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If you are on the internet, you are very much vulnerable to security attacks, hackers, and threats no matter what. The Internet is filled with all sorts of people, and to make sure you are safe on the internet and your information remains with you only, you need to take specific steps. A very prominent step in one of them is getting a reliable VPN service.

What is a VPN?

A VPN or a Virtual Private Network is an encrypted connection built over the internet from a device to an entire network. In simple terms, VPN adds an extra layer of security via encryption to an insecure or less secure public network. This means that your web browsing and surfing experience is more secure and safe.

Just saying “an extra layer of security” is only a fraction of what VPN is capable of. If you are a frequent user of a public network like a coffee shop or a co-working space, a reliable VPN service can protect you from many security problems and data leaking possibilities. On top of this, since a VPN is a private network hosted elsewhere, it can also help you in the viewing country, or area restricted content quickly.

How Does VPN Work?

When you browse the internet, a query is generated and sent to the resources you are requesting. This query travels through numerous servers, physically spread over the world. The thing with these servers is that you cannot rely on them when it comes to security and protection of your data. If somebody wants to hack into what you are entering, they can tap into your network and gain access to all your data. Hackers and even government can easily tap into what you are sending and receiving and can easily exploit that data to harm you or your business. A VPN creates a private network that works as a middleman and acts as a point to point network connection between you and the VPN server.  When a Virtual Private Network is in place, your search request is encrypted and then gets sent to the VPN server. Then the VPN server requests the data from the source website or address and encrypts it before sending it back to your device. This way, your internet connection remains secure and far away from hackers, malware, your internet service provider, and even the government.

Why WordPress Users Require a VPN service?

So, we now know what VPNs are used for and how they can help you in maintaining a secure network over the internet. Let’s take a look at why you need a VPN service. Why don’t we look at this with the help of an example? Let’s say you are working on your website or your client’s website from a coffee shop and minding your own business. Since you are on a public network like a coffee shop, you are vulnerable to attacks and data breaches since literally anybody can get access to the wifi network quickly. I mean, how hard it is to ask the barista for the wifi password?

Once a hacker gets the wifi access, they can tap into what you are sending and requesting from your system. For example, you enter the details of your WordPress admin dashboard, your details and credentials can be stolen. If you are accessing through an HTTPS, you are much more secure. This is because the traffic is already encrypted, but this is not always the case. For example, if you are working on a client website without SSL certification, your only reliable way to deal with this is by using a virtual private network or VPN.So, if you, too, are a WordPress user, you can log into any website and from any network, private or public, without worrying about data theft or any hacking attack. With a VPN, you can also boost the security for your website. For example, if you have a VPN service that comes with a dedicated IP Address, you can create a VPN with static IP, that way, you will be able to safely access your website no matter where you are in the world. You can restrict some sensitive parts of your website to only accessible from a specific IP address with this, making your data more secure.

How to Choose the Best VPN as a WordPress User?

There are quite a few good VPNs out there, and if you are going to buy one of those, you need to make sure that you know the things you should be looking for. If you are not aware of what VPNs are, I would strongly recommend that you go through these points before making a purchase. If you do not want to do that, you can go through our list of top 3 VPNs for WordPress users and can choose the one you like. But before we get there, let’s discuss what features make a VPN service worth going for.

Here are the things that you must look at before selecting a VPN service.

Easy Setting Up

Nothing is worth going after if it only complicates things, and this applies to VPN service providers as well. You need to go with a provider, which makes your jobs more effortless and secure. Ideally, you can select a provider with an easy setup and getting started guide and can be set up without any technical assistance requirement.

Performance & Bandwidth

You do not want a slow bandwidth VPN. It can be pretty annoying in your daily usage and can kill your productivity as well. If the VPNs do not have the infrastructure to support faster connections, it will reflect in your daily productivity. This is something you do not want.

Dedicated IP

Not all, but some VPNs allow you to pay a little more, and for that extra amount, you get a dedicated IP address. This address can be beneficial if you want to restrict some parts of your website. Parts like super admin controls, or any other sensitive side of your website which you do not want to be accessible from anywhere in the world. For such scenarios, a dedicated IP address is perfect.

Servers and Physical Locations

The more servers the VPN provider has, the more options you get to choose from. Having more servers will allow you to get access to content which is locked based on the geographical locations, and you always get the option to jump from a slower location server to a faster one.

Data Security and Privacy

After all, you are doing this to add an extra layer of security. Why leave this out now? You need to make sure that your VPN service provider comes with the best layer of added security to protect you from any potential issues and attacks. 

Price

Last but not the least cared about. Do not directly go ahead with the cheapest option out there but see and compare the features and return you get for the price you pay. Also, you can take a look at the prices for more extended periods. You will see a significant difference in the price you pay for monthly plans vs. the price you pay for the yearly rates. With these things to keep in mind, you can now take a look at the top 3 VPNs for WordPress users out there. You should do an individual check and see if the VPN clears the requirement or not. Let’s have a look at the top 3 VPNs for WordPress.

Top 3 VPN Services for WordPress Users

Here are the top three WordPress VPN services that you can go with. All these services are excellent, and you can choose any of these VPNs, and you will get one of the best deals out there.

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is a very popular option when it comes to VPN service. Moreover, ExpressVPN has a strong network of servers with over 145 locations in 94 countries. Not just standard encryption, they offer industry level encryption. It is super useful in keeping your identity secure and protecting you from any targeted malicious attack. Coming to ease of use, it comes with a fleet of apps compatible with all platforms and devices. While the download and surfing speed is awe-inspiring with ExpressVPN, the user-friendly apps make up most of the USP of the VPN service provider. Even If you have no experience with VPNs, ExpressVPN is one of the best services you can get. Any beginner with minimal knowledge with a VPN will be able to set it up quickly.

Key features of ExpressVPN:

Ease of Connectivity

So far, one of the best features of ExpressVPN is that it is super easy to get started. No matter what device or platform you are using, ExpressVPN will have a solution for that. ExpressVPN comes with a dedicated app for almost every device.

• macOS
• Windows
• iOS
• Linux
• Android

On top of these platforms, if you are surfing the internet and looking for encryption help on your browser, they have extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and even Safari. Other than WordPress usage, if you want to stream Netflix from another or wish to join a server in another country using PlayStation, you can do that too with ExpressVPN. You can connect to AppleTV, Fire TV, Smart TV, Playstation, and loads of other devices. If you can configure the router yourself, great! But if you do not know how to configure your router, ExpressVPN sells pre-configured routers that require no setup.

Server Locations

The ExpressVPN is spread over 160 locations in 94 countries with unlimited server switches and speed. This makes it possible for you to connect from anywhere in the world.

Privacy

ExpressVPN is equipped with top-notch privacy protection practices, which is sure to protect you from any malicious attack. The service comes with hacking and surveillance protection with 256-bit AES encryption, kill switch, DNS/IPv6leak protection, and split tunneling.

Pricing

ExpressVPN allows you to use the VPN on three servers simultaneously with a single subscription. Regarding plans, they range depending on the duration of the billing. Here are the details of the three plans: For the monthly billing, price is $12.95 per month. For six months plan, the price comes to $9.99 per month. And, for the yearly plan, the monthly cost comes down to $6.67 per month, with a total of 99.95 billed annually. You also get a bonus of 3 months with the yearly plan.

Go To ExpressVPN 

SurfShark VPN

While other companies listed here are considered the big players, and someone might say they are a popular option. But other reliable and stable VPNs are entering the market recently. And SurfShark VPN is one of those emerging companies.SurfShark is a trustworthy VPN company with secure infrastructure and fast servers. While it might have fewer servers and locations, it does have some unique features that set it apart from others.SurfShark offers the best plans and pricing options that will fit even the tightest budgets. This feature does make SurfShark one of the most affordable VPN services out there.

Features of SurfShark VPN:

Reliable Security

SafeShark does a great job of keeping your data and information secure, so it does not land in the wrong hands. With the encryption techniques and protocols (OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPsec) being used are the best in the industry.

Anonymity

SurfShark can easily cloak your IP address and redirect it through a secure VPN tunnel. This allows you to stay anonymous no matter what you do online. Also, like other VPNs, SurfShark comes with a kill switch, as well.

Privacy First policy

SurfShark is based in the British Virgin Islands, as well. This helps SurfShark in keeping away from strict data retention laws. With the no-logs policy, SurfShark does not have anything to give up, which is a big plus in case the government ever requests the logs in the jurisdiction they are in.

Unlimited Devices

You can connect with as many devices you want with SurfShark. Since you can connect all your devices like computers, mobiles, TVs, routers, tablets, etc. with SurfShark, it makes it possible for you to browse privately entirely.

Other Notable Features:

Whitelist

With the split tunneling feature, you will be able to create separate tunnels. This makes it possible for you to whitelist websites that go through the natural passageways and a different tunnel to direct all the other traffic through the encrypted passageway.

MultiHop

MultiHop makes it possible for you to connect from different countries at once, making it possible for you to take your ID protection and footprint masking to a different level.

Camouflage Mode

Camouflage mode adds an additional mask on your encryption, which assures that even your ISP can’t tell if you are using a VPN.

Pricing

The price of SurfShark starts at $1.99 per month if you go for the two-year plan, and for the 12-month plan, it costs $5.99 per month. If you want a single month plan, you can get it for 11.95 per month.

Go To SurfShark VPN

NordVPN

Another very popular option is the VPN industry is NordVPN, with more than 5000 servers located in over 62 countries. This VPN service comes with a suite of easy to use apps as well, which makes it super easy to get started.NordVPN allows you to connect with up to six devices and on different server locations simultaneously.

Features of NordVPN

Let’s take a look at the notable features of NordVPN:

Privacy and Security

NordVPN is equipped with almost everything you’ll need to make your WordPress website sessions secure. You get the DNS leak protection, No logs policy, AES- 256 encryption. And even the Kill switch functionality to assure that your connection is always secure.

Server Locations

As mentioned earlier, NordVPN has more than 5000 servers spread in over 60 countries. This does add up to the features of a VPN as you can connect from various locations if required.

Ease of Connectivity

Like other popular VPN providers, NordVPN has dedicated apps connectivity. Connectivity with windows, iOS, macOS, Android, Linux, and they also have browser extensions for Chrome and FireFox.

Pricing and Plans

When it comes to pricing, NordVPN does have outstanding offers. If you are planning for a long term investment like a 3-year plan, you can get NordVPN for a great price of just $3.49 per month. The two-year plans come at $4.99 per month. If you want a yearly plan, you can get it for $6.99. If you’re going to try out NordVPN for a single month, you can get it for $11.95 per month.

Go To NordVPN

Winding Up – What is the VPN of your choice?

The VPNs listed above are the best in the industry. You can choose from any of the 3 VPNs, and you will do just fine. If you have specific requirements, so make sure to check them before purchasing the VPN of your choice.

Introduction

When you start a business, you should create a website, anyway, if you want to promote it and become well-known, at least at the local scale. This is how the modern world works. Fortunately, you have three opportunities here. The first one is to learn a programming language and hand-code a site, in other words, say goodbye to your time.

The second option is to hire a web developer/studio to do all the work for you, in other words, say goodbye to your money.  

Or you can go for website builders — offline or online tools for creating professional business sites that don’t require any special knowledge. This is exactly as simple as it sounds: a good website builder allows you to craft, customize and promote your site with no special coding or design skills. Nowadays, even developers prefer website builders to time-consuming and unnecessary manual work.

uKit or Ukit is notably worth the attention. Being one of the biggest players in the website building niche in more than 15 countries and constantly growing in the rest of the world market, it is perfect for creating a sleek and quality business website. Why? Let’s figure it out.

What is uKit?

uKit – is great for small and medium-sized businesses, it caters to many industries or types of business. In general, by looking into the template library, you could single out three main groups based on different purposes, which are business, eCommerce,and personal. 

Business websites are what uKit specializes in, so the service provides plenty of templates designed for various industries: from apartment repair services to agricultural services, automotive to event planning, education to games, beauty services to sports, fashion to dancing, and more. Also, uKit can boast powerful business features like subscription forms, email marketing, promotion wizard, SEO tools, built-in statistics, etc.

For those who are going to launch an online store, uKit has a great variety of eCommerce functionality.

You can sell products and services, set up order forms and shipping and payment methods, choose the currency for store items (they are 11 in number), and so on.

UKit covers personal websites to the same extent and offers a lot of beautifully designed templates and a few tools for those who’d like to share some bits of their lives with the public or flaunt their creativity through photography, art or something like that.

All in all, you can search the necessary template by theme, keyword, and a color scheme. A separate group of one-pager templates and Premium designs is also available for Basic, eCommerce or Pro account holders.

Now, let’s take a peek at the range of features and tools of the uKit website builder.

uKit Features and Tools

Actually, it could take all day to list every single one of uKit’s features. So, it was decided to pick out some of the most important ones for you to consider.

Firstly, uKit hosts your site for you whatever plan you have, so you don’t have to pay for hosting separately. Secondly, the service’s development speed is great, which also makes it one of the top website builders in any rating table. To say nothing of the uKit Support Team that instantly reacts to users’ requests and comments, letting the Ukit developers implement some of the users’ ideas and improve the platform.

The feature set of this software is solid and practical and, at the same time, is based on the easy drag’n’drop system to help you make light work of creating a website. This means you literally drag elements (such as texts, lists, photos, icons, buttons, etc.) onto pages on your screen, move them around and resize them, without having to write a single line of code.

As for the structure of the uKit interface, it contains four modes of work: Site Pages, Builder, Design, and Preview Mode.

The Design Mode allows users to change the pictures, colors, fonts, configure the background, icon animation effects and block shadow, create a parallax effect for the pictures and it’s not the end of the list. There, in the advanced settings, you can add the “Back to Top” button, which is a must-have for a landing page, enable animation for widgets, and turn on a website version for visually impaired.

However, there’s one small snag: a limited set of color schemes of templates. To create your own custom color scheme or fonts, you will have to upgrade your current plan to Pro.

In the Pages Mode, users can add or delete pages, change their order and names, duplicate them, edit their content, etc. Besides, you can configure pop-up windows, 404 page, and Privacy Policy and User Agreement pages. If you are creating an online store website, in the Pages Mode you’ll be able to fine-tune the Checkout and Order Success pages.

To customize your site for any device, you should go to the Preview Mode. uKit layouts can be adjusted to desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes. All the desired blocks and header/footer can be hidden if necessary. 

The pillar of any uKit website is the Builder Mode that contains numerous widgets such as live chat, callback, slider, price list, and so on. Plus, the service lets users take advantage of specific, pre-programmed content blocks (a themed grouping of widgets – image galleries, slideshows, contact forms, text boxes, etc.) and organize them (transform, add or remove) in the desired way.

What may appeal to an inveterate social media junkie is social media buttons and an option to turn their Facebook page/group into a website in a few minutes (!!!) and manage its content.

The online store owner will benefit from Product, Card or Price List widgets. Moreover, uKit gives access to external services such as Ecwid Shop and Cost Calculator. The latter is about creating a form for calculating the total cost of products and/or services, which attracts customers a lot.

uKit Templates

A couple of words about uKit Templates: they are over 300 in number, and the designers didn’t skimp on the themes (over 30). That is to say that among such a curated collection of the templates anyone is sure to find what suits the site. Even the templates for one-pagers are grouped into a separate category so you won’t have to select a multi-page template, delete unnecessary pages and edit the one that is left, i.e. waste your time on redundant actions.

uKit SEO and Promotion Tools

Regarding SEO tools, you can configure meta tags for each page for the correct display of your website in search engine results and social media, and connect Google Analytics to monitor statistics and adjust promotional strategies.

On top of this, in the built-in Promotion tool, a user can see what extent the website is optimized to based on 5 criteria and can get advice on how to improve each of them.

uKit Pricing Plans

uKit isn’t a free website building service. And yet, you get a 14-day free trial period to try all the features of the desired plan. Whatever plan you would opt for, if you pay for 3 or 6 months, 1 or 2 years in advance, you get considerable discounts.

Now, about the plans. uKit has four: Minimal, Basic, eCommerce, and Pro. The Minimal Plan costs $5/mo and offers a rich collection of themed layouts and secure hosting for your website. Basic includes advanced statistics, online chat with the Support Team and access to premium designs. eCommerce is mostly for online store owners and gives access to the Product widget and Store Settings. As for the Pro Plan, it’s for advanced users because it includes more creative and coding possibilities such as HTML code editor and custom color schemes.

Final Verdict

uKit is a worthwhile investment for your business. It’s uncluttered, beginner-friendly, and easy to use and navigate. An excellent collection of templates makes the design editing process seamless. Built-in tools and features are sure to turn the website of your dreams into reality.

Once you’ve got a hang of things at uKit, you’ll then have a better idea of which subscription plan is right for you. uKit hits the spot! Just try and see it for yourself.

Go to: uKit

Founded in 2003, Accu Web Hosting is an experienced US provider with a huge range of web hosting products and services.

There are shared hosting, VPS and dedicated servers, for instance. WordPress hosting and application hosting. cloud hosting, reseller hosting, load balancers, backup schemes, domain registration, SSL certificates and more.

You’re not restricted to Linux products. Just about everything in the range is also available in a Windows flavor, though for a small price premium.

Shared plans can be hosted in US, Europe, Singapore, South Africa, India and Australia, and VPS and dedicated plans add more options (Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, South Korea, Japan, more.)

Most products are highly configurable. Looking for an unmanaged VPS, maybe? Control panel options include cPanel, Plesk and DirectAdmin, or the company can install free options like ISPConfig, Ajenti or ZPanel. You’re after a US dedicated server? Accu Web has so many options – hundreds – that the website uses eight separate filters to help you find what you need.

• Want to try Accu Web Hosting? Check out the website here

Accu Web Hosting plans don’t claim to offer unlimited bandwidth and storage, but we don’t see that as an issue. The limits are generally set very high; even the cheapest shared hosting plan includes 10GB storage and 500GB monthly bandwidth, probably enough for most consumer and many business sites. And in reality, all providers have limits: they just hide them behind vague ‘fair usage’ clauses in the small print, ensuring no-one knows what they are.

Headline prices aren’t quite the lowest, but they’re very reasonable (shared hosting from $3.09 a month on the three year plan, VPS from $10 on an annual plan), and they often get better when you drill into the details (VPS plans are fully managed, for instance.)

(When you’re comparing prices, keep in mind that Accu Web doesn’t do introductory discounts, making it look a little more expensive than it really is. That’s bad if you’re hoping to save a pile on money by getting cheap hosting over three or four years. But it’s good over shorter plans, as it means your costs aren’t going to double or more on renewal.)

24/7 support is available via email, live chat and telephone (US) if you run into trouble, and you’re protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee (7-day for VPS plans.)

Shared hosting

Accu Web’s shared hosting begins with its Personal Web Hosting plan. This imposes various limits, but as we mentioned above, there’s nothing that will affect the average small site: 10GB storage, 150 email accounts and ‘only’ 500GB traffic is going to be enough for many users. (Even with a bulky web page size of 5MB, that’s 100,000-page views a month.)

Unusually, even this starter plan enables hosting as many websites as you need, within the storage limit (most providers limit you to hosting one site on their starter plan.)

Elsewhere, the plan includes all the features you’d expect: free SSL, cPanel site management, a free domain, a bundled website builder.

Prices range from $3.25 a month on the six-month plan (there’s no monthly billing, unfortunately) to $3.09 a month over three years. That’s good value, and as we mentioned above, keep in mind that this is the standard price, not some special introductory deal. It’s not going to leap on renewal.

There are two further shared hosting plans, but they essentially just give you more storage, emails and bandwidth, although the Enterprise plan (from $9.99 a month) also throws in a dedicated IP.

Shared cloud hosting offers a more scalable product, particularly useful for handling websites which have regular large spikes in traffic. Specs are similar to the regular shared plans, and prices start at a reasonable $4.79 a month.

Some providers have more appealing deals, at least at first glance. HostGator’s Baby plan, for instance, gives you unmetered storage and bandwidth from $2.75 a month.

Check out the details, though, and it’s a different story. HostGator’s ‘unmetered’ doesn’t mean ‘unlimited’, for instance; the Baby plan only enables hosting one site, while Accu Web plans have no fixed limits; and although the Baby plan looks cheap at $2.75, you must sign up for three years to get that deal, and it renews at $6.75, more than twice Accu Web’s price.

WordPress

Accu Web’s WordPress hosting plans have a capable set of features, including some welcome pluses. All plans support hosting unlimited websites; the company will import one existing WordPress site for free; SEO and a performance-boosting Hyper Cache plugin come preinstalled, and daily backups are thrown in.

Advanced features include GIT-based version control and WP-CLI to manage WordPress via the command line, while staging enables editing your WordPress project without affecting the production site.

Pricing is barely any different to Accu Web’s regular shared hosting, starting at $3.49 a month over three years for 10GB storage and 500GB traffic.

There are more capable managed WordPress plans about. Bluehost and IONOS WordPress Pro plans both support auto-updating of plugins, as well as WordPress itself, for instance.

But these more high-end products can also cost 2, 3 or more times as much as Accu Web’s offering. If you’re getting started with WordPress and not creating some business-critical site, it makes sense to start with a budget product and upgrade later, if you find you need the extra features.

Servers

Accu Web Hosting’s VPS range aims to boost website performance by giving you dedicated RAM and CPU resources.

Starter prices are low at only $5 billed monthly (yes, monthly- no long-term contracts required), but that’s because the base plan is relatively underpowered: self-managed, 1GB RAM, 20GB storage and only 150GB traffic (even A2’s most basic shared hosting plan gives you 500GB.)

Its managed SSD Saturn VPN plan gets you 4GB RAM, four CPU cores, 50GB storage and 650GB bandwidth, all for $48 a month on the annual plan.

Comparing plans with other hosts is difficult as there are so many factors to consider, but to take a single example, Bluehost’s Enhanced VPS includes a similar 4GB RAM, two CPU cores and 60GB storage and a chunky 2TB bandwidth. Its introductory price is fractionally lower at $29.99 for all plan lengths, but doubles on renewal to $59.99. If you need the extra bandwidth, Bluehost looks good; if CPU cores and long-term cost is a priority, maybe Accu Web is best. 

Accu Web’s dedicated plans are so configurable that there’s no space to begin to cover them here, but essentially you’re able to select a data center, then choose from a large number of base servers, each of which supports adding a RAID card, control panel, SQL Server (Express, Web, Standard and Enterprise editions), mail server, CDP backup plan, firewall, IPv6 address and more.

Bandwidth allocations are high, with even the cheapest US server getting you 20TB, and prices start at a bargain $118. 

Beware, though: specs and prices vary considerably, depending on the data center you choose (Singapore has only a handful of servers, and even $500 a month systems only give you 10TB traffic a month, although you can add more.) Browse the Dedicated Server product pages carefully to see if they’re right for you.

Signing up

The Accu Web Hosting website has some very in-depth comparison tables of its various plans, handy when you’re trying to choose whatever is best for you.

Most of these tables include pricing for various subscription lengths, too. If you’ve spent time shopping for hosting you’ll know that many providers bury those that vital details, so it’s good to see Accu Web being more up-front with its customers.

We selected the cheapest shared hosting plan, and were offered a small selection of optional extras: a premium SSL certificate for $49.99 a year, CDN support for a monthly $3.95, and SpamExperts-based spam filtering to protect up to 100 mailboxes for $5.85 quarterly ($1.95 a month.)

Creating an account is a little more secure than usual (or involves more hassle, depending on your point of view.) As well as requesting your name, physical and email address and mobile phone number, the company validates your identity by sending you a text with a one-time password.

Accu Web Hosting supports payment via card and PayPal. We paid via PayPal in the usual way, and while we did that, a text arrived with our password.

Once verified, Accu Web Hosting set up and activated our account at speed, and within 15 minutes a Welcome email arrived with logins, FTP credentials, nameservers and every other detail you might want to know.

Creating a site

Logging in to Accu Web Hosting took us to a familiar WHMCS-based account management dashboard, as used by the majority of smaller web hosts. This doesn’t have much visual appeal, but it includes all the account, product and support features you need, and if you’ve used a few other hosts you’ll probably recognize it right away.

A couple of clicks takes you to Accu Web’s full-featured cPanel setup, where you’ll find several tools to help create a site.

Softaculous is on hand for easy installation of WordPress, MediaWiki, PrestaShop and hundreds of other web apps.

RV sitebuilder is a simple drag-and-drop website builder. It doesn’t have many templates but there are plenty of widgets and editing options, and we’re glad it’s included in Accu Web’s plans.

The standard cPanel File Manager enables creating and organizing folders, uploading and editing files and generally getting your web space in order.

There are all the usual website management features, too, including tools to work with domains and subdomains, create databases, create and manage email accounts and, when you’re up and running, get in-depth stats on your website visitors.

All websites run into problems occasionally, whatever your host, but Accu Web Hosting has more ways to help than most: live chat, email, telephone, a web knowledgebase and some busy social media sites.

There’s a huge amount of content available on the knowledgebase alone: 28 articles on CDN hosting, 39 covering email client settings, even 63 Plesk tutorials. The articles help cover practical tasks (‘How to install a WordPress theme’) as well as installation and troubleshooting, making the support site a genuinely useful resource.

Performance

Web host speed matters, even when you’re buying the most basic of shared hosting. Your website visitors may not stick around if they’re regularly kept waiting by a sluggish server. 

To get a feel for Accu Web Hosting’s performance, we signed up for a very simple shared hosting account and uploaded a very basic website.

Next, we used Uptime.com to check the availability and response time of our test site at five-minute intervals over a 7-day period (that’s more than 2,000 individual checks.)

The results showed our site had 100% uptime, with no outages detected. That’s what we expect for a short-term test, but some hosts don’t manage it.

Response times averaged 285ms, almost identical to the 289ms we saw during the last review, in the mid-range of what we would expect for a basic shared hosting package. (And remember, that’s what we’re testing. These results tell us nothing about what you might see from Accu Web Hosting’s other products.)

Accu Web Hosting scored for its consistency, too. Results ranged from 248-485ms, but there are only a handful of readings above 400ms, and our site mostly returned results in a very acceptable 250-300ms range.

Final verdict

No marketing tricks, no misleading headline prices, no ‘unlimited’ accounts which really aren’t – Accu Web Hosting has a strong range of quality products, very configurable fairly priced, honestly described and with quality support. Go take a look.

• Want to try Accu Web Hosting? Check out the website here

Unstoppable Domains Review 

Unstoppable Domains is the most well-known blockchain domain company. It was founded in San Francisco in 2018 by Matthew Gould, Braden Pezeshki, Bogdan Gusiev and  Bradley Kam. 

The team is currently made up of over 48 employees. They have raised a total of $5.2 million so far over two rounds of venture capital funding. 

Unstoppable’s most popular domains are .crypto and .zil. 

What is a Blockchain Domain? 

Blockchain domains aim to greatly simplify the process of both sending and receiving cryptocurrencies.  

Traditionally the process is complex and prone to errors. When a user wishes to receive crypto they will need to provide their public address to the sender. As an example, Bitcoin public addresses are around 30 characters. As you can imagine it is easy to make an error within these 30 characters, an error would mean that the BTC would either be sent to another address or be lost. 

By using a blockchain domain like the ones that Unstoppable Domain’s offer all a sender or receiver needs to know is the domain address such as johnsmith@bitcoin.com. This makes the whole process far simpler and less prone to errors. 

Key Questions 

What Cryptocurrencies Do Unstoppable Domains Support? 

Unstoppable Domains currently support over 70 different cryptocurrencies including all of the major ones like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Cardano, XRP, Tether, Chainlink, Vechain, 0x and many more. 

How Do I Set Up My Unstoppable Domains Wallet? 

Once you have purchased your domain (.crypto being the best option). Your Unstoppable Domains .crypto domain can be connected to a number of web3 (browser-based wallets) or mobile wallets.  

Desktop/Browser/Web3 Wallets 

Metamask  

Opera 

Brave 

Google Chrome Browser Extension 

Mobile Wallets 

Unstoppable Domains App  

Coinbase Wallet  

Trust Wallet  

imToken  

Coinomi  

MEW (My Ether Wallet) mobile  

Have a look at this guide page for more information. 

How Can I Receive Payments Using Unstoppable Domains? 

Go to the ‘my domains’ section of the unstoppabledomains.com website, then add your cryptocurrency (e.g. Ethereum) address to your domain. When the sender of funds types your domain in to their supporting wallet they can then send ETH to that address. 

Do I Have to Pay To Renew My Domain? 

Once your domain has been purchased there are no ongoing renewal fees or hidden costs, the domain is yours for life. 

If you are interested in purchasing your own blockchain domain via Unstoppable Domains head over to their website using this link. 

Whatever type of website you have, you’re probably going to want to generate leads from your visitors. Doing so will give you an opportunity to get in touch with them after they’ve left your site.

In this Thrive Leads review, we’ll explore a powerful WordPress lead generation plugin that can help you connect with your visitors, grow your audience, or make your business more profitable.

What are Leads and Why Do You Need Them?

Leads can be described as individuals that you have the opportunity to follow up on, or reconnect with. If a visitor arrives at your website and performs a certain action, such as submitting a form, they become a lead. You then have the ability to contact those leads, via email or another mode of communication, and present them with further opportunities. These opportunities could be returning to your site to check out a new blog post, purchasing a product, or hiring your services.

If you’re running an ecommerce store or selling a service online, then the benefit of generating leads should be obvious.

But even if you’re just a beginner blogger, you can still benefit from generating leads from your audience.  By collecting emails from your visitors, then adding them to your subscriber list – with their permission of course – you can turn one-time website visitors into repeat returners.

So know that you know what leads are and why should be collecting them, it’s time to cover how you can go about generating them from your WordPress website with our hands-on review.

Introduction to the Thrive Leads WordPress Plugin

Although leads come in many varieties, if you’re running a WordPress website, email addresses of your visitors are probably the type of lead you are most interested in. But how do you go about adding the ability to collect emails to your website, let alone persuade your visitors to enter their precious contact details?

One option for adding this functionality to your website is to use a lead generation WordPress plugin. When it comes to this type of plugin, Thrive Leads is one of the most powerful options around.

As we’ll see in this review, not only does this plugin handle all the technical aspects of collecting email addresses and adding them to your subscriber list, but it also has lots of features that will persuade your visitors to enter their details. Furthermore, the Thrive Leads plugin will help you optimize your lead generation efforts, and turn your blog, website, or ecommerce store, into a lead generating asset.

So, if that sounds interesting, let’s explore the best features of the Thrive Leads plugin to see how this tool could help you generate more leads from your WordPress website.

Thrive Leads Plugin – The Best Features

In this Thrive Leads review, we test out the best features of this plugin to see if they live up to the marketing claims and really can help you generate more leads from your existing audience. However, for a quick run-down of what this plugin can do, here are the key features of Thrive Leads:

• Competitive selection of form types – use a wide range of form types to capture leads.
• Conversion-focused library of form designs – choose from a varied selection of form and pop-up designs.
• Intuitive drag-and-drop form editor – customize the forms or design your own from scratch.
• Detailed form display and trigger options – take full control over when, where, and how your forms are displayed.
• Powerful split testing tool – use A/B and split testing to optimize your forms and find out which ones deliver the most conversions.
• Detailed tracking and reporting – remove the guesswork from generating leads and understand your audience better.

Numerous Lead Generation Form Types

Choosing the right form type for your audience can have a drastic effect on your lead generation conversion rates. For the highest rates, you’ll probably want to display different types of opt-ins and pop-ups on different parts of your website.

This could include a widget form that’s displayed in the sidebar of your blog, alongside your articles, as well as a pop-up form that’s launched when a reader is about to leave your site. You might also want to combine these forms with a ribbon that’s displayed in the header of your site, promoting a particular piece of content on your blog, or a product in your store.

With the ability to add in-content forms, lightbox pop-ups, and slide-in displays to name just a few, you’ll be able to do as much as possible to turn visitors into leads. As the different form types don’t have to be used to display a form, you could choose to present a custom message or other content to your visitors. As this review should make clear, this is a very flexible plugin that can be used in many different ways.

Let’s quickly take a look at some of the most useful form types that can help you generate more leads from your WordPress website with Thrive Leads.

Thrive Leads Lightbox Form

This is perhaps the most well-used type of form in the Thrive Leads arsenal. Displayed in the middle of the browser window, with a dark background that obscures the rest of the page, these forms often pop-up after a certain trigger has been activated.

As well see later in this review, this plugin is packed with pop-up form triggers. But some examples include when a user scrolls through a set percentage of the page, when they’ve been on the page for a certain amount of time, or if they are about to exit your site (exit intent trigger).

When the form is activated, it can be used to display an opt-in form for your email list. Alternatively, it can be used to display a custom message of your choice. Promotional messages or links to other content on your site are common uses for the pop-up lightbox form as well. However, with Thrive Leads you can add any content you like to this type of pop-up.

Ribbon Form

The type of form is displayed in the header of your website, pushing down the page content to keep the ribbon on permanent display. You can give your visitors the option of hiding the ribbon form if you wish, but how ever you configure it, this form can be a great way to share an important message with your audience.

Like the pop-up lightbox form, you can also set triggers for the ribbon form. Controlling how often it’s displayed is possible too.

In-Content Form

In-content forms are great as they can be inserted into your content wherever you feel it’s appropriate. If a reader is enjoying your content, then reaches a form in one of your articles, there’s a good chance they might sign up there and then.

You can easily insert the forms into your articles using the Thrive Leads shortcodes. Simply copy and paste the relevant shortcode into a post or page and it will be replaced with the form when the content is published. The post footer form is another similar option from Thrive Leads. This form type can be automatically displayed at the end of each blog post, giving the reader a clear indication of what to do next, once they’ve finished an article. Again, like the other Thrive Leads form types, you get full control over when and where they are displayed.

Screen Filler Form

Another powerful form type that’s sure to improve your WordPress website conversion rates is the screen filler form.  This impossible-to-ignore form does what its name suggests and fills the entire browser window. When triggered, this form type uses a lightbox window to obscure everything else on the page, leaving only an unignorable call to action.

Like the other form types discussed in this Thrive Leads plugin review, you’re free to customize the content that’s displayed. Thanks to this, you can use this effective form to capture email addresses, promote your social media profiles, or present some other opportunity to your visitors.

To avoid annoying your audience, you can give them the option of closing the screen filler form instead of taking you up on the offer that’s being presented. You can also configure this form using the powerful settings of Thrive Leads to avoid showing it too often, or to visitors who’ve already seen it.

A similar form option in the Thrive Leads toolkit is the Scroll Mat form. This form type is displayed as soon as the page loads. However, instead of using a lightbox window to overlay the page content, the regular content is pushed down the page, requiring the users to scroll past the mat to access the main content.

The form type that will deliver the best results for you, depends on your website and audience. However, Thrive Leads makes it easy to use multiple forms on different parts of your site. You can then run experiments to find out which is the most effective.

Conversion-Focused Form Designs

As well as an impressive library of form types, Thrive Leads has a good selection of form designs and templates. As one of the keys to generating leads from your WordPress website is displaying attractive opt-in forms to your visitors, it’s good to see that there’s no shortage of templates.

As you can see, form designs aren’t in short supply with the Thrive Leads plugin. Whatever type of lead you are trying to collect, or how ever you want to tempt your visitors to enter their details, Thrive Leads should have a pre-built form design to match.

From webinar registrations and product purchases to file downloads and of course, email list subscriptions, Thrive Leads has multiple form designs for you to choose from. As the Thrive Themes team is focused on creating lead generation products, including their themes and other plugins, all of the Thrive Leads form templates have been built with conversions and lead generation in mind.

As well as simply providing individual form templates, there are also collections of designs to work with. Thanks to this, you can ensure that the forms on your site have a unique design, while still following a similar style. This should help deliver a consistent user experience to your audience.

Drag-and-Drop Form Designer Tool

Thrive Leads doesn’t just give you a large library of conversion-focused form designs. You also get access to a powerful drag-and-drop form editor tool. Based on the impressive Thrive Architect page builder plugin, the Thrive Leads form template customizer tool is easy to use. As well as editing the templates, you can also just as easily create your own form designs from scratch.

When working in the Thrive Leads editor, you have the ability to drag and drop any of the content blocks on to your form design. With modules that include content reveal tools, countdown timers, Facebook comments, testimonials, and video players to name just a few, you really can create any type of design for your pop-ups, sidebar forms, and screen filler welcome mats. This aspect of the tool demonstrates that Thrive Leads definitely is more than just an email optin plugin. Whatever type of offer you want to promote, or leads you want to generate, Thrive Leads can help.

Another particularly useful feature of Thrive Leads is the ability to quickly clone a form. You can then make a few changes to the design, such as editing the text or adjusting the colors. By using the Thrive Leads split testing tool, you can then run both instances of the form design simultaneously to find out which one works best with your audience.

To summarize, the Thrive Leads form editor is a very impressive aspect of this plugin that gives you full control over the design of your pop-ups and opt-ins.

Advanced Form Trigger Options

As you might expect from a feature-rich WordPress pop-up and opt-in plugin, Thrive Leads gives you full control over when your forms and other lead generation content is displayed. Depending on the form type you’re working with, you’ll get access to a good set of options for how they’re triggered.

For example, if you’re working with the lightbox pop-up, you can choose from the popular exit intent trigger that doesn’t display the pop-up until the visitor is leaving your site, or you can wait until the visitor has spent a certain period of time on your site. Thanks to these options, you can avoid overwhelming new visitors with pop-ups, while still generating leads from your website.

With in-content forms, you can also set them to be inserted automatically after a set number of paragraphs.

More Useful Thrive Leads Features

Just in case you weren’t sure if this plugin has enough features, here are some more reasons to consider Thrive Leads:

• Content lock opt-in forms for revealing content after a sign-up.
• Multiple choice and question and answer form types.
• Click-activated pop-ups using text links or buttons.
• Form animations to catch the attention of your visitors.
• Mobile responsive designs and display controls.
• Integration with a wide range of email marketing services.

You can view the full list of Thrive Leads features on the Thrive Themes website.

Thrive Leads Pricing Information

You can get access to Thrive Leads as part of the all-inclusive Thrive Suite, which includes all products of Thrive Themes. It costs $19 per month (paid annually). There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee in place, too, should you change your mind after purchase.

Thrive Leads Review Conclusion

If you’ve been meaning to start building your email list for a while now, Thrive Leads is a powerful plugin that can help you make up for lost time.

Choosing this plugin gives you access to a powerful set of features, combined with a good selection of conversion-focused templates. In fact, there aren’t any notable features lacking from Thrive Leads that would cause you to regret choosing this tool.

So if you really want to maximize the results you get from your pop-up forms, opt-in displays, and other lead generation assets, Thrive Leads provides you with the tools, reports, and data to generate more leads with the same amount of traffic.

Pros

• Large library of form templates
• Powerful pop-up and opt-in form designer
• Useful split testing tool for optimizing forms
• Valuable reporting data to improve conversion rates

Cons

• Some form designs aren’t as modern as others
• Requires the purchase of Thrive Suite

Summary

Thrive Leads is a powerful WordPress lead generation plugin for growing email lists, promoting products, and increasing conversions.

Go to Thrive Themes website.