20i WordPress hosting is what this post is about. I’m going to share what I have learned over the years. Essentially, the different types of hosting and what you should be looking out for when choosing a website hosting provider
Moreover, I will be talking about 20i and why you should consider 20i, the UK’s top-rated WordPress hosting provider, when choosing your website hosting. This is instead of the standard “best, “top, “recommended, 10, 5 WordPress hosting providers, You get my drift
20i Overview – The Founders
I mentioned in a previous post that the 20i brand is a relative newcomer to the website hosting space, having launched only in 2016. However, the founders are veterans of the website hosting industry. Tim and Jonathan Brealey brothers are the founders of 123Reg and Webfusion, both launched in 1997, and Heart Internet, launched in 2004. All brands are now indirectly owned by Godaddy; the founder’s history is what led me to use 20i.
20i is a UK-based website hosting provider with an international reach. Its platform is built from the ground up and is not built on WHM/Cpanel, the standard for most hosting providers’ control panels.
WordPress Auto-Scaling Cloud Hosting
20i’s shared hosting is a hard match even for some of the biggest names in the hosting industry. It’s auto-scaling hosting, which is included in its basic packages, whether you are using WordPress or standard website hosting. Auto-scaling is hosting that scales with the demand on your website, meaning the more visitors you have to your site, the more resources are allocated to your site.
A proof of concept is laid out in the scenario they call the Dragon Effect,” whereby a site could have 100 daily visits one day and the next hundreds of thousands of visits, and 20i’s platform will auto-scale to meet demand
WordPress CDN
The 20i auto-scaling platform is backed up by their free Content Delivery Network (CDN), which gives sites hosted with 20i a better international reach. The CDN caches a copy of your site and stores it on servers around the world. So no matter where a visitor may be in the world, they can access a site hosted with 20i at the fastest possible speeds.
Standard Features
A staging environment is included for the development of websites before setting a website live on the internet. WordPress staging is one of many features provided by 20i in their basic package.
It should be noted that 20i WordPress hosting is a dedicated, optimised WordPress environment. Most standard Linux hosting will be able to host WordPress. With 20i, you can start with standard Linux hosting (cheaper than WordPress hosting) and, at the click of a button, automatically migrate to WordPress-optimised hosting. This feature is available via 20i’s Migration Centre, where you can also migrate your website from other hosting providers to 20i.
20i WordPress Security
With WordPress being the most popular CMS (Content Management System) used to build over a third of the websites on the internet, Its popularity attracts wrongdoers and hackers who will try to hack WordPress websites. Whether that be by using bots in a brute force attempt to crack the WordPress admin password or searching for out-of-date versions of WordPress sites and plugins,
20i addresses these problems in a number of ways. Firstly, 20i’s platform automatically scans all its WordPress, Linux, and Windows platforms for malware daily. At the hosting level, 20i provides anti-DDOS and firewall protection. Two-factor authentication at the account control panel level
At the website level, brute-force protection comes built-in. Along with daily backups available, should you need to reinstall your site in a worst-case scenario? These are just some of the security features offered by 20i in their basic hosting packages.
Setting up an e-commerce website with the WordPress plugin WooCommerce 20i provides fully PCI Compliant hosting. PCI Complaint hosting is a requirement for an e-commerce website that intends to store customer card details. In comparison, no other non-enterprise hosting provider provides this feature.
20i WordPress Pricing and Comparisons
I mentioned 20i’s basic WordPress package, which costs
£5.99 excluding VAT (US$8.47 p/m)
£7.19 p/m including VAT (US$10.17 p/m)
You get all available features for one website and 50GB of bandwidth. 20i says this amount of bandwidth should handle up to 25k visitors. If you require additional hosting, you can upgrade to a package that offers more hosted websites along with additional bandwidth. 20i offers the first month of hosting at £1.20 (with VAT) or US$1.70. This allows you to test 20i’s hosting without any long-term commitment.
Basic Package Comparison
Compared to the Best, Top, Recommended, 10, 5, WordPress hosting providers, 20i’s basic package features can only be compared with the premium packages of other hosting services. Comparing prices only would be shortsighted because the devil is in the details. Like I mentioned before, 20i’s basic package is priced at £7.19 per month, including VAT (US$8.47 per month, no tax). A quick search will reveal the pricing of £2.86 (£3.42 VAT included) from Bluehost, one of the top recommended providers.
However, to get this pricing, you have to commit to a 3-year term. So the initial outlay is £102.88 (without UK tax) and £123.55 (with UK tax). The package will then be renewed at standard pricing. So the renewal price is £234 (without UK tax) and £280.80 with UK tax. While 20i over the same term is priced at £251.61 with tax, the renewal price over the same term is £258.75. It should be noted that 20i’s pricing is actually monthly, as 20i does not require you to commit to a 3-year term. Bluehost does offer a shorter 12-month commitment term priced at £4.30/mo, £51.66/yr, renewed at £7.23/mo, and £86.76/yr, which amounts to £225.16 over three years.
This is not an apples-to-apples comparison in terms of hosting features. When you compare 20i’s basic managed WordPress package to Bluehost’s basic managed WordPress package, Bluehost’s lowest possible pricing is £7.20/mo 3-year commitment: £259.16 initial outlay Renewed at £14.43/mo, a £519.48 outlay
At first glance, 20i may look like an expensive option. However, the fact that 20i’s basic managed WordPress hosting can handle the same number of monthly site visitors as other leading hosting providers Plus, with the premium features offered at £5.99 per month, the pricing is more than reasonable.
Features
20i Personal
Bluehost Basic
Siteground Startup
tsoHost Basic
Staging
WooCommerce
Dailly Backups
Monthly Vistors.
1.5m
Not Stated
10k
25k
CDN
Number of Sites
1
1
1
1
PCI
Auto-Scaling
introductory Pricing
Monthly*
£1*
N/A
£16.99**
£4.99**
USD($)
$1.38
N/A
$23.51
$6.91
12 Months*
£65.89**
£51.55**
£35.88**
£47.88**
USD($)
$92.04
$71.40
$49.65
$66.72
24 Months*
£131.78**
£85.77**
£215.76**
£95.76**
USD($)
$184.04
$118.80
$298.55
$132.55
36 Months*
£197.67**
£102.66**
£302.04**
£143.64**
USD($)
$276.07
$142.20
$417.94
$198.82
Renewal Pricing***
Monthly*
£5.99**
N/A
£16.99**
£4.99**
USD($)
$92.04
N/A
$23.51
$6.91
12 Months*
£65.89**
£86.55**
£143.88**
£47.88**
USD($)
$92.04
$119.88
$199.09
$66.72
24 Months*
£131.78**
£164.43**
£230.16**
£95.76**
USD($)
$184.04
$227.76
$318.48
$132.55
36 Months*
£197.67
£233.65**
£302.04**
£143.64**
USD($)
$276.07
$323.64
$417.94
$198.82
Chart Summary:
**Prices do not include UK Vat which is 20% and does not apply if you live outside the UK *** Renewal Pricing renews at standard pricing and for the initial term of the initial plan. Prices are correct at the time of posting.
Recommendations
Like with most things choosing the website, hosting depends on your needs.
Ultimately any of the providers mentioned in this post are capable of providing good WordPress hosting.
For the beginner on a budget while not mentioned in this post I would go with tsoHost which provides most of the features provided by 20 excluding PCI. Like 20i there is no requirement to commit to a yearly plan.
If you are a beginner not on a budget that has established an e-commerce or . Then I would go with 20i for hosting needs.
Now all that is left is for you to choose which provider is best for you.
It should be noted that all shared hosting supports WordPress
Update 21/03/2022
Namecheap
Another shared hosting option is Namecheap “Stellar Plan”. Which has monthly, yearly, and every 2 years payment plans.
The monthly plan is priced at £2.92 ($3.85USD) while the yearly and 2 years plans have discounts initial plan term. The yearly plan is priced at £16.49 ($21.74USD) monthly this £2.25 ($2.96USD) The while 2 Year plan is priced at £28.56 ($37.66USD) monthly this £1.42 ($1.87USD).
Namecheap does offer managed WordPress hosting however Namecheap has restrictions on the plugins on their WordPress hosting. This is due to Namecheap stating that some plugins use unnecessary server resources Namecheap provides a list of plugins not allowed on their WordPress hosting
Another caveat is viewing your website before you launch it via a temporary URL.
Namecheap uses Cpanel for its control panel however the method that the Cpanel uses to create temporary URLs Namecheap considers to be insecure. So Namecheap provides a workaround that requires you to modify the “host file” on your computer. Modifying the host file on your computer basically redirect your computer to the IP address of your un-launched website. All is explained in Namecheap’s how to
Tsohost
Tsohost has been sold to Godaddy and basically is a reseller of GoDaddy services from what I can tell.
I have used both Godaddy and tsoHost, now when setting up hosting on Tsohost.
tsoHost control panel redirects to striped-down version of the Godaddy control panel.
