Best Hosting Approach For PW

[Gazley]

Hi, been a while since I've developed a PW site and would like to know if there are any recommended hosting options that I could consider.

Previously, I used a Linode virtual server and looked after the Linux/Apache/PHP myself. However, I don't want to do that again. I just want an environment that is taken care of for me and I don't have to think/worry about. On saying that it needs to be performant and also, I need to be able to access and send/receive data through third party RESTful services. I am in UK and most access by user will be in the UK. Any help would be appreciated.

[elabx]

I like Runcloud/Ploi.

[millipedia]

I've just spent the last week phaffing around with different hosting providers and we've ended up going with Ploi with servers from Hetzner (largely due to recommendations in this forum). This was partly a cost saving exercise (although it's taken a week of my time...) and because we wanted to shift some sites back into the EU.

Ploi do only have nginx and not Apache. That's not been an issue for any of our PW sites so far, but if you do have something that relies on fancy rewrite rules or something Apache specific then that would be something to consider.
Also - if you're only spinning up a single site then it's probably not going to be as good value as if you have lots of sites. Their Pro tier is the same price for 1-10 servers. 

We also use Krystal for general cPanel hosting. They've been really good, are UK based, B-Corp and green. When I've needed to use their support it was great.

The sites we're moving to Ploi are currently on Cloudways. They've also been good - just more expensive for us than we think Ploi will be. We'll definitely keep some sites with them though. They do have Apache on their servers if you need, and I love just being able to duplicate sites with a click.

Lastly we have a couple of sites on the bog standard Hetzner hosting. The control panel is archaic but they are updating it. We'll probably move these sites over to Ploi as well just to keep things neat, but if you just have a single site to deal with then it's probably a cheap option.

 

[Gazley]

I looked at these two options and they look really professional. However, unless I misread the details, it seems that they both only offer/use Nginx . Is that correct? If so, how does this work with PW?

Thank you!

[millipedia]

Slightly ninja'd there. But we haven't had any issues with using nginx so far. There is a big discussion on it in this forum already.

When I was researching different hosting providers it was interesting how many did just provide nginx  and not Apache ( Runcloud / Ploi / XCloud etc ).

I think that PW probably needs to make sure it's compatible with other servers and not just rely on Apache (and nope, I've not tried LightSpeed yet).

[iank]

I've recently started moving some of my PW sites over to 20i.com after becoming disenchanted with my current host. I've found their systems to be performant and reliable and their support to be really helpful and responsive (although they've recently adopted an AI bot intermediary for support questions - which to be fair is quite good, and if it doesn't answer your question you can get straight through to tech support via a ticket).  Support tickets are usually answered within a few minutes.

They have a custom Control Panel rather similar to cPanel, which is fine; I've not encountered any problems with it.  They provide a CDN by default and the handful of PW sites I've moved over are running perfectly happily. Their migration mechanism is a cinch (I'm migrating from cPanel).  I've a couple of small cloud servers with them and I'm trying out the reseller offering at the moment.

The only downside is that to use their free SSL certs you need to have your domain either hosted with them or if hosted elsewhere, to use their nameservers.  For some of my clients that's a non-starter, so I may look at Krystal as well.

HTH.

[entschleunigung]

I recently came across xcloud.host (also NGINX-based and It’s not limited to WordPress) while working with WordPress from time to time. They offer a version of their panel called “Manage Own Server” that you can use on your own hardware: 1 server, 10 sites — completely free. I have to say, the panel looks really solid. I'm running it on a VPS from Hetzner, and the installation went smoothly. I've been playing around with it a bit, and so far I'm really impressed.

Another option that’s been working great for me with a Hetzner VPS is hestiacp.com. The panel runs flawlessly as well, and you can use Apache and NGINX together or just one of them, depending on your needs. The installation is also super straightforward.

Hope that’s helpful!

[Gazley]

Thanks guys for all your comments! I really appreciate it!

[millipedia]

On 7/5/2025 at 9:49 AM, entschleunigung said:

I recently came across xcloud.host (also NGINX-based and It’s not limited to WordPress) while working with WordPress from time to time. They offer a version of their panel called “Manage Own Server” that you can use on your own hardware: 1 server, 10 sites — completely free. I have to say, the panel looks really solid. I'm running it on a VPS from Hetzner, and the installation went smoothly. I've been playing around with it a bit, and so far I'm really impressed.

XCloud was one of the services I tried, and it was top of our list for a while until we tried to change the default rewrite rule...

Whilst xcloud lets you change quite a lot of nginx conf settings you can't change the default rewrite:

// PW rewrite rule should be 
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?it=$uri&$args;

// but xcloud won't let you change it from
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;

PW has a fallback so that the second rule generally works, so we didn't notice for a week (and after I'd spent a lot of time in xcloud ...).

It was only because we came accross an issue with Bernhards live reload that I realised something wasn't right.

xcloud support were good, and honestly in most cases I don't think it will matter, but because they weren't able to change it I decided it was probably the sensible move to cross xcloud off of my list. 

I don't think that the rewrite to 'it=' gets used much and it might be worth asking @ryan to consider defaulting to the other rewrite url which I assume is what WordPress uses and hence the default for a lot of hosts.

[bernhard]

Regarding using nginx I want to mention that if any module you are using relies on .htaccess (which many of my modules do) you'll have to make sure that these rules also apply to your system.

For example in my RockInvoice module I protect all generated invoices in their related folder (eg /site/assets/files/123) with an .htaccess file like this:

<FilesMatch ".*">
  <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
    Require all denied
  </IfModule>
  <IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
  </IfModule>
</FilesMatch>

Which means, as far as I understand, that on nginx systems the invoices would be publicly available if someone knew the path, right?