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Some thoughts on the WPEngine itself (or at least, the site). These are in order of thought, not importance. Also, these are purely my opinions so take with a g

by edanm 16y ago

Some thoughts on the WPEngine itself (or at least, the site). These are in order of thought, not importance. Also, these are purely my opinions so take with a grain of salt. 1. When I was starting my own blog, I looked around for exactly this. It didn't exist, or at least not in any form that looked worth doing, so I ended up (painfully) self-hosting. 2. Having said that, for a beginner like me, $50 is way too much to spend on the blog. I'm sorry, but I can host my not-making-a-cent blog on Dreamhost, and get the first year of hosting for $20 (the whole year, I mean). I really hope this is just the initial price plan, because I honestly believe that as you grow, it will make sense to let people host smallish blogs for less money. 3. Someone on the blog post mentioned that "one-click staging" is confusing, since the "one click" part is not important. I agree. 4. I think there's a small alignment problem with the prices in the pricing grid (they're top-aligned, not centerered). I'm on Windows XP + Chrome. 5. (This one is really nitpickity): on the pricing grid, the "explanatory" sentence in the first and last column have end-of-sentence punctuation, but the middle column does not. 6. I'd give more details and make it more obvious how to export. This will be a sticking point for people, so one of the major features should be how easy it is to import. 7. Make it really obvious that you can use your own domain name with this. This is important to people, and isn't obvious. 8. Part of your tagline is "We make WordPress fast, secure, and scalable". I would actually stress the "easy" part more. I can make WordPress all those things myself, I just don't have time/knowledge. Stress the idea that this is a convenience thing. OK Hope that helps, just some of my thoughts.

InfinityX0 16y ago
Have to agree with the pricing model, I would host here 100% but when I hit the price, I can't validate the enormous cost - and this is coming from someone who has spent $220 getting my blogged fixed after incorrectly changing something and not being able to correct it. Now, I'll have to be reminded of this down the line by some extraneous source if/when the cost drops.
edanm 16y ago
I have another small idea that might help you gain some goodwill and some link-love. You mention on your site that you have a "curated list of WordPress plugins", which I assume means that, for any request I have, you can tell me the best plugin to fulfill that request. Now obviously, since you're selling this as a feature, you assume (correctly) that this is a competitive advantage worth paying for. However, you might want to consider releasing the curated plugin list. Maybe only parts of it, maybe not forever, but this is something that people often need, and if your site comes up first for every search of "best plugin for Wordpress that does X", you might get a lot of potential customers just through that.
cwilson 16y ago
This is AMAZING feedback. We definitely hear you on all of this and promise to get our website up to snuff. Customer support, on-boarding of new clients, and making things faster, more secure, and more scalable every day have all been our biggest priorities so far. Something we've thought A LOT about is the pricing model. I completely agree with you that $50 per month is too expensive for a beginner. I was in the same place as you a year ago (and arguably would still be were this not my company) and would never had considered $50 for hosting. We think this is OK though. We don't want to compete with Dreamhost on price and as a beginner you shouldn't need all the extras we're providing (though I do understand the appeal of the "easy" part on it's own). Once you've actually gotten some significant traffic and you ARE making a buck off of your blog or site then suddenly we are affordable! Essentially.. we don't want to be your training wheels or your used Honda Civic. We want to be your Ford F150 or Audi. Lame analogy but true! All that said, we WILL listen and will provide a solution if there is enough demand.
dotBen 16y ago
RE #2, the price issue is interesting. I could rewrite your point on #2 from a different perspective: "$20/year 'dreamhost pricing' is way too little to spend my the blog. I'm sorry, but I rely on my blog for my entire income and so I need to know the support at the level I need is in place, the quality for the service I need is there, I have the kind of traffic that needs performance optimization and CDN, and I need to know that this is a clearly long-term viable business so you guys will be around in years to come as my blog gets even bigger. I really hope this is just the initial price plan, because I honestly believe that as you grow, it will make sense to let people host much bigger comercialized blogs on here." The point is we're simply looking at the entire blogging space and carving it up into different market segments based on needs and then super-targeting one segment. Tony Schnieder (Automattic/WordPress.com CEO) said today at TechCrunch disrupt that WordPress blogs power 8.5% of the internet's websites - so we think it's clear that one size does not fit all and there are opportunities for different services to cater for different needs. Finally don't forget there are much more expensive options out there... we're not WordPress VIP either which is several $1000's/month for service and support (TechCrunch, GigaOm etc run on this).
- edanm 16y ago
  You're absolutely right, segmenting the market and choosing one niche over another is great strategy. I wanted to point it out from the perspective of a "beginner" for one reason: lots of people won't move the blog after it gets started out of fear/inertia.

by edanm 16y ago

InfinityX0 16y ago

Have to agree with the pricing model, I would host here 100% but when I hit the price, I can't validate the enormous cost - and this is coming from someone who has spent $220 getting my blogged fixed after incorrectly changing something and not being able to correct it. Now, I'll have to be reminded of this down the line by some extraneous source if/when the cost drops.

edanm 16y ago

I have another small idea that might help you gain some goodwill and some link-love. You mention on your site that you have a "curated list of WordPress plugins", which I assume means that, for any request I have, you can tell me the best plugin to fulfill that request. Now obviously, since you're selling this as a feature, you assume (correctly) that this is a competitive advantage worth paying for. However, you might want to consider releasing the curated plugin list. Maybe only parts of it, maybe not forever, but this is something that people often need, and if your site comes up first for every search of "best plugin for Wordpress that does X", you might get a lot of potential customers just through that.

cwilson 16y ago

This is AMAZING feedback. We definitely hear you on all of this and promise to get our website up to snuff. Customer support, on-boarding of new clients, and making things faster, more secure, and more scalable every day have all been our biggest priorities so far. Something we've thought A LOT about is the pricing model. I completely agree with you that $50 per month is too expensive for a beginner. I was in the same place as you a year ago (and arguably would still be were this not my company) and would never had considered $50 for hosting. We think this is OK though. We don't want to compete with Dreamhost on price and as a beginner you shouldn't need all the extras we're providing (though I do understand the appeal of the "easy" part on it's own). Once you've actually gotten some significant traffic and you ARE making a buck off of your blog or site then suddenly we are affordable! Essentially.. we don't want to be your training wheels or your used Honda Civic. We want to be your Ford F150 or Audi. Lame analogy but true! All that said, we WILL listen and will provide a solution if there is enough demand.

dotBen 16y ago

RE #2, the price issue is interesting. I could rewrite your point on #2 from a different perspective: "$20/year 'dreamhost pricing' is way too little to spend my the blog. I'm sorry, but I rely on my blog for my entire income and so I need to know the support at the level I need is in place, the quality for the service I need is there, I have the kind of traffic that needs performance optimization and CDN, and I need to know that this is a clearly long-term viable business so you guys will be around in years to come as my blog gets even bigger. I really hope this is just the initial price plan, because I honestly believe that as you grow, it will make sense to let people host much bigger comercialized blogs on here." The point is we're simply looking at the entire blogging space and carving it up into different market segments based on needs and then super-targeting one segment. Tony Schnieder (Automattic/WordPress.com CEO) said today at TechCrunch disrupt that WordPress blogs power 8.5% of the internet's websites - so we think it's clear that one size does not fit all and there are opportunities for different services to cater for different needs. Finally don't forget there are much more expensive options out there... we're not WordPress VIP either which is several $1000's/month for service and support (TechCrunch, GigaOm etc run on this).

edanm 16y ago
You're absolutely right, segmenting the market and choosing one niche over another is great strategy. I wanted to point it out from the perspective of a "beginner" for one reason: lots of people won't move the blog after it gets started out of fear/inertia.