Frequently Asked Questions

Onsite security plugins are not always necessary for website security. In fact, they can sometimes cause more problems than they solve. Here are some reasons why we don’t use onsite security plugins on our websites:

1. Plugin conflicts: Security plugins can sometimes conflict with other plugins on your website, causing poor performance, blocking core functionality, and even causing server errors.
2. SEO issues: Security plugins can sometimes ban search bots from crawling your site, which can negatively impact your search engine rankings.
3. High server load: Security plugins can sometimes cause high server load or high memory usage, which can hurt your core web vitals metrics.
4. False positives: Wordfence’s firewall and malware scanner might mistakenly identify legitimate files or actions as malicious, resulting in unnecessary alerts.

Instead of relying solely on onsite security plugins, we prefer to take a multi-layered approach to website security. Here are some of the best practices we follow for your website:

1. Best-in-class web hosting: We host our sites on the highest-end CPUs on Google’s Premium Tier network with enterprise-Level Firewall DDoS Protection.
2. Run high-quality plugins: We vet and install plugins from reputable sources and keep them updated to the latest version.
3. Keep backups: We backup your website daily to ensure that you can quickly restore it in case of a security breach.
4. We offer security or performance audit: Consider getting a professional security or performance audit to identify any vulnerabilities in your website.

We prioritize data safety with daily backups for all WordPress sites that we manage.

For businesses requiring more frequent backups, we also offer hourly or every 6-hour backups. Extra backups are advised for eCommerce sites with regular orders or sites that are updated multiple times per days. There is an additional fee for more regular backups.

While we have no restrictions on updating websites we don’t host. We aim to offer quick and efficient website updates, no matter where your site is hosted. But, factors like how complex the update is, how many changes are needed, and how easy to use your theme or page builder is can impact how long it takes.

If it’s just basic content changes like text or image swaps, we get it done quickly. But larger changes that involve custom coding, adding plugins, boosting features, or changing the design need more time and focus.

Our skilled team works hard to handle all your updates and avoid delays. We keep you in the loop on bigger updates and give you a realistic timeline.

Steps for a free site migration from your current hosting provider to Pronto:

1. Current Hosting & domain account Information

We need the following information to initiate the migration process on our end

a. Access to your current hosting account OR a full backup file of your site.
b. Access to your domain account (assuming you want us to make DNS adjustment on your behalf)

2. WordPress information

a. WordPress login URL b. WordPress administrative account credentials (username and password) c. Or you can create a new user account with an admin role at [email protected]

3. Initiate the migration

Once we have all the above information, we’ll start the site migration. The migration process usually takes around 24-48 hours.

Note: Please refrain from making any changes to your live site during this time to ensure no updates are left behind on your current host.

4. Migration complete

Once the site is migrated, we’ll ask you to review the migrated site on a staging environment before we/you make DNS changes. We’ll put the site live on our hosting environment once the review has been completed. After the site is live, we’ll add it to the monthly updates to keep the site’s themes, plugins, and WordPress core version up to date. All these processes will be handled internally on our end.

Note: We can migrate the site using migration plugin(s) by having full administrative access to your WordPress backend. However, we cannot guarantee a successful migration when using a plugin. Migrations performed with a plugin often fail due to limitations imposed by the host or limitations of the plugin. For that reason, we always recommend giving access to your current hosting or providing a full backup file of your website.

Yes, we actively scan and remove malware from sites, which involves a comprehensive malware inspection and removal of malware from your WordPress site. This includes deep scanning and repair of site files, rectifying the WordPress core, and addressing infected plugins and themes.

Note that our services don’t extend to non-WordPress software or custom scripts. While we strive to eliminate malware fully, some persistent infections may need additional remediation. If you observe any malicious behavior post our service, please send detailed feedback to [email protected].

Our Technical team follows a set procedure for every site undergoing malware removal. This includes reinstalling the WordPress core and updating all SFTP, SSH, and database passwords. We will also update all plugins, themes, and the WordPress core to the latest version. If infections are found within your site’s plugins or themes, the infected components will be promptly removed.

• Monthly WordPress updates – Core, plugin and theme files updates every month by human testers
• Hack fix guarantee – If your site is compromised while hosted with us, we’ll fix it for free
• Staging site– We provide each site with its own staging site to plan and test site updates
• Premium tier network – We host our sites on the best of Google’s Cloud Network
• Choose your data center – 30+ data centers to host your website from
• CDN Included – Speed up content delivery and reduce page load time with our HTTP/3-enabled CDN powered by Cloudflare
• 16 Dedicated PHP Workers – Used to execute simultaneous WordPress tasks quickly
• Server-level & Edge caching – Helps to keep your site loading quickly
• Latest Stable PHP Version – We use the latest PHP technology with PHP 8.0 and 8.1
• Secure WordPress hosting – Our host-chosen host provides state-of-the-art active and passive measures to stop attacks.
• SSL Certificates – This is included in every website we host as standard
• XML-RPC disabled – We disable known vulnerabilities to reduce the risk of brute force attacks
• Database Security & Secure File and Server Permissions – Our servers come with robust database security that protects your data at the source
• DDoS detection – We provide active measures to prevent downtime due to DDoS attacks
• Encrypted SFTP and SSH connections (no FTP) – We only use the most secure protocols to access server files

• We recommend you keep your website up-to-date and perform major updates on a staging environment first
• Please provide us with a staging environment, so our developer can perform major updates here before we implement it on the live site.
• Make sure to back up your website frequently. We recommend doing it daily.
• The credentials to access your website dashboard will be kept in Pronto’s password manager platform and shared with our team to ensure that all Pronto agents can access your website.

Yes, we have in-depth articles on how DNS works with the following providers:

• GoDaddy
• Cloudflare
• Domain.com
• Namecheap
• Network Solutions

If your provider is not listed, feel free to ask your Project Manager for assistance or visit our 24/7 online chat via the Pronto Marketing home page.

We recommend you send sensitive data, such as passwords, to us using a tool such as One-Time Secret.

Your website will be hosted on Pronto’s super-secure servers with support from our infrastructure partners, Kinsta and Amazon Web Services (AWS). It will live on our platform — not on your company’s servers or your domain provider’s servers — to ensure the highest level of availability.

We are currently in the process of moving all sites from AWS to Kinsta, which is powered by the Google Cloud Platform. All new sites built from June 2020 onwards will be on this network.

Contact us if you’d like to know which platform your site is on.

We do not offer high availability (HA) hosting, but we do offer an SLA-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee. We can make this SLA, thanks to the flexibility of our container-based infrastructure, proactive load management by the Kinsta Engineering team, and the use of a best-in-class cloud provider in Google Cloud Platform.

Yes, you can. You own the rights to your domain name, so Pronto will work with your domain name provider to conduct a DNS update prior to activating your new website. It is a simple technical step that ensures your domain name (which can be registered with GoDaddy, Domain.com, Bluehost, etc.) connects with our servers where your website is hosted.

We have a team of WordPress engineers and testers who are dedicated to keeping your site up to date.

Here is an overview of the update process:

1. Generate a fresh staging site based on your live site
2. Update WordPress core, theme, and all plugins on the staging site
3. Run our laundry list of tests, and track bugs and issues
4. Apply fixes to issues and re-run tests
5. Share staging site with you to review
6. Push approved updates to live site
7. Provide you with a summary of the updates and information about new features and changes

We take security extremely seriously at Pronto and have a number of measures deployed and planned. Some security measures are active by default and some can be activated upon request.

Some of these measures include:

• Installing SSL certificates – the first step for improving security on a website
• Activating 2FA – any WordPress user account can be configured with 2FA upon request
• Enabling HTTP security headers – available on all websites upon request
• Akismet & reCAPTCHA spam protection – to protect your site against unwanted bot and spam entries
• Custom WordPress login URL – reduces brute force attacks by hiding the login URL. Soon to be available on all websites upon request
• 30-day update cycles – keeping your website up-to-date is vital. We are starting to roll out 30-day updates across all our sites
• And many more! – we have many more security features deployed such as server side protections, and on-site security fixes

Yes, we support both free SSL certificates and custom SSLs. Our free SSL certificates are generated by Cloudflare and are suitable for the majority of websites. However, we also support custom SSL certificates for websites that require them.

No. In order to keep your site secure and functional, we do not allow our customers to access the SFTP for their site. We also need to prevent large files being uploaded to our servers.

If you need to access your SFTP for any reason, submit a ticket and our WordPress specialists will help you.

Yes, we will troubleshoot and investigate any WordPress conflicts or any plugin that Pronto supports. We will also work directly with the plugin developer on your behalf. However, if the plugin was custom made to your website by your previous developer. You will be responsible in contacting them to provide a fix, we can jump in and help explain technical thing if they needed.

If you don’t see the plugin you’d like to use, let us know and we’ll talk to our development team about adding it or help you find an alternative.

Pronto knows WordPress, and we are here to make sure your website is always running smoothly, and ensure plugins are operating as intended.

Yes, we offer two types of performance optimizations:

• Basic optimization (included in all plans)
• Speed Optimization ($500)

Here are some of the tasks performed in the Deep Optimization service:

• Optimize Images
• Specify Image Dimension to Load in Proper Size Images
• Reduce Server Response Time
• Inline JS and CSS for small file
• Preload for Google fonts and local fonts
• Remove unused JS and CSS
• Minify Javascript and CSS
• Leverage Browser Caching
• Enable Compression
• Render-Blocking Resources
• Cleanup HTML
• Lazy Loading Images
• Load Critical CSS
• Defer JS
• Generate WebP Caching
• Activate CDN Support
• Fixing errors
• Fixing broken links
• Remove unused plugins
• Optimize Elementor section (For Elementor sites)
• And more

There is a 30 day review period for this service where you can work with an engineer to ensure we get your pages performing how you’d like.

You can also get a FREE Website Performance & Security review here, to see how your current site is performing.

We are happy to help you set up Zapier with your website and create new Zaps, but we don’t offer ongoing support or troubleshooting. We recommend reaching out directly to Zapier if you have any issues.

Yes, you will get a staging site, which is a direct copy of your live site.

The staging site IS for Pronto to run and test new updates and for you to review these updates. It can also be used for testing out new and existing plugins. All new plugins must be sent to Pronto to vet and install.

The staging site IS NOT for developing new layouts or pages. We won’t deploy the staging site to the live site, as both sites are running simultaneously so there is a chance that the live site data will be reverted if we replace it with staging data.

Yes, we have two options for backups:

1. Full backup file (free) – This includes all content, plus our WordPress theme, plugins, database, and web code. We will remove most Pronto-specific plugins and remove paid licenses.
2. Full backup with complete migration ($599) – This includes everything from option 1, plus a dedicated engineer to help you get set up on your new host.

We have just two limitations, on-disk space and site visits.

Disk Space

• You get 30GB of disk space for your website. This is sufficient for 99% of all sites we host, with the average site size being 0.5GB.
• We charge $50/m per additional 10GB used. We also offer image optimization and media clean-up to help reduce the size of your site.

Visits

• You get 100,000 visits per month.
• We charge $50/m per additional 100,000 visits.

What counts as a visit?

INCLUDED

Our Hosting & Maintenance plan, or Technical Support, includes hosting for your website, monthly theme & plugin updates, infrastructure support & uptime monitoring, a site that is secure like Fort Knox, built for speed, and powered by Google’s Premium Cloud Platform through Kinsta, a staging site, daily backups, an SSL certificate, proactive hack and malware removal, and much more!

Pronto-built sites will also get access to our Pronto Dashboard, where you will be able to see all your key website metrics and reports.

NOT INCLUDED

Any front-end website edits or support. You’ll need to sign up for one of our support plans for that.

Or, if you need any new content, design, or custom development, you can sign up for a one-time Project.