I’m pretty open when it comes to running my business. Anchor Hosting resells other managed WordPress host providers, primarily Kinsta, and bundles in routine WordPress maintenance at no extra cost for a hassle-free WordPress hosting experience. In a nutshell that’s pretty much it. If you haven’t tried out my hosting services, you should. It’s as awesome as it sounds and it’s a great option for freelancers and agencies that just don’t want to deal with the routine WordPress maintenance.
Back in 2019, around the time of WordCamp US, I upgraded my custom Kinsta plan. Every time I upgrade my Kinsta plan it allows Anchor Hosting to host more WordPress sites and increase my storage and visitor limits. These increases in web hosting costs have been quite gradual over the last few years so I didn’t even notice how much I was paying. That was until this particular upgrade when I crossed the $100,000/year price point.
Kinsta has been an amazing host provider, as my business grows I’m happy to grow with them.
I didn’t even hesitate with the custom Kinsta plan upgrade. That said, it is a price point worth reflecting on. A common question I get is, why do I resell hosting services? At this scale, shouldn’t I just start hiring and build my own hosting company? That’s what I want to answer. Here’s a reflection on why I pay Kinsta over $100,000/year and why I have no plans to build a web hosting company.
Reselling web hosting allows me to focus on solving routine WordPress maintenance.
Routine WordPress maintenance is a huge pain point in the WordPress ecosystem. So much so that literally hundreds of WordPress maintenance businesses have been created over the past few years. Doing WordPress maintenance at scale is really hard. Each web host has its own unique setup and ways of doing things which all need to be considered. In order to do routine WordPress maintenance as a standalone service it requires a costly monthly fee.
As a web host reseller I decide who I use for web hosting. It allows me to know deeply just a few host providers which makes handling the routine WordPress maintenance work far more efficiently than others. Because of this, I don’t have to deal with most of the problems that other WordPress maintenance providers deal with. That’s simply because I control where all of my customers are hosted. In fact, I don’t even charge for my routine WordPress maintenance services, and nor do I ever have plans to do so. It’s just included with my web hosting plans for free, the way it should be.
Running a web hosting business is completely different than being a web host reseller. As a reseller I need to be aware of the web hosting industry however I don’t need to get into weeds of what web hosts do. I am thankful that I don’t have to worry about building and configuring servers, managing data centers, developing web hosting infrastructure and everything else a web host has to do. Instead I can leverage a quality web hosting company and focus on other things like WordPress management and routine WordPress maintenance.
WordPress web hosts need to be focused on innovating WordPress web hosting.
Web hosting companies knows how painful routine WordPress maintenance can be, but I don’t think they are the ones that should solve it. As someone who uses other web hosting services, I want my web host to stay focused on web hosting services. I’ve seen too many web hosting services that get caught chasing down shiny new WordPress maintenance solutions and unfortunately stop innovating on their core business that is web hosting. Web hosting is a constantly changing. If you’re running a web hosting business on legacy style VPS, you’re outdated. You should be running on containerized technologies, like Kinsta is doing with Google Cloud, and pursing future technologies.
There is so much in the WordPress hosting space that is still to be explored. I mean how cool would it be for every WordPress site to be self-healing, self-replicating and automatically hosted on a globally network of datacenters. The future of web hosting is serverless. Imagine being able to deploy your WordPress site and not have to worry about the rest.
If you want to build a web hosting company, go for it. Just know reselling web hosting can also be awesome.
There is no right or wrong thing to pursue. It’s a large ecosystem with many problems to solve. I think reselling web hosting presents huge untapped potential for solving WordPress maintenance. It’s OK to not want to be a web host. Use that freedom to bundle in some amazing services on top of web hosting. Web host resellers aren’t not tied to any individual hosting company. I can decide whose the best to use for my customers which, at the end of the day, keeps the web hosting industry competitive and moving forward.