Difficult-to-use, vulnerable, and unreliable content management systems hamstring newsrooms, burden IT, require organizations to hire additional consultants and developers, and leave content creators in the dark when measuring their work’s impact.
A CMS should be a platform that drives business growth—not a costly burden for media organizations. Enter WordPress VIP, the technical foundation and publishing platform for many of the world’s largest media companies, including Al Jazeera, News Corp, The Times, and VentureBeat.
We help lower their total cost of ownership across the board, driving savings by boosting developer efficiency, streamlining publishing workflows, helping journalists make smarter, data-driven content decisions, and so much more. You’ll read how in detail below.
Looking for the WordPress VIP ROI?
A Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact (TEI) study commissioned by Automattic says organizations that use WordPress VIP can realize a 415% return on their investment.
Here’s why:
- Ease of use and maintenance
- Faster, less expensive development
- Better reliability and security
- Improved business results from analytics
Scalable, secure infrastructure for high-demand websites
We purpose-built our WordPress VIP platform to easily handle even the busiest and most demanding websites. Whether it’s a big event or just a regular day, our sites deliver lightning-fast speed and reliability to users around the globe. Credit our infrastructure, built and maintained by top WordPress experts to meet the needs of large businesses.
Our platform provides access to a highly scalable, secure, and high-performance WordPress setup. With our containerized environment, your site’s performance won’t be affected by others.
Our global infrastructure, with 28 points of presence, ensures high performance worldwide. Our dynamic autoscaling feature automatically adds resources as needed, keeping your site running smoothly on the busiest days. Our integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN) also speeds up content delivery, ensuring quick load times.
For those with Enhanced packages and above, we offer geographical redundancy for disaster recovery with a backup database in a different location. This ensures your site stays up and running, keeping your data safe and secure even in a disaster.
“We have enormously improved our efficiency since we don’t need additional teams or third parties to support our infrastructure.”
—Ricardo Schulz, CIO, Abril
The impact on cost of ownership
WordPress VIP allows you to focus on your core business while enjoying reduced operational and ownership costs. Here’s why and how.
- Scalability and performance: Our platform’s scalability ensures you only pay for the resources you need, eliminating additional hardware investments.
- Managed services: With fully managed maintenance, updates, and security, you save on in-house IT staff and third-party service costs.
- Reliability and redundancy: Built-in geographical redundancy and disaster recovery minimize downtime, reducing potential revenue loss and emergency fix costs.
- Integrated tools: Features like a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and dynamic autoscaling are included, simplifying the tech stack and reducing expenses.
- Expert support: Access to WordPress experts eliminates the need for costly consultants, lowering operational costs.
- Security: Enterprise-grade security helps avoid the high costs of data breaches and associated legal and reputational expenses.
Unmatched security and reliability for WordPress sites
WordPress VIP offers top-notch security for WordPress sites, with multiple layers of protection, including secure networking, robust access controls, continuous monitoring, and code scanning.
That’s why we’ve earned the trust of organizations across media and publishing, financial services, pharmaceuticals, public utilities, and government. It’s also the only WordPress platform with FedRAMP Authority to Operate (ATO), highlighting our commitment to the highest levels of security.
Our security features are designed to protect your organization’s online reputation, shielding you from malicious actors who might try to deface your site or cause downtime.
We offer a multifaceted security approach that covers every level, including the edge, network, data, and application layers, to meet demanding security standards. With advanced access controls, you can set permissions so only authorized employees or contractors can access necessary resources, reducing potential security risks.
We also integrate with single sign-on (SSO) providers, making it easy to incorporate with your existing SSO setup and enhance security while simplifying user access. Our built-in DDoS mitigation technology identifies and stops distributed denial of service attacks before they can affect your site’s performance, ensuring it stays up and running smoothly.
Additionally, WordPress VIP uses proprietary WPScan technology to automate vulnerability scanning for plugins and themes, both at deployment and continuously. This proactive approach spots potential vulnerabilities and automates plugin upgrades, keeping your site secure and up-to-date.
“We needed agility, we needed stability, and we needed security. We’ve got all three of those now with WordPress VIP, so now we can focus on the business part of our business instead of the infrastructure.”
—Grant Cerny, Chief Product Officer, iOne Digital
The impact on cost of ownership
With WordPress VIP, you’ll avoid costly incidents, streamline operations, and reduce the need for additional security investments. Here’s why and how.
- Comprehensive protection: With multiple layers of security, WordPress VIP minimizes the risk of breaches, reducing costs associated with such incidents, like legal fees and reputational damage.
- Automated vulnerability management: Automated scanning and updates for plugins and themes find, address, and prevent vulnerabilities faster, saving time and resources by reducing the need for manual security checks.
- DDoS mitigation: Built-in technology prevents costly downtime and service disruptions, ensuring businesses don’t lose revenue or customer trust due to attacks.
- Advanced access controls: Granular access controls limit permissions to necessary personnel, reducing the risk and cost of managing unauthorized access.
- Integration with existing systems: Compatibility with single sign-on (SSO) systems streamlines user management, lowering operational costs through easy integration with the technology you already own.
Streamlined application management
WordPress VIP offers robust application management capabilities, ensuring customer websites and applications are secure, flexible, and reliable. By optimizing software controls, our platform simplifies scaling WordPress deployments, reducing the workload for IT teams and allowing them to focus on growth opportunities.
The platform features a management dashboard designed for scale, allowing centralized control over sites, domains, user access, security, and more. Integrated certificate management automates renewals, while a command-line interface (CLI) facilitates large-scale system management and task automation.
WordPress VIP includes managed updates for WordPress, PHP, and other components to keep software secure and current.
For customers with Enhanced and Signature packages, additional Application Performance Management (APM) functionality provides deeper insights into site performance, enabling IT teams to enhance user experience.
Efficient multisite management tools offer visibility and control over WordPress multisites, with hourly backups ensuring data safety. APM includes browser monitoring to assess site speed across various devices and networks, and synthetics monitoring to simulate global traffic and resolve availability issues before they affect users. Application downtime monitoring alerts teams to issues, supporting timely responses to maintain site uptime.
“It’s like we hired another engineer… an extra set of eyes. We have an extra level of QA on our code now by people who actually know what they’re looking at, which helps a great deal.” —Steve Tidwell, Director of Technology, VentureBeat
The impact on cost of ownership
With WordPress VIP, you’ll streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and reduce the need for additional resources with comprehensive application management. Here’s how and why.
- Streamlined management and reduced IT workload: By optimizing software controls and providing efficient management tools, WordPress VIP simplifies WordPress deployments and decreases the workload on IT teams, allowing them to focus on strategic growth initiatives and reducing operational costs.
- Automated updates and certificate management: Regular updates for WordPress, PHP, and other components, along with automated certificate management and renewal, ensure that software remains secure and up-to-date without manual intervention, reducing the risk of security breaches and associated costs.
- Centralized management dashboard and Command-line interface (CLI): Whether you use our VIP Dashboard or the VIP-CLI, managing sites, domains, and security configuration from a single place streamlines administrative tasks, reducing the time and effort required for site management.
- Multisite management: Tools for managing WordPress multisites provide visibility and control, reducing complexity and associated management costs.
- Application Performance Management (APM): APM tools offer insights into site performance, enabling proactive optimization and reducing downtime, which can save on potential revenue loss and support costs.
Boosted developer efficiency with agile code management
WordPress VIP makes it easier for developers to deliver high-quality code quickly by boosting operational agility and allowing tech teams to focus on creating amazing customer experiences.
With seamless GitHub integration, easy access to logs and data, and a user-friendly command line interface (CLI), developers can efficiently build, debug, test, and deploy their code. For those with Enhanced and Signature packages, there’s even more flexibility and expert support from WordPress specialists to help you get the most out of the platform.
Our platform includes an integrated code repository that simplifies the entire development process from start to finish. Developers can access production and staging environments to test and ensure quality thoroughly. Local sandbox environments let developers test with the latest updates by pulling in production content, ensuring everything works perfectly before going live.
WordPress VIP supports various architecture options, including single-stack, headless, and hybrid setups, all from one solution, allowing developers to choose what works best for their projects. Logs are automatically saved to an AWS S3 bucket every five minutes, making them easy to store, process, or analyze, which helps keep everything transparent and accountable.
Extra non-production environments are available for even more development and testing space for those with Enhanced and Signature packages. These packages also offer debugging support to quickly resolve issues and database backup shipping to AWS S3 for added security.
Additionally, GitHub Codespaces provide cloud development environments, allowing developers to code from any device without needing to install or configure software, making the process more flexible and efficient.
The impact on cost of ownership
With WordPress VIP, you’ll reduce infrastructure costs and the need for additional development resources. Here’s why and how.
- Efficient development workflow: Integration with GitHub and a centralized code repository speeds up development, reducing time and labor costs and enabling faster project delivery.
- Reduced infrastructure costs: Providing production and staging environments eliminates the need for separate infrastructure, cutting IT overhead and maintenance expenses.
- Flexible architecture: Support for single-stack, headless, and hybrid architectures allows companies to choose cost-effective solutions and avoid unnecessary infrastructure expenses.
- Automated management: Automatic log shipping and database backups reduce manual intervention and storage costs, saving time and minimizing data loss risks.
- Enhanced support and debugging: Built-in debugging and expert access help quickly resolve issues, reducing downtime and costs from lost productivity and revenue.
- Cloud-based development: GitHub Codespaces enable development from any device without extensive software installations, lowering costs for maintaining and updating tools.
Expert support and services
With top WordPress experts at your side, we ensure you’re ready for your digital journey and help you create amazing digital experiences for customers. Our team helps you unblock obstacles around custom code, server infrastructure, plugin choices, and security so you have more time to grow your business.
Concierge Onboarding sets you up for success from the start, and our 24/7 support provides global assistance. Enhanced packages even include debugging support to keep everything running smoothly.
For Signature package customers, we offer Technical Account Management and extra communication through Slack and P2 channels. Our Launch Day Services provide guidance and live support to ensure every launch is seamless and stress-free.
Our support team handles your daily needs while our Professional Services unlock new avenues of growth on your site.
Migration services make moving your WordPress sites to WordPress VIP easy and efficient. Plus, our Performance Service offers testing and improvement plans to keep your site running at its best.
Architectural consulting services provide tailored technology recommendations, reports, and action plans. We also offer training workshops to boost your team’s WordPress skills.
High-traffic event planning prepares your applications for traffic surges, and content consulting analyzes performance to offer strategic recommendations, ensuring your content strategy is effective.
“Some of our goals with the migration were to improve workflow efficiencies, empower site producers to make changes with a full preview of their impact, and cut the time it takes to build out a section of the site from days to hours.”
—Weston Ruter, CTO, News Corp Australia
The impact on cost of ownership
With WordPress VIP, you can focus on streamlining and enhancing efficiency without the need for additional resources. Here’s why and how.
- Expert management: By providing expertise on code, server infrastructure, plugin choices, and security, WordPress VIP gives your teams hours back to their day, so you have more room to focus on your business priorities.
- Efficient onboarding and support: Concierge Onboarding and 24/7 global support ensure smooth operations and quick issue resolution, minimizing downtime and associated costs.
- Streamlined migrations: Migration services facilitate efficient site transfers to WordPress VIP, reducing the time and resources needed for transitions and ensuring predictable, on-time delivery.
- Performance optimization: Performance Service provides testing and improvement plans, enhancing site efficiency, increasing the chances of site conversions, and reducing costs related to performance issues and potential revenue loss.
- Tailored consulting and training: Architectural consulting services and training workshops offer customized technology recommendations and skill enhancement, optimizing resource use and reducing the need for external consultants.
Enhanced publishing workflows with content and AI tools
For media organizations, WordPress VIP combines the world’s most popular CMS with enterprise-level readiness, offering a powerful platform to enhance your content and newsroom efforts. Journalists and editors turbocharge content creation using intuitive, what-you-see-is-what-you-get tools, all safeguarded by robust admin controls and governance.
The intuitive visual editor allows you to customize pages in minutes with the Gutenberg Block Editor, the world’s most flexible drag-and-drop editor. You can build from standard blocks or create reusable content blocks to construct new modular content easily.
The media library lets you upload and access media as part of your content workflow, organizing it with custom taxonomies or integrating it with your own Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution.
As legacy technologies struggle to meet the demands of composability and AI, enterprises are turning to open source solutions like WordPress VIP to build best-in-breed systems. Our platform provides safe, intelligently designed AI tools that can be trained on your top-performing content to deliver optimal results.
Our publishing workflow enables collaboration with peers to develop great content and schedule publishing to align with your publishing calendar. The Parse.ly Content Helper (PCH) integrates data about your content directly into WordPress Admin, helping you make informed authoring decisions by providing content performance context where you draft and edit.
The Jetpack AI Assistant is an out-of-the-box content block within the Block Editor, allowing you to automatically generate, revise, and optimize text using AI.
With Salesforce Integration, you can activate your content to power email marketing campaigns by directly integrating with Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
“Our shift to WordPress VIP has helped our editors produce content faster, reduced our development costs, allowed us to re-allocate money to hiring more editors, and opened up new opportunities to improve our experience.”
—Stephen Merrill, Chief Content and Product Officer, Edutopia
The impact on cost of ownership
With WordPress VIP, you can focus on publishing engaging content for readers using intuitive tools without being blocked by IT dependency. Here’s why and how.
- Efficient content creation and management: The Gutenberg Block Editor and intuitive visual tools streamline content creation, while reusable content blocks minimize repetitive work, saving time and labor costs.
- Reduced IT dependency: By providing user-friendly tools and seamless integrations, WordPress VIP reduces reliance on IT support for content management and technical tasks, lowering IT-related costs.
- Integrated media and workflow management: The media library and publishing workflow simplify media management and facilitate collaboration, reducing the need for additional tools and optimizing team productivity.
- Data-driven content optimization: The Parse.ly Content Helper provides performance insights within the WordPress Admin, enabling data-driven decisions that enhance content effectiveness and reduce trial-and-error costs.
- AI-powered automation: The Jetpack AI Assistant automates content generation and optimization, improving content quality with less manual effort and reducing editing costs.
- Seamless integrations and advanced search: Integrations with platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and integrated Enterprise Search streamline publishing efforts and reduce the need for third-party solutions, lowering associated expenses.
Real-time analytics and insights with Parse.ly
Parse.ly is the go-to analytics platform for newsrooms and content marketers looking to create a results-driven culture. Its user-friendly dashboard helps creators see how their work resonates with their audience, offering a big-picture view and detailed insights. With Parse.ly, you can stay ahead of the curve, joining conversations as they happen rather than playing catch-up.
The Parse.ly Dashboard is key to understanding content performance and improving your strategy. It provides easy access to important details like titles, tags, authors, and performance metrics such as pageviews and engaged time. With real-time updates every five seconds, you can make quick, informed decisions.
Parse.ly offers reports on more than 30 key metrics, giving you a comprehensive view of your audience’s behavior. You can access 13 months of historical data for deeper analysis and track marketing campaigns to see how they drive engagement and conversions. Plus, with cross-channel reporting and a mobile SDK, you can measure content engagement across all platforms, including mobile apps.
The platform highlights important conversion events like purchases and newsletter signups and lets you segment your audience for more targeted insights. The Parse.ly Content API helps you recommend content on your site and export data to your internal tools, enhancing your content strategy.
With the Parse.ly Data Pipeline, you can stream real-time user interaction data to your systems using AWS APIs, ensuring you have historical and live data at your fingertips. Parse.ly equips content creators with the tools they need to succeed and confidently make data-driven decisions.
“The ability to break things down by region—especially when cross-referenced against Parse.ly’s range of metrics—visitors, engaged time, social referrals and interactions—is priceless.”
—Adam Blenford, Managing Editor of Digital in Europe, Bloomberg
The impact on cost of ownership
With Parse.ly Analytics, you’ll optimize content strategy and decision-making processes by looking at what content works and what doesn’t. Here’s why and how.
- Data-driven decisions: Parse.ly enables organizations to make informed decisions about content strategy by providing real-time insights and detailed performance metrics. This reduces the trial-and-error approach, saving time and resources that would otherwise be spent on ineffective content.
- Improved content efficiency: With access to audience-centric metrics and historical data, organizations can identify what content resonates most with their audience. This allows for more efficient content creation and distribution, reducing waste and maximizing the impact of each piece of content.
- Enhanced audience engagement: Parse.ly’s ability to track audience behavior and preferences helps organizations tailor content to meet specific audience needs. This targeted approach increases engagement and retention, reducing the costs associated with acquiring new audiences.
- Streamlined reporting: The platform’s intuitive dashboard and reporting tools simplify analyzing and sharing insights across teams. This reduces the need for extensive manual data analysis and reporting, saving time and labor costs.
- Integration and scalability: Parse.ly’s integration with other tools and platforms allows organizations to incorporate analytics into their existing workflows seamlessly. This scalability reduces the need for additional software investments and minimizes operational disruptions.
Lower cost of ownership with WordPress VIP
Empower your teams to drive your digital business with a CMS that helps them move faster. Ask for a WordPress VIP demo.
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Author
Greg Ogarrio, Content Marketer—WordPress VIP
