Shared server hosting
$300/year
Your website will live on the same server with other Orbit clients.
How Can We Help? Let’s Talk!
Your hosting and managed services options
We host almost every site we build.
You have the option of hosting with Orbit or hosting elsewhere.
We’ll have an in-depth discussion regarding hosting and managed services during the development phase of the project. This discussion includes:
- Your website’s current hosting services
- Your upcoming hosting options
- Hosting decision deadlines
- Launch planning
This meeting ensures we have sufficient time to plan the launch of the new website and we can immediately transition to post-launch services that meet your needs and budget.
Service fees
Orbit can deal directly with your host so you don’t have to.
When hosting with Orbit, the starting fee for hosting and managed services is $2,100. Here’s the breakdown:
Managed website services
Starts at $1,800/year
Complex websites may increase to $3,000 – $6,000/year.
Hosting with Orbit
Website hosting & managed services
When hosting with Orbit, you’ll get hosting, managed services, and support.
Orbit hosting
Our shared website hosting offering is affordable and highly performant. If you have individual requirements, we assess and consult on the appropriate hosting environment based on:
- Your website traffic and performance
- Your “ownership” expectations
- Your IT security and compliance concerns
- Your uptime tolerance
- Your budget and hosting fees
When Orbit provides Hosting, we must also provide Managed Services to be fully responsible for the website availability, security and performance
We utilize industry standard monitoring tools, security software, and rely on the expert services of hosting partners to ensure your website is available 24/7.
We provide shared server space with multiple client websites on a highly performant “P” level server (currently named “Core Hosting” by WPEngine)
Orbit managed services
Managed website services make it easy to keep your site secure and your environment current.
- Website maintenance, monitoring and support services are available for sites that are hosted by Orbit
- Orbit maintains plugins, CMS themes and custom code in version control using Atlassian Bitbucket Cloud (https://bitbucket.org) for git
- We are responsible for ensuring your website is available, secure, and performing at optimal speed
- We oversee continual CMS updates, plugin updates, and backups
- Orbit Support is notified of any downtime, WPEngine failures of WP core or Plugin updates and addresses them with WPEngine support.
Core and plugin updates
- WPEngine (WPE) maintains WordPress (WP) core and uses Smart Plugin Manager (SPM) to maintain official plugins and theme updates.
- SPM runs daily M-F during maintenance hours (typically configured from 12am-6am CST) to update WordPress and active plugins
- During the 5 to 10 minutes that this process runs, the website is put into “Maintenance Mode” – and the public is unable to view the website.
- A backup is created, plugins are updated, visual regression is completed after each plugin update. Notifications are sent to Orbit upon completion of the updates and status.
- Orbit Support is notified of any failures and addresses them.
Security, speed and availability
- Orbit monitors sites for uptime with StatusCake.com checking sites from various locations around the globe.
- We ensure optimal delivery speed configuration with at least 2 layers of caching.
- We review a daily digest of file changes, code changed by developers, clients, and potentially foreign sources.
- Orbit Support notifies you with the status of persistent downtime.
- WPEngine stores 60 days worth of backups offsite in AWS data centers.
Hosting upgrades
At times, Orbit will advise a client to move their website to a different environment for reasons such as:
- The website receives significantly more traffic than other websites on that server, causing poor server performance.
- Large file and/or data storage requirements
- Specific security concerns due to client systems integration
Additional hosting considerations
Orbit provides a thorough list of website security and redundancy best practices. We are happy to consult with you based on your specific requirements and concerns.
The most common recommendation is to add CloudFlare.com as a caching layer for speed, CDN, and DDoS.
| Issue/Concern | Why? | Included in Orbit Hosting and Managed Services? |
| SECURITY | ||
| Hosting Security | Protects from human and bot access to the server | Yes |
| Data Center Security Examination Compliance | SOC 2 compliance provides third party assurance and compliance with Security and Availability Trust Services Criteria. | Yes |
| Website Security | Protects from human and bot brute force entry to website content management system | Yes |
| DDoS Protection | Prevents DDoS attacks | Yes |
| Web Firewall | Protects from illegitimate traffic to hack, steal and can further prevent DDoS attacks | No |
| MONITORING | ||
| File Change Monitoring | Daily digest of file changes allows for review of code changed by developers, clients, and potentially foreign sources | Yes |
| Version Control | Compares current code to latest changes | Yes |
| Multiple Environments | Production, Staging, and Development environments for developing, testing, and staging code and content releases | Yes |
| Uptime Monitoring | Records and alerts to downtime help diagnose persistent downtime issues | Yes |
| Domain and SSL Monitoring | Awareness of domain and SSL expiration | Yes |
| Attack Monitoring, Prevention, and Remediation | Notification of attacks; PCI compliance, penetration scans | No |
| Phishing scam Monitoring | Detects and fights online brand abuse: trademark infringement, counterfeit sales, phishing attacks, fraud, etc. | No |
| Content Change Monitoring | Detects and tracks changes to content on the website and provides reports when the changes occur. | No |
| REDUNDANCY | ||
| Website Backups | Quickly and easily restore from previous versions | Yes |
| DNS Managed Website Failover | Quickly route traffic from a failed or overloaded website or server to another service | No |
| Failover Hosting Services | Pre-built and configured alternate page or website to route website traffic | Yes |
| Off-site Website Backups | Keep historic records of content changes | No |
| Disaster Recovery | Failover hosting for full website and disaster recovery mitigation | No |
Non-Orbit hosting
Deploying and launching a website NOT hosted by Orbit will likely require additional budget and incur additional fees on an active project.
- Maintenance – Managed Services from Orbit is NOT available
- Plugins – Orbit owned Unlimited Agency Licenses for WordPress plugins are NOT available – You will need to purchase your website CMS theme and plugin licenses
- Support – Billable Orbit Support Services ARE available based on time and materials – This means you can submit support tickets for website changes and updates.
Orbit hosting partners and plugins
Orbit primarily offers hosting services as an WPEngine Agency Advanced Partner
We currently host and maintain over 250 websites on WPEngine.
Orbit is an Agency Partner with Pantheon.io for both Drupal and WordPress.
Orbit works closely with Colohouse for hosting services. They are a Chicago-based data center.
Orbit plugins on WordPress websites
Orbit extends our Unlimited Agency Licenses to clients with Orbit Hosting and Managed Services (~$1,600/yr). All licenses need to be replaced if migrating to your own hosting environment.
Plugins options include (but aren’t limited to):
Content management
- Advanced custom fields PRO
- FacetWP
- Stream
- Seamless Sticky Custom Post Types
- Ninja Forms
- Max Mega Menu
- FacetWP
- Gravity Forms
- Adobe Fonts TypeKit
- Elementor
- WP Media folder
- Relevanssi Premium
- User Role Editor Pro
Site performance & SEO
- Cloudflare
- Akismet Anti-Spam
- Yoast SEO
- Solid WP Security Pro
- Schema Pro
- Smush Pro
- Redirection
- Jetpack
- iThemes Security Pro
- Google Tag Manager for WP
- WP Rocket
- FacetWP- Cache
- AltText.AI
Orbit hosting support
We have a dedicated 3-tier support team available to address any website hosting issues.
If something is broken or there is a problem with hosting, there is no charge for support!
Visit our Support page anytime to contact the team or submit a ticket on the Orbit Support Portal.
All support services are provided according to our Support Policy.
911
Support staff respond to critical issues related to a site outage or broken functionality.
311
Support staff can assist with administrative questions, content management, redirects, etc.
Support staff can also handle issues with our code, existing plugins, the hosting provider partner, DNS, and security.
New requested work
Support may help address new requests.
This support is billable and may require a larger scope of work with help from a Web Strategist or Project Manager
More post-launch services
We want to help you get the most out of your new website. With our guidance, we can further your content strategy, improve your on-page SEO and help increase conversions.
We offer the following services for your post-launch needs:
Statements of work
A Web Strategist or Project Manager will work with you to determine requirements and a fee estimate for a fixed amount of new work. These budgets are most cost efficient when Orbit hosts and maintains the website.
Monthly service agreements
It is very common for a wishlist of new features, additional copywriting, enhancements and improvements to justify an ongoing service arrangement.
An Orbit Project Manager would lead monthly meetings with you to prioritize work with our production team. These services are typically only available when Orbit hosts and maintains the website.
Optimization services
Orbit experts in SEO, CRO, reporting, and client service continually assess, recommend changes, and report on outcomes.
An Orbit Project Manager would lead monthly meetings with you to recommend and prioritize work with our production team. These services are most impactful when Orbit hosts and maintains the website.
What’s next?
The launch is right around the corner. We need your decision regarding hosting and managed services.
Once we know your plan, we’ll provide you with your annual agreement and invoice for hosting and managed services. These need to be signed and paid prior to launch.
A couple of quick reminders
- With Orbit hosting, you get both hosting and managed services to help with keeping your website live and up-to-date.
- You can choose to host on your own and if doing so, we’ll send you a full list of the plugins and licenses that you will need to purchase.
- We’re happy to discuss these details with your full team so they understand the financial and technical details.