We at Memberium do our best to support the majority of web hosts out there, but there are still some factors that should be considered when choosing a web host.
Before we go into detail, let’s check out the basic requirements for running Memberium.
Requirements for Running Memberium
- You need a hosting service that supports WordPress.
- You need PHP 7.0 or newer.
Avoid Shared Hosting
We strongly recommend against using shared hosting. If your hosting costs $10.00 USD per month or less, you’re probably looking at shared hosting. “Premium” shared hosting may be ok to run a membership site that is just starting out, but you’ll have to upgrade as your site grows.
This is because sites running on shared hosting often become slow and are erratic in performance due to being on a server shared with thousands of other sites. It will run, but slowly and erratically, and provide a poor experience and reliability issues for your clients.
Avoid Hosts that Force Caching
Web hosts which rely on heavy caching should also be avoided. This caching is done to cover up their slow servers.
Membership sites are dynamic meaning the page changes or looks different for each user. Caching tries to take a “snapshot” of a page and serve it to everyone (which is fine for non-dynamic sites).
Caching can cause the wrong content to be displayed. In some cases, it can also display content for one user to another user, thereby delivering incorrect content.
Also avoid hosts that offer Varnish caching. In case if your host has this option, then we’d suggest you to contact your host and disable the Varnish cache.
Avoid hosts running Open Litespeed server software
Avoid any host that’s running the Litespeed / Open Litespeed server software. As of now, OLS is incompatible with the Memberium Autologin feature.
Choose a Host That Can Handle Your Traffic
One more parameter that should be taken into account when choosing a web host is how much traffic do you estimate the site would receive and then choose a host and a plan based on that need.
If your site is getting hundreds of thousands of members logging in each month, shared hosting probably won’t cut it – just as an example.
Choose a Host with Flexible Security
The web host that you choose should also not be too strict when it comes to security settings. Some web hosts are known to block ActiveCampaign webhooks and also the Memberium license server which can cause problems on the site.
It’s ok if your desired host blocks these out of the box as long as they give you a way to unblock and whitelist certain IP ranges and user agents. Usually, the hosting support team will be able to help with this. If you’re with a host that has virtually no support and the servers are blocking requests, there won’t be much the Memberium team can do to help.
Avoid These Web Hosts – Not Recommended
These web hosts are ones that we do not recommend. Either due to performance issues we’ve seen firsthand or compatibility issues with Memberium.
EIG Owned Hosts
Avoid hosts that are part of EIG (Endurance International Group). Hosts from this group offer low-quality hosting with a large user database. Their servers are underpowered since the focus is on selling cheap, instead of offering quality hosting.
They include page caching in their sites which can cause problems when running a membership. The caching helps offset their server performance.
So you may run into performance issues from their server setup, and caching may cause your users to be shown other user’s data.
Some big names that are part of EIG (which should also be avoided) are HostGator, Bluehost, iPage, HostMonster, Fatcow, and such. In fact, EIG owns over 80+ hosting companies and all those hosts should be avoided.
GoDaddy Managed Hosting
GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting has a caching system that interferes with the dynamic content of a membership site, and is not supported. Also, it lacks support for cron jobs which is yet another limitation of GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting. Avoid using GoDaddy Managed Hosting.
DreamHost
Avoid using cheap shared hosting like DreamHost. Their servers are very heavily used, and running a membership site is more resource-intensive than your average WordPress website. DreamHost has been plagued over the years with downtime and capacity issues and that’s why this host should be avoided.
Pantheon
With Pantheon, we’ve seen issues with the aggressive page caching that causes the wrong content to be displayed. That’s why this host should be avoided.
