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Introducing StudioPress Sites: WordPress Made Easy … Without Sacrificing Power or Flexibility

Not Just Another WordPress Site

From 2010 through 2015, we at Rainmaker Digital built at a furious pace. Most of that effort was directed at development of the Rainmaker Platform.

During that entire time, StudioPress.com worked tirelessly in the background to bankroll our bootstrapped effort to create a full marketing automation platform without outside investors.

And it worked.

That said, we were always aware of the debt we owed to the StudioPress line of business, and more importantly, the community that had grown around the Genesis Framework. Which is to say, we always planned to come back to it and give it the love it deserved.

The idea for StudioPress Sites dates back to 2014. I wanted to do a “Squarespace for WordPress” that had the ease of an all-in-one website builder combined with the flexible power of WordPress.

In the spring of 2016, Tony Clark decided to run with the project. It began by having candid conversations with our StudioPress customers, and prominent people in the WordPress community.

These conversations revealed that not only did people agree with the need for this solution …

… they demanded it.

An innovative hybrid solution

Delivering another website builder wouldn’t be that tough (we knew how to do it thanks to Rainmaker). But that was only half the equation, which made it a bit trickier.

How do you incorporate the best aspects of a website builder like Squarespace or Wix, without locking people into an inflexible box that doesn’t benefit from the best parts of WordPress?

In other words, we needed to make WordPress easier in a hosted environment, while still allowing people to install the plugins and themes that they wanted.

Taking what we’d learned from Synthesis and Rainmaker, we’ve arrived at a solution that represents the best of both worlds. And you can bet we’re not going to stop making it even better with every step forward.

I’m not going to repeat all the features here, since you can check them out for yourself over at StudioPress. But I do want to point out a few aspects of this innovative hybrid solution.

So naturally, there are 20 mobile-optimized HTML5 designs included, powered by the industry standard Genesis Framework, plus a whole bunch of advanced SEO functionality. And there’s also a heightened emphasis on security and “hands off” maintenance.

But there’s one aspect that you need to pay particular attention to.

No bandwidth surprises or hidden charges

The primary difference between a website builder and self-hosted WordPress is that with the former, you’re dealing with software as a service (SaaS), while the latter is … well, hosting. Not only is self-hosted WordPress a pain to deal with, it can also lead to unexpected surprises if you actually succeed.

In this sense, StudioPress Sites is more like SaaS than hosting. You can set up your new site in just minutes on our server infrastructure that’s specifically optimized for peak WordPress performance.

Site speed and page load times are too important to be jammed on a box with hundreds of generic WordPress installs, which is what you get with traditional hosting. More importantly, you’ll never face the experience of your site crashing just because you succeed in getting big traffic.

That’s why we have two simple plans — Content and Commerce:

  • The Content plan is for bloggers, podcasters, and affiliate marketers who are mostly creating posts and pages.
  • The Commerce plan is designed to handle more database-intensive features such as ecommerce, digital downloads, membership sites, and forums.

But here’s the thing … not only do you enjoy superior speed and performance with either StudioPress Site plan, you also avoid the financial hassle of self-hosted WordPress, like surprise expenses for bandwidth upcharges, storage, CPUs, and RAM.

Even as your StudioPress Site remains solid during surprise traffic spikes, you won’t pay extra for short-term success on the way to sustained higher traffic. It’s just one low, predictable price until you’re ready to move up.

That’s cool, right?

Check out StudioPress Sites for yourself

Enough from me. Head over and see if StudioPress Sites is right for you.

In a nutshell, if you’re seeing success but hating the issues that come with low-cost WordPress hosting, this is for you. And if you’re thinking of starting a brand-new site … well, we want to get you started right.

Check out StudioPress Sites right here.

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Reader Comments (31)

  1. Hi Brian,

    Thank a lot for making this happen. What I like the most about StudioPress is the easy-to-use features and pre-made widgets such as Newsletter, Social sharing, and much more to help everyone, who has no knowledge of coding, to build their own websites.

    StudioPress now offers totally a DIY website building platform. Congratulation to this fabulous achievement.

    I am moving in …

  2. Congrats on this excellent-sounding and looking new platform.

    So, of course, here’s the big question … and you’re probably planning to answer it in an upcoming post and/or podcast episode, but …

    I’ve been on Rainmaker for a year. I just launched my dream project on it. I have big plans for blogging, selling digital products like audiobooks and ebooks, using RainMail for email marketing, segmenting, drip campaigns, hosting an eventual podcast. You know, all the stuff you’ve taught me to do over the past couple of years.

    I’m locked into Rainmaker at the old “Standard” price, which you offered right before going to “Pro” only.

    So … should I switch to StudioPress Sites and save some money on the annual or monthly plan? Or does it make more sense to stay with the more robust platform and “grow into it” over time? If I switch and then decide to go back, I’ll probably have to pay a higher subscription price for RM than I am now. What’s the best way to go? What does RM offer over SPS that I’m going to wish I had later on? What would you do if you were me?

    Thanks for your help!

  3. This is fantastic. Hosting setup and maintenance is still my biggest headache, and I’ve been doing this for years now.

  5. All that and for less than a $1 a day!

    Of course, I jumped on it this weekend when I realize it had gone live. And no, you aren’t getting my Rainmaker site back either. I have plans to work them separately, yet together.

    I could have most likely done everything from the Rainmaker side, but I wanted to test it for myself to help friends out.

    Best get back to creating fresh content while I wait for the techies to migrate my goodness from my original site.

    (And just, WOW! Thanks for cutting us a deal on site migration as well.)

  6. StudioPress is well trusted. The themes are beautiful and unique, running on the Genesis Framework makes it secure. Not to mention that the costs are considered very cheap (compared to hat a web designer might charge you). It’s not without its downsides, though, Once you buy the theme, you have a very limited ability to change how it looks. (If you’re happy with the way your website looks after you install StudioPress, this won’t be an issue. Each theme is well crafted and it’s unlikely that you’ll want to change anything.)

  8. Congratulations on the launch, looks a great service. I notice it’s only single sites at the moment – any plans on offering packages for tiered amounts of sites?

  9. So I’m a little confused. What’s the actual difference between what you were doing before and now? Just that it’s more like RainMaker? Didn’t the Studio Press themes exist before? Are you just including managed hosting and a site builder now?

    • The themes existed, but after purchase you had to go get your own hosting, locate plugins, maintain and update, worry about bandwidth overages, etc. It’s a much cleaner and easier solution, without boxing things completely off like a traditional website builder.

    • Hi Neena. No, there aren’t formal limits for media. Based on our historical usage patterns, it’s usually not a problem. If someone has special needs, we’ll work with them one on one. And of course, if we find someone abusing things, we’ll have a chat with them as well. :-)

  12. I just recommended the “Commerce” plan to my sister-in-law who is looking into a redesign of her small firm’s website (circa 2011). It still amazes me when I see a company neglect an essential pillar of their marketing strategy in the age of Google. And, having been a StudioPress customer and advocate for years, I know they will create a contemporary site that will help land new clients.

    • At this point, Rainmail remains tied to the Rainmaker Platform, which is what allows for the adaptive functionality. It wouldn’t work the same way with SP Sites.

  15. What a great news for Studiopress team. Congrats. I am big fan of Studiopress from long time and my most the sites uses Genesis framework.

    StudioPress now offers totally a DIY website building platform which is something everyone in marketing would love to see. This is big and super achieving.

  16. Keep up the good work! If I have one request for 2017, I would love to see Genesis evolve as some aspects are somewhat dated.

    I think it is time to retire the widgetized homepage approach as it is so restrictive and old fashioned. Would love a better solution, something Beaver Builder-esque or native BeaverBuilder support to allow a little more flexibility for users not wanting to get their hands dirty.

  17. Thanks for the post Brian! Love the idea behind this, especially with the 2 different plans being offered. I’ve never heard of StudioPress but I’m definitely a fan now. It makes it sound super easy to make your site run a lot faster and actually stay up instead of having to install a million plugins or worrying about “hosting issues”. Checked out the website and it’s something I can definitely recommend to our clients in the future.

  18. For those who are using an email service like Drip, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, etc…would StudioPress Sites be a better option than Rainmaker? These aforementioned tools give far more options when it comes to automation (both with a logged in experience and a logged out experience) than RM … and combined with the power/flex/expansion options of the “open” platform of StudioPress Sites, it seems like this is a better option for advanced users. Rainmaker seems to be great for complete newbies. But once you’re down the road a bit, it seems most start bumping into the walls of Rainmakers closed platform (where innovation is at the mercy of the dev team).

    Either way, two thumbs up for StudioPress Sites and Rainmaker! I’m actually thinking of using RM on a subdomain for its beautiful LMS and running StudioPress Sites on the main domain to benefit from other powerful tools like Beaver Builder (among many other integrations).

  19. Hey Brian,

    This is some neat stuff I hadn’t previously known about. I have worked in the hosting industry for many years although the the simplicity outlined in StudioPress would definitely be something I am interested in for my clients who want to build out their own sites. What do you recommend as a solution for a business like mine that relies upon hosting but wants all other aspects of your solution?


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