Why I’ve Lost Faith in Other Hosting Companies

First and foremost, I write this with an extremely saddened heart. I know it is just hosting that I’m talking about, but WP Engine used to be stellar. In fact, moving from VPS.net to WP Engine in 2015 was one of the best decisions I made when I was helping run Sideways8 Interactive. It saved me time with the staging environments, to the great support. What went wrong?

It has been over a year since I lost faith, but I didn’t want to just blast WP Engine because I was disappointed. I’m not a rage quitter. I’ve taken enough time, and I think it’s ok for me to share why I’ve moved more than half of my sites away over the years.

Read this chat log with support at WP Engine:

If you don’t understand the significance of this, I’ll do my best to explain it. 127.0.0.1 is something you learn very quickly the first time you set up a server, or any networking device. 127.0.0.1 is known as “home” or the active server you are working on. So, if I log into a server, and I want to test anything, I can try to access the server I’m on by going to either localhost or 127.0.0.1.

If you’re on a Mac, Windows, Linux, OpenBSD, whatever, you always know you that 127.0.0.1 is the box you’re on. It’s basically networking 101. A lot of services will and can access the server it is on by reaching out to the well known 127.0.0.1.

The fact that WP Engine support asked me if I recognized it, and then offered to block all traffic is beyond shocking. Hopefully there are procedures at WP Engine’s that would prevent their own support staff to block such a move, but to be honest, I would never think that someone would even try it because it is such a basic well-known address.

The scarier part of this is the other end of spectrum. I just happen to have a background in networking also, but what if I didn’t? What if I told support that I don’t recognize the IP address and somehow, they were able to block my own server’s services? We’d be in a bad situation.

At this point, I just try not to use their support. The sites that are on there are working, and if it ever gets slow, I just move them over to out servers on Digital Ocean or Linode. Just for the record, I’m not saying that everyone should jump ship. To be honest, where will you go? There isn’t anything much better out there. I just happen to know how to set up a server, and have a team that can help me if things go above my head. Most agencies don’t have that skillset available so they are stuck.

Maybe WP Engine support will get better again. I would guess the primary issue is they are growing too fast to train everyone. But that’s just a guess.