Nice write-up. I wanted to touch on a couple questions that you asked in this post that you hoped were brought up during the show.

First off, what really sets most hosting providers apart is their ability to meet the needs of a wide range of websites that are powered by WP. As I said on the show, the needs of a site with 100 daily visitors is going to be vastly different than that of a site that gets 100,000. Providers that are truly Wordpress-friendly will be able to host these customers, whether they re-engineer their hosting platform or offer a variety of solutions (such as VPS and Dedicated hosting) to accommodate specific needs. For example, Siteground has specifically-tailored aspects of their servers to optimize how certain major open source applications run. InMotion Hosting has made major improvements in how the user is able to install, manage, and customize Wordpress to improve the overall user experience, and has exceeded the industry standard in terms of the server hardware and network infrastructure required to keep websites up and running quickly and securely.

Aside from this, the company's ability to support Wordpress has become vital. As conceded by just about every member of the panel, there's only so much training that can be devoted to one aspect of the business, and when it comes down to it, technical support is for the hosting, not for Wordpress specifically. However, a company's ability to go above and beyond by focusing on increasing their competency in WP is going to stand out more in the community and keep their customers happier. Also, IMH has Jeff Matson :)

Despite my natural "sassy" (according to WPBacon :D ) demeanor towards Bluehost that was exhibited during the show, I want to specifically point out Bluehost's contributions to the WP community are commendable and unsurpassed. They should be recognized for their ongoing efforts to improving what is now considered to be the most powerful and widely-used open source application.

InMotion Hosting has co-sponsored dozens of Wordcamp events across the country and has committed thousands of hours in developing openly-available documentation and help guides targeted to Wordpress users. We will continue to work more and more closely with the WP community for years to come.

Overall, I really enjoyed being on this roundtable and felt that the mix of participants was just right for keeping things informative and interesting.

Vanessa
@vanessa_vasile