20i website hosting: is greener hosting better?

Bottom line upfront

I’m very happy with 20i managed WordPress hosting. Performance is excellent, it’s easy to use, backups are free, and support is superb. Quite a difference from my previous “green” website hosting provider (GreenGeeks).

Why did I switch to 20i as my green managed WordPress hosting provider?

I switched to 20i for managed WordPress hosting because:

• Their eco-friendly claims stand up to scrutiny
• They offer better performance than I was getting with my previous host
• Pricing is competitive
• Website management is much easier than on my previous host
• Pre-sales, migration, and ongoing support has been excellent

Where I was coming from

Previously, I used GreenGeeks to host two WordPress websites for many years. I used a couple of their plans, starting with Lite and moving to Pro for performance benefits. The initial pricing was very good on both, but the discounts expired and both became more expensive.

When my last GreenGeeks renewal came up there was a significant hike in price which I didn’t feel was justified by service or website performance. Support quality and options had declined over the years. Backups and restores weren’t free (except the first one in any month). I was never able to generate the faster speed test scores that I wanted.

What was I looking for?

My criteria were, in order of importance:

1. Green practices and credentials
2. Performance
3. Easier website management and free backups
4. Support
5. Price

After a lot of research and a trial phase, I decided that 20i ticked all my boxes. In contrast, my previous website host (GreenGeeks) failed on all of them.

20i met and even exceeded my expectations

Green practices and credentials

I want to do my bit to reduce my carbon footprint. One step in that direction is to try to make my website an eco-friendly website. So green WordPress hosting is important to me.

It’s essential to question any supposedly eco-friendly website hosting provider’s claims about their green-ness. Do they walk the walk (practice green business daily) or just talk the talk (buy a free pass with “offsets”)?

20i’s green hosting commitment is end-to-end and effective

20i’s green website hosting is pro-active: green energy, green data centre, and green day-to-day business practices. Their offices use solar energy, they’ve gone paperless, and their lighting is all LED. Their servers are powered 100% by renewable energy. They “auto-scale” website provisioning so that when a website is busy it gets additional resources, and when it’s not so busy, resources are scaled back. They encourage employees to work from home, car share, and take advantage of a cycle to work scheme.

The Green Web Foundation agrees that my 20i website hosting is really green:

GreenGeeks’ green claims are meaningless

In contrast, GreenGeeks’ eco-efforts are an illusion. I’m going to go on a little rant because it’s important.

I’d been with GreenGeeks for years. I just assumed that because “Green” is literally the first word in their brand that they take eco-friendliness seriously. So I was very disappointed when I discovered that GreenGeeks’ green credentials are simply green washing.

They have an extensive “personal” statement on their website from Trey Gardner, CEO and founder of GreenGeeks about green hosting. But most of that page talks about how the Internet is one of the world’s biggest polluters. Their actual commitment to doing something is minimal: exclusively from buying offsets and planting some trees.

They ask someone else to estimate GreenGeeks’ annual energy consumption and then purchase offsets for 3 times that figure:

Buying your way out of a problem doesn’t solve it. Especially when other green hosting providers do so much more. As Greenpeace points out, carbon offsets are a scam: “It’s a bookkeeping trick intended to obscure climate wrecking-emissions. It’s tree-planting window-dressing aimed at distracting from ecosystem destruction.”

GreenGeeks’ tree planting effort achieves nothing:

They have an arrangement with a non-profit to plant 1 baby tree for every account they provision. Just 1 tree, just once, for every account – not per website, just per account (accounts can host multiple sites). And GreenGeeks doesn’t even bother to get their hands dirty, they have someone else do the heavy lifting!

Planting 1 tree costs next to nothing, and a baby tree does nothing to offset anything. It takes 10-20 years for a tree to mature to the point where it has any significant impact on CO2. Different types of trees will handle vastly different amounts of CO2. According to Encon, at best a mature tree can sequester 32kg of CO2 per year. That’s equivalent to 12 litres / 3 gallons of fuel oil per year. Just one of their employees driving to work just once eliminates that offset many times over.

GreenGeeks’ tree planting stunt sounds good but is completely ineffective. They should follow 20i’s lead and change how they do business.

Rant over.

Always check a hosting provider’s green claims

If eco-friendly website hosting is important to you, then make sure a provider’s claims stand up to scrutiny. They should have specific information on their website about what they do. And double-check any claims with third-party sites like The Green Web Foundation.

Performance

My website performance at 20i is excellent, far better than it was on GreenGeeks. Speed test results can vary a little over time, but now my site is consistently in the A range at GTmetrix.com – something I never achieved when I was at GreenGeeks.

After migrating my site to 20i, performance was similar to GreenGeeks. But that was before I took advantage of proprietary caching and optimisations that 20i offers but GreenGeeks doesn’t. More on this below.

Speed tests vary over time for a variety of network-related reasons that are out of our control. But getting my site’s performance above a 95% rating every time now is awesome.

Easier website management

Managing my website on 20i is very easy. They have a minimalistic user interface that’s easy on the eye, easy to navigate, easy to understand. It’s a very different approach from the usual cPanel that’s common across many hosting providers.

Crucially for me 20i offers two free backup and restore options: Backup/Restore and Timeline Backups. Backup/Restore allows me to take a full site backup and download it anytime I want. Timeline backups are snapshots that allow me to revert to a previous day’s state quickly. I’ve used the Restore function to undo some mistakes I made, and it was easy and effective.

That’s a huge convenience and cost savings compared to my experience at GreenGeeks. At GreenGeeks I had to request a support ticket to restore from their backups, and only one restore per month was free, otherwise I had to cough up USD 25.

I used UpdraftPlus to regularly back up and restore my sites on GreenGeeks – yet another WordPress plugin and cost that I’ve eliminated after moving to 20i. Even so, sometimes an UpdraftPlus restore didn’t resolve a problem and I had to go back to GreenGeeks support for a costly restore.

Support

Support at 20i has been stellar. They offer several support options 24/7:

• live chat
• support ticket
• email
• knowledge base

I’ve used them all and had a great experience each time.

When I migrated chuckhenrich.com to 20i, there were issues caused by some file structure problems in the backups I had from GreenGeeks. I started a live support chat and the support rep solved the issue in about 20 minutes. He was knowledgeable, polite, and efficient. I’ve asked a few more questions on the live chat and each time the rep has answered my questions quickly and thoroughly. I’ve logged a few support tickets and they were resolved promptly.

In contrast, GreenGeeks used to have a live chat system, but toward the end of my time there it didn’t seem to be available anymore. Perhaps that was a function of my browser security settings. But those settings hadn’t changed at all so it seems that GreenGeeks was making access to live chat support difficult or impossible. The GreenGeeks ticketing system worked fine and my questions were generally answered quickly and professionally.

Most of the GreenGeeks support reps were completely professional and helpful, but on a couple of occasions a GreenGeeks support rep had a snide, disrespectful approach. Before retiring, I was an IT professional for 40 years, so getting that kind of attitude from some young whippersnapper in a field I know well … went over badly.

Price

The 20i managed WordPress hosting introductory offer was attractive. After that period expires, they’re still half the price of what I was paying at GreenGeeks.

I’m not entirely price-driven. I care about quality and price because cheap is often more expensive. As it turns out, for my use case, 20i pricing is not only cheaper but also a much better deal qualitatively than what I had at GreenGeeks. Other people or organisations might find more or less significant differences.

Configuring for performance

Caching

20i has a two-pronged approach to caching, a WordPress plugin and a server-side cache. Their StackCache plugin handles dynamic WordPress content, and Edge Cache on the servers handles static content.

The cache settings on both sides – StackCache and Edge Cache – are more limited compared to the extensive options in the LiteSpeed WordPress plugin. However, the 20i caching system is easy to understand, straightforward, and in my experience more effective than LiteSpeed.

Content delivery

A content delivery network (CDN) is essential to make sure your site gets served quickly to local users across the world. There are a number of big names in the CDN arena, Cloudflare being perhaps the most well-known.

20i host their own name servers and CDN but you can use Cloudflare or any other provider if you want. Depending on the hosting plan you choose, 20i uses their own CDN servers or worldwide neutral data centres as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Initially I was sceptical of 20i’s CDN basic option because I assumed they couldn’t be as widespread and optimised as Cloudflare. After migrating my site to 20i, I continued to use Cloudflare’s name servers and CDN. But I couldn’t get above a B rating on GTmetrix.

I decided to try 20i’s CDN because I had nothing to lose. I could always switch back to Cloudflare if I wanted to. I switched to 20i’s CDN from Cloudflare on my own with a couple of nameserver changes that their management console configured automatically. There was an immediate jump in performance. SSL cert provisioning was automatic and fairly quick.

I was very pleasantly surprised because I’m on their lowest price plan, using their most basic CDN offering. I’ve seen a massive boost in speed since switching to 20i’s CDN. I don’t know how they do it, but it works for me! Large businesses with global reach would benefit from 20i’s more robust CDN plans that leverage AWS, Google, or Azure data centres.

The 20i CDN options are free, bundled with your hosting package. You can use Cloudflare for free as well, but you don’t get the same range of configurations, even if you pay for a Cloudflare plan. With 20i I get a free SSL cert, load balancing across the network, unlimited usage, and the ability to block specific countries from accessing my site. Those are all unavailable on Cloudflare’s paid Pro plan; to get them, you need to pay even more.

After careful configurations and some other tweaks (like switching to WEBP for my image files), I achieved the >98% ratings I aimed for from GTmetrix.com.

Managed WordPress hosting

I’ve built my WordPress site from scratch because I have a technical background and enjoy that sort of thing. GreenGeeks has a managed WordPress hosting service but I have no experience with it so I can’t tell if it’s any better than 20i managed WordPress hosting.

I can say however that my WordPress experience with 20i is way better.

Having the ability to stage a site – test it before going live – for free is a big deal. Reinstalling WordPress is a last resort and something I hope never to have to do, but it’s good to have the option instead of having to do it manually. User management outside of WordPress is also a nice-to-have.

20i hosting options

Aside from managed WordPress hosting, 20i offers reseller hosting, managed cloud hosting, virtual private servers, and domain name services. I haven’t tried any of them so can’t comment on them. However I would expect the same excellent value for money, performance, and support across all of them.

What do you think?

Is this review helpful? Do you have any questions? Do you have any experience of 20i that you’d like to share? Comment below!