WPCP 011: WordPress Hosting at its Finest – Interview with Dusty Davidson of Flywheel

*Be sure to check out the offer Flywheel has generously made to my listeners & readers at the end of the post /podcast*

For those of you who are new to my site I’ll give you an overview of what happened with my hosting drama in the last year so you have a little history on how this all came about.

It was probably a little over a year ago when I started having issues with my site (which was on hostgator). Initially I thought it was just a little slow until someone emailed me to tell me they were getting messages that their anti-virus software was alerting them that my site was dangerous. Then a few more people told me the same thing.

Ugh.

So I started the process of moving my site to WP Engine…which was great, but then I found out I couldn’t have directory installs, so I stopped the migration (and for the record, their service was fantastic. NO complaints). Then went back to hostgator on a VPS (virtual private server). Then was getting the virus issue popping up again, my site was running slow and I was hitting my limits. (Not O.K. when you’re paying $79.95 a month for hosting). The standard response I received from support at hostgator was that I had too many plugins (I didn’t). I had hostgator move my site to a shared server (it loaded faster and was only $14.95/month) and things seemed fine. For a while. Then it started all over again.

Are you KIDDING ME?

So I did what any frustrated person would do… I took my dilema to Twitter! 😉

I mentioned in podcast episode 4 that thanks to Ben Boykin I was introduced the a fantastic new company called Flywheel.

Aah….

How does being migrated (for FREE) in less than a week sound? 

Fo shizzle my nerdizzle! 🙂

I was floored at how quickly they moved everything- and there were no issues to boot! (Which I was pleasantly surprised with after all the issues there had been with hostgator).  It was the easiest, smoothest migration I’ve experienced since I’ve been doing any type of website work (5 years).

Let’s not forget one of the MOST important factors.

SPEED!

On Flywheel my site was easily 8-9 seconds faster!!! Of course I had to test it multiple times… every browser, check my laptop… and of course ask a few friends to check it out. I felt like I won the time lottery. Literally. No more waiting and waiting for a post to update so I could view it on the site to check out the formatting. Just click update and VOILA! 😉

On to the Interview with Dusty Davidson

Dusty is one of the founders of Flywheel, along with his partners Rick and Tony. Pretty quickly after signing up with Flywheel I knew I wanted to do an interview with them for the podcast.

Flywheel is unique.

You know that feeling you get when you try something new or come across something that just “feels right”? I felt that in my gut when I landed on the Flywheel site. I’m SUCH a geek about the visual /design side of things so I instantly fell in love with the way their site looks (Dusty gave props to Rick on the design), let alone how fan-friggin-tastic the interface looks for users!

Just take a peek:

Of course it’s not just that the Flywheel site looks great (although I think they’ve raised the bar for other hosting companies! Time to stop using stock photography images of servers and generic groupings of diverse groups of people on your website)- Flywheel provides exactly what WordPress users want and need!

[icon name=icon-thumbs-up]Managed hosting (they manage security and do backups. So bye bye additional plugins!)

[icon name=icon-thumbs-up]Speed

[icon name=icon-thumbs-up]Customer service 

[icon name=icon-thumbs-up]AND… some personality.  😉

I had the pleasure of talking with Dusty while he was in Paris (you’ll have to listen to the interview to hear more about that). Dusty shared his background prior to Flywheel, how the company came to be and why they chose the name ‘Flywheel’.

And just to make your life easier, here’s an awesome tweetable quote from Dusty:

“Anyone can buy a server, put it in a closet, slap cpanel on it and call themselves a hosting company.”

Haha… love it.

This was in reference to my question about what differentiates Flywheel from other WordPress hosting companies.

I’m sure after listening to my interview with Dusty you’re going to feel like you know “who” is behind Flywheel (meaning the company, the brand, the culture). They say that they’re built for designers ,which is absolutely true, but they’re also built for anyone who wants to remove the headache from hosting and have amazing speed, support and management.

On top of all that…

Flywheel has a GREAT offer for my listeners (and readers):

3 Months of free hosting for annual payments! 

Just email wpchick@getflywheel.com to get a beta code to sign up. Upon checkout use the coupon code: WPCHICK2013

And don’t forget the migration is FREE! Sa-weet! 😉

*Side Note*

I mentioned in the podcast that I’ll be doing some videos on how easy Flywheel is to use. I’ll be posting those next week. Stay tuned!