While we are WordPress enthusiasts, Valice also recognizes that our expertise and skills need to support a wider range of code languages and systems. As a hosting provider, we are charged with familiarizing ourselves with a wide variety of both open source and proprietary platforms. 

In our development services, our platform recommendation is primarily based on the immediate and future functionality needs of the website. Content management platforms each have built-in strengths suited for different applications. Valice is familiar with a majority of reputable systems.

You sure can and if needed, we’ll be there every step of the way. Our white glove migrations and onboarding include code and security reviews to ensure that you’re starting fresh with Valice even if it’s an older site. White glove migrations are free for members or start at $150 for non-members.

We’re eager to learn more, let’s connect!

All Valice hosting plans allow you to scale your allotted disk space and bandwidth from within your my.valice.com account. Below are the current rates for these resources:

Shared or WP Web Hosting

• disk space – $0.50 /GB /month
• bandwidth – $0.10 /GB /month

All resources on VPS hosting plans are configurable including disk space, bandwidth, memory and CPU.

Click here for documentation on how to adjust your resources.

Valice allows all of its customer to over-consume storage and bandwidth resources. We’ll let you know when it happens with some options to reduce consumption, or upgrade, but none of your services will be impacted or suspended when this happens.

Valice provides a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to all hosting plans. This is configurable in your control panel. the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate will auto renew each quarter as long as all the domains and domain aliases secured on the certificate are pointing to your Valice plan’s IP address.

Valice continuously monitors our environments for suspicious or malicious activity. If we detect such activity on your website we will take action to suspend services immediately, notify you, and work with you to resolve any potential compromise.

To run your website over HTTPS, a valid SSL certificate is required. Valice provides a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to all hosting plans. This is configurable in your control panel. The Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate will auto renew each quarter as long as all the domains and domain aliases secured on the certificate are pointing to your Valice plan’s IP address.

If your website is currently running over HTTP, you may need to update all of your site pages to reference HTTPS instead of HTTP. Valice has developed its own scripts for this process. Reach out if you need help updating your website to run over HTTPS. Read our documentation for configuring your SSL certificate and configuring your website to redirect from HTTP to HTTPS.

Vailce takes nightly backups of the entire hosting environment for disaster recovery purposes. You can (and should) take snapshot backups before you do major updates on your website.

We retain 365 days of website backups for every hosted website. Should you need us to restore your website from one of our backups, we can assist with that. If you’re restoring a backup from the last 14 days, that service is free to all customers. Members have an extended 365-day restore period.

If you detect that your website has been compromised, we recommend that you immediately password protect it to prevent it from infecting visitors with spyware or malware. If we detect a compromise during a regular Valice security scan, we will take this action on your behalf and contact you so that we can work to restore a backup from prior to the intrusion and remediate the vulnerability.

Valice maintains our PCI compliance but can not guarantee PCI compliance for your business and the website you may host at Valice because this is your responsibility. That being said, we can definitely help you and your website get there! We can provide you with this service as part of a Pro or VIP membership ongoing; or engage in a one-time service to assist you with your PCI compliance questionnaires and audits as required by your merchant services provider.

Hosting companies should not claim to be HIPAA compliant on behalf of their customers. We do not and cannot control what data you collect from site visitors and users; nor can we control what you do with that data. That being said, we can help you through this process. We work with many medical providers with whom we have helped work through this process while still utilizing the efficiencies of collecting this data through their websites. We can engage in development services to help you build HIPAA compliant web forms and portals. Let’s connect to learn more!

Valice provides 24/7 monitoring of our environment and infrastructure in order to maintain critical uptime and availability. We are not here 24/7 for service and customer support. Individual website, email, or DNS outages due to factors outside of Valice’s environment and infrastructure, while impactful and stressful, are not guaranteed to be responded to or resolved outside of business hours. We do have staff who check in outside of business hours and we will do our best to help you troubleshoot or resolve your outage but cannot guarantee our availability or attention during these windows.

If you are planning to do major updates outside of business hours and want Valice’s attention or assistance, we welcome this. We provide this kind of coordinated, after-hours availability as part of our VIP membership plan and entertain one-time engagements as well.

Well, the short answer is no, because we’re truthful. The reality is there’s no such thing as unlimited anything as far as server resources go, and those that are making those types of marketing claims are being dishonest.

Bandwidth:

Are there hosting companies that offer unlimited bandwidth plans? Yes, but what does that actually mean? For some it means they’ll put caps on speed, or limits on the number of visitors your site can have at one time. For others it means putting restrictions on what you’re allowed to upload to your site. Sure you can have unlimited bandwidth but you aren’t allowed to upload audio or video files or anything else that’s going to consume bandwidth.

File Storage:

Unlimited “file storage,” maybe. Ask them how many inodes you’re allowed to consume. Whoa what!? Inode!? Well, if you’re not interested in learning all about it, it’s basically a term that represents how many files you’re allowed to create. So sure you can have unlimited “storage” as long as you don’t exceed the number of files you’re allowed to create.

The bottom line, don’t let the numbers fool you.

If you’re trying to order a hosting plan and you see * ** ¹ ² ³ § §§ + ++ ° °° all over the place and links to disclaimers and other fine print make sure you know what you’re getting into. Just so you know though, the resource allocations we provide here at Valice are real and genuine. If your plan allows for 50GB of disk space, you get that. If it allows for 2GB of memory or 500GB of data transfer, you get that.

We don’t claim to provide services that are technically infeasible. We are upfront about our resource allocations and are always here and happy to help pick the plan that’s right for you.

WordPress is a very popular and widely supported CMS (content management system) platform. Valice has been providing WordPress website design and hosting since it was a little known blogging platform. We host and support WordPress websites for businesses and nonprofits with a focus on security, performance and ease-of-use. 

We have been really pleased with recent developments in WordPress to provide improved speed and performance in the platform. We’re currently building turn-key block themes to be made available for our customers who want to select from a simple, pre-made layout or completely custom design. Block themes are the newest evolution of WordPress and giving website editors new efficiencies, greater design controls, and much-anticipated functionality.

That being said, it’s not for everyone or every website! We provide shared and VPS (virtual private server) hosting for any Linux CMS or website application. We can also provide ongoing maintenance and service for various platforms outside of WordPress.

Having developed and hosted WordPress website since the early days (2007), we are very familiar with the most reputable plugins both free and premium. Our recommendations and evaluations are based on a number of factors with a few key questions being:

• Is the plugin developer able to provide quality support
• Is the plugin regularly updated and maintained
• Does it do what it says it does and without performance problems
• Is the code clean and fully covered
• Is the plugin compatible with my theme and other plugins
• Is the plugin extendable if it needs to be customized

WordPress plugin testing and evaluation is a service we provide as part of our Pro and VIP membership plans and we are also happy to provide this service to any customers in need of a one-time plugin evaluation.

The following plugins are included in all of our WordPress hosting packages and installed automatically in both our white glove WordPress CLI and one-click installations:

• ValiceWP
• Akismet
• Banner Alerts

If you’re utilizing Valice for development services, the following plugins can also be made available to you as part of your service:

• Gravity Forms
• ACF Pro
• Affiliate WP

Click here to view more plugins Valice recommends and supports.

Yes! We love helping editors learn the tips and tricks of WordPress including how to use the latest blocks and features. Our WordPress training services are personalized for your configuration (plugins, theme, and version) and can be recorded and sent to you upon completion for reference. Click here to learn more or schedule a WordPress training session.

Absolutely! We specialize in working with customers who love their designs but want to transition to WordPress. We’ve helped many site owners “keep their design but ditch their platform” including separations from Drupal, Squarespace, Joomla, Umbraco, DNN, and even WordPress installations that are botched or clunky.

Your design is not stuck in your current CMS. Let’s connect to learn more!

For newer WordPress installations and block themes, WordPress natively has adhered to many of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It can be difficult and time-consuming, however, to try to adhere to these guidelines as you build out your website (adding plugins, editing theme colors, etc). Here is where an accessibility widget can come in handy. Valice can provide you with an accessibility widget (compatible with WordPress or any other website) that presents an interface for users with a range of disabilities to consume your website. Click here to learn more about the accessibility widget.

Valice has a ton of work examples and we’re excited to share them with you! We prefer to provide references and examples most relevant to your design preferences, industry, and functionality needs. We think this project-centric approach provides you with a better picture of what your website can be.

Let’s connect

Below is a general list of things you can do to prepare for a website design and development engagement:

1. Take note of websites that you like and why you like them.
2. Prepare an outline or sitemap.
3. Be prepared to discuss your website audience(s) and what you want your website to do for them.
4. Collect your design and marketing assets (source files always preferred).
5. Be comfortable with what you want to invest in your website (time and money).
6. Compose as much of the website content as you can prior to working with us on your design.
7. Involve your stakeholders as early in the process as necessary to make sure you have internal alignment on the website direction.
8. Be realistic about the ongoing content you plan to add to the website and the time you can commit to adding new content.

Valice email can be configured in any mail application that supports the popular IMAP protocol. IMAP allows you to sync your incoming and sent messages across multiple devices (phone, desktop, etc). The messages are stored on the mail server and synced to your IMAP configured devices and applications. You can also always check your email directly on the server through the webmail interface at mail.e.valice.com. Our documentation provides common mail application setup steps.

Valice members can access our remote hands for setting up new mailbox users and getting their devices configured. Additionally, we provide any ongoing troubleshooting or mail client settings changes to our members. One-time services are welcomed as well through a scheduled remote hands service session. Click here for more information on email support.

Popular supported desktop and mobile email applications supported:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Mac / Apple Mail
• Gmail
• iPhone / iPad Mail

You betcha! While we provide our own basic and business email hosting, we understand that many organizations are better suited to utilize large provider solutions including Microsoft 365 and Gmail. We are well versed in both platforms and can provide you and your organization email support on each of these platforms through our membership plans.

Looking to make a switch or evaluate which platform is right for your organization’s needs? We can help with that too. Let’s connect!

If your former email server supports IMAP or POP connections and you know your former username, password, and server address; You can use the Mailbox Migration tool to import emails from another account into your new email account at Valice. Your storage level will need to be configured to match and exceed what needs to be imported. Once this process is complete, you can remove your old profile in all of your devices and email applications and your new Valice email can be added with all of your old emails intact. If you need assistance with this process, Valice provides that free of charge for members or can engage with you as a one-time service.

Valice provides pooled storage. This means that the level of storage that you are allocated and pay for each month, can be shared across all users. A key feature, however, is this can be configured. Each individual mailbox can be limited in the amount of storage it is allowed to consume. Click here to learn how to set this. If they exceed that storage, they will be presented with a notice that they have run into their mailbox storage limits and can no longer send or receive emails. This provides organizations with flexibility to limit some users in certain use cases.

When you reach 90% of your pooled storage limit on your plan, Valice will auto-upgrade your storage. If you are on monthly billing the additional storage will be reflected on your next billing cycle. If you are on annual billing, you will be charged a pro-rated upgrade. Email storage is billed at a rate of $0.50 /GB / month.

Yes! Email storage and the number of mailboxes on your plan can be increased and we’ll automatically scale your disk space as you approach your limit so that you don’t miss any emails. The rates for additional disk space and mailboxes are below:

Valice Basic Email

• disk space – $0.50 /GB /month
• mailboxes – $0.25 /mailbox /month

Valice Business Email

• disk space – $0.50 /GB /month
• mailboxes – $1.75 /mailbox /month

Click here for documentation on how to adjust your resources.

Valice owns, operates and maintains all of the physical equipment that powers our hosting environment. We are colocated in a state-of-the-art datacenter in Boise, Idaho. Your site is hosted on a redundant, virtualized infrastructure and backed-up to an offsite cloud environment for disaster recovery purposes.

Valice was activated by the merger of Outerworld Networking and The White Space into Valice in 2009. Businesses’ needs for both technical and design expertise for web-based solutions drove this seamless partnership.

Outerworld was established in 1997 as a hosting and programming provider. The company employed information technology and programming expertise as well as a state-of-the-art hosting infrastructure.

The White Space was established in 2006 and offered creative design and marketing services geared toward a small business clientele that was growing rapidly by the time of the merger. The company employed professionals with larger agency experience who could take the elements and plans that worked for large companies and translate them into solutions for small businesses and startups.

Today Valice is committed to making the web presence of organizations and individuals more professional and simpler to manage. With every customer engagement, we want to ensure that we are always providing strong value for the service received.

Valice can provide customers with website design and the related graphic design to support that effort. We’ll create custom graphics, image editing, and basic logo creation. For larger branding, print, and other graphic design needs – we’ve got a network of amazing design partners with whom we can recommend and refer.

Many of our clients are marketing agencies, design firms, and individual graphic designers. We are able to keep them focused on design while we handle the hosting, technical support, and maintenance services for their client websites. Some utilize Valice for the development and implementation of their website designs and visions. We work closely with these partners to deliver pixel perfect executions and collaborate to bring functionality visions to reality.

We love partnering with these talented folks. If that’s you…learn more about our partnership programs.

We certainly do! And anyone can be admitted. Our affiliate program provides competitive, recurring payouts all of our web hosting and service solutions. Every Valice customer is eligible to participate. Simply click the “Affiliates” link in your my.valice.com top navigation and click “activate.” That’s it! Start using your custom link to refer others to Valice.

Not a customer? We partner with agencies, marketers, designers, and others who can create an account to start referring without having a service at Valice. Learn more about our partnership opportunities.

If you don’t find what you need in our documentation, we recommend that you first initiate a ticket from your my.valice.com account. From there, we can complete your service request, answer your question, or hop on a remote hands session if needed. We offer service flexibility through both one-time services and ongoing membership plans.

We receive service and support requests from a variety of sources. The best way to get on the phone with Valice is to request or schedule a call back from within your my.valice.com account. We’ve found that the most effective support we can provide is on a scheduled call and screen share.

Scheduling calls also helps us provide fairness in our responsiveness to your issue or request (no “cuts in line”). In adherence to this fairness, our phone support provides automated remedies to common questions and the ability to leave a message for one of our team members to create a ticket and get back to you.

You bet! Our Enhanced membership level and above includes support for other related services. We understand the frustrations many of our customers encounter trying to connect Mailchimp APIs, navigate settings in Mindbody, figure out the two-factor authentication rules in Microsoft 365, and… The list goes on. Valice is uniquely positioned to provide friendly and helpful support for all of these online touch points. For many business, these third-party applications are as critical as their website itself and we’re here to help!

For those that just need assistance one-time with a third-party application, we also have a remote hands service engagement for that.

Many website owners prefer to stay hands-off and leave the edits and updates to the pros. Providing ongoing website edits and updates is lot of what we do here at Valice each and every day for our members. Membership plans are leveled by the frequency of your service needs.

For sites that just have seasonal needs (e.g. event websites), we provide seasonal editing and development plans for that as well. Reach out to learn more.

Honestly, a lot. It’s sort of like the difference between a concierge who will make your dinner reservations and take care of your transportation and the front desk who will provide you with their phone number and directions for getting there.

Valice is here to empower the do-it-yourself types who really prefer to control and oversee their own services. We welcome these customers and are here to point them to resources and documentation (or create it if it doesn’t exist) related to what they’re trying to do. Documentation covers everything from domain registrations, DNS management, Valice hosting configurations, core WordPress how-tos, to whatever else we can help answer. We enjoy helping! When these customers run into a roadblock or need a one-time engagement, we have one-time remote hands, WordPress training sessions, or even website edit requests for that.

Memberships provide a more intimate relationship with you and your organization. While performing website edits or email management might be driving reasons why many customers choose to become members, the services and advantages go far beyond that. Simply put, it means we’re part of your team taking care of things like…

• Ensuring your domains don’t expire (even if your credit card was declined on renewal)
• Interfacing with plugin developers or other third-party support to report bugs or troubleshoot on your behalf
• Making ourselves available to coordinate major updates or organizational changes
• Helping your keep your email secure and working directly with your team members to troubleshoot issues and setup devices
• Helping you with your connected and related applications including email marketing apps, CRMs, eCommerce systems, payment gateways, etc.

Our members are why we at Valice do what we do and ultimately why we exist as a company.

Learn More