Bluehost

It could also be outdated pricing information.

One of my most neutral examples that I think you saw was, I think, Bluehost, where the...

AI overview was pretty neutral, nothing bad was said about the brand, but all the features listed in the AI overviews were sourced from third-party websites, not the official one.

So there is zero guarantee that those are actually valid at this point and the confusion of everyone landing on the website with a decision to engage and then seeing other information would be also losing customers.

So you've set up your site, you're getting leads, you're making sales, and then the next morning your website's down, disappeared.

What the heck happened? [laughs] So this has happened, like I said, when I was in support, um, not to any of our sites, but if a, you know, say you sign up with GoDaddy or Bluehost or any of the, you know, le- less expensive, um, hosting platforms, that might be perfectly fine for your business, but know that automatic backups are usually an add-on.

So make sure you add on that backup service.

It might be a couple more dollars per month, but you want automatic backups 'cause you never know if your site's going to get hacked or if there's going to be a plugin update that breaks everything and you can't get in your site anymore.

And then one more thing you need to keep updated is the server.

So, um, WordPress runs on PHP and MySQL on the server.

So if you get an inexpensive plan with like GoDaddy or Bluehost and you signed up five years ago, they're most likely not going to update the server until you ask them to.

So if your site is starting to get slow and things are hap- you know, things are breaking, um, it might be because even if you've kept the plugins and the WordPress core up to date, it might be that the server's software, PHP and MySQL, are out of date, so you need to keep those updated as well.

You have to call your host." Okay, great.

So I get on Bluehost, and I'm like, "This is what I think is wrong, and I need somebody to help me." And so I'm talking through the chat in ChatGPT, and because I was technical, I guess, in my description to, to the chatbot-

Mm-hmm

...

My files were too old.

Whatever.

So then he said that Bluehost is now putting everybody, slowly migrating over to new servers, and they're offering to migrate me right now, um, you know, no charge for it, whatever, 'cause they're my host, that's what they're supposed to do.

And just tell them that, "Yes, please migrate me," blah, blah, blah.

It's completely free and open source at wordpress.org. Wordpress.com is the paid version of WordPress where they host and manage WordPress for you, but wordpress.org is where you can download it.

And if you use something like Bluehost or SiteGround or one of these hosting providers, and they install WordPress but you're still managing it yourself, that is still the free version of WordPress.

The code is free, but having a WordPress website can actually get expensive.

Just the hosting itself, web hosting has gotten really expensive lately, even on these budget providers that advertise things like two ninety-five per month for the first year, and then after that, $20 a month just for hosting the website.

No, it could be.

Like that's what, um, so for example, that's what Bluehost does.

Bluehost is a hosting company that has 40 some odd brands and they all host in the same location physically.

They're all the same thing.

Yes.

Literally the same product, but there's 40 brands.

So, so they can have 40 websites.

They can have an affiliate with 10 options, but it's all Bluehost.

And say, hey, I need you to connect to my website.

They're going to say, okay, where's your website? Bluehost, GoDaddy, whatever.

Okay? You have a gift for understanding all of this.

You're like Neo.

And then they find your website in the process because it's hosted on a domain.

So if you have a hosted website, if you're hosting on Bluehost, GoDaddy, Hostinger, SiteGround, whatever it is that you're using.

These are the pages that people are going to access you from first.

So these are the very same things that if you don't do, your competitor is doing it.

And we have data, we have stats, we have Sachin in the house.

So let's start with the reality check on the scope of AI adoption, because you and Bluehost, you recently published a study on AI adoption.

And this is for small and micro business owners.

So what did you learn about agent adoption? Where are people at?

Now you do say that the playing field has been leveled a little bit or a lot, to be honest, but at the end of the day, what's not level are people's confidence because people just come, they're coming into this with different levels of confidence based on their past experience, just based on the personality that they are.

So let's talk about that.

Let's talk about the state of small business AI confidence, because you're seeking to understand that because you know how much of a benefit that will be for you and for Bluehost.

So what have you learned?

And I've always said, look, if you don't care about your website that much, you shouldn't be a customer of WP Engine because why would you pay extra if you don't care about it that much? If you don't care the website has high uptime and is fast and ranks high on Google, like if you don't care, why would you spend...

29, 39, 49 a month when you can spend literally two bucks a month at Bluehost.

Like, sure, it's not as good.

It's also $2.

But that's an extremely brave move that, again, the vast majority of hosting companies, 99 percent of hosting companies don't have any kind of specialty at all.

Right.

If you think about GoDaddy or Bluehost, like sort of for small business, maybe not really.

Like WP Engine is like we are only for WordPress.