[ad_1] WooSesh kicked off this week with a keynote session from WooCommerce CEO Paul Maiorana, who gave an overview of the current state of the ecosystem. More than 3.4 million websites use WooCommerce, according to Builtwith, including 25% of the top million online stores. It is by far the most popular solution among WordPress sites with e-commerce, capturing 93% of the market share. Maiorana covered some industry-wide trends taking shape in 2023. WooCommerce merchants are uncertain about the economy and while some are optimistic, others do not see it improving soon. Although growth has slowed since the pandemic-fueled rapid acceleration towards e-commerce in 2021, Maiorana said revenues are projected to gain steadily through 2025. WooCommerce core is entering a transformative time, as the new admin has been fully merged and Cart and Checkout blocks are now part of core (in beta). The plugin is becoming more block friendly with more than 40 blocks available now. WooCommerce has seen a 319% increase in the usage of block themes and is aiming to have full out-of-the-box compatibility with any block-based theme. The Market for Hosted WooCommerce Products Is Heating Up One of the biggest announcements from the event was that WooCommerce is developing its own hosted, turnkey solution in collaboration with hosting partners. WordPress.com will be the first to pilot the product in February 2023. Maiorana said the goal of the solution is to improve onboarding and retention with the following : WooCommerce pre-installed, activated, and hosted A pre-packaged set of essential plugins Simplified onboarding that works with partners’ systems to improve conversion Competitive monthly price to reduce churn Co-marketing and revenue share with hosts WooCommerce’s hosted solution will be in direct competition with other hosts that have recently launched their own products. In November 2021, GoDaddy acquired Pagely with the intent to deploy a new SaaS WooCommerce product. Pagely was paired with previous 2020 acquisitions of Poynt, a payment processor, and SkyVerge, a popular WooCommerce plugin development company, to create an integrated solution. Last month, GoDaddy launched an open access preview of Managed WooCommerce Stores to US-based customers. GoDaddy’s solution boasts the ability to sync across marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, Google, Walmart, Etsy, and YouTube, with a single dashboard managing payment processing, marketing, shipping, and inventory. It is integrated with GoDaddy Payments for both online and in-person transactions, which incur a transaction fee of 2.3% + 30¢. The hosted WooCommerce preview plans range from $99.99/month – $249.99/month. At WooSesh today, Beka Rice, Senior Director of Product Management at GoDaddy, gave an overview of multichannel and omnichannel sales for e-commerce merchants during her presentation. Enabling multichannel store management seems to be one of the main selling points of GoDaddy’s offering. Bluehost is another recent contender in the managed WooCommerce hosting space, having launched its product last month. In March, Newfold Digital, Bluehost’s parent company, acquired YITH, a WordPress plugin company with more than 100 WooCommerce extensions. Bluehost’s managed WooCommerce packages include a curated set of YITH plugins to help merchants extend their stores to offer gift cards, bookings and appointments, wishlists, product filtering, and more. Bluehost offers two plans. For the first year, when billed yearly, customers pay $9.95/month for a simple store or $12.95/month for selling across various marketplaces. Customers on the more expensive plan have the option to manage product inventory across Etsy, Amazon and eBay from a consolidated dashboard via Ecomdash. At the budget end of the WooCommerce hosting spectrum, Bluehost’s offering has an emphasis on creating a user-friendly, guided onboarding experience. Bluehost conducted an internal research study last year and found that its small business customers were looking for solutions that would allow them to sell online, but many of them are first-time website creators. The company created this new WooCommerce offering to eliminate the hassle of navigating themes and the many plugins required to launch a store. Bluehost uses YITH’s Wonder theme as the stores starting theme, which we reviewed in August. “Our theme is built for WordPress, utilizes the block structure that modern WordPress websites are beginning to adopt (one of the early block-basedWooCommerce block themes) and also includes three full-page patterns for different homepage layouts and designs,” Newfold Digital SVP of Digital Presence and Commerce Jason Cross said. “This not only provides users with a modern looking store, but also allows them to continue to customize it with ease in the future. YITH Wonder comes with six different style variations that make it easy to customize the accent color combinations and typography for the site.” Bluehost’s offering is aimed at catering to the merchants who will be building the stores themselves. The company has not created its own payments solution but connects to popular payment providers such as PayPal and Stripe and offers cash on delivery and in-store pickup options. WooCommerce is at the start of its journey towards launching a hosted solution but the company also plays a different role in the ecosystem as the maintainer of the core software. In an interview with the Tavern after his keynote, Maiorana said the vast majority (+90%) of ongoing WooCommerce core development is done by the WooCommerce team at Automattic. “One important difference is that we are really focused on the WooCommerce ecosystem – including the thousands of web hosts that help support and drive WordPress and Woo adoption across the globe – as our most important ‘customer,’” he said. “And what we’re hearing from these customers is that it is challenging to compete with the simplicity offered by proprietary, turnkey e-commerce solutions. At the same time, many web hosts don’t have the capabilities to address things like onboarding, conversion, and retention holistically – they need our help to compete and win.” Many of the major hosting companies that serve WordPress customers, like WP Engine, GoDaddy, and Bluehost have already developed their own hosted WooCommerce solutions, although there are many smaller companies that do not offer curated plugins, themes, and friendly onboarding that may be more open to partnering with the makers of WooCommerce. “We’re also working with
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GoDaddy Pro To Host Second EXPAND 2021 Event on September 24 in India – WP Tavern
[ad_1] GoDaddy Pro will kick off EXPAND 2021 – India on September 24, the second event of its kind this year. It is a one-day virtual conference that will feature sessions from industry leaders and experts in the field. Nikhil Arora, the Vice President and Managing Director for GoDaddy India, will present the keynote address. In total, there will be nine sessions that will run between 15 and 45 minutes throughout the day. The goal is to provide guidance and resources for those starting and growing digital businesses. GoDaddy Pro launched its first event, EXPAND 2021 – U.S., in late April. Over 5,000 people registered for the two-day virtual conference. However, tens of thousands more have viewed individual sessions since then. Each session is available for free viewing via the GoDaddy Pro YouTube channel, and new videos will be added for future events. When Adam Warner, the Global Field Marketing Sr. Manager at GoDaddy, spoke of the event earlier this year, he described it as a project he had wanted to do since 2018. For him, it was a way of giving back to the community and helping the next generation along. “I’m pleased with how our EXPAND conference series is growing and the feedback we’ve received from attendees so far,” he said. “The overarching goal of EXPAND is to showcase the solutions that our Pros are providing for their clients, and to do so in a way that both inspires and educates others to follow their passion for building the web and their own businesses.” The first event did not go off without any bumps in the road. The team learned from it and will tweak things to improve the conference. “One important lesson we learned from our first EXPAND event was to clearly define chat moderation roles and increase the amount of pre-written platform navigation directions and tips for our Guides to share with attendees in the general and session chats areas,” said Warner. “When our event started, we were walking over ourselves a bit. The chat conversations move so fast, we ended up duplicating a few replies, coming from multiple people.” The EXPAND 2021 – India conference will be different than the inaugural event held earlier this year. Instead of focusing on a more general or U.S. audience, GoDaddy Pro is leaning into its regional teams and members. “All the speakers are from India, as well as the Pros whose stories will be featured,” said Warner. “We have dedicated GoDaddy and GoDaddy Pro teams in India, and they’ve played a lead role in defining the best approach for the Indian audience. The biggest challenge with putting this event together so far has been the differences in time zones for our multiple teams. We’ve tried to accommodate everyone’s schedules as much as possible.” The GoDaddy Pro team is already planning EXPAND 2022 events. Warner said those interested to be on the lookout over the next couple of months for more news. “To date, our EXPAND conferences run parallel with our location-specific launches of the GoDaddy Pro brand,” he said. “As GoDaddy Pro continues to grow, and when the world gets back to in-person events globally, we would love to accommodate attendees in multiple physical locations.” One glaring issue for the India event is the lack of gender diversity within its speaker group. Only one woman is leading a session. I asked Warner why there was such an imbalance. “The number of women in the technology sector in India has been a matter of concern for small and large businesses alike,” said Warner. “GoDaddy is an inviting place to work and an industry leader for women in technology. We are actively working to create platforms and ecosystems to encourage more women to join the fray. We are delighted to have Kriti Aggarwal, Founder of Anaha Services, join us at this year’s EXPAND Event in India and are focused on all future EXPAND Conferences recognizing diverse groups of leaders in their sectors.” The team is holding two Meetups each week. Yesterday was an all-female panel of GoDaddy and GoDaddy Pro team members in prep for their sponsorship of FemTechConf, held between September 24 and 25. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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[ad_1] Hosting is a perennial topic among site owners. The conversation can get fanatic and fervent at times too. GoDaddy is one of the more popular hosts on the market. Even so, it’s not the only option. In fact, there are a lot of GoDaddy alternatives available that may suit you better. For example, you may not need GoDaddy’s collaboration tools. It could be that you need more when it comes to server specifications. Regardless, each provider has a different approach – and one could be better for your needs. Given this, we’ll look at some of the best GoDaddy alternatives, and discuss why they could do a more effective job. First, let’s give you some background on GoDaddy. A Quick Introduction to GoDaddy In short, GoDaddy is a monster-sized hosting provider. In fact, it covers many bases with its services, but hosting is a primary offering. The target user is small and medium business owners, which is why you’ve likely come across GoDaddy in the past. As such, the product lines and feature sets are all geared around running a business. Team-based solutions are also front and center too. GoDaddy is also a domain registrar, which means you can buy your domain and hosting from the same place. While this isn’t always recommended, it is convenient and in some cases can save you money. On paper, GoDaddy can cater to lots of different users and business. Even so, some users are looking elsewhere for hosting. Let’s take some time to find out why. Why You’d Want to Find GoDaddy Alternatives to Host Your Website Of course, GoDaddy is not the only host on the market. As the saying goes, “variety is the spice of life”. As such, there are lots of general reasons why you might want a GoDaddy alternative: The feature set doesn’t align with your site’s goals. There are too many features you’re not using. You’ve found third-party solutions for some of the built-in offerings. It could even be that none of the above is true. If you take a look at a site such as Review Signal, you’ll notice that GoDaddy is not in the top ten for any category. In fact, it’s struggling to remain in the top 20 hosting providers: This is down to a few reasons: Customer support can be poor, and the process to resolve simple queries is made into a complex number of steps. There have been user reports of poor server stability and speed over the years. The price can be cheap if you’re only using hosting. Though, if you’re buying more services from GoDaddy, the cost could spiral out of control. Despite this, GoDaddy can be a solid host for you, if everything hits the mark. More often than not though, you can find higher quality at a cheaper price point. 4 Top GoDaddy Alternatives and Competitors Let’s get down to the ‘nitty-gritty’, and look at some top-quality GoDaddy alternatives. Here are the providers we’ll feature: A2 Hosting. This cost-effective host has all the power of GoDaddy, but none of the ‘fluff’. WP Engine. If you’re after a dedicated WordPress host, WP Engine is a top-tier solution. Kinsta. For ‘hall of fame’ class hosting, Kinsta offers iron-clad dependability and functionality. DreamHost. A WordPress-approved host that offers value for money, and platform-specific servers. First off, we’ll look at the cheapest option on our list. Though, it’s not the worst performer by a long shot. 1. A2 Hosting First off, we have A2 Hosting. This provider has grown to become one of the major players over the past few years, and for good reason. It provides a number of plans for hosting your site, such as shared and dedicated plans, and a Virtual Private Server (VPS) if you need one. It also offers shared and managed WordPress hosting, which might have pricked up your ears. From the four dedicated plans, all but the lowest tier offers an unlimited number of websites. While all plans offer at least Solid State Drive storage, higher tiers give you Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) drives for blazing speed and reliability. The more expensive plans also give you A2 Hosting’s ‘Turbo Boost’ servers. This lets you handle more traffic, reduce your page load speeds, work with a higher-powered processor, and get access to stellar caching. As for support, there’s a comprehensive knowledge base for all types of hosting. If you’re after a more personal experience, A2 Hosting also as a wealth of options to access the support team. Compared to GoDaddy, A2 Hosting offers less on the whole. Though, this isn’t a knock on the latter. What’s here is focused on solid, stable hosting – especially if you’re a WordPress user. If you’re after good all-around hosting without the bells and whistle that come attached to GoDaddy, this is a top-notch option. 💲 Use our A2Hosting Coupon to get up to 51 % off Get A2Hosting 2. WP Engine Next up, WP Engine is a perennial host within any discussion on the topic. Even so, it more than matches up to GoDaddy in a number of ways. WP Engine bills itself as a ‘Digital Experience Platform (DXP)’. Rather than focus only on hosting, WP Engine looks to provide an all-around solution for managing your online presence. The idea behind a DXP is that your brand can be where your users are, through homogenized social media and other branding channels. This is in contrast to the traditional passive approach. Given this, its no surprise that WP Engine offers solutions catered to marketers and developers. It’s a fully-managed host with three different options for your site. Each of these has five tiers. It can be confusing, but no more so than other hosts. Though, the price for using WP Engine is clear. It’s more expensive than most other competitors, including GoDaddy. This isn’t always a negative, though. There’s a lot packed into each tier. If you have everything you need to run your site, it’s money well spent.
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