20i Review: Is The Managed WordPress Hosting Worth It?

20i has been getting a lot of attention due to its affordable yet high-performance WordPress hosting service. Despite its good reputation, this web host is still relatively new in the industry and unknown to many.

In this 20i review, we look at the company’s managed WordPress hosting solution to find out whether it’s worth investing in.

What is 20i?

20i is a web hosting company from the UK where its main data center is located. It has another server location in the US and a network of edge servers distributed across the globe.

Co-founded by two brothers with vast experience in the web hosting industry, 20i has managed to create a solid reputation among web hosting service providers. For its managed WordPress hosting service, 20i uses proprietary solutions to enhance website performance and improve customer experience.

And that’s not all. 20i is also fighting climate change. The company uses renewable energy to power its servers and offices while promoting work-from-home and car-pooling policies for its employees.

20i Managed WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting is one of the types of web hosting you can consider. On top of its benefits, 20i’s managed WordPress hosting comes with many extra features.

And since the service checks all the right boxes, 20i is set to become one of the best managed WordPress hosting services in the market.

If you want your website’s admin functions handled for you while you focus on the business, then 20i has you covered.

With managed hosting, core updates are automatically applied to ensure that your site is using the latest version of WordPress. Security fixes are also applied automatically to prevent malicious actors from accessing your site.

Some of the other features of 20i’s managed WordPress hosting include:

• Unlimited websites: With just one account, you can create and host an unlimited number of websites. And if you want to run apps alongside your website, you can do that too.
• Developer tools: 20i provides all the necessary tools you’ll need to access the servers to upload files, upgrade PHP, and even work on databases. You can work from the command line, use phpMyAdmin, and also schedule scripts to execute automatically.
• One-click staging sites: Creating a staging site to test your ideas and designs is easy, thanks to a simple one-click solution. Once you’re done testing, you can update your live site and the changes will reflect immediately.

One thing that 20i’s managed WordPress hosting gives you is confidence. You get the assurance that your website is safe and you can quickly set up new sites for any idea or brand you have.

Performance and Security

20i understands that performance and security are critical aspects of your website. To help maximize the performance of your site, 20i has invested heavily in website optimization technology.

Starting with the basics, 20i supports PHP versions 5.6 through 8, giving you a wide range of options for your website. This makes it easy to test for compatibility with newer versions of PHP to ensure safe upgrading.

The whole performance and security solution comprises a website acceleration suite, a CDN, and some security features.

Let’s look at these.

Website Acceleration Suite

The website acceleration suite is 20i’s main performance tool. It lets you tweak up to 40 different settings to get the performance you’re looking for.

If these settings are overwhelming, you can use the ‘One-Click Optimization’ option.

Choosing ‘One-Click Optimization’ automatically optimizes your website according to popular optimization settings. This eliminates the need for you to learn technical website-related settings.

One unique and helpful feature of the website acceleration suite is the ability to create performance templates. With this feature, you can save your optimization settings as templates and use them to optimize other websites you’re hosting on 20i.

Other website performance solutions include:

• Image auto-resizing: Instead of struggling to get the right image size, let 20i resize your images for you to ensure they fit every screen perfectly. Having the right image size, for instance, for mobile devices, will improve page loading and user experience.
• Automatic image compression: Although high-resolution images are great, they usually contain non-essential data that can be safely removed without compromising the image quality. When 20i automatically compresses your images, it will save you a lot of time and ensure faster page loads.
• Code minification: 20i also reduces the size of your code by compressing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files while also removing whitespace within the code. This reduces the amount of time required to parse and execute the code, making pages load faster.
• Lazy loading: This is a technique used to improve both page-loading speed and user experience. Instead of loading the full web page at once, priority is given to the content appearing on the top part of the page. The rest of the content gets loaded as your site visitors scroll down the page.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Depending on where your website’s traffic is coming from, 20i can deliver content either from its data centers or its CDN. 20i has two data centers—one in the UK and one in the US—and a CDN built on a network of global edge servers.

Setting up the CDN is easy thanks to its one-click activation option. If you need more control, you can play around with the settings and even purge the cache to instantly update website files.

To complement the CDN, 20i has developed a proprietary caching plugin called StackCache. While the CDN caches static content, StackCache caches your website’s dynamic content.

The combination of StackCache and the CDN gives your website a boost in speed. And as our guide to SEO will show you, website speed is a major factor in search engine ranking.

20i also gives you CDN statistics to help you analyze traffic trends and monitor your website for performance issues. You can optimize the CDN through its settings and even choose whether to cache images and JavaScript separately.

Security

Like other hosting providers, 20i has dedicated significant resources to the security of your website.

The first thing 20i does is enforce two-factor authentication for your login. This is implemented alongside measures such as IP address blocking and brute force login protection. You can also protect your site from login attempts from specific countries.

20i also gives you a free wildcard SSL certificate for every website you host on its platform. Your site will also enjoy 1Tbps DDoS protection to secure your site from malicious traffic.

Here are other security features you’ll get with a 20i managed WordPress hosting account:

• Automated malware scanning: Your site will be scanned daily to check for malware infections. You can also scan the site yourself at any time, especially after fixing any issues reported by the automatic scan.
• PCI compliance: If you’re planning to run an ecommerce website, then 20i has you covered as far as PCI compliance is concerned.
• Firewall: 20i has a firewall that actively monitors your website traffic for any suspicious activity. This works as the first line of defense to keep both hackers and malware at bay.

Pricing Plans

Which one of the above hosting plans should you choose?

Micro plan is best for a simple website that receives little traffic e.g. an online portfolio or a personal blog.

Small plan can support a lightweight website that attracts a few hundred visits per month.

Medium plan will work well for a small local ecommerce store that needs to store customer accounts.

Large plan gives you more resources to run a college website with staff accounts and a blog.

X Large plan is great for a multinational company that wants its website to include subdomains for different countries or brands.

2X Large plan will work very well for a high-traffic news site that includes video articles.

4X Large plan is best for a popular ecommerce website with functionality for selling hundreds of products and shipping them internationally.

Ease of Use

20i is very easy to use thanks to the simplicity of its user interface. Although the control panel isn’t the most attractive, it’s a decent graphical user interface.

The control panel is divided into sections with icons that indicate the underlying functionality. From here, you can manage everything from your account to hosting and domain services.

Under ‘Manage Hosting’, you get access to all your hosting-related tasks including file management, FTP accounts, and website backups.

One thing that is unique to 20i is that it doesn’t use any of the popular web hosting control panels, i.e. cPanel and Plesk. This can be a huge setback for some people. However, if you understand that this gives 20i the freedom to improve the control panel based on customer feedback, you might appreciate the decision.

And if you’re concerned about power usage and eye strain, there’s a dark mode option for you.

Website Migration Center

To make it easy to move your site from your current host, 20i came up with a simple and efficient solution. Instead of waiting for the support team to migrate your site to 20i, you can do it yourself at your convenience.

You can easily start and finish a free migration from web hosts using any of the popular control panels or even using FTP.

Using the website migration tool, your website files will be synced with your current host to ensure that your site remains accessible throughout the process. This keeps your website files intact and avoids deleting them until you’ve confirmed that the migration was successful.

Apart from the convenience, the website migration center also provides the following benefits:

• Free and unlimited migrations: 20i doesn’t limit you on how many WordPress sites you can migrate to its servers. Furthermore, all website migrations are free so you can migrate all your sites without worrying about costs.
• Bulk website migrations: If you’re migrating many websites, you don’t have to wait until one is completed to start the next one. You can migrate all your websites at once or in batches. This website migration tool can be of great help if you’re a reseller hosting many websites.
• Databases are copied as they are: If your website uses a database for any functionality, 20i has you covered. This tool doesn’t just copy website files, it also copies databases with their full structure and data.
• Emails are also synced: You can continue emailing your customers even during the migration process. Since 20i uses IMAP to sync your emails, your email communications will continue unaffected by the syncing.

Customer Support

20i gets a lot of positive reviews from its customers.

One of the things it’s praised for is the customer support staff’s technical expertise. As a WordPress host headquartered in the UK, 20i has been recognized as one of the best and fastest WordPress hosting companies in the UK.

As for availability, you can reach the support staff any day any time, including during holidays. You can contact them through chat, phone, or by creating a support ticket.

And if you’re used to buying expensive plans to get technical support, then with 20i, you’ll get it regardless of the plan you’re on.

20i also has a knowledge base of comprehensive guides and articles. If you’re hands-on and love getting your hands dirty while learning in the process, you’ll love it.

Pros and Cons

For a summary of what you get vs. don’t get with 20i, here is a quick rundown of the pros and cons.

Pros

• Fast and reliable speeds: 20i’s core infrastructure is built on cloud technology that gives you reliability and easy scalability. To ensure fast speeds, 20i has developed a caching solution that supplements its CDN, giving you a cache for static and dynamic content.
• Secure WordPress hosting: Since website security starts with an SSL certificate, 20i gives you this for free. You also get free daily malware scanning, DDoS protection, and active firewall protection that monitors your website traffic.
• User-friendly interface: Although 20i doesn’t use the popular cPanel, it comes with a very simple and user-friendly control panel. Since the control panel is developed in-house, it’s under active improvement based on customer feedback.
• Free website migration: Whether you want to move one or many websites to 20i, the process is easy and convenient—and free. All you have to do is go to the website migration center and choose the platform you’re migrating from.
• Free email hosting: 20i also offers email hosting for free. The service supports both POP3 and IMAP, autoresponders, email forwarding, as well as antivirus and anti-spam protection.
• Free web hosting: You can get free website hosting with the purchase of a new domain or transfer of an existing one. This free hosting solution is ideal for small personal blogs or a portfolio. It comes with 10GB SSD storage, a free SSL certificate, 100 email accounts, and 250MB monthly bandwidth. Surprisingly, 20i doesn’t put ads on these free sites.

Cons

• No free plan: 20i doesn’t have a truly free plan that you can use to test the service. The free option you get will require you to either have an existing domain or buy a new one from the host.
• No cPanel or Plesk: 20i has its control panel and so you don’t need cPanel, Plesk, or any of the other popular control panels. But if you’re so used to any of those and can’t do without it, 20i will disappoint you.

FAQ

Conclusion: Is 20i Managed WordPress Hosting Worth It?

20i managed WordPress hosting is a solid option for your website, especially if you want fast speeds. With a CDN comprising a network of edge servers and a custom caching solution, 20i proves that it’s invested in the success of its customers.

Along with website hosting, you also get unlimited email accounts and good customer support at no extra charge.

If you’re tired of poor website performance and lackluster support from your current host, 20i is worth checking out.

Explore Further

• How Much Does It Cost to Host a Website?
• Best Green Web Hosting Companies
• Domain Registration vs. Web Hosting
• WordPress Hosting Conversio Review

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