= Web Hosting Advice for Non-Profit =

Hi all - I manage the website for a non-profit and wanted to get some input regarding hosting

Our current host is Flywheel/WP Engine and we have been on an old Legacy platform for a while (prior to me in 2019). We're a seasonal organization that has larger spikes of traffic in the summer months (like 300K+ unique visitors per month), so we've just surpassed our monthly visitor limit this year (a good problem to have! but also anticipate it going up in the future). Also for reference, this site is using WordPress

Because of the traffic and the older platform, Flywheel wants us to migrate to their new Cloud Platform. That sounds great but our monthly bill will greatly increase and there is no non-profit discount, I've been told

I've done some research and talked to some industry folks and I've basically reached two consensus points:
Stick with Flywheel/WP Engine and upgrade
Switch hosts - looking at Dreamhost. I've heard pretty good things about it, and they also have a non-profit discount. The WP migration plugin also seems fine as well but not sure either

Curious to hear other opinions before we pull any triggers. Anything else to consider as a non-profit?
What is your monthly budget?Prefer to keep it low, but can afford a few thousand for an annual plan Where are you/your users located?NYC What kind of site are you hosting (Wordpress, phpBB, custom software, etc) or what is your use case?WordPress. Do you have a monthly traffic volume? Estimates are ok.Varies at times of year. In the winter, very low (way less than 100K). In the summer, can range from 200K to 400K+ unique visitors per month. Spring and fall are the ends of the bell curve around summer but still see moderate traffic. If you’re looking at VPSes: Do you have experience administrating linux servers and infrastructure?N/A Did you read the sidebar/check out the hosts listed there? I've personally vetted these companies and their services are a good fit for 99% of people.I did, but don't know much about them and if they would be good in this situation


you could look into Kinsta. it’s also a managed WP offering, but in our experience, it’s much more performant than flywheel. they are more expensive, but since you are a non-profit, they might be able to accommodate something. you’d have to contact their sales team to see. other than that, OVH is a good host, but it can be quite a bit more involved since it’s usually only VPS (though I think they offer managed WP too)
Check hawkhost, they got NY and other US based server. Its cheap (especially when they have recurring/renewal from 30% off "forever") and have good quality so far

If you feel like an unmanaged solution, you could always see what some of the big cloud providers offer to non-profits through Tech Soup - httpswww.techsoup.org/ If you're unfamiliar, you may want to check, too, about Microsoft O365 licenses

I handle sites for several (smaller, regional) non-profits in Canada and host WordPress sites on VM instances at Google Cloud

Try StablePoint, they have 1 USD/m for non-profit. I assume they will also run on DigitalOcean infrastructure for shared hosting too and allow you to choose nearest datacenter to your region

But you may want to chat with them and they advertised they love to help charity and non-profit organisations. Beside, they have managed services which might be useful for our case

WPENgine for non-profit? WPEngine should be for corporate website, they are good but they are suitable for medium large company for profit orientation

You can't compare the services with Dreamhost, Dreamhost basically shared hosting but their support can't compare with WPEngine. Since your purpose is non-profit, you can always go with Dreamhost. If I can recommend you, you may also consider Asphostportal, they are pretty cheap too and I'm using their service

== About Community ==
Members
Online