Exabytes WordPress Hosting Review: Is It Worth It?

 

Exabytes has just launched its WordPress Hosting service. It is reliable, fast, and stable because the entire server is only meant to support your managed WordPress website. It is built on a LiteSpeed server and is using a LiteSpeed Cache to optimize and provide you with faster websites. It also uses a higher percent pure SSD to ensure that your website works at its fastest speed.

I have used Exabytes services before and I consider them as my best partner when it comes to a web hosting provider and domain registratrar. It provides its customers with the necessary tools to create a successful online presence. With Exabytes WordPress Hosting, companies can host their own WordPress sites without the need to worry about the technical details. It offers the most complete selection of pre-installed WordPress themes, tools, plugins, and design options.

New to this web hosting service? Keep reading to find out about my Exabytes review.

Why Choose Exabytes?

Exabytes Group has been providing cloud hosting, eCommerce, and digital solutions since 2001 for a big number of over 160,000 businesses worldwide. Some of their huge clients are Mothercare, Hyundai, Singapore Polytechnic, Nanyang Technological University, Takashimaya, Nando’s, Singapore Olympics, National Gallery Singapore, City Chain, Johnson & Johnson, Sharp, Abbott, and Sakae Sushi.

Their company first started in Malaysia as Exabytes Network Sdn Bhd, but they are now have data centers in Singapore, US, and Indonesia. They also even acquired other web hosting companies such as Usonyx, Signetique, Cybersite, and Web Hosting. They pride themselves on being a leading provider of cloud computing solutions and support to small-to-medium-sized enterprises with their focus on customer service excellence.

They offer a range of services that include web hosting solutions with dedicated IPs or SSL certificates, domain registration which allows customers to build their own websites from scratch or transfer an existing site, mobile app development with cross-platform capability as well as web design. As a web host, they are experts at offering all the products needed to run an online business. Their server network is protected by 24/7 monitoring against intrusion attempts and DDoS attacks.

Their commitment and hard work enable them to receive numerous noteworthy awards like The Golden Bull Award (2007, 2008, 2011 & 2012), Deloitte Technology Fast500 Asia Pacific 2009, Industry Excellence Awards 2011, and etc. Over the years, their partnership with different software, web design, and web/mobile app solution companies has expanded. Some of their partners include Flask MediaLab, Applify Global, ARPlanet Singapore, IT Block Pte. Ltd., and NCODE Consultant Pte Ltd.

They also have reseller hosting plans which are great for agencies who need to host websites for their clients and have their own billing system.

What’s Special about Exabytes WordPress Hosting Plans? 

The Exabytes WordPress Hosting Plans is special because it has a dedicated server to support your managed WordPress websites. Its automatic 1-click WordPress installation makes it easier to set up. The server is designed and dedicated to providing you with the most stability and best performance for your WordPress websites. With the Exabytes Hosting plans, their WordPress Hosting is actually built on the LiteSpeed server on a pure SSD disk drive. The SSD has access speeds of 35 to 100 microseconds which is nearly 100 times faster than HDD. It also comes with LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP), a built-in and high-performance dynamic content acceleration, to guarantee that you have the fastest loading speed and response time significantly. The LiteSpeed Cache also provides users with greater flexibility and enhanced performance even on static pages. It is fully compatible with Apache as well as secure, but only needs less maintenance.

When it comes to security protection, you don’t have to worry about your website being hacked or infected with a malware virus. They have the most enhanced security because it comes with complete Website Security360 protection, Automatic Malware Scan & Websites Fix, 1-Click Hardening, WordPress security scan, and security patches. With these, your website will always be up.

Also, it comes with a One-Click Staging feature that allows you to create a staging environment and safely test new changes on your websites before publishing them. It means that if you want to make changes on your websites such as a new design, new feature, or new plugins, you can do that easily with one-click staging.

Its Daily Website Backup feature is another game changer from Exabytes. They keep up to 14 days for their daily backup. If anything happens to your website, you can do a 1-click restore to fully retrieve your data. Their Technical Support Service can also assist you 24/7 if you feel that this task is overwhelming for you.

They have different data centers around South East Asia, allowing you to choose the closest data warehouse for the fastest load speed to serve your site visitors.

Lastly, Exabytes WordPress Hosting comes with a free domain. If you have a brand new company, you can definitely save your money on domain registration. The domain name is free for newly registered domains and you don’t have to pay for the domain renewal as long as you renew your hosting plan.

But you can actually save up to S$30 for a domain name ending with “.com.sg” or “.sg” on your first year of registration. Click here for more information.

Pricing

The Exabytes WordPress Hosting service offers four plans namely:

• WP 12 Beginner 
• WP 12 Business
• WP 12 Ecommerce
• WP 12 Ultimate

However, you can enjoy these prices if you sign up for them for three (3) years. If you are a brand new company and are going to register a new domain name ending with .sg, the actual pricing for different plans for different terms are as follows:

The one that I am subscribed to is the WP 12 Business in the Singapore data center. This plan is what I recommend for someone who is a newbie or someone who runs a small business. For its price, you can already enjoy the following included in the package: 

• 90 Websites 
• 90 Email Accounts
• 90 GB Fast SSD Storage Capacity
• 100,000 Visits Monthly 
• Free Daily Backup
• Enhance Website Security360
• Ultrafast LiteSpeed Server
• Free SSL
• Free Domain
• WordPress Management 
• WordPress Acceleration
• Support Basic WordPress
• Support Cloudflare
• 100-Day Full Money-Back Guarantee

These features and support will serve you well to run your business. You can send 200 emails per hour. Moreover, with its free domain, you don’t have to pay $40 annually for the domain name only for the .com.sg website. If you get this plan, it would allow you to save up to 2 months’ fee for web hosting per year. 90GB of data storage space is able to handle about 2-3 mid size eCommerce websites and you can addon more storage for an additional fee. Your files is also held in a cloud storage SSD and not a regular hard drive which is able to handle large numbers of digital data transfers improves your loading speed.

The free SSL certificate also keeps the data transferred between your website and its users safe. For example, when a customer shares credit card information and personal contact data, the SSL will encrypt these so hackers would not be able to read it even if they get the confidential information.

Customer Support

When it comes to customer service, Exabytes are one of the few companies that offer 24/7 support which is available through phone, Whatsapp, email, and live chat so you can get assistance with any questions you may have about their services anytime. They also allow walk-ins so you can visit their office to ask for their assistance if you are having trouble with your websites. 

For WordPress Hosting service, they also have dedicated WordPress experts that would assist you 24/7 with technical errors and monitor other suspicious activity. Whether you need help installing Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel on your website or fix a critical error, these experts are willing to take an additional step to resolve your issue.

If you are a beginner, you can join in their events. They actively contribute to WordCamp, Meetup, and other organizing workshops. They also have WordPress Tips & Tutorials to help you enhance your skills. 

If your concern is about Product Enquiry, you need to send them an email (via Live Chat) for them to contact you. When the call is scheduled, they would send you an automated email like this in the picture below. But if your concern is about Technical Support and Billing, you can contact them via Live Chat. Their live agent will assist you. 

My only comment is that their live chat is not available for product inquiries. Though call is great to some extent, this is not good for clients who do not like or get shy to speak on the phone. It would be better if Exabytes would enable their Live Chat to allow the clients to choose their preferred mode of communication and get an immediate response. 

Also, mentioning in the email title that their client is a lead might be a turn-off. Aside from some might not want it, this thing is not that important to be mentioned. 

How Does the LiteSpeed Web Server Make Your Website Faster?

LiteSpeed Web Server is the leading high-performance, high scalability web server from LiteSpeed technologies. It can be used to replace an existing Apache server without changing any other programs or operating system details. Best of all, it can be integrated without breaking anything. As such, LiteSpeed Web Server can quickly replace a major bottleneck in your existing web hosting platform.

Compared to other kinds of servers, it is fast because it has these features: 

But for this section, I will be covering only the Event-Driven Architecture and Zero-Downtime Maintenance. These three features are, in my opinion, the reasons why the LiteSpeed Web server is the best server available in the market so far. So what are these and their functions? Find out below: 

Event-Driven Architecture

Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a software design pattern that enables an organization to detect “events” or important business moments (such as a transaction, site visit, shopping cart abandonment, etc) and act on them in real-time or near real-time. This pattern replaces the traditional “request/response” architecture where services would have to wait for a reply before they could move on to the next task. The flow of event-driven architecture is run by events and it is designed to respond to them or carry out some action in response to an event.

The advantages of event-driven architecture are: 

Real-Time Speed

EDA can enable users to view and analyze the business in real-time and react quickly to the continuously changing market. EDA can be essential for establishing and maintaining real-time connectivity with internal stakeholders and external partners, suppliers, and customers.

Low Latency

In the digital world, many applications depend on immediate access to data. By minimizing the need for point-to-point integrations for data sharing, EDA can streamline communications and reduce latency to milliseconds.

Context Informed Decision Making

With real-time event processing, EDA can help your application to deliver the mission-critical up-to-date, and accurate information and situational awareness your users need to make the right business decisions.

Big Data Scalability

EDA can help you to build highly scalable applications, capable of handling the massive volumes of data needed for today’s analytics and offering the flexibility to scale up and down quickly based on need.

High Throughput

With EDA, your applications can handle high throughput with low latency, while independently subscribing to and processing events in parallel.

Reliable Operation

EDA is designed to ensure reliable communication and operation, mitigating service downtime. In a synchronous model, a service must be available and responsive in order to communicate. When a service is not available, the entire system can stall or even break down.

Zero-Downtime Maintenance

With this feature, your downtime is low thanks to Graceful Restart. Graceful restart allows a routing device undergoing a restart to inform its adjacent neighbors and peers of its condition. During a graceful restart, the restarting device and its neighbors continue forwarding packets without disrupting network performance. So even if you need to restart your server, they will create a new generation of parent and child processors to take over the service from the current processors. Then, the current processors will be shut off once they are completed. Instead of restarting your server when everything is being shut down and put up again and some of the things are being refreshed in a sequence. With LiteSpeed, everything is reset but you don’t experience downtime because processors are still running. You are able to restart the server without having to shut down everything and turn it back on again. 

It also has the fastest PHP because its coding is much cleaner and faster. Compared to their competitors, it has up to 20% better performance. 

Exabytes WordPress Hosting vs SiteGround WordPress Hosting: Which Solution Can Give You Faster-Loading Speed?

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system. When it comes to hosting WordPress, you have two options: Shared Hosting or WordPress-specific hosting products such as Exabytes and Siteground. Both have their pros and cons and can be the right solution for different business needs. 

To understand better which solution can give you faster speed, I made a demo testing for both Exabytes and Siteground. For this demo testing, I used GTMetrix, Pagespeed Insights, and Kadence to compare which solutions load faster. 

Here are the GTmetrix results:

As you can see, Exabytes has a higher performance of 99% than SiteGround with 97%. When it comes to LCP or the Largest Contentful Paint, a metric that measures the time of the website to be complete and ready for interaction, Exabytes loads faster with only 0.8 seconds while the SiteGround takes 1.1 seconds before the website becomes ready. 

Then, take a look at the results of the Pagespeed Insights. 

This test also shows that Exabytes gives a higher performance with a score of 94% than SiteGround with only 88% performance score. 

For the last test, both sites are loaded using Kadence themes and Kadence blocks installed using the same starter template for the website. 

With all the tests that I have conducted, I can say that between the two, Exabytes is really a better solution to choose. 

Exabytes WordPress Hosting: Pros and Cons

Exabytes WordPress Hosting provides a powerful hosting platform for WordPress-based websites with a suite of tools for managing your content and advertising. They offer WordPress-optimized hosting that includes a server-side caching system that speeds up your site and improves the user’s overall experience. But just like the web hosting you use or planning to use, it has its own set of pros and cons. 

Pros

With the features discussed above, Exabytes WordPress Hosting is undeniably one of the most efficient web hosting solutions available in the market nowadays. It can make your WordPress-based website load faster which is crucial if you run a busy website and don’t want to go overboard with needlessly costly solutions. It is also great for static content thanks to the LiteSpeed server and cache. The free SSL as well as the other provided enhanced and tougher security protections enable your website to block web attacks as well as unwanted hacking. 

Cons

It is expensive if you choose to use this short-term. If you have a novelty business idea, Exabyte WordPress Hosting is likely not suitable for you if you are not willing to commit long-term. But if you are committed to your business and you don’t have new business ideas, exabytes is a great price especially if you sign up for at least a year or even three years. With this term, you can get a good deal at a good price. If you have an ongoing business and website, you may want to consider moving to Exabyte. It is faster and if you are going to commit long-term, the price is actually good to get a cheaper transaction cost.

Final Thought

If you are looking to get an online presence for your business, Exabytes WordPress Hosting is the one I highly recommend for you. It is definitely a game-changer for any WordPress website. It provides higher performance and enhanced security compared to other web hosting solutions. Based on my experience, nothing comes close to Exabytes in terms of reliability as long as web hosting and domain registration are concerned. They helped me in my businesses here in Singapore. In fact, I don’t need to worry if something happens on my website because they have a local office here, so I can easily reach them out and ask for their assistance. Their anti-virus support would help you maintain secured websites that are always up. The automatic backup & 1-click staging also help me have peace of mind that if something happens to my website, I can restore it easily. Their phone, email, and live chat support which is 24/7 is really outstanding. Because of the amazing performance of Exabyte WordPress Hosting Plan, I can see myself using their service for the long term for my small to medium size traffic websites.