In simple terms, GridPane helps you avoid hosting companies that do this:
- Step 1: buy servers at generous discounts (often from Google Cloud).
- Step 2: label it “managed hosting,” but provide 0 preemptive support.
- Step 3: make up your own resource limits to constantly force upgrades.
- Step 4: sell it at a high markup, sometimes up to 9x the cost of the server.
- Step 5: build recurring revenue from people willing to pay an “ignorance tax.”
- Step 6: reinvest profits into marketing and high paying affiliate commissions.
GridPane lets you provision servers (i.e. from Vultr High Frequency) with 0% hardware markups, Enterprise performance, and no restrictive resource limits. You’re essentially saving money on support by using the (very helpful) Facebook group + documentation. If you need actually managed hosting and preemptive support, that’s their Agency plan.
A $24/mo server (2 CPUs + 4GB RAM, or ~6 PHP workers) should be able to host 40 brochure sites. And the same $3,000/mo WP Engine Enterprise plan can likely run on a $120/mo OVH box at GridPane while handling 3k-4k subsites and never skipping a beat.
TLDR: there 4 main instances I would use GridPane:
- You manage lots of sites and want better pricing/performance with a managed option.
- You want to start a hosting service with recurring revenue (i.e. you’re an affiliate like me).
- You manage a very high traffic WooCommerce/dynamic site that falls over at another host.
I was lucky enough to spend 3 hours with Patrick Gallagher who answered lot of questions about GridPane, calculating resources/websites (which I used to compare competitors), the trickery behind “managed” hosting, WooCommerce, load testing, and more. Watch the video!
To get started, choose between the free (core) or paid plans, then watch GridPane’s control panel tutorial at 56:36. See 10 things to get started and learn about CPU/RAM/site calculation. Finally, join their Facebook group to connect with the community and see previous questions.
- Lower cost per site
- No server markups
- No added resource limits
- Top tier Enterprise performance
- Object Cache Pro with Relay (paid)
- GridPane vs. [Cloudways, RunCloud, Rocket.net, Kinsta, WPE]
- Step 1: Provision a Vultr High Frequency server
- Step 2: Add sites
- Step 3: Tweak settings
- Plans: Free Core vs. others (features list)
- Speed up development with bundles + boilerplates
- CDN + cache plugin recommendations
- Facebook group
- Makes me want to start my own hosting service
1. Lower Cost Per Site
How much does hosting 1 static (brochure) site cost YOU, how much does it cost YOUR HOST, and how much does it cost YOUR CLIENT? To estimate your cost, here are a few assumptions:
- 1GB RAM can host 10 brochure sites.
- 1 PHP worker is equivalent to 3 CPUs.
- Annual discounts are included, initial (short-term) discounts aren’t.
- GridPane’s LTD prices (orange) include the cost of the Panel LTD plans ($1,997) paid over 5 years at $50/month. Once paid off in 5 years, the cost per site in orange drops significantly.
CPU, RAM, and PHP worker limits were taken into account while monthly visits, bandwidth, and storage limits were not. Since several hosts have other limits that force you onto the next plan, their cost per site is likely much higher than the numbers below. The table also only takes into account the price of servers (it doesn’t include the value of GridPane’s Enterprise performance, experienced support engineers, and tools).
2. No Server Markups
Hosts often buy servers at heavy discounts, label them “managed hosting,” then sell them at outrageous prices. Depending on your hosting plan, you could be paying 9x the retail price.
Since Cloudways is owned by DigitalOcean, you’re paying far more than the ~2.2x markups compared to the prices shown on their website. Similarly, SiteGround, Kinsta, and WP Engine buy machines on Google Cloud Platform and sell them with high markups as managed hosting.
With GridPane, you own the relationship between you and the provider.
3. No Added Resource Limits
Depending on which limits you hit on Kinsta or WP Engine, the same ~$3,000/mo “Enterprise plan” can run (significantly better) on a $200/mo OVH box at GridPane.
That’s because aside from the limits that come with your server (CPUs, RAM, storage, and bandwidth), GridPane doesn’t add “extra resource limits” to constantly force upgrades. As Patrick explained in the video, they have no incentive to tell you to upgrade to a bigger server.
Notes
- Cells show minimum plan price required to support a resource.
- All prices are monthly and don’t include initial or annual discounts.
- Since 1 CPU + 2 GB RAM isn’t advised, this wasn’t included for GridPane/Cloudways.
- Kinsta lets you add storage at a price of 20 GB increments at $20/month (cells E29-E32).
4. Top Tier Enterprise Performance
Although it’s been a while, GridPane was top tier in Kevin Ohashi’s Enterprise ($500+) benchmarks with the 2nd fastest average response time in load tests. This is why GridPane is known for “hosting the unhostable” while you see sites falling over at many other companies.
You get unrestricted servers (most people use Vultr High Frequency or OVH servers), tuned databases, and more features on Developer PLUS (i.e. OpenLiteSpeed, server caching, Redis).
5. Object Cache Pro With Relay (Paid)
Object Cache Pro can reduce CPU usage by 50-60% while speeding up the admin.
It “drastically reduces CPU usage on web servers and database instances” and is “extensively tested” for WooCommerce (it’s literally one of the best optimizations/tools you can implement).
One of the most important parts of Object Cache Pro is Relay. Relay further accelerates dynamic page loads and further reduces resource/bandwidth usage. Technically speaking, it’s a PHP extension by Till Krüss that caches the database and minimizes Redis communication.
- GridPane – various prices depending on the quantity/plan with Relay.
- Rocket.net – free license on Business plan ($100/mo) and up with Relay.
- Cloudways – free, but doesn’t include Relay, even though they imply it does.
6. GridPane vs. [Cloudways, RunCloud, Rocket.net, Kinsta, WPE]
Cloudways
Besides paying ~2.2x the price of what the server retails for, you get significantly worse performance with bloat and incomplete Cloudflare/Object Cache Pro integrations. They’re much less reliable between a support team that has been known for changing things they shouldn’t, losing data, and unwanted changes to their platform. And since they’re owned by DigitalOcean, will they remove Vultr again? Who knows… you’re at the mercy of a big company.
RunCloud
Like GridPane, RunCloud lets you provision servers without hardware markups or added resource limits. While they’re much cheaper, support is somewhat non-existent. They’re basically a cPanel alternative for developers who are managing (some) sites and want great performance for cheap, but not ideal if you need help managing sites with a fully managed solution by a team who knows their shit. RunCloud also backs up applications up to their own storage while Gridpane lets you create remote backups (i.e. Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi).
Kinsta + WP Engine
I assume most of you aren’t using either of these between how overpriced, slow, and limited they are if you see the spreadsheets. I would be moving to GridPane, Rocket.net, or RunCloud.
SiteGround
They’re essentially trying to reinvent the wheel by building “custom tools” (i.e. Site Tools, SiteGround CDN, SiteGround Speed Optimizer plugin). But these are inferior to solutions like Cloudflare + APO, QUIC.cloud, LiteSpeed Cache, and FlyingPress who are miles ahead of them with more experienced teams. Their glowing reviews and claims are also highly questionable. Their shared hosting has super overpriced renewals and their cloud hosting definitely isn’t the best, fastest, or cheapest option. Not sure why you’d use them… other than not knowing better.
Rocket.net
Price will likely be the biggest factor here since both have top-tier performance and support. If you’re managing a couple WooCommerce sites, Rocket.net will probably be best. But if you’re managing hundreds of sites or an extremely high traffic WooCommerce site, go with GridPane.
7. Provision A Vultr High Frequency Server
Patrick recommends Vultr High Frequency for most sites.
This is likely due to their performance (3 GHz vCPUs + NVMe SSDs) and high availability. GridPane gives access to all 32 Vultr locations while Cloudways only gives you access to 23. Hetzner is a solid option if users are in these locations: US, Germany, Finland, or Singapore.
Follow GridPane’s tutorial to provision a Vultr server. The extra ~15 minutes it takes to do this (compared to 1-click launching servers on Cloudways) is the difference between paying roughly 2.2x retail markups on Cloudways (more because they get wholesale prices) or 0% on GridPane.
Step 1: Create a Vultr account (my referral link gives you $300 of free Vultr credit when you sign up). You can also use GridPane’s referral link which I think is the same offer – your choice!
Step 2: In your Vultr settings, whitelist GridPane’s IPs addresses:
- 35.199.11.215
- 130.211.115.235
- 35.245.53.150
Step 3 Paste your Vultr Personal Access Token to GridPane → Your Settings → Integration.
Step 4: Create a Vultr High Frequency server (see 56:36 in the video).
8. Step 2: Add Sites
In GridPane, go to “Sites” and add your info.
- URL: you can also use a staging URL (i.e. staging.yourwebsite.dev).
- PHP version: 8.3.
- Server Caching: Redis Page & Redis Object Caching.
- WAF: 7G.
- SSL: Auto SSL.
- Local Backups: Hourly.
- Remote Backups: see Wasabi tutorial.
9. Step 3: Tweak Settings
Click your site and see screenshots below for a few key settings I would consider:
10. Plans: Free Core vs. Others (Features List)
- Core (Free) – supports up to 25 sites with Nginx, Redis, 7G firewall, boilerplates, and lots of other freebies. However, the Panel plan has a few very crucial features.
- Panel – up to 50 sites with better performance, server caching, OpenLiteSpeed, and a lot more tools/features (i.e. local & remove backups, staging, security tools).
- Developer PLUS – unlimited sites/servers, advanced staging, UpdateSafely, and third-party integrations that primarily improve security and reliability (see below):
- Vulnerability Scanning and Notifications: if one is found, the green check (Sites tab) turns orange. You’ll see a summary with an option for more details.
- Uptime Monitoring and Notifications: receive downtime event notifications (not monitored by GridPane unless combined with 360 preemptive support).
- Snapshot Failover: clone all sites on one server to another and set a syncing schedule for those paired servers. Automatic DNS failover switches your DNS records to the backup server. If your primary server goes down, sites can stay up even when your provider has an outage impacting their entire data center.
- Fortress (50 sites): Enterprise-level security without bloat or sacrificing CPU + RAM usage or performance (only security plugin recommended by GridPane).
- ElasticSearch: extremely fast/accurate search engine that replaces the default WordPress search (good for sites with lots of information like big e-commerce stores or news sites). Since it’s often resource-heavy, many hosts don’t offer it.
- Object Cache Pro (1 Site): for that special eCommerce site that really needs it.
- Agency – fully managed hosting with 360 preemptive support (also worth reading how their support is different from other “managed” hosts). GridPane will monitor your sites/servers, preemptively identify issues, and automatically create a ticket when they detect one or more of your sites are down or experiencing issues. Their team does the ‘heavy lifting’ and will eliminate hosting maintenance by your team.
11. Speed Up Development With Bundles + Boilerplates
Bundles let you preconfigure WordPress sites with plugins/themes you commonly use.
GridPane also makes creating boilerplates (blueprint websites) easy by activating security settings, leaving caching off, and using a “blueprint address” like blueprint.mydomain.com.
12. CDN + Cache Plugin Recommendations
There are the combinations I would use:
- Nginx: FlyingPress + Cloudflare with APO (or FlyingProxy).
- OpenLiteSpeed (Panel plan needed): LiteSpeed Cache + QUIC.cloud Standard Plan.
13. Facebook Group
Definitely join Self Managed WordPress (by GridPane) and watch these onboarding videos.
14. Makes Me Want To Start My Own Hosting Service
These numbers make my affiliate commissions look like pennies:
- WP Engine announced $400M in annual recurring revenue in 2024.
- GoDaddy announced $4.3B in annual recurring revenue in 2023.
- Google Cloud was reported to have $33.08B in revenue in 2023.
- AWS was reported to have $90.76B in annual recurring revenue in 2023.
In my career as a blogger (hosting affiliate), I’ve referred 6,000+ people to them in the last decade which usually paid $150/sale. If those same people signed up for Tom Dupuis’ hosting (through GridPane), even at just $5/month each, that could be $30,000/month recurring today.
Conclusion
If you’re paying lots of money on hosting, GridPane can flip that really quick.
Maybe that means launching a Vultr HF server on their core plan, adding a couple small sites, and testing it out. Maybe it means migrating 1 high traffic WooCommerce site from a $3k/mo “Enterprise” plan at WPE/Kinsta to a $200/mo OVH box. Maybe it means slowly migrating 100 small sites to get cost per site down. Or maybe you’re an affiliate and want to get in on that ARR!
Cheers,
Tom
