A web host can make all the difference to a business’ ultimate success. With more and more consumers now checking websites as a first point of reference, it’s vital that the site is quick and easy to navigate or companies risk losing out on valuable business. Mshini (Zulu for ‘machine’) is a South African-based WordPress host that promises quick and efficient WordPress installation and support. Let’s have a look at the new kid on the block.
What Types of WordPress Hosts are There?
Before taking a look at Mshini, it’s important to understand the two different WordPress host types available. These are:
- Shared WordPress host – This is generally the cheaper option because your site will share a server with other sites.
- Managed WordPress host – This is costlier, but does come with a number of associated benefits including:
- Faster speeds;
- Better security including firewalls, malware scans and intrusion detection;
- Staging sites to test site changes before going live; and
- Server-side coaching for less hassle.
What Mshini Offers
This is a proudly South African managed WordPress host that favours the local market. With origins in the Western Cape, Mshini is a startup that was created by entrepreneurs, Mechiel Couvaras and Syfret Bouwer, specifically tailored to South African needs.
Benefits of Mshini
- Faster for Mzansi – In addition to offering superior speeds as a managed WordPress host, because the Mshini servers are locally based, users don’t struggle with international latency.
- Cheaper for Mzansi – Likewise, the fact that it is a local WordPress host means there are no exchange rate concerns, making it cheaper for South African users.
- Optimal performance – Hosting only WordPress sites, users benefit from optimal site performance.
- Security – Mshini runs regular security scans and performance tests for enhanced business security.
- Free ‘Let’s Encrypt’ SSL – users enjoy the benefit of a free SSL certificate to ensure that traffic between the web browser and web server is encrypted. This provides a further layer of website protection, preventing cyber criminals from stealing their data.
- Free site migrations – Mshini offers free site migrations to a separate staging environment so that the user’s live site is not impacted.
- Staging site and emergency rollback – Users are able to clone a live site to a staging site, and there is always the option to rollback the live site from the most recent backup in one click.
- Quality software stack – Including Ubuntu Linux, Nginx, PHP7, HTTP/2 and MariaDB. Although Mshini doesn’t use cPanel or Plex, they have developed their own lightweight control panel which has the same level of functionality.
- WordPress Servers to Order – Businesses that want to host multiple WordPress sites, or high-traffic WordPress sites, are able to order WordPress-dedicated servers from Mshini. This gives businesses and customers exclusive use of a dedicated server for more flexibility.
- Free Dev Plan – Mshini WordPress also offers site builders and developers a Free Dev Plan which gives the option of creating up to three WordPress websites simultaneously without paying monthly hosting fees.
Alongside these many benefits, Mshini also offers great customer support which is often a deciding factor for many when choosing a web host. Obviously, for international organisations, there are other WordPress hosts that will compare more favourably than Mshini, but for South African-based organisations, the benefits are substantial.