Throughout 2017, we completed moving all of our customers over to a new infrastructure setup on Amazon Web Services. We’re pleased with the results – your WordPress sites are now more redundant and scalable than ever. We describe this new architecture in our Hosting and Security technical guide here.

But some of the schools and universities that we work with have been asking for more flexibility and freedom to customize their sites and how they are managed in various ways. And today, we’re excited to be able to offer new fully dedicated and private clusters in order to achieve just that!

What Is A Dedicated Cluster?

A fully built out private cloud just for you. It is made up of web and database servers, load balancers, and can be customized to meet your needs. Redundancy and the ability to auto-scale to handle any traffic spikes are baked right in.

Here are items that are frequently requested that a Dedicated Cluster will be able to help solve:

1. Performance improvements – we can fine-tune the settings around your specific traffic patterns and needs.

2. Set your own maintenance windows and updates – we can schedule maintenance and code updates at any time, not just during our normal current Tuesday morning windows. You’ll be able to run a different version of WordPress or individual plugins than the rest of our customers when needed (we’ll keep up with security patches, regardless).

3. More flexibility with plugins and themes – we’ll still do code reviews and provide the same feedback as before (keeping an eye out for performance and security), but we will be able to work around many issues that come up.

4. More direct file, database, and code access – we will work with you and your team on whatever access and permissions make the most sense based on your needs. For example, your theme developers could have the ability to push changes live and our team would then review after the fact when needed – particularly useful for smaller CSS changes and the like, and important for higher profile sites that sometimes require faster changes.

5. Customizable email addresses – we are able to route and send all email notifications from an email address of your choice.

6. Overal flexibility – In general, we will be better able to work with you to be as flexible as possible about anything that may come up. Ideal for integrations with 3rd party APIs or applications, the need for highly customized plugins, and more.

Pricing and Getting Started

If this sounds interesting, just get in touch!

Pricing for a dedicated cluster depends on the size of your WordPress install and traffic. We’re happy to provide quick quotes and discuss your unique needs. For the schools and universities that have more than one WordPress installation, they can all be placed on the same dedicated cluster.

Existing customers can be migrated over to a dedicated cluster easily. We’d do a test migration, share access with you, and then schedule the final move for a day and time that works best for you (nights and weekends are no problem!) – usually can be handled without any downtime at all.

And we aren’t planning to stop here, we have more plans and improvements for all customers into 2018 and beyond!

PS.

We’re currently running an extended free pilot campaign through the month of February. If you know of a friend or colleague that may find our services of use, we’d greatly appreciate you sending them our way! 🙂