Category: Tips & Tricks

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting & Do You Need It?
Trying to figure out what managed WordPress hosting is and whether you need it?

WordPress currently powers over 455 million websites, with 500 new WordPress websites every day. Well over a third of the top 1 million websites is WordPress based, so no one is ever going to deny its popularity or success, but that doesn’t mean that it’s immediately straightforward – there are key decisions to make right from the start which could have a long term impact on your website’s success.

In this guide, we’ll walk through when managed WordPress hosting can make sense and why for many use-cases running your own infrastructure (with the help of RunCloud) paired with a popular cloud provider like UpCloud, DigitalOcean, Vultr, etc. can be the better choice. Without further ado – let’s dive in.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting is a service that takes care of all the technical aspects of running a WordPress website. This generally includes everything from maintaining the performance, stability, and security of your hosting infrastructure all the way through to providing support for technical issues that arise.

For those willing to pay a premium to have everything taken care of for them, managed hosting can afford you some extra peace of mind. We’ll get into the advantages and disadvantages shortly.

Overall, the main attraction in finding a managed WordPress host is convenience. You delegate responsibility and let experts handle the technicalities, freeing up to do what you want to focus on which may not be anything related to your hosting infrastructure.

The Pros & Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting

Although the features and services may differ from host to host, you can still rest assured that the majority of these pros and cons will be present in every host.

Managed WordPress Hosting Pros

There are really only two main advantages of choosing managed WordPress hosting – support & the absence of responsibility.

Support

Managed WordPress hosting providers tend to pride themselves in the level of support they’re able to provide.

The Absence of Responsibility

When you work with sites where 100% uptime and maintaining security, stability, and performance are not things that you wish to be responsible for, they’re often a good choice.

Managed WordPress Hosting Cons

Price (better yet, what is your business model?)

Managed WordPress hosting is more expensive, but that’s not really what cost comes down to. Whether or not you choose to go with managed hosting as a result of the cost, realistically is a matter of what your business model is. If you’re a WordPress design and development agency that has made the decision they want to get into the hosting business (a billion-dollar industry), then running your own infrastructure, eventually staffing your own support, etc. becomes a more logical choice.

Whereas, if you wish to maintain the stance that hosting is not something you’re interested in getting into and you would rather focus solely on your area of expertise as a design and development partner, perhaps eventually expanding into offering other services like SEO, then going with a managed WordPress hosting provider – depending on the site – can make more sense for your business.

Less Control

When you go with managed WordPress hosting, you are tied into their ecosystem of how you can scale sites, and traffic and how you can optimize when you reach a certain point, i.e. can you decouple your database and use a dedicated database server & do you need to pay $100/month to enable Redis caching because your host offers it as an add-on? All of these are out of your control and tied to how your managed WordPress hosting provider wants you to handle them.

When Can Managed WordPress Hosting Make Sense?

We would distill the ideal customer profile of managed WordPress hosting providers don’t

To make the distinction of when to choose managed WordPress hosting over a solution like RunCloud (and vice versa), you can distill things into 2 ideal customer profiles:
1. The business owner who is not interested in having extra work to do, just wants things taken care of so is willing to pay a managed WordPress hosting provider.
2. The businesses that have the technical talent but don’t want to capitalize on WordPress hosting as a part of their business model (as a part of a strategic choice to focus on what their core service is, missing out on recurring revenue as a result, but this can be the right way to go of course).
While using a solution like RunCloud doesn’t require you to be a SysAdmin or expert by any stretch of the imagination, realistically anyone who can use WordPress to a decent level will (perhaps with some help from our incredible support team) get up & running, it is still slightly more involved than going with a managed WordPress hosting provider.

So if we go back to the two profiles above, it really comes back to what you want your business model to be. Do you want to take ownership of the hosting layer and become the expert or do you want this to be taken care of by a managed WordPress hosting provider that staffs a team of experts?

Or, better yet, a mix of both? This is what quite a few of our customers do.

For agencies that host sites for their clients but not all client sites are alike, some have bigger budgets and some have more complex sites. When there’s a site that’s too big for the agency’s appetite for managing in-house (with their current team) on RunCloud, they offload it to their managed WordPress hosting provider of choice. While the majority of sites tend to fall within the type of sites they want to manage in which case they choose RunCloud which makes total sense, because it really isn’t a completely black & white choice, and fortunately, isn’t an all or nothing choice either.

Managed WordPress Hosting vs. Shared Hosting

Now although this isn’t the focus of the article, there is one thing we do want to mention and that is shared hosting. Yes, we’re thinking exactly what you’re thinking – subpar support and terrible performance.

When To Avoid Shared Hosting?

Our personal stance on shared hosting is that it almost never makes sense for any kind of serious business owner. Sure, we’re well aware that the shared hosting providers in the industry occupy a very significant portion of the market share but realistically that is because many people that use WordPress aren’t necessarily running a business or working to accomplish something with their websites.

For the price of most shared hosting providers, you can easily maintain your infrastructure with RunCloud at a fraction of the cost so referring clients (if you’re a design and development agency) to a shared hosting provider is really just a huge missed opportunity. Because you’re both not going to satisfy them with your recommendation (given they are likely to not be happy with their experience) and will miss out on keeping them as a customer as a part of a hosting & support service offering.

After Action Report – Get Ready To Own The Hosting Layer & Grow Your Business

Now that you know how to decide on when to use or better yet, the type of sites it may make sense to host with a managed WordPress hosting provider, let’s take a moment to talk about how you can own the hosting layer and use it to grow your business.

Traditionally, managing your infrastructure with cloud providers like DigitalOcean, UpCloud, Vultr, Linode, AWS, the Google Cloud Platform (and more) required you to be extremely familiar with Linux to the point where you could essentially consider yourself a self-taught SysAdmin.

Fortunately thanks to RunCloud, this is no longer the case. Managing your own infrastructure, deploying servers with DigitalOcean of UpCloud all the way to setting up WordPress sites on those freshly-deployed servers can all be done in a matter of minutes. And, if you do run into any issues, you have a friendly support team of real people ready to jump in to help.

This only begins to scratch the surface of how you can use RunCloud, but here are some of the things you can expect to enjoy when managing your infrastructure with RunCloud:
- Easy server deployments
- 1-click WordPress installation
- Built-in tools for file management, Cron jobs, and more
- 1-click staging environments
- Server and site monitoring
- Server statistics and health checks
- Atomic Deployment
- Integrations with GitHub and Bitbucket
- 24/7 friendly & human support team
- Built-in backups (including to external providers of your choice, i.e. S3 Buckets & more)
What really separates RunCloud from other similar solutions is ease of use and support. Other newer providers that throw together some copied version of what RunCloud offers come and go, we’ve been here for years and aren’t going anywhere. And we aren’t basing our product development timeline off of competitors.

One-click SSL, seamless integration with Cloudflare, and more make managing dozens of websites as a company of one (or more with a small team) is all possible with RunCloud.

Ready to get started? Learn more and sign up for your free trial today.

Bonus: If I Do Choose To Go The Managed Route – Which Managed WordPress Hosting Providers Can You Recommend?

So, if you’ve made it to the end of this article and still have a specific use-case for managed WordPress hosting – this is a handpicked list (based on the hosting providers our team has actual experience with). These are all hosts that we can wholeheartedly recommend and are very well-reputed in the industry.

Servebolt

Servebolt is a next-level, high-performance managed hosting provider with a strong focus on scalability. Whereas most such hosting companies are built on other platforms, such as AWS or GCP, thereby limiting the extent to which they can optimize their service, Servebolt has built and maintains its own Linux distribution – and controls the stack from top to bottom. As such, they’re able to optimize for raw performance at every layer of their stack.
- Built for true scale and raw performance
- Friendly customer support
- A hardcore approach to performance
- Consistently outperforms all other managed hosting providers in independent WP Hosting Benchmarks across all tiers.
If you already aren’t using RunCloud to manage a server deployed with DigitalOcean or UpCloud, it makes sense to go with a hosting provider that hasn’t just built their infrastructure on top of AWS, the Google Cloud Platform, etc. Because maintaining their own hardware is what allows Servebolt to achieve the performance and optimize the stack from top to bottom while the other managed hosting providers (although we still recommend them) are simply powered by AWS and the Google Cloud Platform.

It’s also worth noting that Servebolt does not impose a limit on PHP workers, something we highly recommend when choosing a hosting provider, especially when looking at managed WordPress hosts which are by no stretch of the imagination extremely affordable. A limit on PHP workers is something that a lot of managed WordPress hosting providers like to do in order to throttle performance when your site starts to scale and charge extra to “add extra PHP workers to your site” to keep charging you more as you grow. Charging more as your site grows is fine, server costs will trend upwards as your site grows but throttling performance as a means of achieving this is not something Servebolt (nor we at RunCloud) are advocates for.

Pagely

Pagely is an enterprise-level WordPress host and is easily the most expensive service on this list. If you want a host to take care of all the heavy lifting and provide a premium, near hands-free experience, then keep reading.
- World-class server speeds powered by AWS Cloud
- Superb customer support (live chat and tickets)
- Free SSL, CDN, and backups
- Optimized WordPress sites
- Simple staging tools
- Automatic site-wide updates
- Efficient hosting for eCommerce
Pagely’s higher pricing plans allow bigger businesses to host 30 to 60 websites and more. As a solution for enterprise companies, Pagely takes security very seriously. You’ll be protected against DoS/DDoS attacks and have all plugins up to date. Pagely also developed its own security architecture called PressArmor. Finally, since nothing is 100% safe, Pagely will automatically back up your website at no additional cost.

A premium price also requires stellar support, which Pagely proudly offers. Basic support means sending tickets and having access to live chat (only during business hours). If you opt for a more expensive plan, you can get access to phone calls and even have your own personal Slack channel.

Kinsta

One of the largest managed WordPress hosting sites in the industry, Kinsta caters to a wide range of customers, including new business owners as well as enterprise-level clients.

Whether you’re a small business or one that’s almost a household name, Kinsta has a pricing plan ready for you. In this review, we’ll be focusing on Kinsta’s cheapest pricing option, the Starter plan.

Here’s what you can expect from working with Kinsta:
- Site staging features
- Automatic database optimization
- Automatic daily backups, with the option to create manual backup points
- Free SSL
- Limits on the number of PHP workers per site
- 24/7 live chat support team
It’s important to note that Kinsta doesn’t offer unlimited visits and CDN. Each plan has a monthly visit limit and if your visitors go past that number, you’ll be charged extra (notified ahead of time).

As a separate point, it’s worth keeping in mind that depending upon which plan you choose, you will have a cap on the number of PHP workers active on your site. For basic, static websites this is not generally a problem, but more dynamic sites should take this into consideration when comparing their options.

In addition, Kinsta also does not include server-level caching (Redis) that works for dynamic sites unless you pay an additional fee as they separate it from their plans to sell it as a premium add-on.

Still, the support team behind Kinsta feels passionate about their work. The reviews on Kinsta’s support team are some of the best you can read in this industry. If you’re a business with a sizable number of employees, Kinsta makes team management a breeze. You can add unlimited users to your site and easily set roles or permissions for each user.

As for security, Kinsta will fix your website for free if it’s hacked. Which frankly is unlikely given the GeoIP blocking, DDoS scanning, and other features that are protecting your site as standard. The only notable downside to Kinsta is their inability to provide an unlimited plan and their list of blocked plugins (to avoid slowing down the servers and your site).

All in all, Kinsta is a very flexible managed WordPress host. They have 10 pricing plans incremented by $100s from $30 all the way to $1,500. You can also save 2 months’ worth of hosting payments if you pay annually.

WP Engine

WP Engine is an all-around managed WordPress host with a long portfolio of innovation and consistent service.

The managed WordPress hosting service is specifically designed to manage WordPress sites. With patented optimization tools, good customer support, and a range of premium features, WP Engine is an affordable alternative that offers reliable quality.

Here’s what you can expect from using WP Engine:
- 24/7 customer service
- Daily backups
- Staging site features
- Simplified website managing process
- Reliable performance when it comes to speed and uptime
- Quick and easy WordPress migration and installation
- Premium themes
- Automatic site-wide updates
- Free fix in case of hacking incidents
WP Engine has a good list of features to help you build and maintain a solid website. Since their entire framework is specifically designed for WordPress, you’ll also be benefiting from consistent loading times and server speed.

If you’re looking for an entry-level managed WordPress host that executes all the basic features of a WordPress host well, then WP Engine makes a good case.

Beginner-friendly and inexpensive, WP Engine is a great option for new business owners. For those of you who have more websites and demands to solve, WP Engine also offers enterprise-level solutions with a pricing system that’ll be specific to your needs.
May 9, 2022
What Are Linux Logs? What Are They & How To Use Them
Linux logs offer developers and system administrators a detailed account of all events, requests, and activity on the server. Log files can be used to monitor critical events in the kernel, the server, and for any services or applications actively running.

Server administrators can review comprehensive diagnostic information about performance, ranging from kernel events to user actions. In this post, we’re going to talk about Linux logs, what they are, why they’re important, and focus on the most important Linux logs.

What Are Linux Logs?

A Linux log is simply a file that records specific information relating to events, applications, and the kernel. When you face an issue, these files can prove to be a critically important tool for troubleshooting.

In case of a problem, administrators can simply analyze these files to determine and create a timeline for the series of events that occurred, and which eventually led to the problem.

Linux logs are generally stored in plain text and are available in the /var/log directory. Linux logs can be found for virtually everything, including boot processes, package managers, kernel, Apache, MySQL, and others.

The Most Important Linux Logs

Broadly speaking, Linux logs can be categorized under the four main headings:
1. Application Logs
2. System Logs
3. Service Logs
4. Event Logs
Since Linux logs are generally stored in plain text files, sifting through each one is incredibly difficult. That’s one of the main reasons why developers often prefer using different tools, such as log file viewers. Examples of these include Logmaster or MultiTail.

But as a system administrator, there are some Linux logs that really demand your attention. Here are the ones that you should definitely know about.

Application Logs
1. /var/log/syslog
This is a simple Linux log that shows you general information regarding system performance. Essentially, this log shows all the activity that has occurred in the system. This is the same as /var/log/messages, and shows you a generic log of all system activity.

All non-critical and informational messages are shown here. For Debian systems, you will use /var/log/syslog. But for other Redhat systems, such as Rhel, you will use /var/log/messages.

How to use /var/log/syslog

These Linux logs let you track any errors related to application services or any other messages that are logged when the system boots up. Commonly, this is often the first Linux log that administrators look at when something goes wrong.

It gives you a basic understanding of any errors, so in case an issue was detected during system startup, administrators can simply go through these messages to find out what went wrong.
1. /var/log/maillog
These Linux logs are used for storing information relating to mail servers. This is quite handy for any email-related services that are active on your server. It is also useful for postfix or for the SMTP daemon process.

How to use /var/log/maillog

If you’re running email-centric services such as MailScanner, you can find information related to them. With these logs, you can also track all incoming or outgoing emails within a defined period.

In any situation where mail delivery has failed, simply refer to the logs to find out why. More importantly, these Linux log files will also give you information about the origins of incoming emails. If there were any spamming attempts detected and blocked by the server, you can find these in the log files too.
1. /var/log/yum.log
If you have any packages installed that utilize the yum command, information related to those will be found in these Linux logs. This can be useful for determining if everything went well.

How to use /var/log/yum.log

You can see Linux logs that confirm whether packages were installed correctly or not, including information about other software and system components that have been installed.

In case a software package was not installed correctly, you can find information related to that in these logs. These logs will help you identify any malfunctions and correct them by identifying the underlying issue.

System Logs
1. /var/log/boot.log
These Linux logs contain startup messages and information pertaining to the boot. This includes the initialization script, which sends all bootup information to the log file.

Think of this as a comprehensive log file that offers detailed information about the server startup process, including all messages that are logged as the server starts up.

How to use /var/log/boot.log

In case there were issues with startup or shutdown, you will find relevant information here. This also includes information relating to any boot failures or random restarts.

These Linux logs are generally useful for determining issues related to system downtime, especially if the server experienced random shutdowns.
1. /var/log /dmesg
Another way to view Linux logs is dmesg. This shows you all Kernel ring buffer messages, including information that relates to any hardware components and their drivers.

The kernel is capable of detecting physical hardware devices that are connected to the server as it boots up, which is why it is capable of logging hardware errors or the general status of these components. It also includes other general logs.

How to use /var/log /dmesg

If there’s an issue with a certain piece of hardware connected to the server, you can check the dmesg logs to determine the problem and fix it. It’s great for server management, as these logs are mainly for dedicated server customers.
1. var/log/mysqld.log
Finally, this is the MySQL log file. All messages related to debugging, failure, or success of the MySQL daemon are logged here.

If you’re running RedHat or Fedora distros, you will find these under /var/og/mysqld.log. For Ubuntu or Debian distros, just search through the /var/log/mysql.log directory.

How to use var/log/mysqld.log

Any issues related to running or halting mysqld can be found here, so use these logs to determine what’s wrong and make changes. You can also glean valuable information about client connections to the MySQL directory using these logs.

Service Logs
1. /var/log/auth.log
The auth.log generally stores Linux logs associated with authentication and includes information for both failed and successful logins. Again, for Debian or Ubuntu-based systems, you can find the relevant Linux logs in /var/log/auth.log.

But, for Redhat or CentOS distros, you will find them under /var/log/secure. All relevant information regarding the user authentication process can be found here.

How to use /var/log/auth.log

If you feel that there might have been a security breach on the servers, you may want to check these logs to determine successful or failed logins. Server administrators generally keep a watchful eye and instantly become suspicious if they notice a JavaScript file out of place or anything that doesn’t make sense.

With these logs, you can quickly and efficiently analyze any suspicious activity, including failed login attempts. Since it records all activity related to user authentication, you can easily figure out if your server was the target of a brute force attack.
1. /var/log/cron
This log stores all messages related to cron jobs, including the time when the cron daemon began a job, any relevant failure messages, or other status information.

How to use /var/log/cron

Every time a cron job is executed, these Linux logs are used to maintain detailed information, including any error messages or issues relating to the successful execution. If your scheduled cron isn’t running properly, you might want to review these logs.

Event Logs
1. /var/log/faillog
The /var/log/faillog records all relevant information related to failed logins. This is very handy for honing in and finding out about any security breaches. It’s similar to the one above, but instead of showing both successful and unsuccessful logins, it only returns failed logins.

How to use /var/log/faillog

If you feel that your server was targeted in a username or password hack, these Linux logs will give you comprehensive information about any such activity.
1. /var/log/httpd
This is a directory of Linux logs that contain access_log and error_log files associated with the Apache server. The information is stored in two different log files, with errors kept in the error_log file and memory issues related to requests via HTTP stored in access_log.

How to use /var/log/httpd

You can view all errors related to http daemon access using the error_log file, including any system-specific problems. More importantly, the Apache server records events and errors here that occur during http request processing.

In case you experience an issue with your Apache web server, you can check the logs to determine the issue. In addition, the logs also contain IP addresses and user IDs of all clients that serve a connection request.

It also contains information about the status of all server requests, including those that were successful or ones that failed.
1. /var/log/kern
This log offers information about the kernel and any warnings. Kernel logs can be accessed with this terminal, so in case of any errors or warnings, you can check it out.

How to use /var/log/kern

If you’re facing issues with custom kernels, you can check warning data through this log and troubleshoot problems. It gives you comprehensive information about any kernel errors, making it easy to find problems and fix them.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I Analyze a Log File in Linux?

You can use a command line tool such as grep to run plain text searches. These can help you analyze log files and are generally found by default in most Linux distros.

How Do I Manually Create a Log File In Linux?

To create a log file entry in Linux, you can simply use the logger command. The command helps you connect with the syslog module. To create a log file, simply type “logger” (without the speech marks), followed by your message, and Linux will automatically add it in the /var/log/syslog directory.

Where Are Logs Kept in Linux?

You can find most of the Linux log files as plain ASCII text files. They’re commonly stored in the /var/log directory and its subdirectories.

What Is The Purpose Of Logs in Linux?

The main purpose of Linux logs is to provide a detailed event timeline in the Linux OS. It can be an excellent tool for diagnostics and for troubleshooting and is commonly used by administrators to determine what went wrong.

After Action Report – RunCloud Dashboard Makes Log Viewing Easy

Linux logs are an excellent way to identify any errors and correct them. The RunCloud dashboard makes it easy for users to find logs within their Web Application. Simply click on the Web Application, and navigate to Web Server Log.

Are you using Linux logs to keep track of server performance or to identify errors? If so, we’d love to know more about how you use them. Let us know in the comments below!
April 29, 2022
Understanding Continuous Integration vs. Continuous Deployment
If you work in DevOps, you may have heard, or be familiar with, continuous integration and continuous deployment. Often, people use these terms interchangeably, but this is incorrect.

Consider that you wish to implement a change to your web application – for simple changes, these are often made directly. But when you’re considering improving your development workflow, you’ll want to be able to stage these changes, test them in a separate environment, and deploy them – all without causing your site to be temporarily inaccessible to end-users.

In essence, continuous integration and continuous deployment are two related, but separate processes for automated deployment to make changes to code. They are ways to change code in order to keep things smooth, with less need for manual testing and changing. While they do relate to each other, each is a distinct concept that needs to be understood.

In this guide, we’ll break down what these terms mean, how they’re different, the benefits of taking advantage of them in your workflow, and how to implement them properly in WordPress – so, let’s dive right in.

What Are Continuous Integration And Continuous Deployment?

As we mentioned previously, they are both methods to deploy changes to code. If you need to make some changes to the code of a site, you will need to understand both continuous integration and deployment to do so.

However, to make matters potentially a bit confusing, they can work together, with each aspect, integration, and deployment representing different factors. You have to use continuous integration as part of continuous deployment, but you may opt out of continuous deployment, however. So, they are not the same, and they need to be understood independently. Let’s dive into looking at exactly what each of these terms mean.

What Is Continuous Integration?

Continuous integration is the first element of a good CI/CD setup in your development workflow, and it is the automated method of combining code versions and validating results. This is particularly useful the more frequently you make changes, as you can create a CI pipeline that automatically builds and tests changes before you merge them.

This is especially true if you’ve developed automated tests. The benefit of CI is that developers can focus on development while the key tests run in the background to catch any changes that conflict with any other existing code. This can be in the form of deploying to a staging environment or simply running automated tests in the background.

What Is Continuous Deployment?

Continuous deployment (CD), on the other hand, is the last element of a CI/CD workflow. Once the modifications have been integrated and tested via your CI pipeline, the next step is to deploy your new release. Many developers still do this manually, which is a huge waste of time. Fortunately, if you use a service like RunCloud to manage your server infrastructure, you can easily automate your deployments making it possible to seamlessly release your code as frequently as you’d like.

No more sleepless nights thinking of launch days and pushing individual features.

Deploy with no downtime for your users and easily roll back changes if you spot anything that’s acting up in production that wasn’t caught during your testing.

Note: There is another term that is sometimes used: continuous delivery. This is very similar to continuous deployment in that it forms an important part of the development approach involved with ensuring that changes can be pushed at any time. This means that building, testing, and releasing software can take place more efficiently.

What Is The Difference Between Continuous Integration And Continuous Deployment?

Effectively, continuous integration is how to make the code updates work for the developers, assisting them in the implementation of code changes into the main branch. Continuous deployment is about getting the code to the end-user in a way that doesn’t interfere with the branch, and testing to make sure that changes are automatically implemented without issue. They both relate to each other, in that continuous integration plays a role in continuous deployment, but deployment is the step to get the results to the end-user.

How Can Continuous Integration And Continuous Deployment Work Together?

You need continuous integration if you want to do continuous deployment. In that, if a commit is being deployed regularly to production, it needs to be working, and you need to be sure of that. Continuous integration allows you to ensure that it works. So, if you want to do continuous deployment of regular commits, you need to do continuous integration.

However, if you do not have regular changes, you may not need to do continuous deployment; rather, you may choose to opt for continuous delivery and integration. The integration ensures all code changes work, and delivery requires manual approval of the implementation of the changes. Deployment becomes more useful when you are comfortable with the testing process, and you have more regular changes to implement.

Why Use Continuous Integration?

Continuous integration is useful for you and your team to ensure that code changes work. There are several reasons you should use this approach, which we outline now:

Advantages Of Continuous Integration
- Fewer Bugs — Because of the automated tests, bugs get caught early on, and there is less chance of breaking.
- Easy Building Of Release — As you are ensuring that integration matters are taken care of early, the release can be built much easier.
- Less Context Switching — Developers immediately know when something breaks, allowing them to fix it prior to changing tasks.
- Less Testing Costs — Continuous integration servers can handle hundreds of tests per second. This reduces your costs considerably.
- Less Documentation — If you just use continuous integration without continuous deployment, you will have less need to document each and every automatic deployment.
- Less Need For Top Level Testing — Similarly, if you forgo continuous deployment, you don’t need as much top-level testing to ensure that your automatic deployment works. In fact, you have more manual control over the process.
Why Use Continuous Deployment?

With continuous deployment, you make your life considerably easier in the long run. It allows for efficient deployments, and given that you trust your testing, it means that you can spend more time developing instead of worrying whether your changes will work outside of production.

Here are the reasons to consider using continuous deployment:

Advantages Of Continuous Deployment
- Fast Development — There is no need to pause development for each and every release. Rather, the pipelines get automatically triggered to make changes.
- Less time-consuming tasks — Continuous deployment automates a range of tasks, saving a lot of time.
- No Daily Merging Of Changes — If you just use continuous integration, you have to take care of merges every day, but continuous deployment does this for you.
- No tests for each feature — Just using continuous integration requires tests for each new feature. Continuous deployment takes care of that for you.
- Less Risky Releases — With continuous deployment, you can release small batches of code, which are easier to fix.
- Daily Improvements — The end users get to experience constant improvement on a daily basis.
How To Adopt Continuous Deployment?

If you want the benefits of continuous deployment, but so far are only using continuous integration and delivery, how easy it would be to adopt continuous deployment will vary depending on where you are with your project status.

When starting a project, you can implement continuous deployment as soon as possible. You can automate deployments before having end-users, to ensure all things are running smoothly, and generally check that everything is working fine. You can increase the testing and when eventually you are content with the deployment process, you can then launch with a whole continuous deployment process in place.

If your project is already running, and end-users are already present, there are some things to consider changing:
1. Start with continuous integration and delivery, in order to have more control and checks over the process.
2. Then create basic tests for automatic execution, to avoid making things too difficult.
3. Then you can start automating deployments so that eventually all deployments are done automatically.
4. When you are ready for full continuous deployment you need to ensure that everyone is ready and aware of the nature of any changes to the code, as this can affect customers. Constant planning is also required as are top-level testing capabilities.
The Best CI/CD Tools We Recommend

There are multiple tools out there to do the heavy lifting with both continuous integration and continuous deployment. Generally, they help facilitate the integration and automated deployment of code.

If you already use RunCloud to manage cloud infrastructure, we offer built-in Atomic Deployment, so you don’t have to worry about setting up, configuring, and paying for yet another service to handle your continuous integration and deployment needs.

That being said, other big names that provide services for continuous integration and deployment are Jenkins, CircleCI, and GitLab, among many others.

Jenkins is an open-source automation server, with building and integration processes, and it supports hundreds of plugins to help with integration as well as deployment.

With CircleCI, you are able to have an automated pipeline, from building to deployment, and it is compatible with many other programs, including Jenkins, GitLab, and others. It also hosts continuous integration on the cloud or behind a firewall on your own server.

GitLab is a Git repository manager and lets you trigger builds, run tests, or deploy code at each push or commit.

Find what tools you require to help with your continuous integration and deployment needs.

How Does Continuous Integration Or Continuous Deployment Work With WordPress?

Generally, WordPress projects are a bit different, due to the lack of suites for built-in units and integration tests. However, these processes can still apply to WordPress. The main concern for developers when it comes to WordPress is ensuring everything works without affecting the speed of pages. Continuous integration and continuous deployment can take care of this.

Do bear in mind the nature of the structure will be affected if the project has a standalone theme or plugin, or WordPress’s feature themes.

Generally, you would first need to build your dependencies.

Second, you test your code. If you use continuous integration and continuous deployment, you can test within your site. Different developers use different approaches, but it is something that can be done with WordPress.

Finally, you can deploy. When you deploy in WordPress, it is most likely you are deploying a plugin, theme, or full site.

RunCloud’s Atomic Deployment feature is platform-independent, which means it works with WordPress, but it also works with other platforms, such as Laravel. PHP management tools are essential for WordPress.

After Action Report – Implement CI/CD In Your Development Workflow Today

Continuous integration and continuous deployment are two terms that are used interchangeably, in part because they are often linked together. However, we explained the different natures of each of these things. Whether you wish to use continuous deployment is up to you, but it is a good way to save a lot of time and effort, once set up.

It is generally better if you can trust your testing capabilities or are in the early stages of project development. Consider learning more about how RunCloud’s Atomic Deployment can help with your site. Here are some sources you can find out more about Atomic Deployment:
Do you have any specific questions about continuous integration and continuous deployment? Or think we’ve missed something worth including in this post? Join the conversation by leaving a comment below. 💬
April 8, 2022
How To Optimize Laravel for Performance (8 Expert Tips)
With over a million websites powered by Laravel, Google pushing the importance of website speed, and users less & less accepting of anything other than an incredibly smooth user experience – some are giving PHP & frameworks like Laravel the reputation of being less performant than other frameworks. While there very well may be truth to this, that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything you can do about it – so, in this guide, we’ll dive deep into how you can optimize Laravel for performance.

Expert Tips on Optimizing Laravel

This article will go over several important tips, each with step-by-step guides to optimize your Laravel website. While some of the steps may sound technical, the steps will be easy to follow and recreate on your own screen.

Using Artisan Commands

Although Artisan commands are commonly listed as part of the optimization tips, it’s not really a hack. Artisan is just a Laravel command line interface that helps you execute instructions through simple commands. We’ll be using a lot of these commands later on.

Artisan Optimize Command

A quick search online will reveal many articles recommending the use of the Artisan Optimize Command. While this used to help, with much improved PHP op-code caching it’s no longer relevant. It was deprecated in Laravel 5.5, and since 5.6 it’s been removed completely. So don’t go looking for this solution as it will no longer exist!

Config Caching

Any web developer today will certainly agree that caching your files is a great way to save on loading time and increase website performance. By generating a ready, easy-to-read template of your website that your servers read instead of all your web files every time someone loads your site, loading times are cut dramatically.

The only problem with caching is that it sets your website to a semi-permanent state. If you plan on making changes anytime soon, you’ll have to undo the cache before configuring your website and then redo it when you’re done.

Aside from that, caching with Laravel is considerably easier than other frameworks because you can do so through caching engines that don’t involve coding.

If you’re ready to cache your website, simply type this in the Artisan command line:
```
php artisan config:cache
```
Remember, any changes you make on your site after this won’t have any effect because of your cache. If you want to refresh the cache config, simply type the command again. Otherwise, you can also clear the cache by typing in:
```
php artisan config:clear
```
There are multiple ways you can cache with Laravel, but these two basic commands are enough to get you started.

Route Caching

A route cache is a collection of routes around your website that helps load your pages faster. This works by avoiding the taxing and sometimes slow process of mapping your routes from scratch. With route caching, Laravel can temporarily load the routes from a pre-compiled cache instead of starting from scratch for every new user. The cache lasts only until the user exits out of your website.

Just like config caching, any changes you make to your website after the cache will not have any effect until you update the route cache. It’s important to remember to update the cache after making any changes to your website’s structure.

Here’s the command that you have to run to start the route cache:
```
php artisan route:cache
```
To clear the cache, you use a similar command:
```
php artisan route:clear
```
Route caching is a simple way to make your website feel snappier and load faster.

Use Queues

Laravel queues work like your CPU. Whenever your computer processes a task, it does so in the most efficient way possible that doesn’t degrade the quality of the user’s experience. This means that when you’re rendering a file or doing something resource intensive, your CPU makes sure that you still have processing power left for your other tasks until its limit is reached.

The way this works is that your CPU queues tasks after each other, with no strict adherence to order. If you’re rendering a file, then opening a browser window, your CPU will insert the browser process earlier to make sure it opens without delay. Just like a CPU, Laravel can also improve web performance by offloading time-consuming processes to a queue.

Simple examples of this are:
- Sending emails
- Downloading files
- Uploading files
These tasks don’t need to be seen by the user and can be done as a background process.

Queues are an in-depth trick though and we, unfortunately, don’t have the space to cover it fully within this article. Instead, you can check out the official Laravel documentation for this. If you’re curious about what the basic commands look like, here are some examples from Artisan:
```
php artisan queue:work
SendEmailJob::dispatch($to, $body);
```
Laravel also has several queue driver support documentations and offers unique solutions for each, such as Horizon, a dashboard that monitors your queue system.

Use Eager Loading

Eager loading is a way of coding rather than a simple command that you can run via Artisan.

Eager loading is the process of sending a larger, nested data structure with more than enough information for the query. Although sending a larger query might require more memory or data, since the internet is already at blazing fast speeds, several more kilobytes or even megabytes will be barely noticeable for most users. These larger data queries are better for the server since it means sending one large query, rather than processing several hundred queries just to look for the user’s data.

The opposite of this is lazy loading, which might be what your website is utilizing by default, where single items of data are retrieved individually as and when required, resulting in many more server requests. Here’s what the query for that looks like:
```
$books = App\Book::all();
Foreach ($books as $book) {
Echo $book->author->name;}
```
Eager loading on the other hand looks like this:
```
$books = App\Book::with(‘author’)->get();
Foreach ($books as $book) {
Echo $book->author->name;}
```
A simple example where this is used is in games. Most games use eager loading when preparing levels or discrete phases. Whenever you’re loading into a map, the game loads everything in advance so that you have all the assets you need — even if you don’t explore or use all the objects inside that map.

The main downside to eager loading has always been the amount of information users would need to download or prepare to access your site. Each query would mean sending a file that’s larger than technically necessary. However, with mobile data and home Wi-Fi fast becoming near-gigabit speeds, file sizes have gone down the priority list when it comes to optimization.

Clear Up Unused Service

Another tip that involves how your code is clearing up any services that are unused by the user.

It’s common to add and start a service when your website loads, but unused services can add unnecessary burdens on your system and strain your server speed. This is especially apparent when handling larger amounts of visitors. You may even have services that were utilized at the beginning of your development process but are no longer used today.

You can open the Laravel app and go to:
```
config/app.php.
```
This will show a list of all the services installed on your server. Simply comment out the services that are unused.

NOTE: be careful with the services you’re trying to disable. You may accidentally disable a service that plays a huge role in your site, causing certain parts of your website to malfunction or not start at all.

Run tests and check the services manually on staging machines first before disabling services you aren’t sure about.

Remove Dev Dependencies

Dev dependencies are often injected into your system by default when installing Laravel or a composer for the first time. While these dependencies do aid in building your website, you don’t need these dependencies when your site is up and running.

You can input this simple command through Artisan to remove those dependencies:
```
composer install --prefer-dist --no-dev -o
```
After running this command a package or directory will be created (possibly a zip file or similar) which you can then use to install the release. The command specifies only to retrieve and package the official distribution, without dependencies.

NOTE: Dev dependencies are different from dependencies that are required at runtime. Don’t delete runtime dependencies as this may affect your website’s performance or even crash certain parts of your site.

General Web Optimization Tips

There are also several optimization hacks that you can do for your website outside of Laravel. If you’re looking to polish every aspect of your site and increase its performance and rankings on Google, then here’s what you should do next.

Use a Fast Host

A fast host is undeniably the first thing you should start looking at. Is your host fast enough and can it handle the number of visitors that your website is currently receiving, or which you anticipate will be visiting following your business’s growth? This is an essential question to ask at the moment with Google actively punishing websites which it deems too slow (including speed responses measured in milliseconds).

Going for a dedicated 3rd-party host is always the best option. Shared hosts are too slow and hosting physical servers yourself is expensive and hard to scale. 3rd-party hosts on the other hand will cost you between $25 to $150 per month on average and will provide you with blazing fast speeds, secure connections, and website optimization tools.

Minify CSS and JS Files

Your CSS and JS files are laid out to be easily read by default. This means your files have spaces, indentations, and other formatting that make it easy to read for us. However, your website doesn’t care about these visual syntax practices and can easily read your files without them.

Minifying your CSS and JS files means removing all of the unnecessary spaces, indentations, and other characters that take up valuable server space. Depending on the size of your website, this can make a significant difference in server response times. Just remember to keep a separate copy of the CSS and JS files that aren’t minified, in case you ever need to edit or review your code.

This process can be carried out very quickly by using any one of the many online CSS and JS minifiers available for free.

Compress Your Images

Images are one of the biggest performance leaks in websites that aren’t optimized. This is especially true for those who upload 1920×1080 images only display it in a 540×300 format. It may be that you upload an image at the largest size you think you’ll ever need, and then just have it rendered down to the actual size in the browser, but this is hugely damaging to response times, and having multiple image files set at all of the needed resolutions is far better.

Compressing your images will not only reduce the sizes of your image files by more than half, it will also retain the quality pretty well. Typically, you’ll have to compress the images before uploading them to your website, but there are several plug-ins and online services that will compress all the images on your site for you. From our experience, a lot of these will need to be paid for.

As either an alternative or additional solution we often recommend clients use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) which helps boost server response times too.

Reduce the Number of HTTP Requests

Another major performance issue is when websites make multiple HTTP requests from the server whenever a visitor loads a web page. Typically this can involve many separate calls from JavaScript files, CSS files, and images.

HTTP requests are basically your computer asking your website for information. Each block of information, whether that’s an image, a link, or any kind of content, will require its own separate HTTP request. Larger files will mean longer request times and many files will mean more HTTP requests.

To find out the number of HTTP requests your website needs, you can use Google Chrome’s Network panel. You should ideally aim for a number between 10 to 30 files per page. For reference, the average number of requests is typically around 60 to 75 requests.

With Laravel, you can reduce the number of individual HTTP requests easily by using the CodeSleeve/asset-pipeline. What this will do is to combine all of your separate assets (such as JavaScript files and CSS scripts) and combine them all into one single file. This reduces the HTTP requests down to one. Not only that, but it will also minify the code (something we mentioned earlier), which will help speed up the page loading time dramatically.

Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

If your website is hosted in the US, then it may be that visitors from across most of the US will benefit from good response times, but potentially there can be significant delays for those accessing your site from other areas around the world.

One solution to this is to use a Content Delivery Service (CDN). These provide a cached version of either your whole site, part of your site, or assets such as images/videos/audio files on various alternate servers around the world.

When a visitor’s browser requests to load a page from your site, the CDN determines their geographic location, and serves them the page, or assets, from the server that is located closest to them, or which provides the fastest response times.

Getting a CDN used to mean subscribing to another 3rd-party CDN service. However, most 3rd-party website hosts already offer CDNs as part of their basic packages. To reduce the number of payments and have your website set up more conveniently, we recommend looking for a host with CDN features instead of finding a 3rd-party CDN service.

Conclusion – Optimize Laravel for Performance

Laravel has made its name around the web-development scene because of how easy it is to use. It’s straightforward and is fast by default. However, Laravel isn’t immune to bloat and can benefit a great deal from general maintenance and optimization tips.

By using any of the top optimization tips we’ve included here you can combine the fantastic advantages of Laravel with the ever-growing need to keep your website fast and responsive, keeping Google (and your website visitors & users!) very happy. Do you have any specific questions about Laravel? Or think we’ve missed a top optimization tip? Join the conversation by leaving a comment below. 💬
March 23, 2022
The Best Facebook Groups for SysAdmins & Developers
Joining some of the best Facebook groups for SysAdmins and developers is a great way to learn, improve, and stay up-to-date with the industry.

Any developer with more than a year of experience will know for a fact that tech is always evolving. With so many popular tools, languages, libraries, and other technologies out there — it’s impossible to learn everything on your own. That’s why joining a Facebook group with like-minded developers is a great idea.

In this article, we’ll be going over the best Facebook groups for SysAdmins and developers.

Let’s get started — here’s is the breakdown of some of the best Facebook groups for SysAds and Devs:

RunCloud Community
- Members: 2.3k
- Type: Private
- Founded on: 22nd December 2017
What the group is about: The RunCloud Community is a Facebook group originally made for RunCloud users and developers. It’s a medium-sized group with a lot of active members.

The group is only available for active RunCloud users and is mainly composed of posts about:
- RunCloud news
- Industry news for DevOps and SysAds
- Personal and work-related questions
RunCloud Community is one of the most active Facebook groups on this list, despite being just 2,300 members. This makes it a great choice for developers who are looking for quick replies and a group that’s full of new content — without the fear of never seeing the same developer again.

It’s a tight-knit community with a lot to offer both beginners and veterans in this field, especially for developers and SysAds that use RunCloud.

So in case, you decide to go with RunCloud as your web hosting company, we’re 100% certain that you will find amazing support in our community of developers, sysadmins, and engineers!

Why you should join the group: RunCloud Community is a great place to learn about RunCloud, DevOps, and SysAds together with a group that practices the same technology as you. If you’re a RunCloud user, then this would be the best place to grow your skills and network with other developers or system admins.

Check out some of our plans to see what you’re getting besides the most active amazing community out there!

Black (WPT) Web Developers, Programmers, Engineers & Techs
- Members: 4.6k
- Type: Private
- Founded on: 13th March 2013
What the group is about: The Black WPT group is a professional, helpful and enthusiastic community for web developers, programmers, engineers, and techs. This group is arguably the most active one on this list, with nearly 500 posts from December 2021 alone.

The Black WPT group places heavy emphasis on networking, mentorship, collaboration, resource sharing, and communication. Attached below are some examples of what the group posts about:
- Open discussion about how the tech industry and its practices relate to black people
- Safe space for candid communication and reviews of tech practices or cultures
- Questions and discussions about tech news
The group is private and requires you to answer several membership questions, as well as have a profile picture that shows your face. After getting approved, you can create an introductory post: sharing your goals, aspirations, why you joined the group and anything else that seems appropriate.

Black WPT is a very helpful and collaborative community filled with several useful resources, has different mentorship programs, and is focused on making a strong network connection for every member.

Why you should join the group: If you are a member of the black developer community and like to engage with other black developers or sysadmins, then Black WPT is the perfect place for that. It’s an active group with a lot to offer newbies and vetted professionals — especially those who want to talk about how technology affects black lives.

Sysadmin | Cloud | DevOps
- Members: 63.2k
- Type: Private
- Founded on: 28th April 2018
What’s the group is about: The group discusses info about Cloud, Database, VMware, Linux, and Windows. It’s a huge group with tens of thousands of members, but the members themselves are not very active.

Although this Facebook group has a lot of members and was only recently created, it’s quite inactive. We’re only adding this to the list because there are still regular posts that new users can sift through (granted they’re all promotional content).

You can expect posts like:
- Industry news
- Self-promotional articles about different technologies
- Tutorials and guides
- Links to webinars, courses, and online lectures
Just don’t expect to find anyone who’ll reply to your questions or even entertain your comments. The group is filled with people who post their own content and don’t do anything more..

Why you should join the group: If you aren’t looking for an active community, but more of a group with a plethora of possibly interesting articles, courses, or guides to help you. Then this is a good place to find those resources.

Unix Dev Ops
- Members: 8.9k
- Type: Private
- Founded on: 17th April 2008
What the group is about: Unix DevOps is a group that focuses on AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, Tru64, Linux, Darwin, BSD, and Minix. It’s a simple group with relatively idle activity.

Although Unix DevOps isn’t the most active group in this list, it’s good to note that spamming and advertisements are a bannable offense. This means that even though they’ve only had 19 posts as of December 2021, those posts were probably questions or healthy discussions.

Now, the group was created around 13 years ago, so most of the 9,000 members may not even be active at all. Still, it’s always worth a shot since you may be able to find some users who are still frequent contributors to the group.

Why you should join the group: Unix DevOps is an old group, but with some active members who can provide value to both beginners and experts alike. It’s a great place to find a small community to who you might be able to talk on a more personal note, rather than just being limited to comments and posts.

Full Stack Developers / DevOps / Software Designers and Architects
- Members: 26.9k
- Type: Private
- Founded on: 25th March 2017
What’s the group about: Full Stack Developers /DevOps / Software Designers and Architects is a simple community of professional developers with various backgrounds.

Besides other groups we mentioned on this list, this group has pretty much everything — learnings, experiences, troubleshooting, job opportunities, and sharing industry-related news.

However, just like any other group with thousands of members, most of them are inactive, but the ones that are active, post really good content.

Cheap or free courses, experiences from members, or even community helping you to solve the problem — you can find all of it here.

Why you should join the group: The first thing we noticed is how posts are heavily moderated — admins don’t allow all kinds of content posted, but very specific purpose-driven posts. That means the content in the group is good quality, and you can always learn something new, or in the worst-case scenario have a good laugh over a meme!

Docker Vietnam
- Members: 25.9k
- Type: Private
- Founded on: 9th February 2006
What the group is about: This Vietnamese group is a great resource for Vietnamese developers. It’s an active group, with same-day comments and replies.

Disclaimer: If you can’t speak Vietnamese, we suggest moving on to the next Facebook group.

Docker Vietnam is an engaging group for Vietnamese developers, but anyone who can speak Vietnamese is free to join. Here are some posts you can expect from Docker Vietnam:
- Job or hiring posts
- Online courses, lectures, or guides
- Industry news
- Questions about errors and general developer support
The group has more posts about questions, with several corresponding helpful comments, than it does promotional posts. It’s amazing to find a group this active, without all the advertisements. Anyone speaking Vietnamese would benefit from this Facebook group.

Why you should join the group: Vietnamese developers will benefit from local news, local job opportunities, and even finding friends that you might be able to meet in real life.

Software Development Mastery
- Members: 56k
- Type: Private
- Founded on: 14th September 2018
What the group is about: Helping highly motivated people break into the software development field and become rock-star developers. The group is all about helping fellow developers and promoting the group’s Software Development Mastermind course.

This Facebook group is basically a community of developers who are followers of Andy Sterkowitz and his software development course.

Although that sounds like a cult, the group is very particular about posting promotional content and spam. The group itself looks to be quite active, especially considering it’s developed more than 50,000 members despite the group only forming last 2018.

One shining quality of this group is that you can expect only one kind of post here: software development questions and problems.

You won’t find any ads in this Facebook group, the rules state that it’s strictly a group where developers can learn from each other and improve. It also helps that all the members and posts have to be approved by the admin before being accepted.

Why you should join the group: This Facebook group is all about software development problems, questions, and queries. You won’t find jobs here, people selling courses, and other types of advertisement. Developers who join this group will be greeted with the good old “why isn’t this working?” and all that fun stuff.

DevOps | Knowledge Sharing & Jobs
- Members: 2.6k
- Type: Public
- Founded on: 22nd August 2017
What the group is about: The DevOps | Knowledge Sharing & Jobs is an active group that’s full of opportunities and job listings for developers and system admins. They also have online training, courses, and workshops that are self-promoted.

For a group that was created 4 years ago, having 2,600 members is a good indication for a slowly growing, but active community. One of our favorite features from this group is their implementation of #hashtags to help organize the posts and make it easier to sort by.

Now, the group mainly have two types of posts:
- Promotional content like workshops and boot camps
- Job listings
There aren’t a lot of question-and-answer posts here, but you’ll find tons of opportunities if you’re job-searching. Since it is also a public group, you can easily join without having to go through any membership tests or have to wait for an admin to let you in.

Why you should join the group: The group offers a lot of job opportunities for rising developers and even vetted professionals. You should join the group if you’re looking for work and want to see the market for your skills. You can even look around and keep note of the highest-paying jobs or the ones that are most in-demand.

I am a Software Engineer
- Members: 91.9k
- Type: Private
- Founded on: 16th March 2017
What the group is about: This Facebook group is dedicated to software developers and engineers. It’s a mixture of programming in C, C++, C#, Java, Android, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, HTML/5, CSS/3, Bootstrap, JQuery, and more.

I am a Software Engineer is a weird name to name a group, but it embodies what this Facebook group is all about. Regardless of what language or framework you’re studying, chances are that this group can answer your questions and teach you more about your technology.

Here’s what posts you can expect from this Facebook group:
- English only posts (strictly in the rules)
- Question and answer posts about technical challenges and difficulties
- Industry news
The group mainly focuses on the development side of things and doesn’t allow for promotional content like jobs or advertisements. With almost 100,000 members, it might be worrisome to keep track and know everyone. The group’s activity levels aren’t anything to boast about, with only 125 posts from December 2021.

Just the right amount of activity for a small community in a large group.

Why you should join the group: if you’re looking for a group that can answer your questions and is a safe place for you to have discussions, then I am a Software Engineer is a great place to start. You won’t have to deal with any promotional content, plus you’ll get to learn more about different technologies from one group!

Google Cloud Platform & Kubernetes
- Members: 38.6k
- Type: Public
- Founded on: 16th March 2017
What the group is about: Software developers and SysAds who use Google Cloud Platform and Kubernetes. The group is also open to other technologies, especially the ones that have a direct impact on GCP or Kubernetes like AWS.

Kubernetes and Google’s cloud platform are two of the biggest systems in the world right now. For SysAds and developers who are trying to jump on this bandwagon, this Facebook group has a lot to offer when it comes to technical resources.

You can find all sorts of posts here, like:
- Question and answer posts for developers and system admins
- Online courses, workshops, and boot camps (only a few of these are present)
- Technical articles explaining high-level concepts of Kubernetes as well as other technologies
- Industry news
The group lets you filter through all of the posts with a #hashtag system as well, and that’s always a plus. It has a designated tab for questions too, which is a godsend feature for separating technical questions from everything else that’s posted in the group.

Why you should join the group: In short, if you’re thinking about learning Kubernetes and Google Cloud Platform, this group is a great place to hang out. You can get job opportunities, technical articles about Kubernetes, online courses with discounts, and question-and-answer posts that are great for discussion.

Computer Science/Software Engineering Conferences
- Members: 41.9k
- Type: Public
- Founded on: 22nd March 2014
What the group is about: The Computer Science/Software Engineering Conferences Facebook group is exactly what it sounds like — a group for conferences.

If you’re looking for a consistent stream of online events and conferences that you can attend, this is the place to start. The Facebook group requires all posts to follow a strict format, which helps organize all the events and makes things skimmable for members who are uninterested.

Although the group only offers conferences, you can still find all sorts of topics at work here. From AI safety all the way to Robotics and Smart Cities, you won’t be worried about not having enough conferences to attend.

The best part of this group is how diverse it is. There are tons of submissions from India, Switzerland, and even the UK.

Some conferences even allow users to submit papers for review, coupled with some formal benefits and perks if you win anything important.

Why you should join the group: Research papers and theses are important for developers who are taking their masters. Joining conferences to find out the latest and greatest advancements in technological developments can be a huge strength to your skills and ability to adapt to future technologies.

JavaFX Software Developers & Engineers
- Members: 3.2k
- Type: Public
- Founded on: 19th April 2018
What the group is about: The JavaFX Software Developers & Engineers group is about all things JavaFX and Thick Client Java.

Java is a language that’s been around for a long time and still looks to be quite a force in the programming world. The JavaFX Facebook group is a great resource for question-and-answer posts!

The group bans all kinds of advertisements and job postings, so all you see in the group are technical questions that are java-related. It’s a great place to have a casual conversation with a fellow developer or to ask for help with some of your demanding problems.

As the cherry on top, the group also lets you sort through topics by #hashtags. Granted it looks like their hashtags are a bit outdated.

Why you should join this group: Java is still one of the biggest languages in the programming world and this Facebook group is a great place to start asking questions.

After Action Report – Why Should You Join Developer Groups?

Despite the criticism it now gets, Facebook is still a great place to connect with like-minded people in your industry – stay tuned with what’s going on in the industry, what other respected developers are up to & more.

We recommend picking and choosing wisely. Communities are great but they’re also incredibly time-consuming.
What’s your personal favorite Facebook group? Let us know in the comments, join the conversation, and don’t forget to join the RunCloud Community.
February 7, 2022
23 Best Chrome Extensions To Protect Your Privacy
Are you looking for extensions to enhance your security and privacy?

Although Incognito Mode aims at making your browsing experience secure, sometimes it just isn’t enough. Chrome may be the world’s most popular web browser, but it isn’t the most private one. It does, however, provide a number of Chrome extensions that you can freely add and manage in the browser.

With the help of these extensions available in the Chrome Web Store, you can do a lot, such as blocking ads, disabling IP leakage, managing cookies, hiding your IP address, and ensuring site URLs are safe.

With this in mind, here are 23 of what we think are the best Chrome extensions that you could get to protect your privacy.

How to Add and Manage Extensions to Chrome

Adding extensions is an easy process, and we will explain it to you so you know how to do it.

The Chrome Web Store provides access to all extensions. While you may find links elsewhere from the services, they will redirect you to an extension page. When you click download, Chrome will add the extension to the top right corner of your browser, and you can pin them to see them at all times.

How to install and manage a Chrome extension in six steps:
1. Visit the Chrome Web Store, then click Extensions. This is at the top of the left-hand side, highlighted in blue.
2. Find the extension you need through the search function.
3. When you find the extension you want, select Add to Chrome.
4. You will see a pop-up telling you what permissions the extension requires, i.e., to read and change your browsing data. If you accept this, you should then click Add extension.
5. For extension management, select the More menu on the right, which is displayed by three vertical dots, select More Tools, and then Extensions.
6. You can turn on or off the extension on the Extensions page or click Details to find out about the extension and what permissions it has.
We explained how to install an extension, so now we give you a list of 23 security and privacy extensions that you should consider.

What Are The Best Privacy Extensions?

To maximize security and privacy, Chrome offers a multitude of browser add-ons known as ‘extensions’ to address online privacy issues. Anti-tracking, phishing, ad-blocking, password managers, proxy, and VPN are made all available conveniently when you use Chrome.

If you’re concerned with your online privacy, safety, and security, consider acquiring one or more of these services.

1. Nord VPN

VPN has always been a first (and often the best) line of defense when it comes to protecting your privacy. And we’ve chosen NordVPN to be the first one on this list for many reasons.

The way VPN works is that VPN first connects to a remote server before you connect to the webserver that you’re trying to access. At that remote server, your IP address is masked, protecting your personal IP as you browse.

Nord VPN offers you the ability to use the VPN directly in the browser without logging into the app, making it considerably more convenient.

Features:
- Military encryption — AES-256-CBC
- Can access content from any location
- You can use it on up to 6 devices
- No log creation to protect privacy
- Quality streaming.
It’s important to emphasize that NordVPN has a no-log policy, which means that in case anyone requests from NordVPN your browsing data through their VPN servers, they are genuinely unable to provide it as they record no logs about users activity.

There is no free version; however, there is a free trial, and the most basic option comes in under 5 USD a month for a yearly subscription, or you can pay more for a month-to-month subscription. It is nonetheless one of the most widely known and popular VPN services. If you want a VPN provider, which easily integrates into your Chrome, this is perfect for you.

2. DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials

DuckDuckGo is another anti-tracking extension for Chrome. It protects your privacy online with private search, tracker blocking, and secure browsing. What makes it unique is that it defaults your search query to its own encrypted search engine, protecting your privacy.

Features:
- Defaults browser connections to their own secure one
- Enforces encryption
- Provides website’s summary of privacy practices
- Gives a privacy grade to each website.
DuckDuckGo is ideal if you are concerned about your data and privacy when browsing and you want to know how trustworthy sites are to make better choices.

3. 1Password

1Password is a dedicated password manager. It handles all passwords and valuable information, stores it, keeps it safe, and allows you to use this information for auto-filling. Password managers, in general, are helpful, as they better protect your data than default programs.

Features:
- Provides an alternative secure password manager to the default Chrome autofill feature
- Handles all passwords and user accounts you use with Chrome
- Stores valuable information for you such as credit cards, passport info, etc.
- Automation for improved company infrastructure
If you’re not too comfortable using the autofill feature, which Google may well use to collect personal information about you, given Google’s reputation, it’s a good choice. In general, it’s a secure and efficient way to store passwords and other valuable information and to enter them when online quickly.

4. Telegram

Privacy in most major messaging applications remains to be an issue to consider. Applications like WhatsApp may have addressed this problem before, but it has become harder to trust these days ever since its acquisition by Facebook. One messaging application that has genuinely secure end-to-end encryption is Telegram.

Features:
- Secure end-to-end encryption
- Has all the functionalities a messaging application would need
- Data is protected through sandboxing.
Telegram, unlike other messaging apps, has no relation to other programs. For example, WhatsApp can communicate with other applications, which can be risky for your privacy and security.

Telegram, conversely, cannot send data between other applications, and it always encrypts conversations. You can also ensure that no one sees more than you want to share. With this level of security, it still has the features you’d normally expect from a messaging application: fun stickers, group chats, video calls, etc., so Telegram seems to be the perfect choice for an alternative to online messaging.

5. uBlock Origin

uBlock Origin is a great free privacy extension. uBlock Origin blocks ads and prevents trackers from accessing your information. You can use it on various browsers, it is entirely free, and it is very efficient in terms of CPU and memory usage. It also displays information about what is being blocked.

Features:
- Origin filter lists and blocklists
- Blocks ads
- Prevents tracking
- Oriented to being CPU friendly.
It also offers a lot of customization options, more lists, the ability to block JavaScript locally or globally, create your own global or local rules, and more.

Alternative: Even though it’s not actually the Chrome Extension, this same concept of enhanced security and performance is what the Brave browser offers. It’s 3 times faster than Google Chrome, has a built-in Ads Blocker, and has a lot of features specially designed to protect your privacy. So if you’re looking for protection even better than the uBlock Origin Chrome extension, then the Brave browser might just be what you’re looking for.

6. Click&Clean

This extension is straightforward, designed for quickly cleaning your browsing history. You can clear your browsing history, typed URLs, cookies, and cache with one button. You can also clear download history and remove client-side Web SQL Databases.

Features:
- Simple user interface and function
- Provides easy management to browser history, cookies, cache, and other data
- Removes downloads and can create space on your hard drive
- Scan PC for malware.
There is also an option to clean one portion at a time rather than deleting all information. Separate delete buttons are available for each option that you can choose as you see fit—generally, it’s a valuable and simple tool to consider.

7. Unshorten.link

Unshorten.link has a primary purpose, and as the name suggests, it un-shortens any shortened link. Shortened links are one way for cybercriminals to lure unsuspecting users onto their websites. Although that’s not always the case when you see a shortened link, there’s no way to tell without actually clicking on the link first.

Features:
- Un-shortens shortened links and exposes possible hidden malware
- Fast and easy to use
- Keeps a regularly updated list of 300 popular link shortening services
- Directs you to their link expansion page whenever you click a shortened link, so you know what the link is sending you to.
- Malware protection
- Blocks 15 common tracking cookies.
With this extension, you can be sure to know if a shortened link is hiding any malicious intent or not. The extension also boasts additional security features against malware and tracking and ensures that you cannot click a nefarious link. Other programs may offer tracking blockers, but this service is a great tool to know what is behind a link and prevents you from getting caught out.

8. Ghostery

Ghostery app is ideal for protecting your data and privacy when browsing. The free version is extensive as well. Depending on how strict you want it to be, you can configure the extension to four different levels. You may opt to block default, block nothing, block everything, or block specific sites.

Ghostery provides all these functionalities for free, but there is a Pro plan you can subscribe to for $2 per month.

Features:
- Ability to view and block trackers
- Anonymizes your data
- Smart blocking automatically blocks and permits trackers for an optimized experience
- (Paid version) Customer support priority
- (Paid version) Private ad-free internet search
- (Pro version) Detailed analytics.
While the paid plan gives you more options, it doesn’t protect you any more than the free plan; instead, it provides additional tools for a better online experience. It is, in general, an excellent choice for a range of security and privacy measures.

9. Dashlane

Dashlane is another password manager. It safely stores and logs all your passwords for easy use. It can work with various browsers, has two-stage authentication to maintain the security of your passwords, and makes filling in forms considerably easier.

Features:
- Free version allows you to save 50 passwords
- Auto filling
- Authentication protocols
- Password generator
- (Premium version) Up to 5 devices
- (Premium version) Store encrypted files.
Dashlane’s premium version offers many other features beyond simple password management. However, password management is a crucial security measure, as passwords can be stolen by malware without adequate protection. Dashlane makes creating and using complex passwords easier while saving you time.

10. NoScript

NoScript aims at making browsing considerably safer. It protects you from various cross-script attacks. These attacks are when “bad” code is added into “good” sites for undesirable purposes. NoScript can also protect you from clickjacking attempts when questionable sites masquerade as others. It also allows you to control what sites can run executable JavaScript, Flash, and Java content. So, for example, you can let your bank run Java, but no one else.

Features:
- Default whitelist of popular, trustworthy sites
- The first and one of the most powerful anti-cross-scripting filters
- Can work on mobile devices.
In the settings panel, it will give you an overview of everything blocked on the current webpage and allow you the option to allow or trust a particular script. The extension to Chrome is relatively new but is easily integrated into your Chrome security measures. It does not conflict with adblockers, so use it for extra security against script-based attacks.

11. ClearURLs

Contrary to adblockers that target the website or the scripts itself and much like Unshorten.link, ClearURLs targets tracking elements planted within URLs. This add-on is based on new WebExtensions technology and is optimized for Firefox and Chrome-based browsers.

Features:
- Automatic removal of URL tracking elements
- Optimized for Firefox and Chrome.
The extension automatically removes tracking elements from URLs to protect your privacy when browsing through the Internet. So at the end of the day, it’s simply added security to the links you use.

12. Privacy Badger

Privacy Badger blocks trackers, which usually come from third-party ads. However, unlike most adblockers, this extension has a unique approach.

It does not consult filter lists—which are lists that adblockers refer to, to know which sites to block. Privacy Badger automatically detects trackers from their behavior, sends the Global Privacy Control signal to prevent your data from being shared or sold, and also sends a Do Not Track signal to block trackers.

Features:
- Generates a list of sites to block as you browse through the web
- Prevents third parties from taking your data
- Informs you which websites are tracking you and which ones aren’t
- Allows useful cookies and third-party applications if necessary, but screens out trackers and referrers.
To a degree, it works as an ad blocker, but this is not its primary function. It aims to prevent you from being tracked, to better protect your privacy. It just so happens that a lot of ads do this, so it has a two in one appeal. It is compatible with other adblockers, so it is a useful additional tool for your use.

13. SendSafely Encryption for Chrome and Gmail

This extension is a useful tool for safe communication. It provides end-to-end email encryption. It can ensure that no one else can see your email, even the extension provider. It also allows you to send encrypted files through both Gmail and their own Chrome pop-up window.

Features:
- Encryption of emails
- File encryption
- Multi-factor authentication.
There is a free version of SendSafely, and there are various paid versions with extra plugins and a lot more features. Generally, this extension is particularly useful for protecting emails. It is built on OpenPGP, which is the most popular encryption standard, and held as the best encryption method.

14. Avast

While Avast is antivirus software, it has a standalone Chrome extension. This extension protects you from malware, blocks ads, and can prevent tracking.

Features:
- Analysis and report of website’s safety
- Corrects errors in website names
- Adblocking
- Automatically scans websites to see if they are genuine
- Do not track mode.
Whether or not you want Avast’s whole program, the free extension can add an extra layer of security. It also serves as a way to protect your data from being accessed with a do not track mode. It is one of the most popular extensions and is widely recommended.

15. WOT Website Security and Browsing Extension

This extension helps you browse the web more safely. It uses community feedback to assess the security of a site, so before you visit, you can check how wise it is to click. As you search, it will tell you the security rating of sites, so you can avoid or be more cautious when visiting. It uses algorithms of millions of user ratings to gauge how safe it is.

Features:
- Safer browsing, protecting you from tracking
- Ratings of site’s security risks
- Link inspection
- Free online security
- Real-time protection mode, which constantly notifies you of threats
- (Premium version) Pop-up blocker
- (Premium version) Content-control
- (Premium version) Data breach monitoring
- (Premium version) Email protection.
They have both a free version and premium, the latter offering extra security features. In addition, a business version is available with even more features. Nonetheless, the free version offers excellent security and privacy protection.

16. Blur

Blur offers multiple features for your security needs. It’s both a secure password manager, suggesting and storing secure passwords, and a privacy extension, as it blocks trackers and protects your data. Furthermore, it can help make online purchases safer by encrypting your valuable information.

Features:
- Protects and stores passwords with encryption
- Suggests secure passwords
- Autofill valuable information
- Masked emails
- Private browsing
- Tracking protection
- (Premium version) Masked payment information
- (Premium version) Support.
The free version gives many useful features, but the premium features offer a great degree of security, particularly for online payments. It is relatively affordable for a paid extension, between 2-5 USD per month. Nonetheless, this is a solid choice if you want a password manager, which also doubles as a privacy extension.

17. uMatrix

uMatrix gives you control over your security while browsing. Unlike other blockers, you make the decisions on what is permitted or not. Due to its interface, it may not be for everyone, but this is a well-suited extension for others with better technical knowledge. In simple terms, you select whether you allow or forbid requests, block scripts, ads, and iframes, and have access to a firewall with privacy tools.

Features:
- A matrix of requests to manage what is permissible or not
- Blacklist or whitelist requests of all kinds
- See all remote connections
- Blacklist all or whitelist all as default modes, as you prefer.
- Understand what websites are doing behind the scenes
- Can speed up browsing by blocking image requests.
This isn’t the most intuitive extension; however, if you take security seriously and can understand the table nature of the extension, it can offer a great security solution where you are in full control.

18. Pixel Block or Pixel Block 2

Both of these extensions are Chrome exclusive and serve a key purpose. They both block people from tracking you when you open their emails. Companies and more questionable parties often use email tracking pixels to see how long someone has spent on an email and find out location activity. Pixel Block 2 was a “fork” of the original to work with the new Gmail interface; however, it appears that the original has a more recent update and a wider user base.

Features:
- Blocks tracking attempts in emails
- Does not communicate with any remote servers, is locally based on your browser.
Whichever you choose, you will have a simple, one-purpose extension that can be useful in your arsenal of tools to protect your privacy and data.

19. J2Team Security

J2Team Security is mainly an anti-phishing extension with a focus on Facebook. An updated version of an app made primarily for Facebook security, J2Team Security has a few additional features beyond Facebook. It works by protecting you from clickjacking, phishing attempts, malware, and works well for Facebook security.

Features:
- Real-time protection
- Blocks ‘seen’ feature on Facebook messenger
- Anti clickjacking
- Blocks fake Facebook log-ins
- Protect against Blogspot vulnerabilities
- Protects against Facebook Self-XXS exploits.
If you spend a lot of time on Facebook but want to have a more secure presence and protection against phishing attacks, it is an ideal extension to get. The main site is in Vietnamese; however, it has a global audience.

20. Checkbot Web Speed & Security Tester

Checkbot has three main functions: check the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of sites, security, and speed. This gives you a lot of useful information if you are creating your own site. While most of the other extensions here are about you safely visiting other sites, you need to know how to ensure that your own site guarantees the end-users security and useability.

Features:
- SEO check, by testing many aspects of the site
- Site speed checker
- Site security checking.
If you are creating your own site or sites and regularly need to check SEO, security, and speed, this is an absolutely essential tool to have.

21. Cookie AutoDelete

If you want to take control of your cookies, this is the extension for you. You can automatically remove cookies from closed tabs you do not want yet keep any you do want. Add sites to the whitelist, and enable auto-clean to remove anything else if you know the sites you want to keep.

Features:
- Auto delete cookies from closed sites
- Whitelist for sites you want to keep
- Greylist sites you want to keep the cookies until you restart your browser
- Clear all site data for a domain.
Unlike other programs which can remove all cookies, this extension allows you to choose what cookies you want to keep and for how long—a very simple extension to use alongside others to boost your security and regain control.

22. Skip Redirect

Another extension with a pure and simple function, Skip Redirect, removes any sites you visit before getting to your intended destination. Ever clicked a link, and you ended up somewhere else for a brief moment before going to the desired site? This is what this extension deals with.

Skip intermediary websites when clicking links is the only feature it has.

This extension is a valuable and simple tool to help keep yourself safe. Many sites use this redirect practice, and your data and security become at risk, as you do not know what the intermediary site is or what it does. This extension removes all worry!

23. MinerBlock

The final entry of our list also serves a particular purpose. It blocks people from accessing your CPU for cryptocurrency mining. As crypto-mining uses a lot of processing power, some use illegal algorithms to access your computer’s CPU to mine for them, sometimes without your knowledge. This extension prevents this from happening, both in cases of inline scripts or when the miners work through proxies.

Features:
- A blacklist to block requests and scripts
- Detecting and stopping potential mining through examining scripts.
If you are worried about miners accessing your device, which is a very reasonable concern in 2021, this is an ideal extension for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I stop Chrome from tracking me?

On your Chrome browser:
1. Click the Chrome menu in the top-right corner of the browser
2. Select Settings.
3. Under Privacy and security, click Cookies and other site data.
4. Toggle Send a ‘Do not track’ request with your browsing traffic on or off.
Why do I get privacy errors in Chrome?

Privacy errors occur when the SSL certificate of the site cannot be verified by Google. SSL is a data encryption method utilized to ensure the safety and privacy of transmitted data. Sometimes, however, errors incorrectly occur when there is an issue with an extension, antivirus software, or computer settings.

Can Chrome extensions steal passwords?

Extensions can steal your passwords only if the extension itself has been compromised or replaced by a malware version that steals login credentials to access other sites, including Amazon, Microsoft, GitHub, etc.

Are my Google searches being monitored?

Your Google searches and voice searches are all tracked and stored by Google so that the advertisements can be as tailored-fit and accurate as possible. While this practice is solely for commercial purposes for Google and various other social media sites, cybercriminals may do the same, resulting in severe harm and unfortunate circumstances.

How do I stop Google from spying on me?

You can do a few things to protect your privacy and data.

One is to stop using Google altogether. However, this is quite difficult for many of us, and you probably wouldn’t be reading this article if you wanted to stop using Chrome.

The second approach, which is preferable, is to use extensions that we mentioned to protect your data, prevent tracking, block ads, store data not on Google, and use private search engines.

You can also limit what Google “sees” by doing the following:
1. Head to history.google.com/history.
2. Select Activity controls.
3. Under Web & App activity, you should see a blue toggle. Switch it off, and this should stop Google from storing your data.
What is a privacy blocker?

Privacy blockers usually refer to comprehensive apps that protect user data and privacy in a variety of ways, such as ad-blocking, tracking blockers, and so on. They can vary with their primary function or specializations but generally aim to prevent third parties from accessing data, blocking tracking cookies and scripts, and stopping ads interfering with your internet experience.

Is AdBlock illegal for YouTube?

No. This idea is a rumor that misinterpreted a change in YouTube’s policy. While YouTube bypasses AdBlock, so you have to watch their ads if you do not subscribe to premium, it is not illegal to have AdBlock or download additional apps to bypass YouTube’s ads.

After Action Report — Remember to stay safe!

We provided you with 23 different extensions for you to use to protect your privacy when using Chrome. Some of these extensions serve the same function, or overlap considerably, so by no means do you need all of them. On the other hand, some serve specific functions that are best to use alongside others, whereas others offer more comprehensive protection. Adjust accordingly to your needs.

However, we hope you have an idea of how to protect your privacy and can find a combination of extensions that work best for you. It is essential to be aware of the risks you face and take appropriate measures against them. It is not wise to not have any security measures in place. With constantly evolving risks when browsing, security extensions are essential.

While many people do not trust Google when it comes to privacy, and Chrome by default doesn’t have the best privacy policy, you can significantly improve your privacy and security with the right extensions.

What are your favorite privacy extensions for Chrome? Join the conversation & let us know in the comments. 💬
January 25, 2022
The 15 Best Performance Testing Tools to Improve Your Site
In May of 2021, Google made Core Web Vitals a direct ranking factor which means website performance and user experience has never been more important.

In order to figure out how the website performs, there are numerous performance testing tools that you can use and get all kinds of data. Also, it’s important to know for what are you actually using testing tools.

Performance testing tools can be speed tests, load tests, stress tests, pretty much any tool that simulates real-life situations and provides you with data you can use to optimize your processes and performance in general.

Eventually, you will need the knowledge to read the data, but for this article, we’re going to cover the best performance testing tools to improve your site.

The Best 15 Best Website Performance Testing Tools

Let’s take a look at some of the best performance testing tools that can help you to decide which to choose based on your testing needs.

1. Google PageSpeed Insights

Unsurprisingly, one of the first solutions comes straight from Google — Google PageSpeed Insights.

With this amazing software, you can see exactly how Google sees your website in terms of loading time, overall performance, and issues that may occur.

Also, don’t find it surprising if results from Google PageSpeed Insights don’t match other testing tools’ results. The reason for this is that Google PageSpeed Insights is testing your website using a 3G connection so results may vary. Given that website, performance has a big impact on SEO, the most useful way to gauge how Google views your site’s performance (which is no longer just loading time will be using Google PageSpeed Insights and the Core Web Vital metrics it produces).

Pricing: Google PageSpeed Insights is a completely free tool with no membership plans.

2. GTMetrix

GTMetrix is an amazing and very popular website testing tool and with it, you will be able to get a ton of insight into how your site is performing.

The most popular option GTMetrix has is definitely “waterfalls” which can show you the exact process of what’s happening when someone is opening your site and that way you can actually see what’s slowing down your website.

Pricing: GTMetrix has a free plan that can satisfy the needs of most users. However, if you need even more data, they have a lot of plans starting from $10 per month.

3. Pingdom

So, Pingdom also analyses load speeds, and just like with its successors you can use it to learn how to make your website load faster.

The special thing that Pingdom has is that it automatically traces your performance history. So every month when you go and test your website, you can see whether the changes you’ve made have increased the performance of that webpage, and the loading speeds for it.

What you can also do with Pingdom is choose different locations around the world to test your website from.

So, if you’re based in the US, you’re looking at your website from Austin, it’s hosted in Houston, the page load speed are naturally gonna be quicker than if somebody’s looking at your website in London, for example, because it’s gotta cover that extra distance.

Pricing: They offer free testing, but if you require a monitoring tool or simply more data, you can choose some of their paid plans.

4. Nibbler

Nibbler is run by a company called Silktide, and they’ve also got a

The premium version of it is called InSites.

Their report is quite different from Google PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, and Pingdom as they tend to focus on digesting the entire website and providing you with tips and tricks on how to improve.

They are not just testing performance in terms of speed but also in terms of SEO, where they review links that your website is getting and grade them accordingly.

Pricing: Nibbler allows you to run up to 17 free tests, and after that, you’ll have to switch to their premium version called InSites, which starts at $99 per month.

5. W3C Validation Tool

Indifference to other performance testing tools, W3C Validation Tool will check your website’s code in order to make sure that your website complies with formatting standards.

Benefits of validating your website with W3C Validation Tools may be but are not limited to:
- Improved SEO rankings
- Better coding practices
- Improved user experience
- Making your website browser friendly
- Detecting coding errors
Pricing: W3C Validation tool is free to use.

6. WAVE Accessibility Tool

WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool that identifies ways to make your website more accessible to people with disabilities.

While it is true that WAVE can identify many accessibility errors automatically, you should identify any accessibility issues manually.

Even though this tool may not be important as speed and load performance testing tools, it will most certainly help you improve the user experience for users with disabilities.

Pricing: WAVE is completely free to use.

7. WebLOAD

WebLOAD is an enterprise-scale load testing tool that can create proper and real-life scenarios, even in complex use cases. It is mostly used by performance testing services with complex and heavy user load requirements.

You can use WebLOAD to conduct stress and load testing on any web-based software by generating load from on-premise systems and the cloud. It supports different technologies including web protocols to enterprise applications. It can work with different integrations like Jenkins, Selenium, and other applications that support continuous load testing for DevOps.
- WebLOAD offers website load testing, cloud load testing, continuous load testing, etc.,
- You can test heavy traffic loads, constraints, performance bottlenecks, report weak points in your web application.
- It offers analysis reports for performance data that help users to identify bottlenecks.
- WebLOAD supports XML, HTTPS, and HTTP network protocol.
- Automatically enters dynamic values such as enable scripts and session IDs and enable scripts to execute with different virtual clients.
Pricing: They offer a free trial option for up to 50 users. You will have to contact their sales team to get a quote.

8. Neoload

Neoload is a performance testing tool that will help you with test design automation, maintenance, and analysis for Agile and DevOps teams. Neo load integrates with continuous delivery pipelines to support performance testing across the life cycle, from component to the full system-wide load tests.
- Automated test design enables 10 times faster test creation and updates than traditional solutions
- Integration with CI servers for automated test runtime
- Collaboration that is shared test scripts and reports in real-time and after test completion through an on-premise web interface
- 70 different localizations available for hybrid on-premise and cloud load generation
- Protocols supported are HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, REST, Flex push, AJAX push
Pricing: Neo load offers a wide range of subscription-based licensing and their policy is pay-as-you-grow. For exact numbers, you’ll have to reach out to them.

9. Load Runner

Load runner is a software testing tool from Micro Focus that is used to test applications, measure system behavior, and performance under load.
- it lowers the cost of distributed load testing
- scale from single projects to a full-scale testing Center of Excellence that consolidates hardware, standardizes best practices, and leverages global testing resources
- Reducing the risk of deploying systems that do not meet performance requirements through the use of effective enterprise load testing
- Lowering hardware and software costs by predicting system capacity
- Fast and accurate identification of the root cause of app performance problems
- effective tool utilization tracking is also available
- the browser-based access to global test resources an optimal usage of low generate the farm is also present
- all protocols supported
Pricing: Load Runner has a free trial on all solutions.

10. LoadView

LoadView is one of the most popular performance testing sites. It works on the basis of on-demand and is a fully-managed load testing and stress-testing tool. The testing done by the LoadView is performed in real browsers, which totally separates it from all other common performance testing tools. And the result you get after testing is real close to what the actual user will do and is highly accurate.

LoadView is a fully cloud-based testing tool that can be deployed within minutes. It also lets you create multi-step scripts simulating user interaction with your website or application.
- In LoadView, you can define duration, users, behavior in various scenarios and simulate users with load injectors from 30 different global locations.
- It offers three load curves: Dynamic Adjustable curve, Goal-based curve, and Load Step curve, to check infrastructure limits, scalability, and check traffic spikes.
- All the run tests are performed behind a firewall as LoadView provides secure IPs which you can use and configure.
- Supports different internet applications like Silverlight, HTML5, Java, PHMP, and Flash.
- You can easily share performance metrics and reports.
Pricing: Basic pricing starts at $199 for 1000 concurrent users.

11. StressStimulus

StressStimulus is another popular performance testing tool as it can handle complex testing scenarios that is not possible for other performance tools. Usually, it works automatically by fixing playback errors through its autocorrelation feature. StressStimulus records users’ actions before replaying them to emulate changing usage patterns.
- Keeps track of load impact on the responsiveness of the software and the server infrastructure.
- Provides in-depth performance metrics.
- Detects hidden concurrency errors.
- It can be used as a Fiddle independent or add-on tool.
- It has an end-to-end test wizard which covers all steps and reduces the learning curve.
Pricing: Basic pricing starts at $0 and goes up depending upon the number of users.

12. Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is an open-source tool, which is used for load and performance testing. It allows you to analyze and measure the performance of different web applications including networks and servers.

Apache JMeter is based on Java that is mainly used to test web performance.
- It has a user-friendly GUI which makes it easy to use and needs less scripting as compared to other performance testing tools.
- It has a fully-featured IDE which allows easy creation of tests, debugging, and recording.
- It supports Java, HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, XML, FTP, and other different protocols.
- It can integrate with different open-source libraries, like, Maven, Gradle, etc.,
Pricing: Apache JMeter is an open-source tool and is free to use.

13. LoadNinja

LoadNinja lets you check out app performance issues with highly actionable and accurate data. It is pretty easy to use and gives results that are easy to read. It figures out and analyzes application performance data like asynchronous calls, navigation timings, processed resources, and strep times on your web interface and identifies problems using a machine learning assistant.
- LoadNinja is useful for testers, engineer teams, and product teams so that they can pay attention to developing their tool without spending all of their time creating scripts.
- It lets you record client-side interactions, figure out performance issues, and correct them in real-time without losing text quality by removing translation, test scrubbing, and dynamic correlation efforts.
- You can perform automated tests by using their Rest API or CI/CD plugins.
Pricing: Basic pricing starts at $1,439/year for 100 load hours and 100 virtual users.

14. SmartMeter.io

If you want to address the drawbacks of Apache JMeter, then SmartMeter.io will be a good choice. You don’t even need a proxy setup or browser plugin tool that helps you to create and record test scripts easily. It gives in-depth test reports and provides test run trends, test criteria assessment, and comparison analysis.
- Supports CI/CD integration.
- It provides an advanced response body extractor.
- Gives GUI test runs and real-time results.
- Develop numerous virtual users from different global locations using load generators.
Pricing: Basic pricing starts at $39/month.

15. Rational Performance Tester

Developed by IBM, it is an automated performance testing tool for web-based and server-based applications. It lets you conduct full environment analysis by identifying slowdown causes for J2EE interfaces and apps by using a product of IBM Tivoli.
- It supports different protocols like Citrix, Web HTTP, SOA, Weblogic, etc.,
- Supports scriptless testing.
- Large testing can be done easily by including different users.
Pricing:

You’ll have to contact them to get a quote.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of Performance Testing?

Performance testing plays an essential role in any type of development – a simple website or complex application. Some benefits of performance testing are:
- Measuring speed, accuracy, and stability of your software/website
- Identifying issues and discrepancies
- Knowledge of what exactly needs to be optimized
- Drastically improved user experience
- Reduced cost of maintenance in the aftermath
What are the different types of performance testing?

These are the types of performance testing:
- Load testing – check applications ability to perform under anticipated user loads
- Endurance testing – make sure your software can handle the expected load over a long period of time
- Volume testing – monitor overall system behavior when a large number of data is populated in the database
- Scalability testing – determine software application effectiveness in scaling app to support an increase in user load
- Spike testing – monitor software reaction to sudden large spikes in load generated by users
- Stress testing – test the application for handling high traffic or data processing
What is the best performance grade for a website?

Depending on the tool you’re using, you should always aim for the highest possible score in order to achieve maximum performance.

All tools have different evaluation criteria, so it’s impossible to tell you the exact number you should aim for as some use 0-100 scale, others A-F, etc.

How can you test a website’s performance?

Depending on your needs and type of performance, there are multiple tools you can use to test a website’s performance.

When it comes to the performance of the simple website you can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, Pingdom, Which Loads Faster, etc.

If you have an app going on your website you can use SmartMeter, WebLOAD, LoadNinja, SmartMeter, etc.

Basically, any of these tools will help you. You just have to figure out what you need help with!

Is Google PageSpeed Insights accurate?

Yes, in terms of website performance, Google PageSpeed Insights is considered an accurate performance testing tool. And this is especially true as it relates to user experience as it uses the Core Web Vitals metrics that are a confirmed Google ranking factor.

Why is my website so slow?

There are multiple reasons why your website might be slow and some of them are
- Bad (i.e. unreliable) hosting/webserver
- Poor site development
- Large, uncompressed images
- No caching in place
We suggest using some of the tools mentioned above to identify true causes of bad website speed – GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights will definitely help with pointing out problems and providing you with a detailed waterfall chart.

If you’re looking to take complete control of your cloud infrastructure & ditch the busy work of managing servers – that’s exactly what we built RunCloud for. So that you can deploy with confidence, knowing your stack is constantly kept up-to-date, secure, and as fast as possible.

Learn more & start your 5-day, free trial today.

After Action Report — Start Using Performance Testing Tools

We’ve covered the very best performance testing tools there are — so now, the ball is in your court. It’s time to get started. We suggest focusing on a handful at a time because each of them assesses your site’s performance in different ways and therefore provides insights that require different types of work to be done (allowing different types of improvements to be made to your site’s performance and user experience).

What performance testing tools do you currently use? Join the conversation & let us know in the comments. 💬
December 21, 2021
The 6 Best Google Analytics Alternatives 2026
Looking for an alternative to Google Analytics? You’ve come to the right place.

Dominating over 85.4 percent of the market for web analytic tools, Google Analytics is (by far) the most popular way to measure and track the performance of the website.

While Google Analytics is no doubt an incredibly powerful tool – it’s not the only one, with many privacy-oriented alternatives encouraging website visitors to migrate away to help protect the privacy of their website visitors.

So, without further ado – let’s dive right into this definitive list of the very best Google Analytics alternatives out there so you can find the one that’s right for your business.

What Is Data Sampling and Why Is It Important?

Before we touch on the powerful Google Analytics Alternatives on this list, let’s first go over what data sampling is.

Once a website reaches over 5 million views per month, Google no longer reviews all of the user data. Instead, it analyzes just 500,000 users from the 5 million (only 10 percent). Although the data from these users is “good enough”, it’s not nearly as accurate as it could be.

So, when you’re a company with tens of millions of views, getting analytics from just 10 percent of your visitors becomes a problem. It means 90 percent of all your users are unaccounted for.

The analytics tools below don’t sample data, and that’s one of the biggest pros of switching away from Google Analytics.

With that clarified and out of the way, here are the six best alternatives to Google Analytics.

The 6 Best Alternatives to Google Analytics In 2021

1. Fathom Analytics

Source: https://usefathom.com/

Fathom is a privacy-centered, cookie-less alternative. Google Analytics has been known to collect data on more than just web activity. They also curate your user and reader’s data for Google’s own interests. Whether you want to protect your user’s browsing data or be known as a privacy-focused website, replacing your analytics tool with Fathom is a great way to start.

Integrating Fathom Analytics into your website is straightforward. Fathom’s web reports are also just as simple, coming in only a one-page view with all the basic analytic data. Things like unique visitors, site views, bounce rate, the average time on the site, and referral (how users commonly found your site) statistics are viewed on one page. There’s also a section for content, which shows the page views and unique visitors per page, like your homepage, top post, and more.

Where Fathom really shines is their privacy-focused, simplistic approach to analytics. Fathom users see all their stats on one page and can traverse between days, weeks, months, and even years. You can also cycle between daily and hourly data too.

Key Features For This Alternative to Google Analytics
- Fathom’s dashboard is simple; everything is shown on a single page of data
- Users can receive email reports weekly, monthly, or both
- Custom domains bypass ad-blockers
- Fathom is easy to install and is a lightweight script. So, it’s just as fast, or even faster, than Google Analytics’ load time
- Fathom does not collect customer data for their own pockets, unlike Google and no personal identifiable information (PIII) is collected, making it GDPR, ePrivacy, PECR, and CCPA compliant
Setting up Fathom is not only easy but comes with a 7-day free trial, and that’s always a plus. For the technical geeks out there, Fathom isn’t an open-source platform, so you won’t be able to add your own plug-ins or dive into a forum of other Fathom users to exchange GitHub links.

Not everything is perfect, so here are a few points to consider where Fathom falls short.

Points to Consider
- Fathom is a paid tool, which can feel intimidating considering Google Analytics is free.
- Fathom’s pricing plan is based on the number of views, so the cost increases as your website becomes more popular.
- No option to view page-specific metrics. So looking at how specific pages perform is next to impossible.
- No bounce rate metrics for individual pages. Bounce rates allow you to spot which pages need attention and improved user retention.
Fathom Analytics vs. Google Analytics – How Do They Compare?

Where Google wins in this bout is in its sheer number of features. Google Analytics is a powerful tool, especially when you learn how to use it correctly. However, Google’s data-collecting leaves less to be desired, especially when your users have to go through cookie prompts every time they go on your website.

Fathom, on the other hand, is more privacy-focused and bare-boned. While you get a lot of basic analytics, the functionality to hone into specific pages isn’t there. The upside to Fathom is that since you aren’t targeting users with advertisements or collecting their data, some internet laws don’t require you to have a cookie prompt. This can easily make users feel welcome to your site.

Pricing
- $14/month (100,000 page views per month)
- $24/month (200,000 page views per month)
- $34/month (400,000 page views per month)
- $44/month (800,000 page views per month)
- $54/month (1,000,000 page views per month)
- $74/month (2,000,000 page views per month)
You can check here for their complete pricing plans.

Our Thoughts on Fathom Analytics

Fathom is definitely a good option if you value privacy, especially user privacy. It’s a premium experience that you can give to your visitors, at the cost of losing more powerful features that you would get with Google Analytics.

All in all, it’s worth a try and comes with a free 7-day trial. This is an excellent analytics tool for website owners or managers that don’t want to spend too much time looking at numbers.

Try Fathom Analytics

2. Matomo

Source: https://matomo.org/

Matomo is an open-source web analytics software. It was previously known as Piwik and PHPMyVisites back in 2007 when it was founded. The program is GPL-licensed and also puts visitor privacy first, protecting your viewer’s data from advertising companies.

Considering that Matomo is a dedicated program, the web analytics that it provides are advanced. Unlike Google Analytics, Matomo doesn’t do any form of data sampling, so everything you get is the full picture. Suffice to say, Matomo works just as well as Google Analytics but as a stand-alone program with privacy features for your users. It’s a win-win.

For those of you who are wary about transferring, Matomo has a lengthy 21-day free trial period. Their pricing plans are also very diverse, offering 10 different payment options based on how many views you’re getting. The higher the views, the lower the payment costs.

Key Features For This Alternative to Google Analytics
- Creates visitor profiles for each viewer that track their on-site interactions, viewing frequency, and more
- Analytics are 100 percent accurate, Matomo does not sample data like Google Analytics
- Testing and data features like heatmaps, A/B testing, form analytics, white-label reporting, and enhanced visitor profiles help you understand your data and make better business decisions
- Matomo catches keyword performance across Bing, Yahoo, and Google, showing you what keywords brought visitors to your website
- Reports can be custom formatted through 200 different templates
- Matomo does not track user data for 3rd party advertising programs, so your users don’t have to fill in consent forms
These are the main key features from Matomo, but you can find more on their product features page. Similarly, they also have a live demo available too, so you can have hands-on experience with that. Now, Matomo isn’t perfect. Here are some points you might want to consider.

Points to Consider
- You have to pay extra for advanced features if you go for the free version. These are billed yearly but range from €19 to €499 a year
- Matomo is a technical alternative, so those who are unfamiliar with web-related tasks might find it hard to migrate
- Pricing is expensive, but if you go for their Cloud package then most of the advanced features come free.
Matomo vs. Google Analytics – How Do They Compare?

Google Analytics is by far easier to set up than Matomo. It’s also a free service that doesn’t require much technical knowledge to set up and keep on running. Contrast that to Matomo, which often requires setting up a brand new server just to run the program, and you can see how Google Analytics is more convenient.

Matomo protects your users’ data and analyzes all of your visitors, unlike Google, which samples data. Users who can afford the advanced features get to use Matomo’s powerful tools for better analytics as well. By ensuring that your user’s data are not pocketed by Matomo, your users don’t have to fill in page-blocking consent forms about cookies while they scroll through your site.

Pricing
- On-premise servers: unlimited websites, team members, segments, and goals; raw data retention is forever; extra features require additional monthly charges
- Cloud servers: limited websites, team members, segments, and goals; raw data retention is forever; extra features come available with the plan
On-premise is free, but cloud prices will differ depending on monthly visits. You can check here for their complete pricing plans.

Our Thoughts on Matomo

Matomo is an excellent and equally powerful alternative to Google Analytics. Unfortunately, it comes with the need for web-related skills to pull off properly if you want the free plan. They do offer cloud hosting though, which comes with dedicated tech support and technical help.

Users who do have the skills to set up servers and manage this program on their own, Matomo has a dedicated user base who can guide and help you along the way.

Try Matomo

3. MixPanel

Source: https://mixpanel.com/home/

MixPanel is one of the best alternatives to Google Analytics on the market. It’s used by over 26,000 companies worldwide, including the likes of Samsung, Twitter, and Expedia.

Blurring the line between data collecting and being a tool for retaining your users, MixPanel offers more than just analytics. It’s a complete set of tools to build your website and brand from the ground up. Although MixPanel doesn’t have a fool-proof alibi for being privacy-focused, this analytics service excels in other areas. From tracking real-time data to user interaction and even customizing funnels easily, MixPanel outclasses Google in all these areas.

Setting up and getting started is simple here. Reports are easy to create and customize, even with the numerous types of data you can arrange. It’s user-friendly and comes with a ton of customization in the UI alone. They have a lot of features, so strap yourselves in for this one.

Key Features For This Alternative to Google Analytics
- Users can quickly make custom reports based on time, browser, device, and many other metrics
- MixPanel identifies all your users uniquely and can group them based on their actions
- Easily make funnels and segmentations around your website to get page-specific data
- Intuitive and simple interface, which keeps data management clean
- Integrates with over 50 top tools in the market to help you analyze your stats and grow your business
- Send messages or offers to real-time users who are browsing through your website
Points to Consider
- MixPanel is better at reporting real-time events and what users do on your website. They aren’t great at finding your keywords, best-ranking pages, referrers, and so on.
- The pricing can be too high for small businesses with a limited budget
MixPanel vs. Google Analytics – How Do They Compare?

Google is a better option if you’re looking for results about how users came to your site. Google Analytics will show you your keyword search performance, top-visited pages, and so on. It’s also a much cheaper option between the two because it’s free.

On the other hand, MixPanel is an enterprise-level tool that might be too expensive for most companies. However, they do offer a great deal when it comes to real-time and behavioral tracking. This lets users make informed decisions about how their visitors are interacting with their site, which helps optimize and increase user retention.

Pricing
- Free plan (100,000 users per month)
- $25/month (additional monthly costs depend on monthly tracked users picked, includes all features in Free and more)
You can check here for their complete pricing plans.

Our Thoughts on MixPanel

Companies that are getting hundreds of thousands of views but little revenue in customer purchases will want to invest in MixPanel. By tracking user behavior closely, you’ll be able to optimize the process of how your visitors go around your site. Increasing user retention is a great way to improve profits with customers who are already there.

On the other hand, informational websites that offer a more read-and-leave approach might not benefit from this. Websites like The Verge target readers and benefit from ad revenue more than selling direct products. Samsung, on the other hand, sells a lot of items and will benefit from optimizing the buying process so that their sales increase.

Try MixPanel

4. Kissmetrics

Source: https://www.kissmetrics.io/

Kissmetrics is a step above how MixPanel performs. It’s more complicated with a higher learning curve, but the rewards for mastering the platform cannot be understated.

Just like MixPanel, Kissmetrics focuses more on real-time user behavior than just pages of where your user came from. This lets you easily monitor key areas around your website and see how changes instantly affect your users’ experience. Founded in 2008, a year before MixPanel, Kissmetrics has been analyzing users for more than a decade. The analytics service specializes in deep tracking users for insights, by making user profiles, funnels, custom reports, and more.

Make no mistake, Kissmetric is a very premium service. It’s more expensive than MixPanel, but comes with dedicated email support, cross-platform or device support, and other testing tools like staging sandboxes, A/B tests, and flexible funnels. Here are some of Kissmetrics’ notable key features.

Key Features For This Alternative to Google Analytics
- Email customer support
- Website segmentations allow you to easily identify and track the behavior of users around key areas on your website
- Kissmetrics monitors customer interaction to your website regardless of device: phone, computer, tablet, etc.
- Customize reports from different data sets and funnels, helping you make informed decisions based on valuable behavioral data
- Makes visitor profiles for every single person and tracks their behavior. Doesn’t sample data
Points to Consider
- Much higher price compared to others on this list
- Lots of reviews complain about the lack of optimization with the interface.
- One of the highest learning curves for web analytics. Installing and integrating takes practice
- They don’t actively advertise their privacy policies, unlike other companies that strongly push privacy first
Kissmetrics vs. Google Analytics – How Do They Compare?

Google Analytics is better at pointing out where users came from and how they got to your website. Keyword search indexes, top-performing pages, and referrers help increase the ranking potential of your website. And of course, Google Analytics is cheaper at $0 per month.

Kissmetrics works just like a beefed-up MixPanel. It tracks user behavior and helps websites optimize the user experience. User behavior is further trickled down into individual user profiles, giving invaluable insight into how groups of users interact with your website. Finally, Kissmetrics does a better job at evaluating user behavior around specific areas of your website too.

Pricing
- $299/month for up to 10,000 unique visitors per month, with email and in-app chat support
- $499/month for up to 25,000 unique visitors with email, in-app chat, and phone support.
- For over 25,000 unique visitors per month, directly contact Kissmetrics.
You can check here for their complete pricing plans.

Our Thoughts on Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is a premium industry service. If you can afford it and want to invest in something powerful, it’s definitely worth your money. Just keep in mind that aside from the hefty price tag, there’s also a steep learning curve.

This Google Analytics alternative is perfect for companies that are getting lots of monthly visitors. Companies that want to improve and streamline the user experience for better turnarounds in profit. If you think your unique visits per month aren’t aligning with the number of purchases from your customers, Kissmetrics is a great way to analyze and grow your business.

Try Kissmetrics

5. GoSquared

Source: https://www.gosquared.com/

If you liked what you read about Kissmetrics and MixPanel, then GoSquared something very similar at a much more affordable price. This website has integrated the fine connection between web analytics and user behaviors seamlessly.

GoSquared is a simple-to-use web platform with an intuitive dashboard. There’s virtually no learning curve, yet users are greeted with a mix of web analytics and behavioral tools. While GoSquared isn’t as powerful as Kissmetrics and MixPanel, you still get tools like segmentation, event and user interaction tracking, conversion tracking, heatmaps, custom reports, and more. It’s an excellent bang for your buck type deal that’s perfect for startups who need something affordable.

Where GoSquared shines is its ability to provide behavioral data without losing what Google Analytics provides—web analytics. Users still get to see their keyword indexes, top-performing pages, and referral tracking. The integration process is simple and easy as well, especially for websites hosted on CMS platforms like Shopify and WordPress.

Key Features For This Alternative to Google Analytics
- GoSquared has a refreshingly simple interface. This is perfect for companies and business owners who’d like to check and understand their own analytics themselves
- The Now Dashboard is a real-time analytics page to show you what’s happening on your website right now. Similar to MixPanel and Kissmetrics
- Dedicated e-commerce metrics like revenue, transaction volume, items sold, etc.
- User interaction, heatmaps, conversion, and event tracking for behavioral data
- Email and live chat customer service support. Even offers phone support for enterprise-level plans.
- Live chat support for individual customers
Points to Consider
- Data is exported into Microsoft Excel rather than customizable reports
- User reviews complain about slow customer support responses
- No funnels
GoSquared vs. Google Analytics – How Do They Compare?

Google Analytics still has the edge when it comes to web analytics. Keyword indexing, referrer tracking, top-performing pages, the whole works come complete with Google. Also, the free cost from Google is always a plus.

GoSquared still has a lot of what Google has to offer, yet is different enough to provide twice the value. With GoSquared’s behavioral data, businesses can optimize customer retention, satisfaction, and the interface experience. The live chat system also adds a very personal way to talk to customers directly, which is as convenient as it gets.

Pricing
- Free plan for up to 1,000 pageviews per month.
- $79/month for up to 10 million pageviews per month.
- $499/month for unlimited pageviews.
You can check here for their complete pricing plans.

Our Thoughts on GoSquared

Users who love MixPanel and Kissmetric but can’t afford them will love this one. GoSquared is basically a lighter version of those two analytical tools, all without sacrificing the importance of web-based analytics.

Real-time data, behavioral stats, and web performance. GoSquared is a steal at the price point it’s at, although it does get pricier past a certain view count.

Try GoSquared

6. Heap

Source: https://heap.io/

Heap stands out from the rest of this list right from the beginning. Its ability to start recording user behavior across your entire site as soon as it’s installed, without requiring any setup, means you don’t have to waste time adding triggers or conditions.

Also, Heap is perfect for users and website owners who might not know how or where to set up funnels. Since Heap immediately captures all user behavior around your website interface, you don’t have to worry about setting up your own heatmaps and funnels. For example, Heap automatically tracks how many users click buttons, comments, and more. This lets you compare data from all over your website.

By collecting and storing so much data, Heap promotes cross-referencing and hypothesizing, unlike any other platform. Unfortunately, that also means you might have two pieces of data that seem correlated but don’t actually connect. That grey area does irritate some users and we’ll talk about that below. For now, here are Heap’s key features.

Key Features For This Alternative to Google Analytics
- Heap immediately collects all sorts of user interaction data from your website the moment it’s installed. This removes the need to set up specific funnels, which is beginner-friendly
- All the pieces of data you get can be correlated with each other through multiple graphs, views, and arrangements. Doing so helps you understand if there’s a connection between different behaviors around your website
- Heap has an Autocapture function that doesn’t require you to write in any code to your website to start capturing user behavior
- Segments user behavior into groups so you can analyze them together
Points to Consider
- Because of how free and open the data collection system is, inexperienced website owners feel unguided in analyzing the collected data. Without funnel suggestions, it gets difficult for you to formulate valid theories on your own
- Lack of customization for graphs and formatting, particularly with graph colors, titles, line names, etc.
Heap vs. Google Analytics – How Do They Compare?

Google Analytics and Heap are two completely different types of analytical tools at this point. However, whichever one is more useful depends on your use case. Google Analytics is best for figuring out how your user got to your website.

On the contrary, Heap is best at figuring out what your user does on your website. It does a fantastic job at this, capturing every user interaction the moment Heap is integrated into your site. It’s purely a behavioral tool but is also affordable for most startups, with the first analyzed 10,000 monthly visits being completely free.

Pricing
- Free plan for up to 10,000 sessions per month.
- For more sessions per month, directly contact Heap.
You can check here for their complete pricing plans.

Our Thoughts on Heap

Heap is a great alternative for Google Analytics if you’re a website that needs to optimize the user experience. Websites that sell products, like Amazon, study user behavior down to the smallest habits to continue selling products efficiently.

For eCommerce, SaaS, and other product-oriented website owners, Heap definitely has a lot of value for your website. On the other hand, businesses that focus on read-and-leave users should stick to Google Analytics or migrate to Fathom and Matomo instead.

Try Heap

Google Analytics Is Great – Should You Even Consider Alternatives?

While we’re advocates for privacy and protecting website visitors (of course) – as of present we (at RunCloud) are still avid users of Google Analytics (as well as Google’s entire suite of services, actually).

Because while some of these alternatives are easier to set up and easier to use, it’s widely accepted that Google Analytics is the only analytics solution that integrates with the rest of Google’s products (i.e. Google Ads, etc.) so if you grow your business with PPC advertising and want to truly track the impact of your marketing efforts justifying the migration is difficult. While if you run websites and are more interested in a few KPIs & really prioritize your website visitor’s right to privacy over everything else – Fathom is an excellent alternative to Google Analytics. that can easily be tracked using Fathom.

Have you considered making the switch to a Google Analytics alternative in the past & what did you end up deciding? Let us know & join the conversation in the comments. 💬
July 30, 2021
How to Use Cloudflare Firewall Rules to Protect Your Web Application
For more than ten years, the Cloudflare team has provided security services to website creators worldwide and is currently helping thousands of businesses maintain and secure their online resources.

Since its creation, Cloudflare has released many strong firewall utilities, such as IP rules, CIDR rules, ASN rules, country rules, and HTTP user-agent blocking, to name a few, and Cloudflare Firewall Rules are a recent addition to these. These rules combine how firewall utilities are used, and provide users with more flexibility and control over how their firewall works.

In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know about firewalls, how to start implementing and editing Cloudflare Firewall Rules on your website, and why security is so important.

What Are Cloudflare Firewall Rules?

Cloudflare Firewall Rules are a flexible and intuitive framework website owners can use to filter HTTP requests – giving you complete control of which requests are able to reach your application.

Firewall rules integrate well with existing Cloudflare tools, as they allow you to combine multiple techniques into a cohesive set of rules. For example, you can create one rule to block traffic from users matching a particular pattern, instead of having to use three or four different rules in as many places to accomplish the same result.

They also give you the advantage of continuously checking the site traffic and responding accordingly to threats. You can define expressions that inform Cloudflare of what or what not to look at and what kind of action should be taken when those particular requirements are satisfied.

Why Are Firewalls Necessary for Your Website?

Cloudflare is mainly used to decrease web page load speed and protect your site from online threats. It also fights against spammers, malware injections, and DDoS attacks.

Around 70% of WordPress installations are prone to hackers, making it more necessary to use Firewalls from Cloudflare to protect your site from unwanted threats. Some of the reasons why firewalls are required for your website are:
- Cloudflare utilizes three different types of minification, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, to reduce file size and increase load speeds by removing unwanted white spaces, newline delimiters, and unnecessary characters.
- With the introduction of HTTP/3, Cloudflare supports multiple page elements parallelly over a single TCP connection along with push technology and header compression.
- Cloudflare WAF protects your site from many vulnerabilities that popular CMS tools (WordPress, Joomla, etc.) are prone to. Cloudflare WAF has more than 145 rules to protect your site from all types of web application attacks.
- Cloudflare has a rate-limiting function that helps mitigate DOS attacks, brute force login attempts, and other malicious intent against the application layer. The rate-limiting function allows you to configure thresholds, define responses, and gain insights on websites.
As you can see, Cloudflare not only improves SEO by speeding up your website, it provides a whole host of advanced security features to protect your site from attacks.

Cloudflare Firewall Rules – Matching & Actions

Cloudflare Firewall Rules are made up of two main functionalities: Matching, which lets you define a filter to precisely match your traffic, and Actions, through which you determine the action Cloudflare will take after you set the matching filter.

Matching

Matching lets you filter out any incoming traffic to your website. For example, if you wanted to restrict certain countries, redirect visitors to a location-specific page, or filter out particular IP addresses, then you would use matching rules to do this.

Among the most important features Cloudflare is introducing is the known bots (cf.client.bot) field. It provides you with a Cloudflare-approved list of good bots obtained through reverse DNS lookups. You will find a comprehensive list of bots approved by sites such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Linkedin, Apple, and more.

Note: Since the “allow listing” function has been removed, it’s recommended that you include cf.client.bot in an Allowed rule. This would prevent Cloudflare Firewall Rules from unintentionally blocking good crawlers.

What’s more, Cloudflare Firewall Rules also come with an algorithm that gives a threat score to IPs by measuring their online reputation. The threat score ranges from 0 to 100 and is divided into the following categories:
- High – for scores from 0 to 13;
- Medium – for scores from 14 to 23;
- Low – for scores from 24 to 48;
- Essentially Off – for scores greater than 49.
However, setting up matching rules alone won’t achieve much. This is where Actions come in.

Actions

With matching filters set up, you can instruct Cloudflare Firewall Rules to apply the standard Cloudflare actions (Block, JavaScript Challenge, and Challenge) as well as the new Allow action.
- Block: used for blocking traffic from getting access to your web application.
- JavaScript Challenge: used to block traffic from visitors who don’t have JavaScript support, which is usually bots.
- Challenge (Captcha): used to set up a Captcha challenge to block potential bots.
- Allow: used for allowing visitors access to your web application.
Three Examples of Cloudflare Firewall Rules In Action

In this section, you’ll find three ways to set up Cloudflare Firewall Rules by using the dashboard and why they might be helpful.

We’ll be covering:
- How to block particular countries from visiting your site
- How to make your WordPress site more secure with captcha
- How to prevent bad bot traffic from coming to your site
Note: Another way to set up these rules is by using API and Terraform.

To begin, log into your Cloudflare dashboard. From there, choose the domain name for which you want to set up Cloudflare Firewall Rules.

Next, click on Firewall from the top sections and then on Firewall Rules.

This section lets you set up a new firewall rule, browse and filter existing rules, activate, deactivate, modify, and delete rules. To try out the below examples, click on Create a Firewall rule.

Example 1 – Block All Countries Except the USA

To block all countries except a single one (in our example, it will be the United States of America), follow the steps below:
1. First, give your rule a name.
2. From the Field drop-down, choose Country.
3. Next, from the Operator drop-down, choose does not equal.
4. In the Value drop-down, choose the United States.
5. Finally, choose an action drop-down, select Block, and then click on the blue Deploy button in the lower right-hand corner.
Conversely, if you would like to block a single country, pick equals from the Operator drop-down and then follow the procedure as mentioned above.

Expression Editor:

(ip.geoip.country ne “US”)

Example 2 – WordPress Security

WordPress security is an important thing that site owners don’t think much about. Every day, Google blacklists about 10,000+ websites for malware and around 50,000+ websites every week for phishing. It’s essential to keep your WordPress site secure from malware and threats and avoid getting your site blocked.

Why Is WordPress Security Important?

Whether your website is big or small, hackers don’t care about it. One way or the other, they can find different ways to use the information against you. They typically look for your personal and financial information and then try to cause damage to you and your company with the collected info.

Mark Ronso, Marketing Manager at Top Writers Review, said, “a business’s reputation can be seriously damaged due to a hacked website. Hackers commonly install malicious software or viruses to extract the data in the background, which can result in a loss of trust in your business and customers turning to a competitor.”

Hence, to keep your business safe and secure, you’ll need to protect your site through WordPress plugins or a Cloudflare firewall. So, which one is the best, and what’s the difference between the two?

WordPress Plugins vs. Cloudflare Firewall – Which Is Better?

A lot of people choose to install free plugins to handle the security of their site, instead of having to use a third-party tool like Cloudflare – usually, because it’s too complicated or to save money. In reality, Cloudflare doesn’t take long to install and provides you with much more functionality than any other WordPress plugin.

Here are the key differences you should know about:

Cloudflare firewall:
- Cloudflare firewall seamlessly integrates with CDNs like WordPress
- Cloudflare’s Automatic Platform Optimization (APO) caches your site and optimizes the assets, increasing your site’s speed.
- Cloudflare firewall offers a free SSL certificate and DNS service, along with powerful DDoS protection.
- Increases the speed and performance of your site by rewriting insecure URLs dynamically to their secure counterparts.
- Free to get started
WordPress Security Plugins:
- Regularly scans your site for malware code and has a real-time firewall feature that protects your site from known and unknown threats.
- Many free plugins don’t offer features like IP blocking, country blocking, and protection from brute-force logins.
- Some WordPress plugins allow you to rename the login gateways to avoid potential attacks.
- You never know what permissions you’re giving up to the plugin developer.
All things considered, most WordPress plugins don’t increase your site’s speed or offer as many advanced features that Cloudflare firewall provides. Cloudflare firewall is recommended over free security plugins to protect your website from any attacks.

How to Secure Your WordPress Site With Cloudflare Firewall

Repeat the process mentioned above of creating a new firewall rule and naming it, but this time, click on the Edit expression.

By doing so, you are directly accessing the Expression Editor. In the field, paste the following:

((http.request.uri.path contains “/xmlrpc.php”) or (http.request.uri.path contains “/wp-login.php”) or (http.request.uri.path contains “/wp-admin/” and not http.request.uri.path contains “/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php” and not http.request.uri.path contains ” /wp-admin/theme-editor.php”)) and ip.geoip.country ne “US”

After that, pick Challenge (Captcha) from the Choose an action drop-down, and then click Deploy.

Now you will have set up a Captcha challenge for all visitors outside the US who attempt to reach WordPress xmlrpc.php, wp-login.php, and /wp-admin (except admin-ajax.php and theme-editor.php), in order to block potential hackers from accessing your WordPress website.

If your login or admin URLs have been changed, feel free to edit the original expression to match.

Example 3 – Block Bad Bot Traffic

Bad bots are assigned to do a number of fraudulent practices and malicious activities like ad scams, malware attacks, and data theft. Around 40% of internet traffic consists of bad bot traffic, and, during the pandemic, there was a 788% increase in bad bot traffic to retail websites globally between September and October 2020, resulting in a loss of $82 million during peak season.

Blocking out bad traffic helps avoid attackers trying to launch a DDoS attack on your site. Most DDoS attacks slow down your site by directing a large amount of traffic towards your site, overloading the server, and making it go offline.

While the list of user agents to block may vary based on your specific needs, here are some common ones to consider:
- Yandex: A Russian search engine bot.
- muckrack: Associated with media monitoring services.
- Qwantify: A bot from the Qwant search engine.
- Sogou: A Chinese search engine bot.
- BUbiNG: A web crawler.
- CFNetwork: Associated with Apple’s networking framework. While legitimate Apple users utilize CFNetwork, some malicious bots or scrapers may also impersonate it.
- Scrapy: A Python-based web crawling framework.
- SemrushBot: Associated with the Semrush SEO tool.
- AhrefsBot: A bot from the Ahrefs SEO tool.
- Baiduspider: A bot from the Baidu search engine.
- python-requests: A Python library for making HTTP requests.
- Various “crawl” and “spider” user agents: These may include legitimate search engine bots, but it’s essential to filter out excessive or suspicious crawling behavior.
The procedure here is similar to the previous example. The only difference is that you should choose Block from the Choose an action drop-down and paste the following in Expression Editor:
```
(http.user_agent contains "Yandex") or (http.user_agent contains "muckrack") or (http.user_agent contains "Qwantify") or (http.user_agent contains "Sogou") or (http.user_agent contains "BUbiNG") or (http.user_agent contains "CFNetwork") or (http.user_agent contains "Scrapy") or (http.user_agent contains "SemrushBot") or (http.user_agent contains "AhrefsBot") or (http.user_agent contains "Baiduspider") or (http.user_agent contains "python-requests") or (http.user_agent contains "crawl" and not cf.client.bot) or (http.user_agent contains "Crawl" and not cf.client.bot) or (http.user_agent contains "bot" and not http.user_agent contains "bingbot" and not http.user_agent contains "Google" and not http.user_agent contains "Twitter" and not cf.client.bot) or (http.user_agent contains "Bot" and not http.user_agent contains "Google" and not cf.client.bot) or (http.user_agent contains "Spider" and not cf.client.bot) or (http.user_agent contains "spider" and not cf.client.bot)
```
This rule will block bot traffic with user agents containing the strings “crawl,” “bot,” “spider,” and some other custom user agents.

Remember that blocking user agents should be done thoughtfully. Regularly review your website logs and adjust your blocking rules as needed to strike a balance between security, performance, and user experience.

How To Test That Your Firewall Rules Work

Once you’re all set up, you should check to see if your Cloudflare Firewall Rules work. To do this, you can access the Firewall Event Activity Log by going back to the Overview section of the firewall. There, you can see a list of firewall events and details related to them.

Note, checking your Firewall Rules can take some time to do if you don’t get much traffic. If this is the case, wait a couple of days and monitor Google Analytics to make sure there are no abnormalities before returning to Cloudflare and checking the activity log.

The most important thing to look out for are challenge and block events.

When challenge and block events appear on the list, take your time to go through them and see if any good bots were blocked when they shouldn’t have been, or if any known bad bots made it through. You need to make sure no positive traffic gets denied access to your site because of an error in setting up firewall rules.

Summary – Use Cloudflare Firewall Rules To Your Advantage

RunCloud lets you easily manage your server and web application, and seamlessly integrates with Cloudflare. We hope you’ve found this guide useful in setting up & effectively implementing Cloudflare firewall rules to improve the security and performance of your web application.

Get started with RunCloud today.

What firewall rules are you currently deploying via Cloudflare? Let us know & join the conversation in the comments below! 💬
July 9, 2021
What Is GitHub & How Does It Work?
If you’ve ever worked in a team of software developers – chances are you’ve heard them mention Git, GitHub, forking, and version control. The internet is rife with comments from developers about how GitHub is a godsend and completely changes the way they write code; but, what is GitHub anyway?

At its core, GitHub is a cloud-based platform that allows developers to collaborate & track changes to their code.

Before we dive into GitHub, what it is & how it works – it’s important to understand Git first. In the following article, we take a deep dive into the underlying systems powering GitHub, its main features, and how it integrates with RunCloud.

An Introduction to Git & Version Control

Created by Linus Torvalds (the founder of Linux) in 2005, Git is an open-source, distributed version control system. Essentially, it’s software designed for tracking changes made to any group of files. Because it’s distributed, every codebase, along with its history, is available to every GitHub user. This makes collaboration and revisions much easier as developers can seamlessly work together.

If you’ve ever saved a game and then reloaded back to that point after doing something wrong, or created a system recovery point in your computer, you inherently understand the concept of Git.

So, What is GitHub?

GitHub launched in 2008 after spending a brief period in beta. It’s a for-profit company that has become one of the largest version control systems in the world – mostly because of its safety and user-friendliness. As of May 2021, GitHub is used by more than 55 million users, with more than 228 million repositories.

The interface streamlines Git’s capabilities, allowing even amateur users to start writing code on the platform. GitHub is particular for open-source projects, since anyone can sign up and host a public code repository without any charge. That’s one of the reasons why GitHub has more than 42 million public repositories.

GitHub has also become one of the largest developer communities worldwide. It’s used by employers and recruiters to look for talented coders, and many developers use it for networking purposes as well.

While there are a few competitors in the market like GitLab and SourceForge, neither of them really come close to the sheer number of users on GitHub. According to Gitlab itself, they have an estimated 30 million users, which is almost half that of GitHub.

GitHub supports all popular programming languages, and makes version control extremely easy. You can always view the changelog to see editions to the code and who made them. Let’s dive a little deeper into what version control is, and why it’s so important for developers.

Version Control Explained

Version control is the established practice of making and tracking changes to a project’s code. As new features are added to the project, the code continues to grow. Without version control, it’s difficult for the software team to figure out how the code was revised and what changes were made.

Instead of delving into the official source code for a particular program, developers can work in a more efficient manner. In case they make a mistake, they can simply revert to the older version to compare what went wrong. This is particularly helpful for DevOps teams who want to keep development time as minimal as possible.

Version control also protects the source code from human error and because everything’s in the cloud, the chances of a developer losing their source code from GitHub are next to none. Version control systems like GitHub help ensure that all revisions to the code are tracked.

All the subsequent changes made to the code are stored in a central “hub.” This makes it easy for developers to share their code and collaborate with others. One developer may work on a specific feature while another might focus on fixing an existing bug thanks to version control systems like GitHub. Two common techniques used by developers include branching and merging.
- Branching: This technique allows developers to replicate part of the original code and work on it. This isolates a section of the code, and doesn’t have any effect on the original project.
- Merging: Once the developer has made changes to the code, they can use the git merge command to bring together independent lines of code into the official source code.
It’s Not Just for Teams

While it may seem that a lot of GitHub’s features are geared towards teams of software developers, many others can take advantage of it as well. Amateur software developers can easily track changes made by others in a codebase and learn from it.

One of the major features of GitHub is “forking.” Forking allows you to copy an entire repository from one user account and bring it on your own, thus giving you write access to it. Once you are done making changes, you can then send a notification to the owner, and they can decide whether to merge the changes or leave them be.

Easily Contribute To Public Projects

When you send a request to the original owner for review (known as a pull request), the project maintainer is able to view your activity on GitHub, as well as any past contributions you have made on the platform. If accepted, you’ll get credit for the changes, and enhance your reputation.

Prior to GitHub, developers who wanted to contribute to a project had limited options to contact the authors. They relied mainly on email, and even then, convincing the authors to even consider their contribution used to be difficult.

With GitHub, every user has a discrete profile that serves a similar purpose to a resume. This allows groups of experts to find like-minded developers and collaborate with each other on projects, and also provides a free option to host your portfolio if you’re looking for a new role in the software industry.

How to Use GitHub with RunCloud

RunCloud makes it incredibly easy to deploy web applications that use version control (i.e. Git) in particular with GitHub. We also integrate directly with Bitbucket, Gitlab as well as custom Git servers…

If you are using Git, you can easily generate a deployment key within RunCloud and attach it to your repository. RunCloud can then clone your repository and register the Webhook URL. This way, automatic deployment of web apps becomes much easier.

Here’s how to use GitHub with RunCloud.

Step 1: Create an Account

You need to register for an account on RunCloud so you can deploy your server. We offer a free 5-day trial period that lets you explore its features and see how it simplifies server management.

Step 2: Deploy a Server

You will have to provision a server from a cloud provider, such as DigitalOcean, AWS, or Google Cloud. Once you are done, it’s time to connect the server.

Step 3: Connect the Server

Now that you’re logged into your account – you’ll need to go ahead and connect your first server to RunCloud. This only takes a few minutes, to get started, click Let’s get started as shown below:

Step 4: Deploy Your Web App from Git

RunCloud allows you to attach your project to your web apps with ease. An automatic pull will sync the latest code to your website. When you get to the Web Application Screen, select Git. You can also easily switch repository branch.

Simply add your Deployment Key to the Git repository, and then select a provider (GitHub, shown above). Add the repository name and your GitHub username, and then click on Attach Git Repository to connect to your web app.

If you are looking for a robust server management platform, RunCloud is a fantastic choice. We support NGINX and OpenLiteSpeed & offer easy 1-click installations for popular apps like WordPress, Joomla, and Laravel.

And for those of you with more complex, mission-critical infrastructure – we also offer built-in support for Atomic Deployments with zero downtime. In short, Atomic Deployment is essentially a script that allows your web application to be updated from Git so that it continuously runs, while the code updates in the background, ensuring zero downtime on your server during the entire process

Getting Started with GitHub

If you’re interested in a weekend well spent – and have been planning to improve your deployment infrastructure, all you need is two things. A GitHub account (completely free) and your RunCloud account. Going forward as your team grows and you manage multiple sites, you won’t even be able to imagine going back to the days with no version control for changes you deploy to your web applications.

Already using RunCloud with GitHub for version control? Or, have any other questions? Let us know & join the conversation by leaving a comment below. 💬
June 25, 2021