Evaluating Enterprise Content Management Platforms: The Cost of Not Choosing WordPress VIP

Did your digital transformation timeline accelerate this year?

We’ve seen many leaders realize that digital content is intrinsically tied to their business growth (or survival). Also, given the state of constant change we all find ourselves living in, agility has become more important than ever for businesses looking to create engaging customer experiences.

With this understanding of the mission-critical nature of content, executives are assessing not only the content management platforms they use, but also their ability to deliver digital agility, and the costs involved in doing so.

It’s not always easy to assess the total cost of ownership (TCO) of enterprise content platforms, as a platform that looks less expensive on the front end can carry hidden costs in its ability to actually deliver digital experiences that engage your customers.

Most content platforms providing managed WordPress will be able to speak to hardware costs, disaster recovery, basic security, ongoing operational support, and other “standard” factors that impact TCO. However, there are significant differences between enterprise and mid-market offerings.

Stakeholders assessing these platforms must consider the implications in site performance, long-term budgeting, security mitigation, developer empowerment, and the platform’s ability to deliver on a strategic digital growth roadmap.

Here’s how choosing WordPress VIP can help reduce your total cost of ownership in each of these five areas:

Maximize every revenue opportunity

Studies show that even a .1s increase in site speed leads to retail customers spending almost 10% more.

Every potential customer that bounces from your site due to poor performance is an indictment on your platform provider. In fact, this is frequently why we are seeing enterprises choose WordPress VIP over competitors. When your website contributes such a significant amount of your revenue, you cannot afford to compromise it in any way.

In a recent conversation with a prospect, they mentioned poor site performance as a chief motivator in considering a platform change.

“85% of leads and revenue come from our website,” he explained. “With WP Engine, our page speeds are very poor, we are not running on a dedicated server, and we have little to no tech support.”

As the premium enterprise WordPress platform, we invest heavily to ensure our performance is best in class. Instead of reselling hosting, we own the platform down to the hardware. Because we only host WordPress, we are able to optimize monitoring and speed throughout the stack in ways that other providers are not.

For example, we are one of the top three DNS providers in the world, we deliver performance in the single digits of milliseconds, and we provide advanced features like edge caching to ensure that time to first byte (TTFB) is extremely fast—in fact, in our monthly speed tests, WordPress VIP performs 20 to 50% faster than major competitors. For a real-world example of our performance at high scale, read how we helped FiveThirtyEight shatter traffic records with zero downtime during the 2020 U.S. election.

Of course, site speed is just one metric that goes into the total cost of ownership calculation. But if you follow the example cited earlier, the conclusion is already clear: any metric that can lead to a 10% difference in customer spend dwarfs any savings you might have from choosing the partner who submits the lowest-dollar proposal.

Rely on predictable budgets

High site traffic should be a cause for celebration, not for hidden expenses. Unfortunately, many platform providers operate using artificially limited packages, with built-in overage fees and other gimmicks aimed at forcing you to upgrade to the next tier.

We believe that your customer’s interest in your company shouldn’t be held against you. With WordPress VIP, if you experience a spike in traffic, you simply pay for that hosting cost—instead of having to pay extra for an “upgraded tier,” hidden overage charges, or other gimmicks. WordPress VIP customers who operate at large scale and value predictability in their budgets mention that our reliability in handling high traffic loads is one of the primary reasons they choose WordPress VIP.

“Not only did you guys make the cut, you’re the front runners based on your ability to dynamically scale the environment to handle bursty loads.”

Head of Cloud Operations, WordPress VIP Customer

Mitigate security risks globally

Can you put a price tag on peace of mind? Turns out, yes you can. We recently spoke with a customer who is the VP of Strategic Technology at a top global publisher. He was comparing us with managed WordPress platforms and quantified the peace of mind we create for his business.

“Not worrying about getting hacked is a big benefit,” he said. “[Without WordPress VIP] I would need two people to manage the environment and de-risk hacking, so that’s in the six figures already.”

WordPress VIP brings a thoroughness to security that elevates us from other high scale WordPress providers. As an example, we run parts of our production file system in read-only mode, protecting applications against attacks that install backdoor shells and other malicious files.

This is just one of the security features that come standard with WordPress VIP—they are not locked behind upgraded packages at additional costs. Other security differentiators include our support for 2FA, SSO, DDoS protection, and the fact that we own our hardware. Learn more about WordPress VIP’s security best practices.

Think “developer empowerment,” not “developer support”

When it comes to total cost of ownership, the right resources can save developers from months of headaches, technical debt, and delayed deployment. True, developer support is table stakes for most digital experience platforms and managed WordPress solutions. Yet you’ll find that most of them think of developer enablement as a cost center, instead of as an opportunity to build a true partnership.

At WordPress VIP, we know that our world-class content management customer success team and solution-oriented approach is a primary reason why enterprises choose us as the foundation for their digital strategy. As members of the Automattic family, whose CEO is the co-founder of WordPress, we bring expertise in WordPress that is not matched anywhere else.

Beyond a list of features, what distinguishes our approach to customer success is a difference in philosophy—it’s the difference between proactive and reactive support.

We make it our business to understand your project and help you reach your business goals. That’s why we offer expert review and recommendations for code, themes, and plug-ins, and are available to advise on any issues that could put your customer’s digital experience at risk.

In stark contrast, for some of our competitors, the single most important metric for their customer success team members is how much hardware they can sell. Because we own our own infrastructure, our business is not based on the margin we make reselling AWS/GCP/Azure hardware. For our customer success team, “throw more hardware at it” would feel like giving up. Instead, we work with your developers to build lasting solutions in the best interest of your business.

Everyone says they can provide application-level support but when you prod you see a reluctance to go as deep… I have more faith that your engineers can figure it out.

VP of Strategic Technology, WordPress VIP Customer

Embrace long-term digital transformation

The cost of platforming goes beyond just the migration from one platform to another—enterprises must also consider the opportunity cost involved in that platform’s ability to deliver on digital transformation.

This brings them to the WordPress ecosystem. As the most ubiquitous, open, and easy-to-use content management system, enterprise leaders who understand the direct impact of content on business growth often turn to the WordPress ecosystem to bring their digital experiences to life. These leaders might consider an array of WordPress platforms such as Kinsta, Pagely, WP Engine, and WordPress VIP in their objective to leverage the open web.

To accurately assess any of these platforms, it’s crucial to understand how the platform fits into the broader ecosystem of your existing technology stack—and where you want your stack to be a year from now, five years from now, and in 2030.

What elevates WordPress VIP’s content platform from other WordPress platforms is the deep understanding of and strategic approach we take to the needs of enterprise users.

This approach is reflected in our relationships and integrations with best-in-breed partners like Salesforce, OneTrust, and Cognizant. In this we are unique: our goal is to empower our customers to select the best technologies from both inside and outside the enterprise WordPress ecosystem so they can solve their specific customer experience needs—today, tomorrow, and into the future.

“I feel it is difficult to bring WP Engine into enterprise conversations. It’s a different experience with WordPress VIP. I feel like I learn something when in conversations with WordPress VIP, and with WP Engine I need to step in and help them.”

WordPress VIP Agency Partner

Choose wisely

The content platform you choose will have long-term impacts on your revenue, budgets, security, development, and digital agility, so think carefully about how each partner will impact the total cost of your platform ownership. Learn more about how organizations that use WordPress VIP can realize a 415% return on their investment.