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My experience with WPEngine

chester.id.au

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Re: My experience with WPEngine

#51

Post by jacques_chester »

jc4p wrote: post #49
gozmike wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can totally understand your negative experience, I have email threads between myself and WPEngine as well as between common customers and WPEngine that prove quite the opposite. It really sucks that you went through this. I'm just suggesting that you refrain from the public flogging and find another solution. I'm not affiliated with these guys other than as a client and I can tell you that I respect what they bring…

>I'm just suggesting that you refrain from the public flogging and find another solution. If you've spent more than a day in any online community you should have already learned that this, although it may not be preferable for the company at fault, is the fastest way to get something fixed or something changed. It'd be irresponsible for Jacques to stand by silently and suck up all the time and money he wasted days af…

This man speaks with special authority, given that I have sometimes publicly flogged his employer too.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#52

Post by dugmartin »

highace wrote: post #39
dugmartin wrote: post #23

This is a bit of a meta comment but it must really suck to wake up on a random morning and find a blog post like this about your service as the top story on HN.

Pissing off bloggers is probably the worst thing you can do, given that they'll likely blog about it..!

I wonder if being proactive and adding a message board on your site where people can vent would mitigate some of this.

Here is a great example from a radio personality I used to listen to:

http://mb.clarkhoward.com/forumdisplay.php?7-Clark-Stinks!

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#54

Post by jacques_chester »

caleywoods wrote: post #53

Posted by Patrick Mckenzie almost a year ago: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/02/09/why-i-dont-host-my-own-b... I haven't tried it but it seems to be a good experience for some people.

This is the exact blog post that planted the seed of my interest in WPEngine.

I read it again before I signed up with them and googled around for reviews. Everyone was very positive.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#55

Post by ck2 »

gizzlon wrote: post #50
ck2 wrote: post #42

WPEngine uses NFS/NAS which is a show-stopper. Dreamhost has the same issue, and GoDaddy (still?) You never, ever, use NFS on something with hundreds of files to load for every page (ie. WordPress). Every file takes 2-2.5ms to stat/load on NFS ( from my tests on WPengine ) which seems small but adds up fast. It means you instantly have 700ms or more of overhead on the SERVER side to render a page (not transmit to the…

I recently removed some code that stat'd 4000 files over NFS. It took ~5 seconds, so it wasn't as bad as you say. Also, I'm pretty sure NFS can do better if you tune it.

Well obviously every NFS setup is going to perform differently. I personally benchmarked WPengine which is how I got the 2.5ms number.

What you are saying is 1.25ms on your network (5000/4000). That's twice as fast but still significant.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#56

Post by jasonkester »

The important lesson to be learned here is that even though higher price points tend to shield you from the bulk of toxic customers, you'll still find the occasional toxic customer at even the highest price point from time to time.

As nice a guy as this blogger probably is, he's the bane of services like WPEngine. There is no way to service the needs of his complex edge case of a system for anything like $250/month. They are guaranteed to lose money on him, and the only hope they have is to convince him to leave the service as rapidly as possible to avoid being sucked into the time sink that dealing with him is going to become.

This is the reason you have a "refund" button on the customer page of your admin console. A quick email apologizing for not being able to meet the needs of his unique setup and a refund of his payment, as soon as it became apparent just how impossible things were about to become would have solved this completely.

Or at least one hopes so. The tough thing about dealing with toxic customers is that they grow on you slowly and you don't notice at first. Then one day you realize you've spent four hours just digging into issues and writing emails to this one person who you're probably going to have refund eventually anyway.

I've never met the guys on the WPEngine team. But I feel for them after reading this.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#57

Post by gozmike »

jc4p wrote: post #49
gozmike wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can totally understand your negative experience, I have email threads between myself and WPEngine as well as between common customers and WPEngine that prove quite the opposite. It really sucks that you went through this. I'm just suggesting that you refrain from the public flogging and find another solution. I'm not affiliated with these guys other than as a client and I can tell you that I respect what they bring…

>I'm just suggesting that you refrain from the public flogging and find another solution. If you've spent more than a day in any online community you should have already learned that this, although it may not be preferable for the company at fault, is the fastest way to get something fixed or something changed. It'd be irresponsible for Jacques to stand by silently and suck up all the time and money he wasted days af…

Fastest != Most appropriate

You're advocating revenge. I'd just like discussions to be discussions. Not attacks.

The blog post read (to me at least) like an attack on a company with some obvious growing pains.

There are ways to write a complaint that doesn't involve pointing out Cohen's self congratulation. The way the post is ended wreaks of jealous hatred. That is not the way you constructively criticize.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#58

Post by graupel »

For sites that are large enough/can afford it, I cannot say enough good things about WordPress VIP - we have 20+ sites on VIP and could not be happier with it.

Since they 'are' WordPress they can make pretty much anything that does not modify core, work. It's not for everyone, but for the right sites (high traffic/high availability/generating revenue) it's fantastic.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#59

Post by spindritf »

jasonkester wrote: post #56

The important lesson to be learned here is that even though higher price points tend to shield you from the bulk of toxic customers, you'll still find the occasional toxic customer at even the highest price point from time to time. As nice a guy as this blogger probably is, he's the bane of services like WPEngine. There is no way to service the needs of his complex edge case of a system for anything like $250/month.…

> the only hope they have is to convince him to leave the service as rapidly as possible to avoid being sucked into the time sink that dealing with him is going to become

Then just tell him that the service isn't for him at that price, like Page.ly did.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#60

Post by jacques_chester »

jasonkester wrote: post #56

The important lesson to be learned here is that even though higher price points tend to shield you from the bulk of toxic customers, you'll still find the occasional toxic customer at even the highest price point from time to time. As nice a guy as this blogger probably is, he's the bane of services like WPEngine. There is no way to service the needs of his complex edge case of a system for anything like $250/month.…

Multisite networks are not an edge case.

It is part of the mainline code for Wordpress. It is present in the base installation.

WPEngine specifically advertise that they support it.

Also ... since when did we start considering people who expect to get what they were promised by the sales copy to be "toxic customers"?

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