Stop! The Guess work…about Wealthy Affiliate hosting.
If you’re curious about Wealthy Affiliate Hosting, stay tuned, because, it’s the same question that I had to ask myself.
So, that there is no time wasted. I can tell you right now, Wealthy Affiliate hosting is probably not the best for a web developer, or anyone that wants individualized access to cPanel, and you kind of all ready know how to start a blog or website.
Instead this web hosting is more suitable for complete beginners, with absolutely no knowledge. You don’t want to deal with the tech stuff, or you just want to use an easy and simple web hosting solution.
I’ve been using Wealthy Affiliate hosting service for the last 5 years. I also have experience with other hosting companies. Therefore, I have the experience to let you know what to expect from Wealthy Affiliate’s hosting service.
As you can imagine, you’re probably aware that Wealthy Affiliate Hosting is not your typical hosting. In other words, its not a hosting service that you can purchase by itself.
Instead, you must join and become a paying member with Wealthy Affiliate to gain access to their hosting service.
In fact, the hosting service is an added feature that comes with your Wealthy Affiliate monthly or annual membership.
Our Rating On Wealthy Affiliate Hosting
- Excellent for website hosting beginners
- Integrated Site Commenting Systems
- No tech knowledge needed
- Web Hosting is included with your membership
(in-house hosting) - Security is pretty good with daily back-ups
- No cPanel access
- Limited ability do downloading certain plug-ins and services
- Some members love the hosting while others think it sucks
Wealthy Affiliate Hosting (Explained)
Wealthy Affiliate hosting is a hosting service that’s provided to Wealthy Affiliate community members only.
As I mentioned earlier, Wealthy Affiliate hosting is not a stand alone hosting service (at least not yet.) So, to use this hosting service you must be a member of there community.
Moreover, the hosting service it’s an added benefit that comes included with a Wealthy Affiliate membership, which really helps beginners get started without having to break the bank.
It also allows you to skip all technical things that come with the responsibilities of hosting a website.
In addition to that, the hosting is designed specifically for Wealthy Affiliate’s beginners, affiliate marketers, and content creators.
One of the notable benefits of hosting within the WA community is having the ability to get comments for your website without having to do blogger outreach.
Another benefit of the WA’s hosting is that as you’re building out your website, you can receive feedback on your work as you go.
How Does Wealthy Affiliate Hosting Work?
What all this means to you is that, if you decide to host a website at Wealthy Affiliate, the website files will be stored under Wealthy Affiliate’s infrastructure.
Therefore, if any issues arise with your website, all you have to do is reach out to tech support.
The team that will assist you with the website hosting usually responds within a few minutes up to 24 hours. From what I experienced most of my website issues have been taken care of within an hour or less.
As a beginner, you may not know exactly what all the ups and downs are when it comes to hosting a website. Having a great tech support team that is available to you 24 hours and 7 days of the week consider yourself in good hands.
Let me tell you, I can remember the time when I had no clue on how to manage a website. Wealthy Affiliate hosting and tech support saved me numerous of times. There was a time when I accidentally deleted my entire website, including 200+ images and over 510 comments. Oh what a nightmare that was.
If Wealthy Affiliate tech support wasn’t as helpful as they are, I don’t think I would have been able to recover. In fact, one minute I was stressed the heck out.
The next minute I was overjoyed that Wealthy Affiliate’s site support jumped in to save the day.
They took over and had everything fixed for me within a few hours. The best part about it is that, I didn’t have to sit around and wait for a response.
I was able to move on and continue whatever else I needed to do for that day. Having a helpful hosting tech support team can be beneficial in so many way especially, if you’ve never used stand alone hosting before. It not only saves you your sanity but, time as well.
The point is, Wealthy Affiliate owners included the service so that you can focus on learning affiliate marketing and building a website.
Instead of having to focus on all three: learning affiliate marketing, building a website, and learning how to use hosting.
Managed WordPress Hosting Plan For Affiliate Hosting
Wealthy Affiliate hosting uses a site builder named Siterubix. If this makes no sense to you, no worries!
None of this actually made sense to me until I outgrew Wealthy Affiliate hosting and was ready to learn how hosting actually worked.
I’ll explain what I mean in further details, within a few paragraphs.
Briefly, know that Siterubix is a website builder that Wealthy Affiliate uses.
By the way, as a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you’ll have three managed WordPress hosting options.
Starter Member
As a starter member, which is the beginner package. You’ll have the ability to host one website. That one website will come with SiteRubix the website builder. In addition to that, you’re website hosting will give you hosting security and a free SSL.
Premium Membership
If you’re considering what the premium membership offers for its hosting affiliates, then wonder no longer. With one of the premium membership, you can host up to 3 websites. Additionally, you’ll get daily backups, hacking prevention, DDOS protection, 24/7 support and free SSL.
According to Wealthy Affiliate a website hosted on this type of plan can receive up to 250,000 monthly visits.
Premium Plus Membership
Finally, if you’re a power user, you have the ability to host up to 10 websites with unlimited priority support. Plus everything you get with the starter and premium website hosting services.
This hosting plan claims that it can receive up to 1,000,000 visits.
The bottom line here is that all hosting packages are close in features when you’re a paid member. Even though there are things I do not like about Wealthy Affiliate hosting, which I’ll explain later.
The point I’m trying to make here is Wealthy Affiliate from understand is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) which means when AWS has an outage or gets effected, its more likely to effect some of the websites hosted at WA.
So, knowing that it could possibly explain some of the restrictions that Wealthy Affiliate applies to their affiliate websites hosting.
I still have a few websites hosted at Wealthy Affiliate. At the time of this article, this website is currently being hosted at a different web hosting service. Their website builder is called Softaculous. Each hosting company will have an unique name for their website builder.
Moreover SiterRubix
Again, Siterubix is the name of Wealthy Affiliate’s website builder. It allows the end user to create a website without knowing any knowledge of coding or technical skills.
Other Key Features & The Pros Of Hosting With Wealthy Affiliate
As I mentioned earlier I would explain to you what I like and don’t like about Wealthy Affiliate hosting. This section will go over the positives of WA hosting.
No Coding Skills Needed
The beauty of Siterubix is you’ll have access to pre-built templates that helps you create professional looking websites quickly without having to code all the different Frames, query loops, CSS grids, flexboxes and so on.
With that in mind, having pre-templates available is not something that is specifically geared towards SiteRubix. Usually, most hosting companies site builders come with at least a few theme templates.
Also, When Wealthy Affiliate says that you’ll have a website built by lesson 5, that’s only because, their SiteRubix website builder is almost like a click and drag service. As a result, please don’t get ahead of yourself. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Having the website up in running by lesson five is not too challenging. All your really doing is choosing a domain name, and clicking a few buttons.
However, when it comes to adding the content to the website, that is when your learning curve will kick into high gear.
With that being said, I can tell you that what I know today about web hosting, might have detoured me if I didn’t start off using SiteRubix first. For that reason, I’m very thankful for the no coding option that Wealthy Affiliate offers because, it allowed me to learn and keep going.
Eliminates and Separates Third Party Web Hosting Company
Another advantage of being a member of Wealthy Affiliate training community is that, not only will you receive ongoing training for affiliate marketing but, you can also host your websites on their servers which helps eliminate the need of paying a third party hosting company.
Depending on the web hosting service that you need, this alone can save you roughly $36 up to $226 or more per year.
With that in mind, as a beginner, your web hosting package would more likely be a basic hosting package because, withing the first 6 months to a year your traffic may not be enough to invest into a higher hosting service.
The bottom line is, using Wealthy Affiliate hosting can save you money, time, and headaches.
SiteRubix is a beginner-friendly solution for creating and hosting your websites, especially if you’re not tech savvy. Not only does it make it convenient but simplified too.
WordPress Integrations
WordPress is one of the most well known and user friendly content management systems(CMS).
With WordPress you’ll have access to hundreds of plugins, themes, and add-ons to enhance the appearance of your website and its features.
However, due to Wealthy Affiliate taking security very serious, there are certain plugins and services that Wealthy Affiliate doesn’t allow you to add on to your website. Some examples would be JetPack plugin and WP Rocket.
At first I thought not having the ability to add any plugin that you want to your website was a little odd but, after experiencing web hosting outside of Wealthy Affiliate I’ve learned that most hosting companies have rules of what they allow and what they don’t allow being hosted on their platforms.
For example some website hosting companies do not allow gambling sites on their platforms at all.
From my understanding, Wealthy Affiliate allows this in certain cases. Such as if it was a gambling site helping others fix their addiction.
Either way, Wealthy Affiliate believes in protecting their business as well as yours.
Therefore, they do have the ability to remove “rogue” plugins and themes because, without doing this, it can lead your website to vulnerable hacks, attacks, and data integrity issues.
Transferability To Other Web Hosting Company
If you think your website will be stuck forever under Wealthy Affiliate’s roof, think again. As with any other hosting company, you do have the capability of moving your website over to another webhosting company, while still remaining a member.
Likewise, you can join Wealthy Affiliate and bring your current and active website over to Wealthy Affiliates, servers.
You Don’t Have To Worry About Hosting Overages
Another important factor, which I noticed is not mentioned often is that, when hosting your website at Wealthy Affiliate training platform, you don’t have to be concerned with overages.
In fact, depending on how much you upload images, videos, and content, you might not even have to upgrade your web hosting for years to come.
While with other hosting companies, you will have to worry about overages or possibly upgrading your hosting package.
Wealthy Affiliate Integrated Site Comments
Here’s the big debate, over blog commenting.
Some SEO and expert bloggers will say that receiving blog comments has no benefits to your SEO ranking factors.
While others will say that receiving blog comments does help with SEO.
From my experience, I believe that blog comments are about learning, building a relationship, and having fun with your readers. I also believe that blog commenting does help with traffic and SEO,
For instance, I’ve learned many answers to my questions just by reading other people blog comments. I read reviews and comments faithfully, in my everyday life. Therefore, I believe even blog comments can help you and your website.
Regardless, I’ve read, studied, and tested for the Google Quality Raters job several times. During that process, I learned that Google is looking for certain things and comments is one of them.
Therefore, regardless of what study or opinion you go by, Google quality raters guidelines, mentions that the rater should review the commenting section of a website.
In fact, Google even goes further to say if the rater does not see any review or comments on the post, they almost feel like the article is not helpful at all.
For that reason, Wealthy Affiliate integrated a commenting system, for its members that host their websites within the community.
In the image below you can see the commenting dashboard. You’ll have the option to request or offer comments.
By the way, every comment you receive is not always the best but, it creates activity on your blog, which eventually sends positive signals out to Google.
Final point is that if, you go above and beyond, you can even earn credits or money by becoming a Wealthy Affiliate Certified Commenter.
Either way, integrated comments is not something offered with traditional third party hosting. Also, if you’re a member of Wealthy Affiliate and do not host your website within the platform, this means you are not able to receive comments from the integrated comments system.
Instead you’ll have to use the give and take feed.
Wealthy Affiliate Website Technical Support
Wealthy Affiliate website technical support is helpful for the most part.
They always respond to your issue, what I don’t like at times, is when they don’t give me enough information to understand what the problem was in the first place.
Either way, tech support is available to any member that is hosting their website at Wealthy Affiliate.
Truth be told, I have this love hate relationship with the hosting within this community.
For instance, there’s been times when I have contacted WA tech support in regards to my hosted website with them, and got absolutely nowhere.
However, on a positive note, that particular instance caused me to go outside of the Wealthy Affiliate community and seek further web hosting knowledge, so that I can equip myself for future mishaps.
On the other hand, there’s times that I was thankful when Wealthy Affiliate web hosting support saved my blog’s life.
For instance, the time I deleted 200+ blog posts.
- Pictures
- videos
- 510 comments all gone with one click.
One silly mistake, and I lost all of my hard work.
Talk about my heart dropping to my toes.
I contacted Wealthy Affiliate site support and explained to them what happened.
After going back and forth, WA site support advised me to not worry.
And guess what? I didn’t!
While I cooked dinner, helped my kids with classwork, and ran errands.
Wealthy Affiliate site support was hard at work retrieving my website.
Once the entire site was recovered they sent me an email telling me to go and check the website to make sure everything was working correctly.
The bottom line is, no other hosting company will tell you to go on about your day, while they recover your website in the meantime. In fact, with my current hosting company, any time that I have an issue, I have to stay on stand by while they do their thing.
Note: I haven’t accidentally deleted any other website so, I can’t speak for all hosting companies. What I can tell you is that, if the hosting company offers daily back ups, its a good sign that they are able to retrieve your website if anything happens.
Either way, Wealthy Affiliate website support does come into handy when you need them the most.
Wealthy Affiliate Domains
Wealthy Affiliate offers the convivence of buying a domain within their community. You’ll also get a business email along with the domain name.
In my opinion, this can be good and not so good.
When I first started blogging I didn’t know anything about domains. I had the slightest clue of what it meant to point the domain Regi stator to the hosting servers. Therefore it worked out as a beginner.
On the other hand, there is a drawback to having your domain housed within Wealthy Affiliate. In my opinion, it limits some of your abilities.
Since you do not have access to certain features such as DNS records, cPanel and so on, you’ll always have to send a site support ticket and ask them to add whatever records you need to your hosting account.
Here’s What I Don’t Really Like About Wealthy Affiliate Hosting
Okay here comes the drawbacks of Wealthy Affiliate hosting.
At times, I wish I could just transfer this website over to Wealthy Affiliate because, hosting your website there does come with a lot of other value but, at the moment I’m still contemplating.
No cPanel Access
First off, I didn’t know any knowledge about a cPanel until I had to use it.
After searching high and low, I later discovered that Wealthy Affiliate doesn’t allow the members to have access to the cPanel. And I can understand why especially since WA is a beginner community.
Can you imagine how many members websites they would be recovering and fixing? It would be a lot.
Of course, WA site support can help assist you with whatever your trying to add to the backend of your website but, eventually it can get annoying. You start to feel like your missing something, which is why I ended up hosting this website outside of Wealthy Affiliate.
I needed to know what I was missing with my web hosting.
The Control Panel
The control panel, I was missing the control panel.
The control panel is what houses your MySQL, PHP, SEO features, email database, website data tracking metrics, your SSL certificate, IP blocker and so much more. I also learned that having access to your cPanel can prevent you from having to download so many plugins.
Regardless, if you ever wanted to add a cool tool to your website, the only way, that you could possibly attempt to add it with Wealthy Hosting, is to ask site support for help.
Alternatively, you could try and use methods like FileZilla and FTP and the last two options don’t work for all members.
On the positive side, cPanel is not used as often as people make it seem unless, you really know what you’re doing.
The only time, that I’ve ever had to really use cPanel more than ever was when I had to activate my theme. And even then I had to go to my hosting support for help.
Therefore, cPanel can be helpful to have but, not necessary.
Of course, you can run a website without all of this data stuff at least in the beginning but, as you grow and gain more knowledge, this may be something that you’ll want to look into later.
Limited Access To Plugins Or Services
The other drawback that I have about Wealthy Affiliate hosting is at times, I find my WA hosted websites PHP is running on an outdated version. It’s currently running on (7.3.9), while the recommended PHP should be 7.4.
PHP is your WordPress programming language. Therefore, it’s important to keep the PHP updated, or your website could be at risk for security issues.
I must admit I have never experienced any security issues while hosting at Wealthy Affiliate.
I later discovered that WA site support can help update the PHP version, or they can move your website to a server that is already running on the latest version.
I’ve also heard that it’s not too much of a big deal but, in my opinion, it seems like its a big deal to your website performance.
Why Should You Trust Wealthy Affiliate Hosting?
In my opinion, Wealthy Affiliate hosting is does have its pros and cons.
As I mentioned earlier, you’re never stuck with one particular web hosting company forever. So, why not take your time to learn and grow at your own pace.
If I were to narrow it down to validated reviewer reasons this is what I have come up with based on my own hosting knowledge.
- Firstly, Wealthy Affiliate hosting is legit. I’ve used their web hosting for the last 5 years.
- Secondly, the speed of the hosting isn’t so bad after all.
- Last, its beginner friendly! if you don’t have a tech bone in your body, WA great for you. hosting is where you want to be. It allows you to focus on learning affiliate marketing without the hassles and roadblocks of everything else.
Either way, I ran a test on a website that I host at Wealthy Affiliate. This particular website has a ton of images, SEO mistakes, and so on. The results came back that it takes 1.2 seconds for the website to load. Not so bad after all.
Full disclosure here: The bottom line is, the only time I’ve ever noticed a problem with Wealthy Affiliate hosting is when my website hit 1500 daily visitors.
I can’t officially blame Wealthy Affiliate hosting for having any issues because I don’t have proof.
- For one, I can only assume that the article that I wrote went viral. It was a scam that many people were chasing, and unfortunately those types of articles drive a lot of traffic at times.
- For two, I had a very popular theme on my website called Thrive Theme which I loved at the time but, that theme also gave me headaches. After during further research it appeared to be a common issue of complaints that the theme was clunky, bloated, and caused headaches for those that used it.
With that said, I have no proof that Wealthy Affiliate hosting is terrible.
As I mentioned earlier many members love the value of Wealthy Affiliate hosting, while others don’t. I personally like WA hosting because, you can use it with ease.
Either way, I took steps to find the issue.
First I contacted my Thrive Theme developers, they said my web hosting was outdated. Then I contacted Wealthy Affiliate, and they said the complete opposite.
The difference between the two companies is, Wealthy Affiliate did their best in helping me resolve the issue.
They even went a step further and upgraded me to their new servers. On the other hand, my theme developer basically left me stranded.
Eventually, I got rid of the fancy website theme and invested in a lightweight simple theme. I also kept my website hosted at Wealthy Affiliate.
Since then, I haven’t had any major issues like that again.
How Does Wealthy Affiliate Hosting Compare To It’s Competitors?
After considering a couple of competitors, this is what I discovered.
Wealthy Affiliate Hosting VS. Host Armada
First, Wealthy Affiliate hosting doesn’t offer it’s members access to cPanel and for good cause.
While Host Armada does.
Most members in Wealthy Affiliate are completely new to affiliate marketing and blogging.
Using cPanel requires a tad bit of technical knowledge.
cPanel allows you access to creating new email accounts and the passwords.
- You’ll also have access to installing WordPress
- Adding subdomains,
- Changing URLS,
- Uploading files to the file manager
- And you’ll be able to back up your website with cPanel.
cPanel Is A Tad Bit Techy
It’s a bit more techy than it sounds.
Secondly, Wealthy Affiliate tech support will transfer most websites free of charge.
While Host Armada allows one website transfer free of charge.
Third, Wealthy Affiliate hosting is in-house and has a no refund policy.
On the other hand, Host Armada is a stand alone hosting company that offers a 45 day Full refund, if you don’t love their service.
In the end, using Wealthy Affiliate hosting can save you $187.20 in hosting fees.
That’s what it’s going to cost you a year for hosting alone, if you were to host with Host Armada Web Warp plan.
Therefore, if you are on a budget and have no tech knowledge using Wealthy Affiliate isn’t a bad idea. You could always transfer the website once you get your funds right.
In addition to that, Wealthy Affiliate is geared towards teaching beginners how to start a website.
If you don’t know how to start a website and maintain it third part hosting companies do not come with that type of training. You’ll need to learn that on your own.
If you like to learn what hosting is like outside of Wealthy Affiliate, you read my Host Armada review.
Wealthy Affiliate Hosting VS. Siteground
To begin with, Wealthy Affiliate hosting at the premium membership level, will cost you $49.00 per month.
- That includes 10 hosted websites plus affiliate marketing training and all the support that you need.
On the other hand, after the 12-month introductory period, Siteground offers its shared hosting members a package called GoGeek.
- That package includes unlimited hosted websites for $39.99 per month which is also capped at 400,000 visitors per month.
- In addition to that Siteground will not offer you any webhosting training, unless its an article. You also will not receive affiliate marketing training.
- Plus, they don’t teach you how to build a website, which many people do not know how to do.
Next, Wealthy Affiliate is more than hosting, while Siteground specializes in hosting only.
Lastly, Wealthy Affiliate hosting and or membership doesn’t offer a refund at all.
Instead, they have a 7-day Starter plan that requires no credit card.
Since you’re not charged the first 7 days, there’s no refund that needs to be processed because, Wealthy Affiliate allows you to tour their community without any obligations.
However, if you were to upgrade your account to premium membership after the 7-day Starter plan and decided you don’t like the service. Therefore, you may not get a refund.
It’s different at Siteground, if you decide you don’t want to host a website with Siteground.
They offer a full refund within 30 days of signup. This does not include the purchase of your domain.
To my understanding most of the time a domain can’t be refunded or changed.
Final Thoughts Of This Wealthy Affiliate Hosting
The comparisons that we did today are based on personal experience.
Since I use Wealthy Affiliate hosting and other third part hosting, I felt like I had the qualifications to explain the pros and cons of Wealthy Affiliate hosting.
I guess the main concern should be, is Wealthy Affiliate hosting reliable?
And, the answer to that is “Yes, Wealthy Affiliate Hosting is reliable.”
Wealthy Affiliate hosting does have its limits but, it also has features that other hosting companies don’t offer.
Wealthy Affiliate was built for complete beginners and struggling marketers.
Imagine this:
- Learning to write articles
- Installing themes
- Installing and learning plugins
- Learning material
- Learning how to properly do keyword research and rank articles
- Learning how to manage your web hosting
- Plus, so much more!
When you’re first starting out, it’s definitely a lot to learn. Even after you think you’ve learned it all, you haven’t because, SEO is always changing. Google is always doing updates. It’s a lot!
Not to mention, that you’ll have to juggle all of the above, while managing your family, work, and now hosting.
It’s a bit much in the beginning stages of your affiliate marketing career!
So, here’s a suggestion. In the beginning of your online journey I do recommend that you use Wealthy Affiliate hosting.
The reason being is because that’s one less headache you have to worry about.
The minute you feel comfortable and confident to go out there on your own.
Then that’s when you can think about seeking other hosting companies.
Keep in mind hosting can be changed after the fact.
Well, that’s all folks!
I hope that you have a better understanding of Wealthy Affiliate’s Hosting.
Is there anything else you would like to learn about WA hosting?
Do you have any questions about Wealthy Affiliate Hosting?
I would be glad to answer them for you.
