How to Find and Evaluate WP Support Specialists
If you're managing a WordPress website for mid-size and large organizations, you need enterprise-level support. But that begs the question, what qualifies as "enterprise support" and where can get WordPress help?
Where to Find WordPress Enterprise Support
Freelancers
While freelancers can be cheaper, they can also be less reliable and lack a team of WordPress Experts needed to get work done quickly. If considering a freelancer consider talking to them about the number of dedicated hours they can provide your company. You want to be assured that they can provide the attention you need. Also, discuss availability and typical response times.
Agencies and Studios
Marketing and various communications firms often offer WordPress support as part of their services. This can be very convenient if working with such a firm on marketing, public relations, or SEO campaigns.
Agencies and studios can have high hourly rates or demand high retainers. However, if built into a larger campaign this may make sense for your company.
One thing to keep in mind is that most agencies make money from campaigns and not general website support and maintenance. Support can often be a lower priority service.
Same with studios that often make money from new designs and website builds. If the same team is dedicated to both support and development, you may find yourself with long response and reaction times.
Agencies and studios also don't typically offer 24/7 website monitoring and may not hold expertise in security and infrastructure performance.
Managed Hosting Companies
Managed WordPress hosting companies like WordPress VIP, WP Engine, Kinsta, Pantheon, and others provide enterprise WordPress Hosting. They often advertise some support as well.
These companies excel at providing strong hosting infrastructure and provide an array of managed hosting services which can include backups, version control, automatic updates, and performance enhancements like caching and CDNs.
It's important to note though, that these are hosting companies, and support included in their hosting plans is often limited to issues having only to do with the hosting environment. Meaning they don't provide support for your particular website and what makes your website unique such as plugins and themes.
One of the most frustrating experiences for anyone responsible for a company's website is to be put on hold for an extended period of time only to finally reach someone and have them tell them to contact a developer because the issue is not on their end or covered under their enterprise solutions.
WordPress Support Companies
I'm obviously partial to this because we are in fact a WordPress support agency. The number of web support companies, those that focus on support and maintenance as a core service, has grown in the past decade.
Today it's not tough to find a WordPress support firm or a web development agency/studio that has a dedicated web support desk.
When I started FatLab over 10 years ago, I thought this would be a nice and unique niche. Today we are far from alone but that means you have choices.
Having a dedicated support team or group is important for providing quality services and ensuring your site remains secure, stable, and online. You don't want your website falling behind larger projects of a studio or agency and you don't want to be chasing down a freelancer.
Support from these companies can be had on an hourly, project, or per-month basis. When you have a WordPress Enterprise website, it is important to have someone who can offer web support when needed.
What to Look for in WordPress Enterprise Support
When you're running a WordPress site for your business, you need to know that you can rely on your support team to keep things running smoothly. Here are some things to look for when seeking out a WordPress enterprise support company:
- A team of specialists: You want to make sure that the company you're working with has a team of specialists who are experts in WordPress. They should be able to troubleshoot any issues you're having and provide guidance on best practices.
- Issue tracking: You will want a project or issues management system in place so you can keep track of all open issues and correlate billing. Regular emails are hard to track.
- 24/7 support: If something goes wrong with your site, you need to know that someone will be there to help you right away. Look for a company that offers 24/7 support so you can get help whenever you need it.
- Proactive monitoring: A good WordPress support team will proactively monitor your site for any potential issues. This way, you can rest assured that your site is always up and running smoothly.
- Scalability: As your business grows, you'll need a WordPress support team that can scale with you. Look for a company that has experience working with businesses of all sizes so you can be confident they can handle your site as it grows.
- A focus on security: With WordPress, security is always a top priority. Make sure the WordPress support team you're working with takes security seriously and has experience keeping WordPress sites safe from hackers.
- Managed Website Hosting (optional): This is optional as your support provider does not have to provide your hosting services. For us, we like to manage the website, the hosting, and ongoing support. This makes us responsible for the entire website environment and therefore we are never at a loss of being able to help a client. For example, we can't take responsibility for uptime or some performance issues of other hosts.
Website Support + Regular Web Maintenance
Enterprise Support means not only providing on-call support but regular maintenance services for your business website. These may include:
- Backups
- Regular Software Updates
- Security Services such as Firewalls and Malware Scanning
- Performance Optimizatoin
- Caching Services and Optimizations
- Customization
- Further Development
Get WordPress Help and Have Access to WP Support Specialists
WordPress enterprise support is simply support for businesses that consider their website to be mission critical.
It's support for organizations that are not in the business of running websites but rely on their business website as an important tool in their marketing, sales, and public/constituent/member relations.
It's working with a firm or agency that prioritizes support services over new builds, designs, and campaigns.
It's important for businesses to do their research and find a web support agency that understands their business, the size of their business, can answer your questions, and has experience supporting and maintaining websites for such organizations.
