InMotion Hosting has a number of new developments in the works that we’ll be seeing this year. During my recent conversation with InMotion’s Co-Founder and EVP Sunil Saxena, I was interested to get his take on the effect of the new wave of website creation companies versus the traditional hosting industry. We talked about BoldGrid—the new WordPress product from InMotion Hosting (and an alternative to SquareSpace and Wix), as well as what else is in store for the company in 2016.
Web Hosting Cat: BoldGrid is the exciting new product from InMotion Hosting. Can you tell us what it’s all about and who your target market is for BoldGrid?
Sunil Saxena: We’ve been working pretty hard on BoldGrid for the last year and a half or so. It’s something we developed in-house. And, it services two different target markets in the WordPress world. The first and more obvious one is someone who wants to use WordPress to build their website–or use a CMS in general. It’s for that particular customer. But the thing we realized early on by supporting customers who use WordPress is that the learning curve to actually get to publish quality content, to put photos, and to get their website up and running was pretty painful for a lot of our folks. So, BoldGrid really helps that particular avatar by making it a lot quicker and easier to get a beautiful website up and running. So that part is pretty straight forward. And, I think what it does is that it really allows people to use WordPress the way they think they should be using it.
On the flip side, and I say it’s kind of a dual approach is, if you’re a WordPress developer or designer, we’ve really put some special widgets, some special pieces into BoldGrid that’ll help you save time as a WordPress developer. And, anybody who builds many WordPress sites per month knows stuff like image selection; stuff like content can really be a time sink. So using BoldGrid as a developer is also something that we’re really going after.
WHC: BoldGrid appears to be a viable alternative for those looking for an easy way to create professional websites, yet still receive the benefits of a traditional web hosting plan—unlike website creation companies such as SquareSpace or Wix.com. Has there been an impact by these types of companies on the tradition web hosting industry?
SS: Those players have eaten into the traditional hosting market space. A lot of our customers who maybe ten, five years ago would call us to get a website now look at SquareSpace or Wix to build their website. It’s really gone from saying “I want hosting” to “I want a website” for certain customers.
WHC: How do you see things playing out in the future between traditional web hosting and these website creation companies?
SS: The one fundamental issue we have with some of those other third party softwares is that you are locked into their ecosystem. So for example, you build a site with Wix, there is no migration, there is no moving away from Wix. There’s no moving it to a different service provider. If you have to leave, you can’t. You’re handcuffed. One of the main things about BoldGrid is that you can use it with us or you can use it with any other hosting company that can support the WordPress infrastructure. So you have that flexibility to own your own website. I think that’s a big thing for business owners—especially as they scale.
WHC: Can you give us an update on InMotion Hosting offering bare metal cloud hosting?
SS: We actually have an internal beta out already. I really like to refer to it as High Availability Hosting. It’s going to be out at the end of this particular quarter—maybe the early part of Q2. And we’re very excited about that. The high availability side will really help us leverage our VPS and our Dedicated and our Reseller customers to have the platform and the applications that they need to really make their businesses successful.
WHC: What other exciting things will we see in the future from InMotion Hosting?
SS: Obviously we’re excited about the products that we’re having. You’ll see some international expansion come out of us towards the end of the year as well. And then, really it’s going back to providing some more solutions for our Shared, VPS, Dedicated, and Reseller customers. It’s really going back and making sure that we are the market leaders in providing the very best hosting platform.
We introduced SSDs about a year, a year and a half ago across all of our products. That’s been a great success. And we have a few more things in our bag that I’m excited to let you guys know about in about six months or so that will continue to make our hosting platform a solid solution for web developers, designers, and business owners so that they can run and execute their business and have the speed, the functionality, and the tools that they need to be successful.
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