It’s a great problem to have: your website is getting so popular that your current hosting can’t keep up. We remember that feeling well, watching our traffic climb while anxiously hoping the server wouldn’t crash.
That anxiety is real for many growing businesses. You start worrying about slow load times, security vulnerabilities, and whether your site can handle the next big traffic spike.
This is often when you first hear about enterprise solutions like WordPress VIP. In the hosting world, an ‘enterprise’ solution is simply one designed for large-scale websites that need maximum performance and reliability.
WordPress VIP is premium managed hosting built for the world’s biggest brands, with pricing that starts around $25,000 per year. For most growing businesses, there are powerful alternatives that deliver similar performance at a fraction of the cost.
In this guide, we’ll break down what WordPress VIP offers and explore the alternatives we use ourselves. We’ll help you find the right fit for your budget and needs.
Here is a quick overview of the topics we will cover in this guide:
What Is WordPress VIP?
WordPress VIP is an enterprise-level managed WordPress hosting platform. It is built for very large websites that get huge amounts of traffic.
The service is provided by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. Automattic was founded by WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg. If you are new to WordPress, these names can be a bit confusing.
WordPress.org is a free website builder software. On the other hand, WordPress.com is a hosting company that offers various plans. You can learn more in our article on the difference between WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.
Having worked with different hosting providers, we’ve seen how WordPress VIP positions itself as a premium, fully managed hosting solution. It’s marketed as the fastest, most secure, and hassle-free WordPress hosting available, but that comes at a steep cost.
Beyond the price, WordPress VIP enforces strict coding standards and approval processes. This can be a hurdle for many businesses. If your team needs flexibility or frequently pushes updates, this level of control might not be ideal.
Who Should Use WordPress VIP?
WordPress VIP is designed for large corporations and high-traffic websites that handle tens of millions of pageviews per month. It is a powerful hosting plan built for high volume with excellent performance and security.
The pricing for WordPress VIP is customized for each client, so it’s not listed publicly. However, plans reportedly start around $25,000 per year and can go much higher depending on your needs.
It’s helpful to view this cost as an investment in a full partnership with a team of experts, not just a hosting fee. For that price, you get unlimited storage, bandwidth, CDN, and dedicated support.
Here are some of the top brands that use WordPress VIP.
What are the Benefits of WordPress VIP?
WordPress VIP handles the technical headaches of running a large website. This allows you to use the full power of WordPress without worrying about server management.
Here are some of the key benefits of using WordPress VIP:
1. Fully Managed WordPress Platform
WordPress VIP is more than just managed hosting. It includes automated hourly backups, proactive security scans, and automatic core software updates.
They also provide uptime monitoring, automatic scaling for traffic spikes, and a strict review process for all plugins and custom code. This review guarantees site performance and security by preventing inefficient or vulnerable code from running.
2. Planning & Training
Each WordPress VIP plan starts with a detailed strategy session. Their team works with you to review your needs and help you pick the right theme and plugins.
They train your developers, editors, and administrators on the platform. This helps your whole team make the most of its powerful features.
3. Best Performance & Blazing Fast Speed
The entire WordPress VIP platform is optimized for the best WordPress performance. You don’t have to worry about caching, code optimization, or plugins.
It uses a state-of-the-art content delivery network (CDN) with data centers worldwide. This provides fast load times, low latency, and protection against DDoS attacks.
4. The Best WordPress Security
All WordPress VIP websites are protected by a custom-built infrastructure and WordPress security best practices. Your website traffic is fully encrypted with HTTPS to protect data in transit.
Their security team also uses firewalls and proactive monitoring to block attacks before they reach your site.
Best Alternatives to WordPress VIP
Despite its advantages, WordPress VIP is not for everyone, mostly because of the cost. Many companies also prefer more flexibility than their strict processes allow.
Thankfully, other WordPress hosting providers offer similar enterprise-grade plans. There are also excellent WordPress maintenance services that can handle site monitoring, upkeep, and security.
Here are our picks for the top alternatives to WordPress VIP that offer enterprise-grade services.
SiteGround is an officially recommended WordPress host that also provides enterprise hosting. They specialize in providing custom infrastructure tailored to your needs.
Why Do We Recommend SiteGround?
We have been long-time SiteGround customers. WPBeginner is hosted on SiteGround’s enterprise cloud hosting. Our experience has been excellent, as we detail in our SiteGround case study.
We also moved our other websites, including WPForms, MonsterInsights, OptinMonster, and All in One SEO, to SiteGround’s enterprise cloud hosting. We could not be happier with the performance and support.
Expert Tip: Get up to 83% off SiteGround hosting plans with our SiteGround coupon code.
Rocket.net is a managed WordPress hosting platform renowned for its incredible speed. Their high-performance infrastructure can dramatically reduce page load times.
Why Do We Recommend Rocket.net?
We have thoroughly tested Rocket.net’s services for our own websites. We have found them to be one of the fastest WordPress hosting platforms on the market.
They offer daily backups, free Cloudflare enterprise CDN, a website application firewall (WAF), and expert support 24/7. You can see our speed tests in our complete Rocket.net review.
Tip: Get 50% off Rocket.net hosting with our Rocket.net coupon code.
Rapyd Cloud is a managed WordPress hosting solution built for websites that need high performance and speed. It specializes in handling traffic spikes with ease and delivering stable, consistent performance.
Why Do We Recommend Rapyd Cloud?
We loved Rapyd Cloud’s enterprise-grade infrastructure designed especially for high traffic. It is built for eCommerce, membership, and online course websites where multiple users access critical non-cached pages, such as the cart, payment, and subscription pages.
We were truly impressed by its performance. For more information, see our comprehensive Rapyd Cloud review.
Expert Tip: WPBeginner users get two months free with annual plans. 👉 Click here to claim this offer.
Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress VIP
What does WordPress VIP cost?
WordPress VIP plans are customized for each client. The pricing reportedly starts around $25,000 per year and goes up depending on your website’s specific needs for traffic, applications, and support.
Is WordPress VIP good for small businesses?
No, WordPress VIP is not a good fit for most small businesses due to its high cost and complexity. It is specifically designed for large-scale, high-traffic enterprise websites. Small businesses will find better value in alternatives like SiteGround, Rapyd Cloud, or Rocket.net.
What’s the main difference between WordPress VIP and other managed hosting?
The main difference is the level of partnership. WordPress VIP provides comprehensive planning, training, and proactive management of your platform. They enforce very strict code and plugin reviews to guarantee performance and security, acting as an extension of your development team.
What’s the difference between WordPress VIP and regular WordPress.com?
WordPress.com offers hosting plans for individuals and small businesses, including free plans. WordPress VIP is a separate enterprise product with custom pricing, dedicated support, and infrastructure built for high-traffic sites. They share the same parent company (Automattic) but serve very different audiences.
Additional WordPress Hosting Resources
We hope this article helped you learn about WordPress VIP and its alternatives.
You may also want to check out these other guides and comparisons:
- Which WordPress Plan Should You Use? (Expert Answer)
- 8 Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers (Performance Tests)
- WordPress for Enterprise – 6 Tips You Should Know
- How Much Does It Really Cost to Build a WordPress Website?
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Jiří Vaněk
I was not familiar with WordPress VIP until today. Again, I learned something new thanks to wpbeginner. Thanks for the great explanation of this service.
Anjana Nilupul
Hi,
Thank you for this article. I’ve been a WPBeginner fan always. But I wonder, being such a huge website, WPBeginner hasn’t moved to WordPress VIP. What’s the reason for that? Also can you tell me if it was because they are pricy or they are too much for what WPBeginner requires at the moment?
Thank you
WPBeginner Support
For why we use what we use on WPBeginner you would want to take a look at our article below:
https://014.leahstevensyj.workers.dev/opinion/reasons-why-wpbeginner-switched-to-siteground-hosting/
As well as our blueprint:
https://014.leahstevensyj.workers.dev/blueprint/
Admin
michelle
FYI- VIP is way overkill for most companies. As an example, Whitehouse.gov is on vip. Plus the prices are high (it’s priced per the basic package plus traffic plus a nominal (nominal for them) price for each website domain. It can be more than 100k easy).
David in Mississippi
You gave some rather scary prices for the WordPress VIP program, but failed to give any price ranges for the alternative services.
Yes, I realize that different levels of services will have different price structures, but you could have made this article SO MUCH better by giving us the low, mid, and upper price ranges for each service.
You can probably understand that most people don’t want to even consider any product or service without having at least some idea what it will cost.
Michelle
Disagree. This was an article about wordpress vip, not others. And VIP can go up to 100k or more, btw.
BobH
Do any of these high end sites include management utilities like ManageWP?
WPBeginner Support
Hi Bob,
Each hosting company offers different sets of tools to manage multiple WordPress sites from their hosting dashboard.
Admin