CloudLinux continues to focus and invest heavily in building WordPress-specific value for end users - pushing us toward our primary goal; creating a new source of revenue for our customers.

We understand there is a long road ahead to achieve our goals: 

• Generate more revenue for our hosting provider customers 
• Create high-impact value for end-users 

We are also aware that our unique ability to scan websites and provide data-driven advice to website owners is a critical differentiator that enables CloudLinux to provide value where other solutions cannot. The combination of CloudLinux expertise and our customers’ contribution is how we believe all of our goals will be achieved.

So let’s dive in and take a closer look at what we’ve already done and what to expect in the future from our AccelerateWP program.

As you can see above, our upcoming plans include adding more supported server software, expanding caching capabilities, and increasing the quality of advice. One of the most common requests we’ve received is official support for LiteSpeed Web Server. Our beta testers will soon be able to thoroughly test all features vs. other LiteSpeed solutions as it is currently planned for a Q3 release. 

We will continue to build additional value into the product by adding shortcode caching and DB query caching. We are also hard at work on a provisioning API that simplifies integration with billing platforms and enables automated upsell to site owners. 

Another common question we’ve received is regarding our pricing model. What price should be charged to the site owner? And what addons will be charged by CloudLinux (beyond the OS license)? 

The standard version of AccelerateWP (X-Ray Autotracing, SmartAdvice, the Site Optimization Module, etc.) will be included free of charge on all Shared Pro licensed servers. 

For AccelerateWP premium (Object Cache Module, Shortcode & Query Caching & more coming soon), we are working hard to assess the current and future value as perceived by site owners. We do know that AccelerateWP premium will be priced per WordPress installation, but only for the users who have been advised to activate and that have chosen to upgrade. Our current estimates show that only around 6% to 8% of websites on our servers will be given advice to upgrade to the premium modules. Therefore, pricing per WordPress installation more accurately aligns with the value for both site owners and CloudLinux customers. 

As stated above, our primary goal is to generate revenue for our customers. Maximizing the value for the site owner is how we get there. We will be researching this diligently during the beta/free period, and we expect to finalize end-user pricing and our revenue share model before the end of 2022. 

If you have feedback, insight, or just opinions that you would like to share regarding pricing, we would love to hear them. After all, you know your customers best, and our goal is to help you grow your business. Please feel free to reach out to our VP of Hosting Products, Dennis Kittrell, product@cloudlinux.com.

Below you can see which modules will be free and those that will incur an additional price for the site owner. You can also see which features are included today in each module and those that will be added soon.

The PHP X-Ray and Autotracing are the key features that allow us to analyze problems across all servers that run on CloudLinux OS. It is a site profiler that performs in-depth profiling and allows you to efficiently find problematic areas of your user's website and automatically analyzes end-user websites in the background. 

Based on data from PHP X-Ray, the user can choose to fix their website on their own, or they can use Smart Advice – the product that automatically generates solving problem advice. It is already available for Beta testers and their end-users and will be included for free in Shared Pro and Solo licenses.  

After the recent AccelerateWP release, the CloudLinux OS Shared PRO and Solo come with a suite of tools that allows you to automatically find problems on your users' websites. The tools determine the type of problem, make optimization decisions, generate advice and apply optimizations to fix those problems. 

A new AccelerateWP tool provides optimization with two levels of Website caching.

1. The first level is the Object Cache, meaning caching of the object at the code level. For example, the object created after the query to the database or other objects. The speed of processing queries to the database is very important for the WordPress CMS, because all content data is stored in the WordPress database. So, if you activate (turn on) the Object cache module it means that you activate some storage to cache queries from your clients to the WordPress database. Every time users of your site request some content for the web page it makes a request to the WordPress database. That's why Object Cache is now a part of CloudLinux OS Solo and PRO, fully automated and free. The Object Cache plugin – the advanced object caching module is based on Redis and stores data there, but with our LVE and CageFS it is fully secured and each user's data isolated from others. It allows mass managing and enabling the cache tight form admin side for server’s end users. It is provided as a WordPress plugin for website owners and it is a fully automated solution. There are no settings here once installed and enabled. The website owner should just request caching from the hosting provider and everything will work out of the box and the performance should just increase.
   This is the only one premium feature that we will charge as an add-on in the future, this allows us to dedicate even more of our engineering effort to the project. Additional features listed here (and many new features in the development) are included in the premium version that you will be able to upsell to your customers and generate revenue.

   • Caching of external database queries
   • Caching of large text objects

2. The second level is Full page caching – caching literally everything on a page. This is also provided as a WordPress plugin, the Site Optimization plugin. This plugin can be customized depending on each user's specific needs. For example, a website that does not use the media queries to optimize for mobile devices may have mobile and desktop versions of the website. In this case, it will be useful to create a separate file cache for mobile devices. In addition, this plugin can minify CSS and JavaScript files, load many types of media sources and can do cache preloading which creates a cache in the background before a visitor first loads the website.
   A cPanel user also has an AccelerateWP user interface. This allows a one-click activation of a particular caching function whether Site Optimization or Object Cache. The administrator can show or hide the visibility of this product in cPanel, for an individual user or all users. Site Optimization plugin. It also can be branded/whitelabeled under a hosting provider logo and offered to end-users as a separate service. The following features are included the given module:

   • Page caching
   • Image caching
   • CSS and JavaScript caching
   • Lazy load (show only the requested content)
   • Cache, URL, and Font Preloading
   • and many new features in the development…

* The ShortCode Caching module is also coming soon, will be included in the premium version allowing you to upsell to your customers and generate revenue.

Join our AccelerateWP Beta program for Hosting Providers

At the moment, AccelerateWP offers two WordPress plugins for performance optimization (the Site Optimization plugin & the Object Cache plugin) with more coming soon. As we are focused now on the Apache-based servers, the LiteSpeed integration is on the list for the next round of updates, but we don't know yet how it will work today out of the box with LiteSpeed. Our beta program is meant mainly to evaluate the performance and to gather feedback on how well the AccelerateWP product solves performance issues compared to other products, so we would be glad if you try it and provide some feedback.

Program details

From CloudLinux, you’ll get:

• A provisioning API that allows all your customers to use all of our AccelerateWP modules.
• Permission to charge your customer throughout the Beta testing program, but there won’t be any extra charges or payments due to CloudLinux.

As a Beta tester, you agree to:

• Provide feedback to the CloudLinux product team.
• Authorize CloudLinux to collect feedback from your end-users (restricted to users that have activated the beta features). This feedback will be collected through an unbranded survey URL only, and CloudLinux will not collect participant email addresses.

Details on terms and pricing of the Beta testing program 

• The beta program free license period is scheduled to end on March 21st, 2023
• The free license period will be extended if either the billing/provisioning API is not released at least 6 months before the free period is due to end on March 21st, 2023
• You can manually revoke user access to the Beta program in WHM or do it automatically via API

Requirements:

• CloudLinux OS Shared Pro (6,7,8)
• cPanel
• WordPress version 3.7 and higher
• Required any (ea-, alt-) php 5.6+ version with loaded Redis extension
• PHP handlers: php-fpm or php-lsapi (Apache)
• Apache only (LiteSpeed is not supported yet, coming soon)

How to signup:

You can sign up by submitting the form on this page and receive all the installation instructions and support from our product team by email. All the beta testers will have access to the CloudLinux slack channels with the product team for direct communication. Based on the Beta testers' contribution, we will offer specific marketing activities and result in placement on our website.