After discovering the brutal reality that hosting companies were more concerned with turning a profit than fine tuning their servers, Dana Rockel and Karen Jackie decided to rescue WordPress fans by entering the WP hosting arena themselves.
Thus BlogOnCloud9 was born.
Founded in February of 2010 by the team behind ContentRobot, BlogOnCloud9 offers WordPress bloggers a cloud based solution for those seeking friendlier host who actually tries to help resolve WP related issues (instead of pointing them towards a search engine).
Utilizing the power of Rackspace (their host), BlogOnCloud9 seems geared towards medium sized sites such as small businesses, probloggers and hobby bloggers who have become a little too popular.
The folks at BlogOnCloud9 were gracious enough to give me a test spin under the Guru plan, and are even offering readers $10 off for the first month of service (see below for details regarding this offer).
Migration Sensation
One thing that impressed me about BlogOnCloud9 is that from the moment you sign up they immediately offer to help migrate your entire blog off of your host for free.
Migrating your blog can take up to 3 days (if not longer), although if you are an impatient geek (like me), you can simply create a new account and 24 hours later import your old blog WP style into BlogOnCloud9′s hands.
Note: I would highly recommend the migration path, as that way you do not have to reinstall any plugins, themes or customizations to your site.
Regardless of which option you choose, BlogOnCloud9′s team will guide you through the process of setting up your new blog, and will even help you configure your DNS settings on your domain.
Email, cPanel and FTP (Oh My!)
BlogOnCloud9 does include FTP for the geeks out there, as well as access to Rackspace’s default cPanel that allows you to easily view how much space your blog (or blogs) are taking up, as well as create email addresses underneath your domain.
Despite the fact that providing an email service gives BlogOnCloud9 an edge over WordPress hosting rivals like HostCo (who does not provide this service), I found the user interface to be very bland and “anemic” (note: I would highly recommend using Gmail instead).
Although I did not see this mentioned on their site, BlogOnCloud9 does also boast a calendar within their email interface, as well as a tasks feature (both which bloggers may find useful).
The Price Is Right?
As far as expense goes, BlogOnCloud9′s pricing models are more expensive than the “el cheapo” hosting sites that dot the digital world, although their plans are actually competitive considering the support that they’re giving users.
Their basic (aka Guru) plan is currently $25/month (note: this price looks temporarily reduced from $35/month) for one blog and 100 GB of bandwidth.
For those with multiple sites (or larger blogs), their Expert Plan offers 15 GB of space for $65/month (note: this price looks temporarily reduced from $75/month) which allows you to host up to 5 blogs and grants one up to 300 GB of bandwidth.
For bloggers with multiple blogs this last plan appeals to me (as I currently own 4 on a less than pleasing hosting site), and unless your site is routinly on the front page of Digg then these plans are for the most part reasonable.
Warning: Speed Bumps Ahead
Although I was impressed with the service overall (minus email of course), I did encounter a few slow downs while using the service, although that issue had more to do with their host Rackspace than BlogOnCloud9.
While Rackspace does have a positive reputation in the geek world, the site was hacked into in June (which caused a mass panic amongst the WordPress faithful) and is increasingly becoming a preferred target by hackers (something Posterous discovered recently).
According to Rackspace, many of these attacks are the result of faulty WordPress plugins, so users who decide to utilize BlogOnCloud9′s services should verify each plugin they install (or have the BlogOnCloud9 team check them out for you).
Is BlogOnCloud9 Right For Me?
Personal bloggers and medium sized businesses will probably find BlogOnCloud9 to be a Godsend, especially for users who are not exactly tech savvy.
For those of you desiring to leave your old host behind, BlogOnCloud9 is offering readers who sign up by October 15th $10 off their first month of service.
Users can receive this discount by typing in the code “BLOGHERALD” (minus the quotations of course) which should help users test out the service for the first month without losing an arm or a leg.
Although BlogOnCloud9 can’t cater to everyone’s needs, their platform is the perfect solution for small business and personal bloggers desiring to leave blog purgatory and experience WordPress in a whole new light.
Image Credits: BlogOnCloud9 and Norebbo
Update: Corrected information detailing that the cPanel interface is from Rackspace, not BlogOnCloud9
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Hey, Darnell …
Thank you so much for your review of BlogOnCloud9! Our clients are enjoying not only rock solid hosting, but (perhaps, more importantly) our expert support of their WordPress blogs.
While no host can truly offer 100% up-time, our clients have not been heavily effected by Rackspace’s performance/growth issues.
We also wanted to note that migrations are always free at BlogOnCloud9, regardless of how many blogs, the size, and their complexity. We also tune them up and install other plugins for security, SEO, and other goodies to help manage their blogs.
Karen & Dana
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Heya. I’m a very happy customer at BoC9. :) I finally moved there after struggling for years with cheap hosting and white-screens…
I see that you “complain” about the webmail they have, and you recommend gmail in stead. BoC9 gives you normal mailboxes (IMAP or POP) that you _can_ read through webmail. But I would recommend that you either forward or import the mail into the software you normally use. I import mine to gmail, but you can of course use Thunderbird or Outlook(!) or whatever you prefer.
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My company offers WordPress development services to small nonprofits. Over the past year, the number of new business has sky-rocketed. The problem I had with the growth is that, because my expertise doesn’t include being a WordPress geek, I couldn’t scale it efficiently.
I originally chose BlogonCloud9 because they seemed ideal for growing businesses like mine who need a lot of help setting up and managing dev sites. So in my case, the monthly fee completely pays for itself.
I also found that Dana and Karen are obsessed with taking care of their customers. I’ve been kind of a pain in the ass with questions, but they’re always very quick and happy to respond to every question. They recently pushed a client’s site live – for free.
In short, many headaches removed wihh these guys.
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I LOVE the BlogOnCloud9 guys.
I moved to them earlier this year, and have nothing but good things to say about them. They made the transfer from my previous host pain-free, and they’re so on the ball when it comes to support and resolving issues (even when it has nothing to do with them).
I’ve also moved clients over to their services because I’m that impressed.
And I even wrote a blog post to show how impressed I am :)
http://dannybrown.me/2010/07/20/why-im-loving-blogoncloud/
Great to see Blog Herald recognizing the BlogOnCloud9 guys, well deserved.
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I recently switched to BlogOnCloud9 after years of frustration with shared webhosts. My website is fast now, and I cannot say enough about their support. My website recently went completely down (no fault of the webhost – a bad plugin uninstall). I sent an email to Karen and Dana at 10:00pm. They instantly answered and had my website back up in less than 5 minutes. What company does this?? This is only one example. Every email I send to them gets answered personally and promptly.
I was actually hesitant to post this positive review for fear that hundreds more might sign up and thus reduce their level of customer support. However, their excellent customer support deserves to be rewarded with increased business. I hope that they maintain their customer-oriented focus as their business grows.