PageCrafter Offers Entrepreneurs an All-In-One Solution for Hosting, Maintenance, and WordPress Design

TL; DR: PageCrafter is a Minnesota-based website design, maintenance, and hosting company that serves businesses with WordPress websites. The company focuses on the technical elements of sites so its small business clients can remain dedicated to running their operations and improving products and services. As WordPress becomes more challenging to navigate with its plugins, updates, and complex security, PageCrafter works with SMBs to build a stunning and sustainable web presence.

Almost 7 million new websites went live in 2020 as brick-and-mortar stores transitioned to selling online during the COVID-19 pandemic. And many small businesses used WordPress to build those sites.

WordPress now powers nearly 40% percent of all websites — up from 35% in 2020. The content management system was built with end users in mind, but many modern business owners don’t have the time to build, design, maintain, and host their sites due to the platform’s complexity.

Today, navigating WordPress with confidence often requires a deep technical understanding, which may be especially difficult for small businesses that need to focus on other parts of their operations.

PageCrafter launched in 2011 with a mission to make it easier for businesses to set up and maintain a WordPress website. Founder Brian Johnson told us about how he started the company organically, helping one client at a time.

“When I started, it was just me. I had been working with another web development company, and I branched off on my own and started working with small local clients,” Brian said.

What started as a lean web design shop quickly grew into an expert-level firm that can handle anything related to WordPress. PageCrafter offers entrepreneurs and small businesses an all-in-one WordPress solution, including web design, hosting, and maintenance.

The company started by catering to customers who used a variety of content management platforms, but PageCrafter focused on WordPress early on and decided to make the platform its specialty.

“Now we work exclusively with WordPress. Over the years, we’ve grown in a few different areas, and the team has expanded,” Brian said. “We’re a website design, development, and maintenance company, and hosting is a big part of our business.”

PageCrafter was set up to thrive during the events of 2020. Instead of working with companies to adjust to a digital world, most of its B2B clients were already online, and many were expanding during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Most of our business tends to be B2B or membership organizations. A lot of that market didn’t change much over the last year. They were already online,” Brian said. “We were busy the entire year. And now, 2021 is shaping up to easily be our best year by far.”

PageCrafter offers affordable and easy-to-implement solutions because it focuses on small businesses in the B2B sector. Instead of customers adding services à la carte, PageCrafter offers unique infrastructure solutions and price transparency.

The company also doesn’t compromise on speed or quality.

“We provide managed hosting, and we deal with all the issues,” Brian said. “With our clients, we migrate their websites for free. We deal with any problems that come up along the way.”

Small companies may not have the luxury of building out an internal IT team. They also don’t typically have the time to spend designing, maintaining, and solving hosting-related problems in-house.

PageCrafter maintains an organic approach to growing the company and still obtains many new customers through word of mouth. That allows it to focus on personalized solutions instead of marketing standard packages with one-size-fits-all products. PageCrafter understands that there’s no ready-made option for building a company or a brand, so there shouldn’t be a package solution for building a website either.

“Our main pitch is that we make it easy to have a website. We handle all of the things that you don’t want to,” Brian said, “Some clients don’t mind editing their website and adding functionality, and we’re happy to handle the parts they don’t want to do, including hosting. Others want us to do everything, and we’re happy to provide that, too.”

PageCrafter partners with customers to handle the questions and problems that get in the way of delivering their products and services. And clients receive a superior, personalized product at a lower price point instead of working with public hosting options or cookie-cutter designs.

Many of PageCrafter’s customers were already online in 2020, but the consumer shift to digital channels helped them grow in their markets.

“2020 was one of the best years we had. We were fortunate that we were already in a space that was set to do well during a pandemic,” Brian said. “If anything, people were going online more.”

That dynamic has led to PageCrafter’s steady growth since the beginning of the pandemic. The company also expanded its offerings to include everything that a company needs to have a successful WordPress website. Whether clients need a website design or help at every step of the process, PageCrafter can help.

“We’re in a growth mode here, and PageCrafter is planning on expanding in the hosting sector by acquiring smaller hosting providers,” Brian said. “We recently added WP Rocket into our managed hosting platform in addition to uptime monitoring. We’re constantly focused on making our clients’ websites faster and more reliable.”

PageCrafter has established itself as a go-to solution for SMBs and entrepreneurs that need a fast, beautiful WordPress website. Companies won’t need to look to multiple vendors to complete projects thanks to PageCrafter’s recent acquisitions, which allow it to design, maintain, and host their site.

Offering comprehensive services ultimately saves customers time and money. Instead of building a website using 10 vendors, companies can get a better price and a more integrated product from a single provider.

PageCrafter builds relationships with each of its clients, responds quickly to customer requests, and creates product offerings that serve those needs. Public hosts often don’t have the time to listen to individual customers, especially if they aren’t at the enterprise level.

At the root of PageCrafter’s mission are four questions designed to make the customer experience as easy as possible.

“How can we make it faster? How can we make it more reliable? How can we make the process easier for our clients?” Brian said. “And how can we give them the most value for what we’re offering and make their lives easier?”

PageCrafter creates a uniquely effortless and affordable WordPress solution by asking those questions and applying the answers to improve customer experience. As more businesses continue to choose WordPress websites, PageCrafter has firmly established itself in the market at a perfect time for growth.

“We want to make everything directly connected to the website easy for our clients. Clients that are busy and have more important things to worry about the technical side of their website turn to us to take care of it for them,” Brian said.

Small businesses and entrepreneurs who need personalized solutions, but have limited budgets, don’t have to go it alone. PageCrafter offers the expertise of an enterprise agency with the customer service and attention of a much smaller firm. And it doesn’t set limits on the problems it will solve for its customers. PageCrafter offers hosting, maintenance, and design all in one place.