GoDaddy Launches New Managed WordPress Hosting Platform Aimed at Professionals

GoDaddy has expanded its managed WordPress hosting plans to include a new “Pro WordPress” platform with tools aimed at professionals who are hosting multiple sites. Although GoDaddy currently has 4 million customers running on WordPress, its more basic plans were not adequate for those who require additional tools to manage multiple sites and clients in one place.

“Our new Managed WordPress platform is for WordPress professionals, which we’ve struggled to serve well in the past,” GoDaddy’s Head of WordPress, Gabriel Mays, said. “We’re fixing that.”

Pro WordPress, a product the company teased at WordCamp Europe 2017, uses PHP 7.1 as the default, Kubernetes container management, and gives each site isolated, dedicated resources. It also includes ManageWP premium tools (GoDaddy Pro Sites), 90 days of backups powered by ManageWP, staging site environment, a Gravity Forms license, a library of 10,000+ free stock images, scanning and monitoring powered by Sucuri, and free SSL automatically installed on every site.

GoDaddy’s new offering is aggressively priced at $10/month for one site and ranges to $99/month for 25 sites. Mays said that hosting millions of WordPress sites has allowed GoDaddy to gain economies of scale and pass on the savings to customers. For comparison, WP Engine’s personal plan pricing starts at $25/month for one site and $249/month for 25 sites. Flywheel’s bulk pricing starts at $92/month for 10 installs and $229/month for up to 30 sites. SiteGround is still somewhat of an outlier with unlimited installs for any of its bulk WordPress hosting plans, which begin at $5.95/month and range to $11.95/month.

“Our chief competitors are other hosts who serve Web Pros like WP Engine, SiteGround, and others,” Mays said. “We differentiate in performance, quality, and value. For example, while our competitors serve their products from a shared environment, we don’t. Our customers get a fully containerized environment with isolated resources. This delivers high performance and failover for high redundancy.”

GoDaddy’s WordPress customer base continues to outpace the growth of the market. In 2016, roughly one third of all GoDaddy sites were running on WordPress, and half of all new sites were using the software. Over the past several years, GoDaddy has been working to overcome its poor reputation in the WordPress community. During that time, the company acquired several large WordPress-related products to boost its offerings in the space, including ManageWP (September 2016), WP Curve (December 2016), and Sucuri (March 2017).

The acquisition of these products, as well as partnerships with Gravity Forms, Beaver Builder, and WP101, were all milestones in what Mays said is GoDaddy’s goal – to become “a one-stop shop for WordPress professionals.” The company continues to invest in the community by sponsoring WordCamps globally and supporting WordPress security team lead Aaron Campbell as a full-time core contributor.

“Five years ago, GoDaddy wasn’t involved in the WordPress community; we were the mammoth host that made money off of WordPress without giving back,” Mays said. “We’ve made some big strides in changing that, and will continue to ramp up our commitment to the WordPress community.”