Pressable vs Nexcess:
A Detailed Managed Web Hosting Comparison

Selecting the right web hosting provider is important for anyone using WordPress, but it’s especially important for businesses that hinge on creating secure, reliable, and high-performing websites. Whether you’re an ecommerce business owner, an experienced developer, or an agency managing complex WordPress projects, your hosting choice will directly impact your success. 

In this article, we’ll discuss why you might want to evaluate your hosting options, provide a handy table to compare Pressable to Nexcess, and dive into the details on pricing, hosting package options, security, support, and other important considerations.

Why Compare Hosting Platforms?

Pressable and Nexcess both have a lot to offer. And while we’re definitely proud of our hosting services, we also understand that, for site owners, it’s not about finding “the best” hosting platform. It’s about finding the right host for your particular needs. 

So this comparison article is intended to provide you with the details you need to make an informed choice, no matter which provider you end up choosing. 

Are you looking for a hosting company for your first WordPress site? Migrating sites from your current host to something more robust with more advanced features? What are your hosting priorities?

You may be looking for a platform that offers:

• Managed WordPress hosting: Some hosting plans require you to do all the day-to-day management of the server environment. This can be unnecessarily time-consuming, especially if you’re managing a large number of sites.
• More advanced management tools: You may need the ability to assign users different permission levels, create staging and dev environments, and integrate with version management tools.
• Speed and security tools: Some hosts offer built-in performance tools like server-side caching and global edge caching, as well as security features like DDOS protection and free SSL certificates.
• Exceptional customer support: Downtime or critical errors on your website can lead to lost sales and a damaged reputation, so responsive and knowledgeable customer support is critical.
• More resources: Some websites, especially ecommerce stores, can be quite resource intensive. So you’ll want to make sure your hosting plan offers adequate bandwidth, storage, and traffic limits for your needs.
• Easy scalability: Your websites may grow gradually over time or experience traffic spikes during busy seasons for your industry. Your host should be able to accommodate these changes in your site’s traffic and usage.
• The right pricing and plan structure: Pricing isn’t always about monthly costs — it’s also about the services and features included with each plan. Every hosting company sets their plans up a little differently, so it’s always a good idea to read the fine print.

In addition to your list of hosting requirements, spend time getting to know the companies that you’re comparing. 

How much of their company is dedicated to WordPress and WooCommerce hosting? Does their staff have a high level of expertise in WordPress and WooCommerce support? Do they cater to agencies and enterprise businesses or to hobby bloggers and local businesses?

With these questions in mind, let’s start our detailed comparison of Pressable vs. Nexcess with an overview of both companies.

An Overview of Pressable

Pressable was founded in 2010 in San Antonio, Texas, as a managed WordPress hosting provider geared towards freelancers, developers, web designers, and business owners. 

Their deep knowledge of WordPress means that their infrastructure and support is 100% focused on an optimized WordPress and WooCommerce hosting experience. 

While Pressable’s services are aimed at high-traffic websites, busy ecommerce stores, and WordPress agencies, they offer hosting plans that are suitable for any WordPress site.

Plans are simple and transparent, with no hidden fees, and are based on the number of sites hosted and the resources required. They come loaded with features that help your WordPress site load quickly, stay secure, and grow as needed. Developers love the flexibility and tools for version control, testing, and collaboration, while less technical users enjoy a hassle-free site management experience with top-notch customer support.

No matter what type of WordPress site you’re creating, if you want a reliable, high-performance hosting partner with in-depth WordPress experience, Pressable is a solid choice.

Hosting Package Choices

Both providers offer robust features in all of their hosting packages, but they shine in different areas. 

Pressable offers a clean and optimized framework for any type of WordPress site, with a simple pricing structure that’s easy to understand. Each plan offers the same features — the cost differences are simply based on the number of sites you host, volume of monthly visitors, and the amount of resources you require. No extra fluff. No hidden costs.

Nexcess offers plans that are a little more complicated. They offer WordPress hosting plans that are geared towards non-ecommerce sites and WooCommerce-specific plans that include a long list of features that you may or may not need.

With their WooCommerce hosting plans, Nexcess includes some pre-built site templates, SEO tools, premium page builders and themes, WooCommerce extension bundles, and sales monitoring tools. Some of these WooCommerce features are only available on more expensive hosting tiers.

These features might be great for business owners building and managing their own WooCommerce sites or for freelance web designers without advanced development skills. But if you’re an agency that builds your themes from scratch and has systems for handling SEO and tracking sales performance, then Nexcess’ suite of WooCommerce features are unnecessary.

Having separate plan types for WooCommerce and standard WordPress makes sense if all you manage is one type of site. Otherwise, you’ll need to purchase two different plans to suit different needs. This will be more of a hassle in the long run compared to Pressable, which is optimized to run both WooCommerce and any other WordPress-based website on any plan.

Performance Comparison

Site performance is critical for any type of website and visitors simply aren’t going to wait very long for your pages to load. In fact, a B2B website that loads in one second has a conversion rate that’s five times higher than one that takes ten seconds. 

While there are a variety of factors that come into play, speed starts with your host. So let’s take a look at how Pressable and Nexcess compare.

Both offer similar features, like auto-scaling, compression, caching, and performance monitoring. They also include CDN tools, though Pressable uses WP Cloud, which is specifically built for WordPress sites, while Nexcess uses Cloudflare, a third-party company that is not tailored for WordPress.

The number of resources allotted to your plan can also impact your site’s performance, particularly in times of high traffic. Pressable is one step ahead here, with unlimited bandwidth, compared to Nexcess’ allotted 2TB for starter plans, and 20GB of storage compared to 15GB from Nexcess.

However, Nexcess does allow for unlimited user visits, while Pressable includes a certain number of visitors for each plan. Starter plans, for example, include 30K visits a month.

Protecting Your Site and Customer Data

When it comes to building a foundation for a secure website, Pressable outperforms Nexcess. Pressable includes a web application firewall (WAF), SSL certificate, malware scanning, spam protection, and real-time automatic backups with Jetpack Security for free with all hosting plans. 

Nexcess, like most managed WordPress hosting providers, only offers daily backups.

Pressable’s real-time backups with Jetpack are especially critical for busy, dynamic websites. Every single change made on your site is saved automatically so you never lose data in case of a hack or mistake. With Jetpack security, you also get:

• Real-time malware scans
• A 30-day activity log
• Brute force attack protection
• Downtime monitoring
• Spam protection

Other security features include limited database access points, locked permissions for key files, and restrictions on uploading certain file types that may be malicious (although you can always change the file types you want to allow). You can configure additional security measures, but Pressable has taken care of quite a few right from the start.

Nexcess doesn’t provide any security solutions with their hosting plans other than a free SSL certificate and daily automatic backups. However, they do have the option to pre-install the free version of Solid Security. This tool includes login protection, brute force attack prevention, and site monitoring. 

If you want more advanced protection from Nexcess, you can pay for a premium security plugin, configure your own measures, or use their Performance Shield by Cloudflare solution for an additional $5/month.

Developer Tools

Pressable and Nexcess both offer valuable tools for agencies and developers. However, Pressable has more advanced features for version control, site deployment, and team member management.

Both platforms offer SSH and SFTP access, although there are some areas of your site that you can’t change via SFTP with Pressable — certain file permissions and some pre-installed plugins like Jetpack and Akismet, for instance. Nexcess does offer a bit more flexibility in that regard, although both hosts prevent the deletion or modification of any must-use plugins.

They both also allow access to the database via phpMyAdmin, one-click staging, and the ability to manage team members and their permissions.

Where Pressable and Nexcess differ, however, is in the additional developer-oriented tools that Pressable includes with all hosting packages, including:

• Smart staging-to-production push via data sync: Pressable gives you the ability to push select data to your production site to avoid issues that may occur with completely overwriting the database or specific directories. It gives you more granular control over what is updated when deploying changes. This is especially important when it comes to highly dynamic sites like ecommerce and membership sites. 
• Robust API with webhooks and custom application capabilities: Pressable’s API facilitates integration with other tools and services, enabling custom workflows and automation.
• Bulk operations across multiple sites: Manage multiple sites efficiently with bulk operations, saving time on repetitive tasks.
• Site activity and web server logs: Access detailed logs to monitor site activity and troubleshoot issues effectively.
• Preconfigured WP-CLI and Git integrations: Instead of having to integrate these tools manually via SSH for each site, Pressable speeds up development workflow with WP-CLI and Git access integrated for all hosting plans.

Nexcess is not without its own advantages if you’re an agency or developer looking specifically for WooCommerce hosting. If you choose one of Nexcess’ WooCommerce-specific hosting plans, you can access tools like their Sales Performance Monitor and automated WooCommerce testing, which identifies problems on your site that affect your cart, payment methods, and other critical issues. 

WooCommerce Support and Scalability

Pressable stands out with its WooCommerce-optimized hosting environment, designed specifically to provide seamless performance for online stores. It offers built-in caching, auto-scaling, and automatic failover to ensure that your store remains fast and reliable, even during high traffic periods. 

Hosting plans include features like integration with popular payment gateways, advanced development and deployment tools, and robust security tools, which are essential for maintaining a secure and efficient online store. Additionally, Pressable’s relationship with Automattic ensures that customers have 24/7 access to Happiness Engineers with the most in-depth knowledge of both WordPress and WooCommerce.

Nexcess, on the other hand, offers WooCommerce-specific plans with features aimed at both beginner and advanced users who need fine-tuned control over their store’s functionality Nexcess offers built-in performance optimization tools like image compression, a CDN, and automatic scaling, along with monitoring tools to help with site performance. They also include some themes, store templates, and site builder tools, which can be helpful for less experienced store owners. 

Additionally, Nexcess provides proprietary tools such as the Sales Performance Monitor, which tracks revenue and offers recommendations for improving store performance. For store owners who want detailed insights and need a little extra help with design and marketing, Nexcess may offer an edge.

Support for Agencies and Multiple Websites

One thing that puts Pressable over the top when it comes to features for agencies is their integration with Automattic for Agencies. Automattic for Agencies members get access to premium Jetpack tools like instant search, video hosting, Jetpack CRM, and automated social media post scheduling. 

Agency members also receive discounts on Pressable hosting plans, special pricing on WooCommerce extensions, and revenue sharing opportunities when they recommend top Automattic tools to clients. Plus, you’ll get access to features that simplify workflows with centralized billing, advanced multi-site management, and client site licensing.

Of course, the features mentioned earlier for developers will also assist agencies, like advanced user management, developer controls and flexibility, a simple dashboard that makes it easy to switch between websites, and automated plugin update schedules. 

Nexcess also has an agency partner program that pays between 5-20% commissions depending on the volume of business you refer. Like Pressable, they’ll migrate your client sites for free and promote your agency to potential clients.

Again, many of the features we’ve already discussed are helpful, like multi-site management, priority support, staging and dev sites, and multi-user management.