FAQs

Platform

• Is there a list of the supported API calls?

  Yes, please refer to our API documentation here.

• Does WP Cloud have detection for fatals and does it auto revert when we detect issues?

  Yes, WP Cloud continuously monitors for fatal errors and automatically reverts changes when fatals are detected. This helps ensure site availability and prevents broken deployments from affecting your customers.

  How it works:

  • Fatal error detection runs in real-time
  • When a fatal error is detected, the system automatically rolls back to the last known working state
  • Your customers’ sites remain accessible throughout the process
  • You can review what triggered the revert and address any issues before redeploying

  This automated protection helps reduce support tickets and maintains high uptime for your customers’ sites.

• Does WP Cloud provide the ability to create WordPress sites with custom configurations, i.e. certain plugins already installed and activated, and/or a theme pre-installed and activated?

  Yes, WP Cloud supports creating sites with custom configurations right from the start. You have multiple options for site customization:

  Via API (create-site endpoint):

  • Pre-install and activate specific plugins
  • Set up themes and activate them automatically
  • Configure basic WordPress settings

  Via SSH access:

  • Perform advanced configurations post-creation
  • Install custom code or configurations
  • Set up complex plugin configurations

  Common use cases:

  • Creating branded starter sites for customers
  • Pre-installing security, backup, or performance plugins
  • Setting up staging environments with specific configurations
  • Deploying client-specific themes and branding

  This flexibility allows you to offer turnkey WordPress solutions tailored to your customers’ needs.

• Are WP Cloud’s speed tests based on a unbiased third-party review?

  Yes, WP Cloud participates in independent web hosting benchmarks conducted by WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks (operated by Review Signal), a respected third-party testing organization in the hosting industry.

  What makes these tests credible:

  • Independent testing methodology – Review Signal operates separately from hosting companies
  • Transparent results – Performance data is publicly available for comparison
  • Multiple test types – Various performance scenarios are evaluated
  • Industry standard – Widely recognized benchmarking in the WordPress hosting space

  Real-world validation: Both WordPress.com and Pressable, which run on the WP Cloud platform, participate in these benchmarks, allowing you to see actual performance data compared to other hosting providers.

  You can review the detailed benchmark results to see how WP Cloud-powered hosting performs across different metrics and use cases.

• Is DDoS protection included?

  Yes, WP Cloud manages DDoS protection. Additionally, Edge Cache’s Defensive mode offers an additional on-demand layer of protection.

  This feature can be enabled for durations ranging from 30 minutes to 7 days.

  Utilizing proof-of-work, Defensive mode issues a challenge to browsers visiting the site, mitigating spam bot and DDoS attack requests. Legitimate users will briefly see a challenge page while their browser completes the work before accessing the site.

• How do customers manage their DNS?

  You own DNS. You can use the get-ips endpoint to obtain IPs that should be used for a given domain. Partners can also implement BYOIP (bring-your-own-IP) if that better suits their needs.

• How often is cache refreshed?

  This depends on which cache is being utilized. Memcache has evictions, Batcache (page cache) has a default cache time of five minutes, and the edge cache takes its cue from the content it is caching.

• What is the difference between Edge Caching, CDN and Memcache which is applied to WP Cloud sites?

  • Edge Caching — rendered pages are cached.

  • CDN — static files are cached.

  • Memcache — objects/transients are cached so that database lookups aren’t needed for that data.

• Do you offer persistent object caching, such as Redis or Memcached?

  WP Cloud makes Memcached available as the persistent storage backend for WP_Cache. In the converged architecture of WP Cloud we see better performance and stability from Memcached than we do from Redis.

• Is there server-side malware protection included in your services, or do customers need to install Jetpack Security separately?

  Jetpack is installed by default. In addition, we can upgrade all or some customers to the full Jetpack security module for a heavily discounted rate.

• Is the free SSL certificate automatically installed during WordPress setup, or is there a specific process for it?

  We attempt provisioning SSL for each site when the site is created and when the domain name is updated for the site. Failures have retries with backoff, and the Atomic API allows you to check the status and retry SSL provisioning. Partners who wish to use their own SSL solution are able to as well.

• Is there a user-friendly method for our team to review these logs, such as through a terminal or another tool?

  Yes, we have Grafana boards for our hosting partners. We can provide the credentials for a Grafana board once a partners has a site live with WP Cloud.

• Are backups and restores included in your services?

  WP Cloud offers different types of backups and restores to ensure that your sites are always secure. 

  Every site hosted on WP Cloud has a redundant site hosted at a different data center. If there is a failure at the primary data center, requests will fail over to the secondary data center. Prolonged outages will result in the promotion of the secondary server to primary without the site owner needing to do anything manually.
  
  Additionally, WP Cloud automatically creates file system and database backups for user sites. These backups are performed on a site’s replica server and do not impact the resources or performance of a production site.

  Another type of backup is where the site owner wants to revert to a prior version. They can do this with Jetpack Backup, which is a real-time backup on our servers. We provide favorable pricing for those types of backups to WP Cloud partners. 

  WP Cloud also provides restores as described here.

• Where are WP Cloud’s data centers located?

  WP Cloud’s origin data centers are in Dallas, TX, Ashburn, VA, Los Angeles, CA, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The platform also maintains, and delivers content across, 23 global edge locations.

Sales

• What is WP Cloud and who is it for?

  WP Cloud is a specialized hosting platform built exclusively for WordPress. Unlike traditional cloud hosting that supports all types of websites and applications, WP Cloud is engineered specifically to make WordPress sites faster, more secure, and easier to manage.

  How it works: WP Cloud provides the underlying infrastructure and WordPress-optimized technology that hosting companies use to power their WordPress hosting services. Rather than selling directly to website owners, WP Cloud partners with hosting providers who then offer WordPress hosting to their customers.

  What makes it different:

  • WordPress-first design – Every component is optimized specifically for WordPress
  • Managed infrastructure – Automatic updates, security, caching, and scaling
  • API-driven – Hosting companies can integrate it seamlessly into their existing platforms
  • Enterprise-grade – Powers high-traffic sites like those on WordPress.com

  Who is it for:

  • Hosting companies looking to offer premium WordPress hosting without building infrastructure from scratch
  • Agencies and resellers who want to provide managed WordPress hosting to their clients
  • Large organizations needing reliable, scalable WordPress hosting solutions

• Can WP Cloud be private labelled?

  Yes, WP Cloud offers flexible branding options for hosting partners:

  • White label/Private label: Use WP Cloud’s platform behind the scenes without mentioning WP Cloud in your customer-facing materials
  • Co-branded: Leverage WP Cloud in your messaging and marketing to highlight the advanced WordPress infrastructure powering your hosting services

  Partners can choose the approach that best fits their brand strategy and customer communication preferences.

• Does WP Cloud have panels?

  WP Cloud is API-first with no mandatory control panel, giving you complete flexibility in how you present WordPress hosting to your customers. Panel options include:

  • Build your own panel – Use our comprehensive API to create a custom interface that matches your brand and workflow
  • WP Cloud Station – A free, open-source WordPress plugin that provides a ready-to-use management interface
  • PanelAlpha integration – A third-party hosting control panel solution with native WP Cloud support

  This flexibility allows you to choose the approach that best fits your existing infrastructure and customer experience goals.

• What is WP Cloud’s Pricing?

  WP Cloud does not require any up-front commitments or minimums. Pricing is based on resources per site, and there are volume discounts. Partners are free to set their own pricing plans for their clients. Find specifics on pricing here. You will also find the terms here that includes SLAs.

  WP Cloud uses a flexible, usage-based pricing model with no upfront costs or minimum commitments. Key details:

  • Resource-based pricing – Pay only for the PHP workers and storage your sites actually use
  • Volume discounts – Lower per-unit costs as your usage grows
  • Flexible markup – Set your own pricing plans and margins for your customers
  • No minimums – Start small and scale as your business grows

  For detailed pricing information and service level agreements, visit our pricing page and review our terms of services.

• Can plans be customized according to our needs, such as the number of CPUs, PHP workers, or storage?

  Yes, WP Cloud offers fully customizable resource allocation to match your specific requirements:

  • PHP workers – Scale from 2 to 10+ workers per site based on traffic and performance needs
  • Storage – Flexible storage options up to 200GB+ per site, with the ability to adjust limits as needed
  • Dynamic scaling – Sites can burst up to 110 workers during traffic spikes
  • Real-time adjustments – Modify resource limits without reprovisioning or migrating sites

  This flexibility allows you to create hosting plans that perfectly match your customers’ needs and your business model, from small business sites to high-traffic enterprise applications.

• Are any plugins bundled with WP Cloud?

  Yes, both Akismet and Jetpack are bundled with WP Cloud. We do not enforce these to be activated for all sites but both are highly recommended.

• When a site grows beyond a pricing tier, am I required to reprovision?

  No, sites can be scaled up or down instantly without reprovisioning. All resource adjustments happen in real-time on the existing site.

  Storage scaling:

  • Increase: Up to 200GB (or more upon request)
  • Decrease: Can be reduced as long as current usage doesn’t exceed the new limit (e.g., a site using 10GB cannot be reduced below 10GB)

  PHP worker scaling:

  • Increase: Up to 10 workers (system default with bursting enabled), with higher limits available on request
  • Decrease: Minimum of 2 workers per site

  This seamless scaling allows you to adjust customer plans based on their actual usage and growth without any service interruption or technical migration work.

• Can a hosting partner setup an additional backup if a client asks for it, such as AWS or Google Cloud?

  Yes, partners can redirect the location of backup restore points to another service like Google Cloud or AWS. This is one way WP Cloud helps hosts feel at ease about maintaining ownership of all the data for all their clients.

• Does WP Cloud have overage charges for additional pageviews or visitors?

  No, our platform includes unlimited visitors/bandwidth.

• Are staging sites free on WP Cloud?

  Yes, each production site on WP Cloud comes with one free staging site.

• What happens if a client reaches the plan limits regarding storage? Is the website throttled until the spike subsides?

  WP Cloud implements a hard storage limit that applies to uploaded files but excludes the database. When this limit is reached, no additional files can be uploaded until storage is freed up or the limit is increased.

  However, partners have flexibility in how they implement this with their customers:

  • Hard limit approach: Set the WP Cloud limit to match the customer’s plan exactly
  • Soft limit approach: Set the WP Cloud limit higher than the customer’s plan to provide a buffer before hitting the hard limit (as implemented by partners like Pressable)

  The website itself continues to function normally when storage limits are reached – only new file uploads are prevented.

• For customers who frequently create sites and want to add a domain later, does WP Cloud allow me to create a site if the customer does not have a domain?

  Yes, WP Cloud allows you to create sites without a custom domain using the API. You can assign the customer’s domain later when they’re ready.

  Best practice: Set up a “holding” domain pattern for sites without custom domains. This provides customers with a functional URL while they prepare their domain. Examples:

  • Pressable: Uses *.mystagingwebsite.com
  • WordPress.com: Uses *.wpcomstaging.com
  • Your implementation: Consider something like *.yourcompany-staging.com

  When the customer is ready with their domain, you can easily update the site to use their custom domain through the API.

  ---

  Key improvements:

  1. Clear yes/no answer upfront
  2. Added “Best practice” section to highlight the recommendation
  3. Concrete examples with actual staging domain patterns
  4. Implementation guidance – suggests how partners can set up their own pattern
  5. Complete workflow – mentions both creation and later domain assignment
  6. Better formatting – Makes the examples more scannable

  As examples, Pressable uses *.mystagingwebsite.com, and WordPress.com uses *.wpcomstaging.com.