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Launched in 2014, Servebolt is a relatively new addition to the WordPress-centric sector of the web hosting market. The company was founded by Hans Kristian Rosbach and Erlend Eide in Norway and had been known by a different name for some time. The name was “Raske Sider” and can be translated into English as “Fast Pages”.
Whether you prefer the company’s previous or current name is an academic question, but one thing is for sure: you are known for making performance issues a thing of the past, and your name is synonymous with blazing fast internet speeds.
Servebolt is headquartered in Drammen, Norway, and users can choose between Oslo (Norway) or Amsterdam (Netherlands) when deciding on a data center location. Although Servebolt was originally aimed at the Scandinavian web hosting market, it has been serving an international audience since 2017 and is enjoying growing popularity across Europe.
Servebolt’s main website is simple in design, mostly white with the occasional yellow motif, and is available in four languages: English, Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish. The Servebolt website recently started offering an official blog and a very good one. Aside from the blog, they seem to be quite active on social networks (mostly on Facebook and Twitter), while the rest of their social media accounts (YouTube and Instagram in particular) feel kind of out of date.
Plans and Pricing
Since Servebolt is geared towards demanding users who need the highest speed and fairly perfect performance (e.g. media intensive sites, community sites, third party resource sites, etc.), their product will be priced accordingly. So, if you’re not ready to pay the maximum amount, this is probably the wrong web hosting provider for you.
Servebolt offers a variety of managed WordPress hosting solutions divided into two categories: “High Performance” (includes six plans) and “Enterprise” (three plans). Aside from fees, the differences between these plans are mostly related to storage, files, databases, and dynamic queries. The one most likely to be “pocket-friendly” is referred to as the “Pro Plan” and starts at € 99 ($ ​​119.71 per month). It offers 4 GB of storage space, up to three 3 websites, an unlimited number of PHP workers, countless domain names and up to a million dynamic requests.
All plans, with the exception of the customizable enterprise-level plan, come with an excellent 60-day free trial. Therefore there is no money back guarantee.
The payment methods available include: credit cards, PayPal and direct debit (only for the Eurozone and Sweden).
user friendliness
Servebolt is all about speed, speed, and more speed, so it’s no wonder their answers to the “why us” question had something related to (you can imagine) speed. The same goes for their list of features, which highlights, among other things, their network infrastructure, “modern” hardware solutions, optimized caching configuration, use of the fastest and latest PHP and their customized Linux version. With all of this on the move, Servebolt is on the way to turning all concerns about your website’s performance, security, and scalability into an old story.
After you’ve looked through all of Servebolt’s hosting plans and decided on an ideal one, you can sign up right away or try the plan first by starting your free trial. In either case, the process is pretty much the same, except you won’t be billed for a free trial until you decide to make a purchase or your Bolt (that’s what they call individual environments you manage through your dashboard) with a live Upgrade to update domain to launch your website with Servebolt.
To log in, you will need to create an account with Servebolt and provide some personal information (name, surname, email address and mobile phone number). After that, we passed the verification process via email and our new account was activated in less than a minute. There you will be greeted by a welcome message that includes a link to a well-written entry from their knowledge base that explains what Bolt actually is and how this stuff works.
After going through the reading material, we tried our best to be creative with a password (and the strength was “strong,” the algorithm decided), passed another review (this time on cell phone), and entered Servebolt’s administration dashboard in all its simplicity and glory. From there you can manage your server settings, set up your domains, control your databases and individual websites, access SSL settings and change anything you want about your account.
In addition to WordPress (for which the Servebolt platform was specially developed), a variety of additional content management systems (CMS) are also supported, including WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, CraftCMS, Drupal and more.
Should you ever find yourself in any embarrassment, don’t hesitate to contact Servebolt’s support staff for all the support you never knew you needed.
Speed ​​and experience
Free of false modesty, Servebolt emphasizes how they use faster networks (including Infiniband) that are designed to ensure lightning-fast data transfer between computers on their network and minimal latency for everyone on the network. In addition, they promise their users loading speeds that they have never seen before.
Although this all sounds good in theory, we had to test our beloved GTmetrix to see how it holds up in practice. After completing the speed test on Servebolt’s main website, no one was surprised with an A (100%) final grade. However, it took the website 3.8 seconds to fully load (the average result is 8.2) which is great but not the fastest speed we’ve ever seen.
In terms of uptime, Servebolt offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee “SLA always included” and (interestingly) the ability for potential users to check the uptime of their website for the last 30 days (this is currently 99.99%) . In any case, we monitored the uptime of their website for two weeks (via UptimeRobot) and got the results that corroborate their words. There was no sign of downtime, which indicated a pristine up to 100% uptime.
support
If you need help, the first option that is likely to catch your eye is the live chat, which should be available 24/7 as it promises a response time of under five minutes. There you can see seemingly authentic photos of all available support agents. That being said, you can contact them by email or phone number (international or for Norway), although Servebolt’s website subtly suggests that you should try the chat first.
If you don’t want to rely on others, Servebolt offers a “Help Center” that serves as a knowledge database and covers everything to do with hosting from A to Z. Along with common categories for different types of issues (Account, Billing, Getting Started, Platform, Security, etc.), this knowledge base contains manuals, how-tos, how-tos, news, and updates. Most of these guides are short and straight to the point, but they seem very helpful.
If you need help with setup and migration at the end of the day, or need well-written instructions along with ongoing support from their technical teams, Servebolt will have it all.
The competition
While HostGator has several well-structured managed WordPress plans that give you great value for money, they aren’t exactly aimed at mission-critical websites that require impeccable performance without compromise. On the other hand, Servebolt was developed with that mission in mind.
Much like HostGator, DreamHost is another fan favorite known for offering a whole range of hosting options, features, add-ons, and all for one pocket-friendly price. However, Servebolt is dedicated to the highest level of managed WordPress hosting and would be an overdose for less demanding users. Likewise, Servebolt’s customer support is up to par with their services, while trying to get help from the DreamHost staff can easily turn into a nightmare.
Bluehost is another savvy host from the US that has a lot going for it, especially for those looking for a way to start a website without breaking their budget. Servebolt is more aimed at those who do not have to worry about their budget, as well as the customers from Europe, since their two data centers are located within the national borders.
Aruba is another European web hosting company with more than two decades of experience, known for its budget-friendly plans and (unfortunately) the lack of in-depth support (especially in English). On the other hand, Servebolt is neither cheap nor lacks customer support. Hence, the decision of who will fit in the bill ultimately depends on what type of website you have in mind and how much you are willing to pay to make it a reality.
Final verdict
If you are looking for a rock solid WordPress oriented host for your mission critical website that is also focused on speed and performance as well as great support, Servebolt is your safest choice. If you don’t yet know the answer to the question we asked at the beginning of this trip, here it is: yes, Servebolt is as fast as they say and that is commendable.
But even if Servebolt is great value for money, the amount of money you are paying for their services is going to be no less than steep. If you consider yourself a newbie in the field, your needs are a little simpler, or you want to save money, both HostGator and Bluehost have great, budget-friendly hosting plans with a variety of attractive features.
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