Over the last few years we have seen many WordPress companies adopt the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model. Rather than charge a one off fee, the company charges customers on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.
In return, the company provides access to a large number of products and services in addition to dedicated support.
One of the latest WordPress companies to launch under the SaaS model is 10Web. Developed by the same people behind Web Dorado, 10Web gives you access to dozens of plugins and themes in addition to other premium WordPress services.
Let's take a closer look at 10Web and see what you receive if you sign up as a member.
An All in One WordPress Solution
10Web provides a wide variety of WordPress tools and services from only $12 per month. You receive two months free if you opt to pay annually.
At the current time, a 10Web membership gives you:
- Over 60 premium WordPress plugins
- 6 premium WordPress themes
- WordPress backups
- Image optimisation
- SEO tools and analytics
The current features noted above are correct at the time of writing, but it is important to note that 10Web is a new service. In the future they will be adding more plugins and themes and are soon adding hosting, security, and uptime services, to their membership plans.
WordPress Plugins
Their plugin page states that a 10Web membership offers 60 plugins. This is 100% true, but also slightly misleading in a way as the total number of unique plugins is 26. The remaining 34 plugins are extensions that add additional features to the 26 core plugins.
You will be pleased to hear, however, that the quality of plugins is very high.
I am very familiar with their plugins as they have been sold on Web Dorado over the last few years and I have reviewed several of them. This includes Google Maps WD, Event Calendar WD, Form Maker, Instagram Feed WD, Facebook Feed WD, Slider WD, Photo Gallery, Google Analytics WD, and MailChimp Forms WD.
There are a lot of other WordPress plugins I haven't tested yet that look very appealing to me. For example, YouTube WD can be used to embed YouTube videos on your website in video galleries and boasts useful tools such as social media integration. Ad Manager WD looks fantastic too as it helps you integrate advertising into your website and features ad scheduling, geo targeting, ad stats, user role management, and more.
If you look back at my reviews of 10Web's WordPress plugins, you will see that they are overwhelmingly positive. There are a few reasons for this.
Firstly, all of the plugins are bug free. I don't recall ever coming any major bugs or errors in any of their plugins. They all work as intended.
Secondly, all of the plugins provide an option to uninstall the plugin. The vast majority of plugins leave a mess in your WordPress database when they are removed. In contrast, all 10Web plugins come with an option to remove plugin data from your website database.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, their plugins give solutions to common problems that website owners will face. Their Instagram plugin is a good example of this. It lets uses display photos and videos from their Instagram accounts and display them in beautiful galleries.
Another area where 10Web plugins impress are options. All of their plugins come with a ton of settings and configuration options that allow you to tweak and adjust things to suit your needs.
There are a good variety of plugins on offer from 10Web. The key thing to note is that each plugin adds a lot of functionality to your website. They are not offering simple widget plugins just to increase their portfolio. These plugins have been sold for around $25+ each over the last few years and help you add many useful features to your website.
WordPress Themes
A total of six WordPress themes are currently included in the 10Web membership.
This includes a multipurpose theme called Sauron, a one page business theme called Business Elite and another business theme called Business World, two magazine themes, Best Magazine and news magazine, and a photo theme called Portfolio Gallery.
The WordPress themes feature multiple layouts, page templates, and widgets. They have social media integration and built-in contact forms too.
Whilst the designs aren't bad, the quality is no better than what is being offered in the WordPress.org theme directory. They are certainly not good enough to convince someone to buy a 10Web membership.
Having six WordPress themes included in the 10Web membership is welcomed, but it is clear that the strength of their WordPress plugin portfolio is not matched by their WordPress themes. It's an area they will need to expand upon in the future.
WordPress Services
At the moment, a 10Web membership includes three WordPress services.
Their backup service provides a defined amount of storage for you to back your website up. The amount of storage available depends on what membership plan you select.
Their backup plugin provides daily, weekly, or monthly backups. The plugin supports differential backups so that only data that has changed is backed up. You can choose to backup in a variety of formats and backup to external locations such as Dropbox and GDrive too.
Backups can be downloaded at any time and you can restore a backup at the click of a button.
Their image optimisation service lets you resize, compress, and optimise images. It supports a wide range of image formats and gives you three different compression options. You can select the compression option which suits you best (i.e. one which reduces file size, but doesn't affect quality too much).
Reports are available that highlight what images have been optimised and how much space you have saved.
Their SEO service offers search analytics, technical analysis, XML sitemaps, meta boxes, keyword tracking, and more. You will find some of that functionality in other SEO WordPress plugins, but it's great to see them including keyword tracking too.
Pricing
10Web offer a 14 day free trial of their service. You need to enter your credit card details in order to take advantage of this trial, but you will only be billed if you do not cancel within two weeks. If you do decide to cancel, you can continue to use their plugins on your websites for as long as you wish (but obviously, you do not gain access to updates and support).
Whilst I prefer services that offer a 100% free trial without the need to enter credit card information, I do appreciate that if 10Web were to offer that, tens of thousands of people who had no intention of using the service long term would sign up.
On the whole, I feel their free trial offer is fair and a great opportunity to test their service.
Three membership plans are available: Basic, Standard, and Premium.
All plans give you a unified dashboard, support and updates, and access to all plugins and themes.
The basic plan costs $12 per month. It supports three domains and offers 10GB of WordPress storage and 20,000 optimised images per month. The standard plan costs $30 per month. It supports 10 domains and offers 40GB of WordPress storage and 80,000 optimised images per month.
Upgrading to the premium plan at $80 per month increases domains to 50, WordPress storage to 140GB, and optimised images to 250,000.
10Web state that they offer 20% off if you pay annually. That isn't actually true. It appears they have did their calculations wrong.
At $12 per month, the basic plan would cost $144 per year. 20% off would mean the annual plan would cost $115.20, not $120. What they are actually offering is two months free.
So you get two months free if you choose to pay the basic and standard plans annually. Bizarrely, the premium plan costs $780 annually; which is less than 20% saving and a little better than two months free. Who knows how they worked that one out.
All subscriptions can be cancelled at any time and you can continue to use 10Web plugins forever as all their products are GPL friendly.
Final Thoughts
10Web have put together a very attractive package for WordPress users. Many image optimisation services and backup services charge around $10 per month, so for 10Web to include those services in plans that start from $12 per month is pretty generous.
Their WordPress themes aren't much to shout about, but with such a large collection of useful WordPress plugins and genuinely useful WordPress services on offer, 10Web is easy to recommend.
I encourage you to check out their website to find out more about what they offer.
Thanks for reading.
Kevin
