What is Pressable?
Pressable is one of the many managed WordPress and managed WooCommerce hosting providers you will find on the web. This company offers NVMe servers, which are better and faster than SSD storage.
Apart from that, the company takes pride in 99.999% guaranteed uptime, automatic failover, and several other features that any webmaster looks for.
The various features that Pressable managed WordPress hosting offers should conveniently put the company in the top spot among the best managed hosting providers. But is it the best? That is precisely what I intend to find out in this review.
Stay with us until the end and learn how good Pressable is. If, at the end of the review, you have questions and concerns,
Let us begin.
People Behind Pressable
Pressable WordPress hosting comes from those people who gave the following three products:
- WordPress.com
- WooCommerce
- Jetpack
I guess, you all know these names.
Already getting confidence?
Hold your horses. Wait until the review is complete.
Features of Pressable
Pressable managed hosting offers several incredible features. Let us quickly go through each of those features and understand what your money can buy for you.
NVMe Server
NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express. It is way better than SSD servers. NVMe dramatically improves server response time and gives enhanced security, both of which are important for SEO. I do not know of any other managed web hosting company offering NVMe server infrastructure. If you know of any, let me know.
CDN
They have their own global CDN that will serve your website’s static resources from servers close to the readers. It does not matter where your hosting server is located. The cached static files will always be served from the CDN POPs (point of presence), that is CDN servers.
WordPress Optimized
These are the guys who gave this world WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and Jetpack. They know WordPress inside out. So, you can rest assured that their hosting servers are optimized for running both WordPress and WooCommerce without a glitch.
Automatic Failover
They have automatic failover present. This means that if the server you selected suddenly goes down for some reason, their monitoring system will immediately switch to an alternative server. Yes, a copy of your live website will always be stored on a separate server for automatic failover purposes.
Free Managed Migration
They will perform free website migration for you. No additional costs! You just need to send a request.
Performance Monitoring & Optimization
They will actively monitor your website for performance and check for memory usage. If they see something unusual, they will send you a mail with solutions to fix the issue.
Free SSL
They will give a free SSL certificate for every website you host with them. The provider, of course, is “Let’s Encrypt” – a joint venture between Google and Facebook.
Managed WordPress Updates
They will take care of updating your WordPress core. You do not have to worry about those updates. Unfortunately, they will not be updating the plugins you are using.
Web Application Firewall
They also implement a web application firewall to stop hackers from attacking websites using common attack problems. The WAF actively monitors the servers for identifying malicious activities and preventing attacks from happening. However, it does allow all good traffic.
Honestly, I cannot vouch of the efficacy of the WAF, but I am sure that they do an excellent job because they know WordPress and they know about its vulnerabilities.
Malware Scanning
They actively scan all websites hosted with them for malware and other threats. They prevent malware injections and XSS (cross site scripting), and other threats.
Hack Recovery Assistance
They will ensure that if your website gets hacked, they will cleanup all the mess and recover your website. They will also give you advanced tips on protecting your website(s) from such incidences in the future.
Daily Backups
They offer nightly backups offered by Jetpack Security Daily. If you want, you can schedule your backups and even restore the backups with an easy-to-use interface.
Customizable and Scalable
Right from inside the Pressable dashboard, you can upgrade your hosting package. If full package upgrade is not on your mind, you can quickly add addons like extra site, extra visitors, additional storage, etc.
Jetpack Security Daily
Every hosting plan with Pressable comes with Jetpack Security Daily that will allow you to boost your website’s security and performance. Additionally, it also comes with a CRM, various social media tools, SEO tools, and themes.
Simple Dashboard
Pressable offers and extremely simple dashboard to work with. It is easy to navigate around, and it also gives easy access to support chat and knowledge base.
Pressable Ease of Use
Alright, there is a lot that they offer. What about the dashboard that they say is simple and intuitive? Is it easy to use the dashboard as they claim?
Let us find out!
Dashboard First Look and Menu Walkthrough
This is how the dashboard will look like when you log in to the dashboard after creating an account:
Everything is clearly arranged. There is nothing complex about the dashboard.
The first menu item is selected by default where you get to see the list of sites you have.
If you move on to the next menu item, that is, Account, you will see the active plan you have. You can upgrade the plan from that tab, or you can add addon elements. You scroll down to check the different plans available and the various addons available.
The next menu item on the list is the plan usage tab where you can see your website stats and how much you have consumed from your allocated resources.
There is nothing fancy in the plan usage tab. It just helps you to understand whether it is time to upgrade to a better plan or you should be using addons or not.
The next is the billing tab in the menu where you will get the billing information and add a new billing method if you want. It will also show you the current billing method. If you have used a credit card, the saved card will also show up.
The next menu option is API applications. This is how the screen looks like:
If you are a developer, then you will be using this tab in case you want to create applications that use Pressable API. If you have no intention of creating such applications, you can happily ignore this tab and the next tab which gives your API Documentation.
Creating a Site with Pressable
Okay, dashboard was simple. How about creating a site? That is simple, too!
Do you see that small green + button on the top of the dashboard? That is from where you add a site to your account. Simply click on it to get started. When you click on it, you will see the following screen:
You must select whether you want to create a WordPress site or a WooCommerce site. You can also select the datacenter from the dropdown. Give your site a name. Finally, on the top you can toggle the switch to make it a staging site. If you leave that option as is, what you will be creating is a live site.
I will suggest that you create a staging site. When you are done with the design and customization, you can move forward and push it to the live environment.
This is what you will notice when you create a site:
Once the site environment is deployed, you can click on that small cog icon you see to access further site details. Here is what you can see when you click on that cog icon:
It shows everything from site name, datacenter, PHP version, SFTP URL, CDN URL, option for flushing object cache, option to create clone, option for pushing the site to a live environment, option for downloading a migration plugin, and the option for deleting the site.
You will also notice a few extra icons showing up on the top. The three additional plugins you see on the top are:
- A Cog icon – that takes you directly to WordPress admin login URL.
- A Database icon – that takes you to the phpMyAdmin panel where you can work with your database.
- A WordPress icon – that takes you to the frontend of your WordPress site installation.
Once you are happy with your site customization, you can push your site to live environment by clicking on “Convert to Live Site.”
Once you do that, the site details page in dashboard will refresh and give you the details for nameservers and server IP. You will also get the option for adding your domain. This is what you will see:
To add your domain to the live site that has a staging URL, simply add your domain name in the given field and hit the add button.
Once you add the domain name, Pressable will automatically create both www and non-www versions. You can access the DNS records for each by clicking on the cog icon next to each URL. Once you click on the cog icon, this is what you will see:
Notice how you see two IP address for both www and non-www versions. You will also see the same two IP address on the right under the Advanced tab.
The reason why the same domain is pointing to two different IP addresses is that there is automatic failover feature. While technically your website will be served from one server (one IP), the other IP is for the failover server.
Now, all you need to do is add the IP address to your domain name in domain management area of your domain name registrar. If you do not want to add A records, you can add the name servers.
Pressable Site Speed
Honestly, this segment does not really make sense. Performing speed test on a newly installed WordPress site with no content will return high speed. The reasons are simple, and they include:
- There is no content.
- There are no images.
- There are no scripts and extra JS or CSS.
- There are no web fonts.
There is literally nothing! So, the speed test is not a true reflection of the speed. However, if there is something that can be found is the server response time. So, I conducted the speed test anyway using Google PageSpeed Insights and this is what I found:
Mobile Results
On mobile, the speed is excellent with no optimization. The only plugin installed is the Jetpack plugin that Pressable installs by default.
Surprisingly, the initial server response time is not vastly different from the servers using SSD storage.
Desktop Results
On desktop, the site clocked a perfect 100 score, which is quite impressive. Remember, there is no optimization and the only plugin in use is Jetpack. The theme is Twenty-Twenty.
Digging deeper, this is what I found:
Again, the initial server response time was not significantly different from any SSD-powered hosting I have tested so far.
So, speed test revealed a simple thing – whether it is SSD-powered infrastructure you are using, or it is NVMe-powered infrastructure, there will not be any significant difference in initial server response time.
Okay, when I say this, is there any significant proof in hand?
Well, I have proofs!
Check out the quick video for a website hosted with Liquid Web / Nexcess managed WordPress hosting powered by SSD storage:
So, NVMe does not necessarily give you superfast server response time compared to SSD storage.
In fact, there are many factors that determine the server response time including caching, CDN, and more!
Still, I must admit that Pressable will give you great server response time out of the box. Whether or not you can capitalize on it will depend on how well you optimize your site.
Pressable Pros and Cons
Pressable has its pros and cons. Here is what you should know:
The Pros
- Extremely simple and intuitive interface. You do not have to be a pro to use Pressable.
- It gives free backups, free SSL, free migration, and free CDN.
- NVMe infrastructure gives good server response time.
- It comes with a Web Application Firewall to protect your website from hackers.
- It provides free malware scans.
- It promises to clean up hacks!
- Configures CDN and SSL automatically. You do not need to do anything else.
- The best part is its automatic failover that will ensure continuous availability of your site.
- They have a 30-day moneyback guarantee. You can ask for refund if you are not satisfied with their services.
The Cons
- The site migrations offered are not human-powered migrations. They use a plugin.
- There is no instant auto-scaling available. If your traffic shoots over the set limit, you have to either upgrade immediately or purchase addons immediately. So, you need to keep monitoring your website traffic.
- NVMe does not significantly improve server response time.
- It is expensive, but at par with most of the managed WordPress hosting providers.
Pressable Pricing Structure
Pressable offers nine different pricing tiers for managed WordPress hosting. Here is a quick snapshot of the different plans you get with Pressable:
Plan Name | Pricing and Features |
Personal |
$25 a month
|
Starter | $45 a month 3 sites 50,000 visitors a month 20 GB storage |
Pro |
$90 a month
|
Premium |
$155 a month
400,000 visitors a month 50 GB storage |
Business |
$350 a month
|
Business 80 |
$545 a month
|
Business 100 |
$675 a month
|
Business 120 |
$805 a month
200 GB storage |
Business 150 |
$1,000 a month
|
If you need anything more than Business 150, they offer custom plan where you need to speak to their sales representatives.
The very idea of restricting the number of visitors is something that does not go well with me. I would rather have no limits on visitors but a limit on bandwidth. Liquid Web, for instance, gives 2 TB bandwidth for its lowest plan that costs $19 a month and allows only one site.
With 2 TB bandwidth, you can accommodate more than a million visitors a month depending on the weight of the webpage you have and the amount of data transfer that takes place.
So, the allowed visitor counts in each of the plans offered by Pressable is quite stifling, making it a strict ‘NO’ for my taste. On top of that, the NVMe infrastructure does not really give any real value. The same or better results can be achieved even with SSD storage.
Conclusion
Even though Pressable comes from the same people who gave WordPress.com, Jetpack, and WooCommerce, and even though this hosting provider offers NVMe server infrastructure, Pressable is not the number one managed WordPress hosting provider. In fact, there are better managed WordPress hosting companies. Check out my Liquid Web review. That is the hosting provider I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. I do not recommend Pressable above Liquid Web. That does not mean that Pressable is a bad hosting company. It is a good company. You can always use Pressable if you are okay with the visitor limitations they have put in place.
