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Comparing Silverstripe hosts? Here’s what you need to know

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Silverstripe deserves its place as a popular CMS, especially in New Zealand. If you’re building Silverstripe sites you need hosting that matches its flexibility and power.

The Silverstripe Advantage

Silverstripe is a top choice of many developers for its highly flexible framework and straightforward interface. It’s an impressively powerful site-building platform that lets you support extensive interactions and build SEO-optimised websites with speed.

And it goes without saying, of course, that Silverstripe is something of a local champion here in New Zealand. Tu meke!

While there’s no “typical” Silverstripe website - the platform is way too flexible for that - it’s common for Silverstripe developers to have a keen eye on security and data sovereignty. We see a lot of value placed on site speed and performance as well, which suggests that Silverstripe is called into service when there’s something serious to be done.

What to look for in Silverstripe Hosting

The ideal Silverstripe hosting provider could work in with any or all of the different priorities that Silverstripe websites can have, while still providing a rock solid environment for the CMS. Whoever you choose, make sure they have proven knowledge and success with Silverstripe hosting.

Here are few other things for Silverstripe developers to look for:

Happy Silverstripe clients. There’s no more important indicator of reliability. Look for reviews on third-party sites like Trustpilot, Silverstripe case studies, and even ask around your own network.

Excellent support from a team that knows how to make Silverstripe really hum. The support you get from the ideal hosting provider spans from infrastructure support like security patches to troubleshooting issues when you raise them (rather than weeks later). Find a hosting company that really listens to you and understands the systems that you’re using. A 24/7 support team is an entry-level requirement, followed by quick response times and proof that customers appreciate the outcome.

Additional management options. You must have the choice to boost the kind of support you receive especially if you have delicate security needs or need to know that your site will be accessible at all times.

Our 24/7 Managed Hosting was designed for this. This means we are extra proactive with round-the-clock server monitoring, providing maintenance and responding to any incidents.

Proven record to meet security compliance/data sovereignty standards. If you’re working on Government projects or any other sites with big data sovereignty or security requirements, there will be crucial infrastructure decisions beyond your control. That’s why you need to trust your provider 100%. Find a host that has proven experience with similar organisations, and knows how to meet a high standard of compliance.

Local servers and local knowledge in the hosting infrastructure. Having a hosting provider with infrastructure right here in New Zealand brings enormous benefits, particularly in offering greater speed for your local clients and meeting their wider preference to keep their data exclusively and safely in New Zealand.

Powerful, easy-to-manage hosting. The best infrastructure in the world can still be frustrating if it’s difficult for you to manage. Plenty of Silverstripe developers are too focused on the front end to want to manage their own VPS, but for others that can same server could offer the exact right level of control.

Most of our Silverstripe customers prefer Cloud Containers, which you can manage without needing to be your own sysadmin. Nicolaas from Sunny Side Up, for example, calls them “out of the box perfection”.

SiteHost’s Cloud Containers

Silverstripe experts like Nicolaas favour Cloud Containers because they’re flexible, fast and secure. And since we maintain the Cloud Container platform for you, they do away with headache-inducing technical complexities.

To quote Central Station, another long-time customer, running your website on Cloud Containers means “having full control of Cloud Containers and direct access to code".

Each Cloud Container can run a different development environment or CMS, letting you set things up just the way you like them.

Other developer-focused features include container cloning, which is just one of the improvements we made in response to customers’ requests. You can easily create a copy of an existing container or synchronise the data between two containers. Ultimately, this means easily and quickly creating separate development environments, then easily deploying changes into a live environment.

There’s a lot of good stuff that you can’t see, as well, like the high performing and incredibly reliable NVMe storage found in every Cloud Container server.

Experience you can rely on

As well as having a lot of Silverstripe sites running on our infrastructure, we’ve worked with a range of security and compliance requirements. We’re very familiar with the Cloud Risk Assessment Tool for Government projects, for example, and we have proven experience in complying with the New Zealand Information Security Manual. We host multiple sites that are up to this standard and have passed independent pen testing.

Whatever security threshold you need to meet, we can also work with you on compliance.

We could also meet local data sovereignty standards as our datacentres are right here in New Zealand. But if you have global customers to serve, you can still give them the best possible performance by spinning up Cloud Containers in Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, London or California.

See how well Silverstripe can run today

It only takes a few minutes to get started and spin up your first Cloud Container. When it comes to Silverstripe hosting like this, seeing is believing. Or if there’s anything more you want to know, just ask.