ZippyKid 2012 – Changes coming to ZippyKid

In April of 2011, I decided to make ZippyKid a full time job and focus all my efforts into growing the company, my goal was to make a new kind of hosting company, that focused on WordPress and small businesses. I wanted to make the best WordPress hosting company, not just another company that manages updates to the WordPress core and plugins for you.

I realized back then, that saying “We upgrade your WordPress” as your only selling point, is like a restaurant saying “we wash your dishes when they get dirty”. We needed to do more than that, and we have.

Fast forward from April of 2011, when I only had 65 customers, to today, where we have several thousand, the company went from being just myself and Kai part time, to 6 full time employees. We are trusted from small mom and pop shops in small towns all over the world, to larger names like Reuters, and even a forward thinking government agency. Starting in February, we’ll be a team of 7. We’ve learnt a lot, and we know what we need to do to continue to be the best, and better than anyone else.

Originally, this post was going to be a list of 7 things we’re about to release in 2012, then I realized I didn’t want to be a vapor-ware company, so here are somethings we have either already launched, or are rolling out in the next 30 days.

The biggest one is that our base price will increase to $35/month starting February 29th 2012. If you sign up before February 29th 2012, your prices won’t go up.

1. SSL for all. Because security is not an add-on. I had written a blog post in September talking about the need for this, I wanted to get this done, we know what to do and how to do it, but large scale implementation wasn’t/isn’t easy. You have to order SSL certs, you have to get certs validated, and you need to get a unique ip address. Currently we charge extra for SSL, but it’s something that should be offered standard.
2. Email (already active) You’ll get 10 email addresses and unlimited aliases included with the base plan. It doesn’t make sense for you to have us host your WordPress site, but you go elsewhere for e-mail. We’ll either setup Google Apps for you, or set you up with Rackspace Email.
3. Malware Scanning (already active) An independent third party (Sucuri) is scanning your site 3 times a day for malware and vulnerabilities, in the small chance you do get hacked, or are running an insecure version of WordPress or a plugin, we’ll be notified and we’ll fix it.
4. SAS 70 Type II Compliance (already active) We’re the only WordPress hosting company that offers SAS 70 Type II compliance, basically, it means we take your data seriously, even if you’re just hosting pictures of cute kittens. They’re your cute kittens and no one but you has access to them.
5. Quarterly Security Audits and Results (first one scheduled for February 2012) Everyone claims to have a secure network, who wouldn’t? We’re going to get audited by a third party (Trustwave), and we’ll post the results on the web quarterly, for all to see and judge for themselves.
6. 30 Day Free Trial We’re so confident in our product, that we’ll give you 30 days to try us out, if you’re not happy, you can cancel without paying a dime. You’ll even be able to take the SSL certificate with you.

There are some other changes that I haven’t mentioned yet, as we’re still perfecting them. Our goal at ZippyKid is not to be the first with features, but the best. Keep an eye out on the blog and our newsletters, and you’ll find out about them shortly.