Impressive Hosting

Jesse Friedman interviews Oliver Sild, founder of Patch Stack, about the confusion surrounding WordPress security responsibilities. They explore why hosting companies market security they can't fully control, how customers misunderstand their role in site maintenance, and Oliver's virtual patching solution that bridges the gap between infrastructure and application-layer security. Click here to wa...

Jesse Friedman continues his conversation with Christos Paloukas from Presidio about performance optimization in managed WordPress hosting. They explore how hosting companies should proactively help customers optimize sites, the responsibility hosts have for the broader WordPress ecosystem, and why bundling performance features creates better value than piecemeal solutions that nickel-and-dime use...

Jesse Friedman interviews Christos Paloukas from Pressidium about WordPress performance optimization and load testing. They discuss mobile performance challenges, Core Web Vitals, and how slow sites directly impact sales and SEO rankings. Christos explains testing methodologies, customer expectations, and why two-thirds of global users lack access to high-speed networks. Click here to watch a vide...

Jesse Friedman continues his conversation with Aaron Campbell from hosting.com about transforming customer frustrations into delight. They explore building trust through transparent status pages, improving support communication with clear wait times, and aligning internal KPIs with actual customer success rather than efficiency metrics that game the system. Click here to watch a video of this epis...

Jesse Friedman interviews Aaron Campbell about hosting.com's recent rebrand from A2 Hosting and building trust through empathetic design. They discuss serving different customer segments, transitioning from infrastructure to product companies, and the importance of business vulnerability when problems occur. Campbell emphasizes hosting companies' responsibility to provide experiences that help Wor...

Jesse Friedman talks with Elise Prather, WP Cloud sales team member, about ethical sales practices in hosting. They discuss building relationships over using fear tactics, consultative approaches versus high-pressure sales, and how hosting companies can hit revenue targets while maintaining trust. Elise shares strategies for creating genuine partnerships with customers without compromising ethics...

Jesse Friedman continues his conversation with Ivan Pjano and Dale Obradović from Ivapix about building premium WordPress hosting without competing solely on price. They discuss automated real-time failover, custom panel design focused on user experience, and how listening to customer feedback helps small hosting companies deliver enterprise-level features while maintaining quality over quantity....

Jesse Friedman interviews Ivan Pjano and Dale Obradović from Ivapix about their custom WordPress hosting dashboard built on WP Cloud. They discuss flexible pay-per-site pricing, eliminating rigid hosting packages, and creating simplified panels focused solely on WordPress instead of bloated universal control panels that overwhelm users with unnecessary features. (00:00) - What Happens in WordPress...

Jesse Friedman continues his conversation with Krys Lambiase, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Bluehost . They explore AI's role in WordPress hosting, solving the "blank canvas problem," balancing automation with creativity, and product marketing challenges. Krys shares insights on what features should be free versus premium, and both reminisce about the "weird internet" - and how to bring...

Jesse Friedman sits down with Krys Lambiase, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Bluehost, to discuss how effective product marketing can transform WordPress hosting. They explore creating personalized experiences that guide users based on their specific goals, avoiding confusing interfaces, and extending onboarding into ongoing customer education and support. (00:00) - 106.1 - Krys Lambiase (...

Jesse Friedman continues his conversation with Tom Fanelli of Convesio about strengthening cooperation across the WordPress ecosystem. They explore host contributions to plugin improvement, value alignment between service providers, and Convesio's WP Cloud integration. Tom also shares his vision for white-label support that frees agencies to focus on creative work. 00:30 Introduction 01:12 The Rol...

In this episode of Impressive Hosting, Jesse Friedman interviews Tom Fanelli, CEO of Convesio, about their unique approach to WordPress hosting. Tom explains how Convesio differentiates itself as a platform rather than just a hosting company, focusing on containerized WordPress solutions for mid-market to enterprise clients with complex needs. The conversation explores Convesio's evolution from ta...

Jesse Friedman hosts Jessica Frick ( Pressable ) and Joshua Goode ( WP Cloud ) to define quality managed WordPress hosting. They discuss how true managed hosting provides security through site isolation, malware protection, and vulnerability scanning. Performance considerations include preventing "noisy neighbors," implementing multi-level caching, and maintaining control over third-party services...

In this episode of Impressive Hosting, Jesse Friedman speaks with Aaron Ware from Linchpin and Joshua Goode from WP Cloud at Automattic about WordPress hosting for higher education. They discuss approaching university websites, managing peak traffic during enrollment and commencement, and the debate between WordPress Multisite versus single-site implementations. The conversation covers performance...

Jesse Friedman continues his conversation with Christian Dawson from the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) about the upcoming Secure Hosting Alliance launch party at CloudFest 2025. Jesse and Christian discuss how the Alliance aims to establish industry standards for ethical hosting practices and create a trust seal to help consumers distinguish between quality providers and "fly-by-...

In this episode of Impressive Hosting, Jesse Friedman speaks with Christian Dawson, co-founder of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition), about the newly launched Secure Hosting Alliance. They discuss how competing hosting companies are coming together to establish industry standards for responsible hosting practices and proactively address issues like content moderation and security....

In this episode of Impressive Hosting, Jesse Friedman is joined by Jim Groom (Reclaim Hosting) and Ronnie Burt (Automattic) to explore the unique hosting challenges and opportunities in higher education. They discuss the power of WordPress Multisite, the importance of giving students their own digital space with "A Domain of One’s Own," and the technical strategies for scaling university-wide host...

Jesse talks with Vic Ciorbaru, Chief Development Officer at MariaDB Foundation, and Kevin Ohashi, Founder of ReviewSignal, on new open source projects they're involved in and whether or not companies who profit off of open source technology have an obligation to give back.