Launched in 2011, Lightning base was developed by Chris Piepho, who has been present in all business areas of his company ever since. Posting new articles on the Lightning Base official blog, dealing with customers, and doing “whatever needs to be done” is just part of his daily routine. You (and everyone else) can reach him personally by filling out the contract form and sending your message to Chris. This is a curiosity in these times as well as the fact that the Lightning Base is not part of the Endurance Group, both of which are part of its appeal. They specialize in fully managed WordPress hosting solutions to make them accessible and affordable to anyone interested.
The main office is located in Minneapolis, USA and offers a truly global content delivery network (CDN) with more than a few locations in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
The main Lightning Base website took simplicity to a whole new level, in both good and bad ways. There is an “About” section and some additional data on the technical aspects of Lightning Base hosting solutions, much of which was written by Chris himself. If you choose to take a tour, you’ll be taken to a page with a detailed (and somewhat text-intensive) description of the key components of their services. Additionally, there is an official (and a decent looking but dated) blog run by the aforementioned Chris Piepho.
Both Twitter and Facebook accounts appeared to be relatively active until at least 2018, after which they were quietly forgotten.
Plans and prices
As mentioned earlier, you shouldn’t expect Lightning Base to have a multitude of different hosting products in their catalog as they are all managed WordPress and managed WordPress. Even so, there are four plans to choose from, each differing in size and purpose. The cheapest version starts at $ 9.95 per month, making it one of the most budget-friendly solutions of its kind on the market.
The smallest WordPress plan lets you host a website (larger plans let you host up to 25 WordPress websites), up to 10,000 views per month, 1 GB of storage (SSD), 10 GB of bandwidth, and 20 GB of global CND per month . All plans come with a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, which is a major selling point.
While this option is easy to miss, any dissatisfied user is eligible for a refund that covers their first month’s fees with no questions asked. However, the website doesn’t make it very clear whether this acts as a standard 30-day money-back guarantee or whether you can request a refund for a month of hosting at any time. In either case, not much changes, so it is safest to treat it like a standard.
In terms of payment methods, Lightning Base accepts all major credit cards, PayPal, and ACH (if customers are from the United States).
user friendliness
Lightning Base doesn’t spoil its users with the little luxuries in life like free domain registration. However, if you already have one, the transfer is free (as expected). Those who already have a website can transfer it for free, and those looking to start a new website don’t have to worry about setup fees.
If you are concerned about the security of your website (or your websites, as Lightning Base supports up to 25 of them), you can be sure that Lightning Base (in addition to the SSL certificate) provides multi-tier website backups. In addition to the daily backups of the servers (i.e. data backups; the full ones are performed weekly), they provide backups for their users’ WordPress installation themselves, allowing for data recovery in the event of an unpredictable disaster. In addition, users can determine the frequency of these backups so that they occur more or less frequently if requested.
Choosing a hosting plan with Lightning Base is reasonably easy, in part since there are only four of them and all of them are managed WordPress hosting solutions. After you’ve chosen a plan, you’ll be asked what to do with a domain name: register a new one (this costs between $ 14.95 and $ 44.95), use an old plan, or transfer it on Lightning Base. Then you have to choose whether you want a monthly or an annual billing cycle. If you choose to go for a year, you will save about $ 1.50 for every month of hosting. The server locations you can choose from include: United States (Central), Europe (Netherlands), Australia (Sydney), and Asia (Singapore).
Before you can checkout and complete your payment, you’ll need to provide a reasonable amount of personal information, set a password, and choose whether to be part of the Lightning Base mailing list. With the promise of instant setup, your website should be up and running in minutes. Since all packages come with industry standard cPanel, managing all areas of your website will be as easy as possible. From here, you can install HTTPs in minutes as your system supports HTTP / 2 (which makes it easy to run fast websites that aren’t burdened with unnecessary complexity).
Speed and experience
Lightning Base provides servers based on Intel Xeon processors, which are connected to a “reliable and redundant infrastructure”. Since they use 100% SSD-based storage that is local to the servers and arranged in a Raid 10 configuration, the speed performance should be lightning fast.
After a speed test (provided by GTmetrix) on the main Lightning Base website, we got good, if not great, results. The page load time was 4.5 seconds, which looks nice compared to the 8.1 seconds average, but the requirements required to do this were above the average. Other key metrics related to speed were above average, with the exception of the total block time of 231 milliseconds (150 or less would be a sign of good performance). In summary, GTmetric rated the website’s speed performance with a B (86%), which is still a better result than we find it to be most of the time.
While we couldn’t find a single trace of an uptime guarantee, the Lightning Base main website performed excellently when tested. While monitoring (courtesy of UptimeRobot) (only) a month, not a single downtime was recorded, which promises stable performance.
support
Nothing is perfect in life or in the world of web hosting. The Lightning Base support team is friendly and helpful, but not easy to reach. If you are used to the “modern” luxury of having live chat as one of your support channels (like us) you are likely (like us) to feel baffled. If you are used to solving your problems right away, you may need to learn some patience as there is no phone option supported.
To be fair, you can get in touch with the Lightning Base support team by submitting a ticket or sending an email. You will likely get an answer within 30 minutes. Additionally, according to reviews from satisfied users (based on our own experience), the support you get is top notch.
In terms of self-help options, Lightning Base provides a knowledge base that contains everything you would normally expect from it, except that it is only available to registered users.
The competition
Flywheel, just like Lightning Base, decided to move on to one type of hosting and that is managed WordPress. Both hosts are very skilled in their field and offer well-structured hosting packages that can be adapted to most requirements. With Lightning Base, however, you get two for the price of a premium package with a flywheel. While both offer expert customer support, Flywheel gives you additional options like live chat and 24/7 phone (the latter, however, is reserved for premium customers).
Although managed WordPress hosting is Bluehost’s newest product, it immediately became popular and one of the most popular options of its kind. Both Lightning Base and Bluehost are beginner-friendly options and will do whatever it takes to make a daunting task of starting a new website, so as simple as possible. If you are still considering other hosting types and options, we recommend choosing Bluehost. However, if you know WordPress is what you want, Lightning Base (which specializes in just that) is a smart choice.
Hostgator’s cloud WordPress hosting plans will definitely give you a bang for your buck without compromising on quality. The cheapest price starts at just $ 5.95 per month and gives you some useful perks like free domain, free SSL, 99.9% uptime guarantee, 45 day money back guarantee and so on. So while Lightning Base is a great option, Hostgator is a great option.
Similar to Lightning Base, SiteGround aims to make website administration as simple as possible without depriving you. However, SiteGround’s solutions are a bit cheaper with an entry-level plan starting at a particularly pocket-friendly price of € 5.99 per month and come with some amazing tools for all webmasters.
Final verdict
One of Lightning Base’s slogans is “Hosting the software you love,” which is strange because after trying the offer we got the feeling that despite everything we have, think of yourself as well like a love work. Lightning Base isn’t a flawless host, but with its dedicated, courteous, and knowledgeable support team, well-designed, and affordable hosting solutions, it’s close enough to being one.
If you’re not particularly interested in managed WordPress hosting, or if you’d prefer to trust an experienced host, you can try your luck with Bluehost or HostGator.
Source link : https://www.techradar.com/reviews/lightning-base/
