IvyCat Announces Hosting Partnership with SiteGround

[bs_lead]IvyCat is discontinuing its hosting business and has partnered with the award-winning hosting provider, SiteGround to host our current and future customers.[/bs_lead]

[bs_notification type=”warning”]We will migrate all hosting and domain customers over to SiteGround beginning this month with all moves to be completed by April 15, 2015.[/bs_notification]

If you host websites or domain names with IvyCat, then you should have already received an email with this announcement, including account-specific information.

Why Discontinue IvyCat’s Hosting Service?

IvyCat has been offering hosting for well over 10 years for all sorts of sites. We’ve also been providing web design and WordPress development, which is our specialty.

During this same period, IvyCat has grown from a little one-person sole-proprietorship to our current staff of eight regular IvyCats. And as we’ve grown, we’ve focused and specialized what we do, which has made us one of the premier WordPress development and maintenance shops in the Pacific Northwest.

My New Year’s resolution was to try to focus on working more on the business, rather than in the business. As many of you know, I’ve been the lead hosting tech at IvyCat since the beginning, which makes me the guy who answers tickets late at night, early morning, and on weekends. This means I’m constantly working in the business.

At IvyCat, we reached a crossroads near the end of last year: we have enough hosting business that we need more help with support, but hiring another person to fill that role guaranteed that I’d still always be involved in managing servers and hosting clients until we could hire more hosting folks.

Looking at our numbers for last year, around 85% of our income came from our WordPress and web design services, leaving only 15% of our income representing our hosting and domain services.  The hosting service also causes about 85% of the stress at IvyCat, so this was an easy decision.

Why SiteGround?

The hosting market is competitive and there are other folks out there who do a fabulous job – a better job than IvyCat, even. So, when I started thinking about migrating IvyCat’s hosting, SiteGround was the first company I contacted.  SiteGround was immediately excited to partner with IvyCat and I’m very happy, too.

This is a win-win for all of us:

• IvyCat will focus on what we do best: building cool WordPress websites and tools
• SiteGround takes award-winning care of your hosting needs, and
• You can rest easy with better hosting, email, and support.

You’re important to IvyCat and we’ve selected SiteGround with your best interests in mind. The simple fact is that SiteGround is everything I wanted IvyCat hosting to be: fast, flexible, well-supported, and with a strong background in WordPress.

In fact, all of IvyCat’s own websites are already moved over to our new server at SiteGround, and we couldn’t be happier with their service and stability.

Why is SiteGround a perfect fit for you?

There are plenty of great reasons to move to SiteGround, but a few of the most important are:

1. Support – SiteGround is known for outstanding support. You can get them on the phone, chat, email anytime day or night. And, they know what they’re talking about.
2. Speed – SiteGround knows servers and they love tweaking them for speed.
3. Stability – SiteGround knows how to manage servers and their uptime shows it. Their unique server technologies help protect your site from going down even when other sites on the same server have problems.
4. Security – SiteGround’s unique security setup protects all hosting customers from hacking by providing routine scanning, and isolating customer accounts so one infected site can’t harm other sites on the same server.
5. SiteGround knows WordPress – SiteGround is a huge supporter of the WordPress community, contributing to many aspects of the WordPress project. In fact, I’ve met many SiteGrounders over the years at WordCamps and other WordPress conferences in various cities. They don’t just talk WordPress, they do WordPress, and they do it well.

What will move to SiteGround?

SiteGround will be taking over all of IvyCat customer’s:

• Hosting accounts, including Resellers
• Domain names
• SSL Certificates

How will this affect me?

SiteGround’s Plans and Features

You can check out SiteGround’s hosting plans and features for yourself, but we’re recommending that most IvyCat customers go with the GrowBig plan, unless you need the extra space and geeky features included in the GoGeek plan.  SiteGround even has a StartUp plan that is less expensive and suitable for just one site.

If you’re running an e-commerce site that requires PCI compliance, then the GoGeek plan is the best choice to start.

Here’s what we’re recommending for current IvyCat hosting customers:

• IvyCat’s Starter Plan –> SiteGround’s GrowBig plan.
• IvyCat’s Business Plan –>  SiteGround’s GrowBig plan.
• IvyCat’s Pro Plan –>  SiteGround’s GoGeek plan.

Technically, customers on IvyCat’s Starter Plan could easily fit on SiteGround’s StartUp plan, but SiteGround has been kind enough to offer IvyCat customers a year of discounted pricing on the GrowBig and GoGeek plans (see below), making the price of their GrowBig plan very comparable with IvyCat’s Starter plan.

The added backups, speed, and features of the GoBig plan are well worth any extra cost.

Costs & Billing

Your billing renewal date will not change. If you’ve already prepaid for hosting with IvyCat, you will not be billed from SiteGround until your account is scheduled to renew.

SiteGround Hosting Renewal Pricing

You’ll save money. SiteGround’s hosting accounts offer more resources and features, often for less money than you’ve been paying with IvyCat.

• StartUp plan – renewal price for 1 year is $107.40 (10% off regular price)
• GrowBig plan – renewal price for 1 year is $162.00 (10% off regular price)
  IvyCat customers get a discounted first renewal price of $119.40.
• GoGeek plan – renewal price for 1 year is $323.40 (10% off regular price)
  IvyCat customers get a discounted first renewal price of $239.40.

You can save even more by renewing for multiple years at a time:

• 20% discount for 2 years, and
• 30% discount for 3 years.

After your initial renewal with SiteGround, you can choose to upgrade, or downgrade your account as needed.

Please Note:

• SiteGround does not have a monthly billing option. Your account will be billed annually when it’s scheduled to renew.
• SiteGround’s default payment option is via credit card. If you’d rather pay via PayPal, you can contact their Customer Support after your account is setup.
• All services including domain names are set to auto-renew. You may, however, cancel auto-renewal at any time.

SiteGround Domain Renewal Pricing

When we transition domain names to SiteGround, there will be no extra charge and no added term to your domain registration.  You’ll keep the same renewal date.

SiteGround will take over registration and billing of all of IvyCat customer’s domains at the exact same annual price of $14.95/year.

When will my move take place?

All websites will be migrated from IvyCat servers by April 15th and our servers will be powered down and retired by April 25th.

Moving to SiteGround

We’re working closely with SiteGround to make sure all of IvyCat’s customers are taken care of and are moved without any downtime or interruption. If you wish to move your site to another host or cancel your account, please let us know by March 15th, so we don’t transition you to SiteGround.

SiteGround will setup an account for you and send over credentials along with instructions for adding your payment information, so they can take over your billing when your account renews.

What if I don’t want to move?

If you don’t wish to migrate your hosting to SiteGround, you must opt out by filling out this form before March 15, 2015.

While you won’t be able to continue hosting with IvyCat, you’re free to select any host provider you’d like, but you will need to transfer your hosting and domains over to another host by a April 10th, 2015.

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Can I keep working with IvyCat?

IvyCat is not going away – we’re just focusing our talents on web design, and WordPress development and maintenance.

WordPress Maintenance

If you are currently signed up for one of our WordPress Maintenance & Support plans, that won’t change – we’ll continue to provide updates, maintenance, backups, security, and troubleshooting for your WordPress site.

We’ll even have a few exciting new offerings for WordPress Maintenance customers soon.

Website Development

We love to build fast, effective sites built on the easy-to-use WordPress platform. If you, or a colleague, need professional WordPress development services, whether a full website, a plugin, or a theme, we would love to help.

IvyCat hopes to be working with you long into the future. We are here to support you as your businesses and websites continue to grow.

If you have any questions or comments, please share them below in the comments section.