerce. For larger sites that are more resource intensive, four VPS plans are priced depending on your storage and bandwidth needs.
Pagely also offers the opportunity to add storage or bandwidth expansion to an existing plan for in-between plan upgrades. This scalability means that as your WordPress site grows, Pagely will have a plan that can accommodate your needs.
Being managed means updates and security patches are installed automatically by Pagely. Backups are made daily, and secured off-site at Amazon’s S3 service and they are retained for 14 days.
Pagely uses PressCache for faster loading of web pages, and PressArmor to proactively monitor for hacks and malware.
They also provide PressCDN, a content delivery network, for faster loading of static content such as graphics. The amount of content allowed depends on the plan chosen.
The Pagely VPS plans offer some features not found in the Business or Professional plans, including staging, Git, SSH, and the ability to access databases.
Staging allows you to make changes to your site without affecting the live version. Once happy with the changes, you can use Git Push to apply those changes to your live site. SSH and database access provides you greater control over your site.
If you want to use WordPress Multi-site to manage several sites from one dashboard, you will need to get the Professional plan or above.
The number of WordPress sites you can host is also limited by the plan, with Business allowing up to three sites and the top level VPS plan allowing up to sixty sites. If you need to host more than sixty sites, the Enterprise plan allows you up to three hundred sites. SSL certificates and dedicated IPs are available to the plans with additional fees.
Up to two sites can be migrated from other hosting companies to Pagely at no charge, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. This may be a limited offer as Pagely’s TOS (terms of service) states that Pagely reserves the right to issue a refund on a case-by-case basis at Pagely’s sole discretion.
There are no required contracts for the length of terms. However, they do offer savings when hosting is pre-paid annually, rather than month-to-month.
It should be noted that Pagely’s pricing is higher than most shared hosting sites. Its partnership with Amazon and its range of features offset the price for those who prize reliability, security, and speed (all plans utilize SSDs).
Customers can focus on the content of their website because Pagely does the maintenance.
One “feature” that may seem odd, especially to the experienced user, is that WordPress core files are symlinks – meaning they cannot be edited. Pagely says that is not to limit capabilities, but to force good practices on its customers.
Rather than edit core files, custom functions, and Child templates should be used instead. This is a case of saving customers from themselves, which can be considered a useful aspect of having a managed site.
Its reputation, its wide range of plans supporting scalability, its proactive security, and its WordPress optimized, Amazon-based, managed servers, makes Pagely perfect for the blogger or e-commerce owner who uses WordPress and desires risk-free dependability and speed.
While suitable for small businesses, Pagely is ideally suited for mid-to-large sized companies that require the host to be able to handle large amounts of traffic without a hiccup.
Key FeaturesBased on the overwhelmingly positive consumer reviews, it should come as no surprise that the experts are just as glowing in their praise of Pagely. In fact, the service often receives a perfect score of 5 out of 5 stats. The experts highly recommend Pagely and rank it at the very top of web hosting services. Pagely makes some big claims about reliability, load times and overall performance. According to the experts,the service more than lives up to the high standards they have set for themselves.
One of the best parts about Pagely is that it is perfect for any size business or website. Bloggers, small businesses and large enterprises will all benefit from using Pagely. If you are losing any business to website outages and downtime, then experts recommend making the switch to Pagely. While it may cost more than other services, critics say it is worth the price.
The vast majority of consumers are extremely pleased with Pagely and highly recommend the web hosting service. Users are especially impressed with the powerful speed that Pagely offers. Their servers can handle large spikes in visitors and without any effect on load times. You can expect a fast, reliable and high performance site no matter how many people are visiting at once.
Positive reviews also mentioned confidence in Pagely’s security and technical support. Consumers can rest assured that their site is protected and that their data will be backed up on a daily basis. The service offers a scalable and redundant architecture that can fit any site. Users don’t have to worry about technical issues and they have access to an excellent support team.
The only negative comments consumers had to make about Pagely referred to occasional outages.These problems appeared to be fairly isolated though and not representative of performance as a whole. In fact, one comparison showed that a competitor had a total of 13 hours of downtime over a six-month period. This is actually considered about average in the web hosting industry. When the website switched to Pagely, they didn’t experience any downtime over a six-month period. While certain customers may have experienced problems, there is plenty of evidence to show that these incidents are the exception to the rule.
In addition, some shoppers were turned off by the price of Pagely. However, premium services come with a premium price tag.
Reliability & UptimePagely does not have an uptime guarantee, but statistics indicate that uptime is usually near 99.9%, as would be expected with an Amazon partnership.
Pagely primarily uses Amazon’s Eastern U.S. data center, located in Virginia. However, VPS and Enterprise plan customers can request any of Amazon’s global data centers to be close to their clients.
Pagely spreads hosting over different zones and uses load balancing pairs of servers to reduce outage risks and traffic spikes.
Features & Tools Here’s a closer look at some of the features Pagely provides.
| Feature | Overview |
| Control Panel | Pagely uses Atomic Core as the interface for access to your WordPress dashboard(s), customer information, plan details, billing, and other administrative needs. As with any WordPress installation, the content of the website is managed and edited from the WordPress dashboard. |
| Disk Space | Disk space is allotted according to the plan selected. The business plan offers 10 GB; Professional is 20 GB, and the four VPS plans provide 50 GB of storage. The Enterprise plan starts at 200 GB and goes up from there depending on user needs. |
| Bandwidth | Bandwidth also depends on the plan. The business provides 10 GB, Professional 25 GB, and the four VPS plans range from 150 GB to 500 GB. The Enterprise plan accommodates a large number of visitors, providing 3 TB and up in bandwidth. |
| Database Support | Pagely is a WordPress specific hosting company, so MySQL databases are supported. User access to the databases is restricted to the VPS and Enterprise plans. |
| Free Domain | Pagely does not provide a domain service. You’ll have to get your domain(s) from a domain registrar such as GoDaddy or Namecheap. Pagely will migrate up to two sites hosted elsewhere to Pagely free of charge. |
| Multiple Domains | The number of domains allowed depends on the plan selected. The business allows up to three sites; the top VPS plan allows 60 sites, and Enterprise allows 300 or more installs. |
| Data Backups | Backups are done daily by Pagely, stored offsite, and retained for 14 days. |
| One-Click App Installer | Plugins and add-ons are done through the WordPress dashboard. |
| Email Accounts | Pagely does not provide an email in its hosting packages. You will have to look to third-party solutions to provide an email with your domain name as the address. |
| Hosting Security | Servers are monitored by PressArmor for proactive protection against hacks, viruses, and malware. It also provides protection from Distributed Denial of Service and brute force attacks. For those that require it, SSL certificates can be purchased and installed for an additional fee. |
| Website Builder | There is no website builder software on Pagely. WordPress is the only type of site supported. However, there are WordPress plugins that make creating your site easier and more graphical. Keep in mind, if it doesn’t work with WordPress, it won’t work on Pagely. |
| Malware and Spam Protection | Pagely uses PressArmor to scan automatically servers for hacks and viruses. There is no email service, so there are no filters in that regard. As with any WordPress installation, for individual comments on sites, WordPress has its internal settings, plus there are some WordPress plugins to fight spam, one of which, Askimet, Pagely installs by default for you. |
| Shopping Carts | Shopping carts are added through the WordPress dashboard, with the most widely used cart being WooCommerce. Any cart that WordPress supports can be installed on Pagely sites. If your e-commerce site will have much traffic or is fairly large, Pagely recommends stepping up from Business to Professional or higher plans. |
| Programming Languages Support | WordPress uses PHP, so it is supported by Pagely. |
| Site Statistics | Site statistic plugins are available for WordPress, and Google Analytics can be installed for a more detailed analysis of traffic. Some site statistics can be accessed in the Atomic Core interface. |
| Additional Features and Tools |
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Plans & Pricing Pagely’s plans are based on bandwidth and storage needs. As mentioned, Pagely is more expensive than most shared hosting plans due to its providing Managed hosting on Amazon servers. Prices are always subject to change and promotions, so the prices below reflect pricing on Pagely at the time of this writing.
The Business plan provides 10 GB of SSD storage, 10 GB of bandwidth, and 50 GB of CDN capacity for $64 a month. That is sufficient for most blogs and small business owners. The Professional plan provides 20 GB of SSD storage, 25 GB of bandwidth, and 100 GB of CDN capacity for $149 per month.
VPS-1 provides 50 GB of SSD storage, 150 GB of bandwidth, and 750 GB of CDN content. VPS-2 offers 50 GB of SSD storage, 250 GB of bandwidth, and 1.5 TB of CDN content. VPS-3 50 GB of storage, 500 GB of bandwidth, and 2.5 TB of CDN content. VPS-4 is 50 GB of storage, 500 GB of bandwidth, and 3.5 TB of CDN capacity. Capability and pricing for the Enterprise plan are customized, based on the customer needs.
SSL certificates can be purchased for all the plans for an additional fee. Dedicated IPs are provided for a fee for the Business and Professional plans, and are free for the VPS and Enterprise plans.
Pagely also offers extra bandwidth, storage, and CDN capacity for monthly charges to expand the capabilities of your plan without upgrading to the next level.
Customer Support As easy as Pagely is to use, support may not ever be needed. However, if there is a drawback to Pagely, it could be the lack of phone support. There is also no chat support for the Business and Professional plans. That said, response times to emailed tickets is available 24/7, and is reported by customers to be excellent.
For email support, you can use a link in the Atomic Core control panel.
There is also a detailed contact page on the Pagely website. You will also find a Tucson, Arizona address on that page for contact via regular mail. If you have a particular issue, you may open a support ticket on the website.
Pagely has a blog, and there is an FAQ section with answers to most questions that arise for the typical customer.
For questions concerning system-wide issues, Pagely has a live status page with uptime information for some services.
If you have a VPS plan, you are given access to chat, which is available from 9-5 MST.
Ease of Use The Atomic Core control panel is clean and easy to navigate. For new installations, the one-click WordPress install sets everything up for you, including the MySQL database.
Pagely updates, routine maintenance, and security monitoring, owning a WordPress site is as easy for the novice as it is for the expert.
Conclusion To quote Pagely’s website, “It’s WordPress, just better.” That better comes at a price, however. Pagely does offer extreme reliability, security, and most of all, speed – and it takes care of much of the technical side of running a website for you.
These features make it an excellent choice for a WordPress user who wants uninterrupted service on a host that can handle whatever is thrown at them, and who doesn’t wish to deal with the maintenance, security, and update side of things.
Most hosting companies unmatch its scalability, and the ability to handle websites of any size from startups to ones dealing with millions of visitors per month – without a hitch – makes it suitable for anyone who can afford the higher fees.
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