WP Bolt Review: High Performance WordPress VPS Hosting

Are you looking for reliable VPS hosting for your WordPress website? In this in-depth review, I’ll look at WP Bolt VPS hosting and explore its pros and cons to see how it holds up with the current industry standards.

I’ll check the performance, speed, dashboard, support, and pricing of WP Bolt individually. By the end of this article, you’ll have a better understanding of VPS hosting and WP Bolt altogether.

WP Bolt Overview

WP Bolt is a pretty reliable WordPress hosting provider with competitive prices compared to other VPS hosting pricing standards. You get your own server for your website backed by Linode or Vultr. WP Bolt has all standard measures and firewall protocols in place to keep its servers secure. You also get a free automated free SSL from Let’s Encrypt for all websites you are hosting on your plan.

Since WP Bolt is a WordPress-focused VPS hosting, you get a one-click WordPress installation tool, and for performance and speed, you get support for PHP 8.0 and 7.4, Ngnix/Apache stack, MariaDB, HTTP/2, and CDN addon.

Regarding pricing, plans start at $13/month for a starter server. You get hosting for up to 10  domains, 32 GB disk space, 1GB RAM, 1 TB Bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, among other features. If you want to host unlimited domains, you get 2 GB RAM, one virtual CPU, 64 GB disk space, and 2 TB bandwidth. If you have higher hosting requirements, you can go with the higher-end plans — more on that in the WP Bolt pricing section below.

Before we can jump into our in-depth review, let’s start by answering this question.

What is VPS Hosting, and do you really need it?

VPS Hosting stands for Virtual Private Server hosting.

In a standard VPS hosting, you’ll share one physical server, but every user is assigned a predefined set of resources on a virtual setup. This means even if there are other websites on your server, it won’t affect the websites on your virtual server. This is made possible by permanently allocating resources on visual servers for every user even if they are not being used.

Whether you need VPS hosting on not depends on your usage and requirements. If you have just started out, you can use a shared WordPress hosting to start off, but if you have a website with high or growing traffic and performance needs, it is good to migrate to a VPS hosting as it has its own benefits such as higher security, no downtime, or speed issues during peak hours.

So, if you are a tech-savvy user looking for a more serious hosting server, I recommend getting reliable VPS hosting for your website, such as WP Bolt.

WP Bolt Key Features

Let’s take a look at WP Bolt’s features.

Multiple Server Locations

Since server location plays an important role in the speed of your website, you need to carefully choose the hosting that is physically closer to your audience. WP Bolt comes with 23 global data center locations. From Seattle to Sydney, you can easily choose the server location that fits your website’s needs. Regarding server infrastructures, you get to choose from Vultr and Linode, depending on the location.

Performance

The hosting is backed by support for PHP 8.0 and 7.4. It is also recommended to run your website on the latest PHP version for higher security. You also get a CDN addon for faster load times.

Dashboard

WP Bolt’s dashboard is powered by my WHM with a custom design layout. The overall dashboard is easy to navigate, and you can find the most important options and information on the dashboard homepage.

Towards the left, you can find the navigation for important sections such as Dashboard, Services, Billing, Support, and Affiliates.

The Dashboard tab gives an overview of products, services, tickets, and shortcuts.

You can check the server details by clicking on the server details link and editing the websites and plans for your hosting package.

For example, if you want to edit sites, upgrade/downgrade plans, or request cancellation, you can do it from the left navigation option.

You can also apply other standard security measures such as Two-factor authentication from the security settings. It is very easy to navigate to these options, and you can find the option you are looking for easily.

Support

WP Bolt comes with standard 24×7 email support. It is worth mentioning there is a knowledgebase section on the dashboard, but it still needs to be updated with articles related to the dashboard and troubleshooting.

Pros and Cons of WP Bolt Hosting

Now that we have discussed the features let’s look at the Pros and Cons of WP Bolt.

WP Bolt Pros

VPS hosting: WP Bolt is backed by Vultr and Linode, which are reputed names for providing hosting infrastructure. You can rely on their robust servers to deliver optimum speed and performance.

Interactive Dashboard: Powered by the WHM dashboard, you get all the options easily accessible placed strategically for easier navigation. Even if you are not familiar with any hosting dashboard, you can familiarize yourself with WP Bolt’s interface in no time.

Multiple Server locations: With more than 22 server locations, you can choose the desired physical location for your server for faster delivery time.

One-click WordPress installation: Since WP Bolt is WordPress-focused hosting, you get a one-click WordPress installation for every domain on your server.

Automated free SSL: Although every other hosting provider offers a free Let’s Encrypt SSL, WP Bolt having it automated does count as a plus on top of all other features.

WP Bolt Cons

Lacks knowledge base: Any hosting provider needs an in-depth knowledge base. However, since there aren’t any articles in WP Bolt’s knowledge base, it can be difficult for newbie users as VPS hosting generally requires more technical know-how.

No Backups: WP Bolt does not keep a backup of your account by default. If you want to create backups, you’ll need to get JetBackup or DirectAdmin Backups which will cost extra, ranging from $1 to $5.95 per month. Other competitors in the industry offer daily backups and keep multiple offsite copies as an added protection.

Technical challenges: This is not WP Bolt specific and applies to almost every VPS hosting provider. Configuring VPS hosting is not the same as managed or shared hosting. You need to know your way around your hosting dashboard and a few technical key areas. If you’re not familiar with those concepts, getting started or even making the most out of your hosting plan can be hard.

While this list of pros and cons might be enough to help you make a decision about WP Bolt, I recommend checking the pricing plans before making up your mind. Compared to other VPS hosting solutions in the market, WP Bolt comes with very affordable pricing plans starting at just $13. Let’s explore the pricing plans in more detail.

Pricing

WP Bolt has four pricing plans starting at $13 per month.

In the Starter server plan, you get hosting for ten domains, 32 GB disk space, 1 TB bandwidth, free migrations, among other things.

In the Small server plan ($26 per month), you get hosting for unlimited websites, 64 GB disk space, 2 TB bandwidth, and multiple user account access.

If you want more resource requirements, you can go with the Medium server plan that costs $50 per month. For this price, you get to host unlimited websites, 128 GB disk space, 3 TB bandwidth, 4GB ram/2 vCPUs, and everything in the small server plan.

The priciest plan costs $96 per month and allocates you 256 GB disk space, 8 GB RAM, 2 vCPU, 4 TB bandwidth, and every feature of WP Bolt. You also get free SSL with Let’s Encrypt with every plan.

Verdict

If you want affordable and reliable VPS hosting for your website, WP Bolt can be a good option to go with. Although there are a few concerns, such as the knowledgebase and no backups, it still holds up to its core features, such as performance-optimized servers and competitive pricing.

I would still recommend doing your research before choosing a hosting provider, but if you are on the fence with WP Bolt, you can give it a try and see for yourself how it works out for you.

Also, keep in mind that VPS hosting is quite different from shared hosting and would require you to set it up yourself, so if you are not a tech-savvy customer, I would recommend looking at managed WordPress hosting plans before you make a decision. And if in case you are worried about migrations, you get free migrations with WP Bolt.

If you want to try WP Bolt, you can get it here:

Get WP Bolt Hosting

What are your thoughts on WP Bolt hosting, and what are the most important things you look for in VPS hosting? Tell us in the comments below!