Website Backend

WordPress or Hosted site

This is the first question you have to decide and it's not an easy one.

Should you choose a hosted site, like Wix or Squarespace, or a platform like Podia or Kajabi, or build everything in WordPress, hosted by a hosting provider. 

The benefit of a site platform like Wix is that they take care of the backend, and in the beginning all your focus can go on the copy. You pick a template, then write the pages. 

But then, you quickly realize that you only have the functions they offer, at the quality they developed it. You can only integrate with what they build connections with and that you are locked in that price for good, no matter what. If you are in a non US, Canada, UK, West-Eu country, chances are you will not be able to integrate, or customize some element with the platform to your local needs. (eg. language, currency, invoicing & tax compliance etc.)

The benefit of WordPress is that even with a high quality host like Cloudways you can run it on $12/month - and not just one site but 5-6. 

You add the functions you need by plugins and only those you need. And each has world class choices because of the competition and the focus. The very best of everything exist on WP from membership, community & course plugins to affiliate managers, page builders and more. You own the data. You are in control. Most plugins still work, even if you don't pay continuously, you just don't have the updates. 

The downside is that with all that customization comes extra work and to an extend extra fragility. Badly written plugins can crush or pose security risks, the good ones became quite expensive by now and the costs quickly adds up. 

How much?

For a well built WP site, using premium plugins and hosting you are looking at about 60$ per month of a cost (mostly paid annually).

It gets cheaper proportionately if you have 2-3 sites. (and why not, you can explore more side-business ideas)

All-in-one platforms: the better ones are around a 100 / month. Some tease with a low 15-25-is tier but you quickly realize that some critical limitations will force you to the 2nd or 3rd tier.  

I have 2 course sites, this review blog site and I had a personal brand consulting site, that I'm probably taking down, not accepting clients anymore. This is the same 60ish cost where with a standalone course or site platform it would be x4 in this case. 

If you want to review the hosted solutions, scroll down. 

Choosing WP - Hosting

Fast, reliable managed WordPress hosting is the backbone for your web presence. It’s not a ‘chose cheap-upgrade later’ business. You chose cheap you won’t grow. Your site will freeze at traffic spikes and load slow in general and you will be on your own if you have a tech issue. 

So go with the best from the start. I recommend three I know well.

Cloudways

I host all my sites on Cloudways, and in my opinion it is the best choice price, value and performance wise. You can scale as you grow, but you are not limited by the number of sites you can open, unlike in most hosts I used before. 

The support is first class, very helpful, knowledgeable and 0-24 immediate. 5-star service. That is crucial for hosting. You want your site to be up and running.

Beforehand I used Flywheel and WPX. They are both good, offering about the same services, but when you have multiple sites, they get expensive.
With Cloudways you can simply upgrade the server as you see more traffic, and able to choose between 4 different server parks.

Do not use cheap crap hosting. People endorse Bluehost and Hostgator and such because they pay more commission. You won't get any support, it's on the same shared server as porn and gambling sites and as you drive more traffic, your site will simply crash. Use a premium managed host like Cloudways, or any other if you want to pay more. 

WP Plugins

Let’s do a quick list of the recommended backend plugins.

• LiteSpeed cache (speed & image optimizer)
• Wordfence Security or Sucurri (security)
• Cloudflare CDN (CDN and firewall)
• Akismet Anti-Spam or similar
• Folders (to organize images, pages & posts)
• CookieYes | GDPR Cookie Consent (for GDPR)
• Admin Menu Editor (allow you to reorganize your menu bar)
• Duplicate Page (allow you to clone pages for faster work)
• FluentSMTP (adding an SMTP service will send out admin emails from your site)
• Redirection (if you update the url of a page it redirects the old so your links will still work)

If you run a blog a SEO plugin is useful. I use RankMathSEO

Now let’s jump to themes and presence tools.

Site Design - Themes

GeneratePress

If you want to go with a clean, minimalistic, fast theme, Generatepress is a great one, I use it on this site too. Their premium plugin will provide you with most that you need for a content sites.

The basic theme is free, the premium plugin for unlimited sites (!) is only 50$ (1 time). 

Their name should be Generous-press for that value.

Thrive Suite

For conversion pages or where design is important, a well written visual builder will give you wings. Most however are creating a messy code, slowing your site and honestly being a pain to work with.

I honestly believe that the very best choice is Thrive Architect+Theme builder (these 2 or the whole Suite). Unfortunately they have been acquired lately, and as a consequence it became twice as much.

If you are on a short budget pay for a quarter only, cancel, then next year again to upgrade everything. Or hopefully by then you earn more than enough to pay the full fee. 

Why not Elementor?

Elementor is pretty, but it is also slow as shit. (SlaS) It slows you site badly. The work experience is also somewhat tedious compare to Thrive. 

Thrive is not only faster and better with meaningful conversion elements, but when used along with their other plugins you get a very advanced, well oiled ecosystem.

I use Architect for sales pages and page design, Theme builder for the overall page and menu design.

It is extremely effective and easy to work with, you have all the blocks and styling options you would ever want. They have a plethora of templates and ready-to-use blocks, even with no design or landing page experience you can put together a modern, well polished site with sales pages that will look better than what most sites have.

It’s tempting to go over the top though because you can literally do everything design-wise.

The great advantage of Architect however is that you will not need any more ‘element’ plugins ever. From contact forms to clocks to tables to toggle areas to hover color changes to icons and an entire landing page library... everything is in it.

Unfortunately you can purchase the plugins one by one anymore. There is a Theme builder+Architect option for $167/year (1 site), or a full suite subscription for 299/year.

I recommend you to buy the quarterly option and then upgrade at Black Friday to the yearly.

Course platform - Thrive Apprentice 4.0

From a very rigid, meh Learning management plugin it was, the new generation of Apprentice transformed into the most customizable, versatile and awesome LMS & Membership plugin there is. Nothing comes close. 

Apprentice gives you the ability to create the exact learning experience you want to instead of just use an okayish layout. As it is with other plugins (or course platforms).

What you pay is the extra time invested to tweak everything. But what you do get is class. 

Suite up or not?

Architect, Themes and the new 4.0 Apprentice are head and shoulders above the competition.

The rest of the Thrive plugins are not the best in their class, but as a package they offer tremendous value. There are 3 that stand out: Thrive Automator, Th. Ultimatum and Th. Optimizer.

Ecommerce

If you want to sell on your site, you will need something of an ecommerce manager. This will give you a checkout and a product manager.

SureCart

If you are selling digital products or services the best choice is - by far - SureCart. The free tier is already too good to be true, a stylish customizable checkout experience with single paid, payment plan or subscription products. 

On the paid version you can add upsells, bumpsells and more. 

Clean UI, great functions, beautiful checkouts. The best thing in SureCart is that it is headless, meaning that the heavy lifting is done on their servers, not slowing down your site. 

The downside is their lack of integrations, particularly on Affiliate managers. (only AffiliateWP)

WooCommerce + Cartflows

Woo is a bloated, slow but massively popular webshop plugin that can be turned into a streamlined checkout funnel with an additional plugin called Cartflows. 

Because it's popular, everything integrates with it. Unfortunately a lot of things are exclusively for Woocommerce. 

The main plugin is free, but once you want to add subscription payment or other functions you have to add premium plugins. 

Affiliate Manager plugin

If you sell something you should have an affiliate program. It's the most effective and efficient way to get the ball rolling. You can pay cpc later from your revenue.  If you use SureCart your only option will be AffiliateWP, which is not bad as a tool, a bit overpriced compared to other options.

Unfortunately these other options are Woocommerce only.
Solid Affiliate and Coupon Affiliate for Woo are both excellent options, the first is link the second is coupon centric. 

Hosted site & course platforms

I don't think you should choose a platform that doesn't allow you to sell & lock pages. You actually want to sell something, if you just run a blog, then why would you pay more than 12/mo on Cloudways and build a WP blog site.

If you only need a few profile page (or sales page) use

Carrd

$19/year, few templates, easy peasy, up and running in no time. You can combine this with an email tool, and run a lean business.

Podia

Podia is in my opinion the best course platform giving you blog and landing page functionalities as well as a well oiled course site. You can sell courses, ebooks, consulting services etc for the shred of the cost of like Kajabi. 

If you want the fast and easy, choose them. 

Circle

If you want to build a paid community centric business, you can run it on Circle. It also support courses these days. I write an entire free mini course on how to do it.