Actively-Managed Website Support

Nope. We're month-to-month around here. You can change your service plan at any time before the next invoicing period begins. If we are hosting your website, just please understand that site migration is not usually something that may require at least a two week notice.

Yes! Performance and security scores tend to be significantly higher with our fine-tuned setups, but if you prefer to keep your current website infrastructure we may be able to provide an ongoing service plan without a new setup. However, our team will still need to install and configure a suite of supporting plugins so there is typically a migration fee even without a setup.

We primarily serve Wordpress sites, but there are some exceptions to this. If you have questions, just let us know!

We love WP Engine, Digital Ocean, and other great hosting companies like them. We’ve even worked with WP Engine directly during our SoundBoard conferences for three separate years now, and they are amazing organizations! We actually utilize those services for many of our clients.

Think of our managed hosting plans as a major additional layer of service and support on top of what they offer. Without our managed service layer, even with a premium hosting service you’d still be on the hook to troubleshoot things that go wrong. You’d also still be responsible for managing and troubleshooting WordPress and plugin updates every month, a vital part of maintaining a secure, headache-free website. With our plan, you get to delegate all of that to us so you can focus on your primary business activities.

Yes! If you decide to cancel your managed hosting service, we have an export process where we can remove our management tools and convert your website into a transferrable WordPress setup. If you ordered a new GlideStep website setup instead of migrating an existing WordPress site, you will lose some of the performance and security features during a later export effort. You may also need to purchase your own licenses for some third party plugins to keep certain functionalities operational. However, the front-end of your website should remain mostly unaffected during the transfer process.

While we are actively managing your website you will not be able to manage plugins yourself. There are a lot of bloated and even dangerous plugins out there, so we cannot promise that it will be possible to add any plugin you request for security, performance, and technical reasons. But if there is something you need, just ask and we'll be more than happy to review it!

For security purposes, we disable user registration on our platform by default for our PRO plans. If you require user registrations, or if you need your own admin users then you will need at least a Premier plan.

For security (and performance) purposes, we do not allow comment functionalities on most sites. If you really need this functionality, then just let us know and we'll explore some options.

If you already have a site built on the WordPress platform, then we can most likely work with what you've got! We will need to review your current setup and possibly install some supporting tools. This initial intake effort will require a one-time migration fee, which will depend upon the scope of your current site. Of course, if you're looking for a faster site or a general design refresh, a new GlideStep website setup might be a good move regardless.

Yes! If you prefer to pay by check we also offer quarterly, biannual, and annual invoicing. Payments for hosting will be charged at the beginning of each service period.

We'll always work to earn your business, and will work with you if you ever decide it's not working out. But please understand that we do not offer refunds.

If extra work would be needed beyond the scope of your service plan, we will either provide you with an estimate for the extra work order or help coordinate with a third party vendor of your choice. You will always be given advance notice of any out-of-scope work requests. We don’t believe in surprise invoices.

It depends. Restoring hacked websites is a job that can vary significantly in terms of scope, and it really depends upon the nature of the attack. In our experience, in most cases these issues can be resolved by reverting to a recent backup, changing passwords, and running a few scans to ensure things are back up and running and the initial exploit has been remediated. Depending upon the severity of the attack and the resources of your attacker, however, restoration and protection may require further work.

We have allocated the following capacities for each service level. If your website is very highly visited, we may need to setup you up on a custom server plan. But in over 15 years of service, we’ve very rarely run into a case where a client needed more than our capacity. For temporary burst in resource demands, we'll do our best to work with you. If it's a consistent issue then we'll work with you to upgrade your plan.

Your team will have high-level users fully who are capable of making virtually any ongoing edits to your site that you are likely to need. While it is possible to also have full-privileged admin users, we strongly discourage this since every instance of these creates new potential security vulnerabilities. We will consult with you during your setup in order to come up with a server setup and access protocol that best protects your site while still serving your team’s needs.

There are no magic bullets or sure-things when it comes to marketing. Please understand that there are myriad ever-changing factors that determine search marketing performance, and specific rankings are never guaranteed. Our team will constantly strive to maximize your ROI and ensure that our efforts as well as any results we are seeing are clearly communicated to you on a regular basis. 

In the majority of cases, yes. Compared to most economy hosting services, our servers tend to load sites a bit more quickly, which search engines like Google care a great deal about. However, this will depend on the specific nature of your site setup and the combination of plugins that your site is running, especially if you require additional plugins or tracking scripts on your site over time. If your site is already implementing performance boost and upgrades of its own, you might be off to a strong start already! Of course, if you choose a new GlideStep website setup option, then it will almost certainly be faster than your current website.

Unfortunately, no. While our hosting services will significantly improve your chances of surviving many automated attacks, there are no guarantees in our world of increasingly complicated cyber attacks and threats. Even without hackers, sites regularly break because of various plugin updates or user error.

The core value of our managed plans is that you’ll have someone in your corner ready to help you troubleshoot and get things back up and running as quickly as possible when something goes wrong.

Remember, search engines are inherently competitive. Even if you're doing everything right your competition might also be stepping up their game. Just like staying on top in your industry in the real world, it takes work to do the same in the virtual world and there are unfortunately no guarantees. Anyone that tells you otherwise is either out to take you for a ride, or is into some dark magic that will be the end of us all.