Frankly, the existing "specialist" WordPress hosting companies are useless when a client has anything more than a minor problem. Perhaps only the worst cases wash up at my door, but my impression is that, unless a support issue is on their existing list, they would rather jettison the client than spend time fixing it - no kidding, I have seen them abandon big multisite clients, spending thousands a month, over issues that anyone with an understanding of servers should know how to fix.

At first I was surprised by this, but have come to understand that the business model is based upon systemizing the service, minimizing support spend per customer and simply relying upon marketing to replace the customers you lose. In a nutshell: focus on growth, grab the 95% of customers who are never going to have serious problems anyway, don't waste time on edge cases. I can see how that would give angel investors and VCs a boner.

So, the WordPress hosting industry is essentially a scam because, when you actually need the specialist expertise you thought you were paying for, you are left high and dry. Shamefully, the enthusiastic participation of the WordPress commentariat has been bought and paid for by large affiliate payments, I never see these cases receive any coverage.

I have long thought that what customers are getting is, roughly, a $10 value for $30, with ridiculous jumps in billing for minor increases in resources. The entry of bigger players such as Godaddy will, at least, push prices closer to where they should be.