Service Announcement: Faster Websites & SSL Now Included

We’re ringing in the new year with two major upgrades that will dramatically improve the speed, reliability, and security of client websites.

Effective immediately, all client websites have been moved to our new hosting provider Kinsta and throughout the next few weeks we’ll also be working to integrate SSL certificates. The best part? These upgrades are provided at no additional cost for One Stop Site Shop clients.

Let’s take a look at why we’re so excited about these changes and what they mean for your website.

Why are we moving to Kinsta and Integrating SSL Certificates?

First, let’s talk hosting and the move to Kinsta. As some of you may know, all our websites were previously hosted on a robust BlueHost platform. BlueHost is a large hosting provider and one I’ve personally recommended for many years. But their success and affordable pricing has taken a toll on their infrastructure and support times.

This means more server-related problems that often resulted in a 15-30 minute wait time before I could speak with a support agent, which means your site could be down for a half hour before we can do anything about it. We think you deserve better.

So we made the move to our new host Kinsta. Compared to BlueHost, Kinsta kicks some serious butt. Most notably, they utilize Google’s Cloud Infrastructure to host and deliver your website.

What does this mean for you? Our testing has revealed an average 75-95% reduction in page load times for our websites, plus enterprise level security.

If you haven’t been on your website lately, go try it. You’ll see near instantaneous page load speeds.

The latest statistics from SEMRush indicate that every 1 second improvement in page speed results in:

• 11% more page views
• 16% increase in customer satisfaction
• 7% gain in conversion

I’ll let you do the math on that. Across the board, this is a huge improvement. But speed isn’t the only enhancement. Kinsta also offers:

• Improved backup routines, with daily backups
• Hardened security and anti-spam measures (the same security structure used by Google)
• Hardcore infrastructure improvements including PHP7 and NGINX, meaning sites are instantaneously scalable and extremely fast
• Average support response time of 9 minutes, which means your site is back up fast if something goes wrong

Kinsta starts at $100 per month, per website just for the hosting, but we will be including this for all our clients at no additional cost. How awesome is that?

Guess what else it can do… SSL!

You know what SSL is right? It’s the little green lock that shows up next to your URL when you’re on sites that require an additional level of security. Due to system limitations we’ve previously been unable to offer this to our clients, but that’s about to change.

Secure Socket Layer, or SSL for short, is getting more and more important for websites. In essence, an SSL certificate creates a secure connection between a visitors’ computer and the website they’re visiting. This prevents anyone from getting in the middle of the connection and intercepting data. It also ensures that visitors are connecting to the right website, and not an imposter.

This is important for obvious security reasons, but there are some other benefits as well. For instance, Google has started ranking websites with an SSL certificate higher than those without. Soon, Google will also start shaming websites without an SSL connection, labeling them as “insecure.”

Throughout January we will be working to integrate SSL on all client websites at no additional cost.

Together, these improvements ensure our clients’ websites will be faster and more secure than ever before. We also believe it represents tremendous additional value, which is what we’re all about.

If you have questions about the move, SSL, or anything else, please let us know. We’ll be contacting you throughout the month regarding SSL certificates if needed. Until then, happy holidays and thank you for your business!