We offer an HTTPS upgrade service for our Managed WordPress Hosting clients, and have been seeing some great results for the sites that have signed up for it. I looked into two sites in detail and both saw an 8% increase in traffic comparing the week before the upgrade and the week after. An excellent improvement.
However, some people have asked why they would pay for this service, when some hosts offer an HTTPS upgrade for free. That's a great question!
We initially hoped to offer the HTTPS upgrade for free for all of our hosting clients, but when we looked into what it takes to do it well, we realised that it actually takes us 4-5 hours when we take into account all the extra updates and troubleshooting we do. This means that the price we're charging really is a deal -- it's a fraction of the price we would charge on an hourly rate. We believe that HTTPS is the future of the web and want to give all our clients that competitive advantage as easily as possible.
Other service providers that do the install for free are mostly offering an automated install, with no troubleshooting, no updates to Google Analytics or Google Search Console, no testing for mixed content errors or broken links. Basically they're offering a ten-minute service in comparison with our four-hour one. We want to make sure everything's working well, so we really do need to devote a fair bit of time to each site.
Remember, an HTTPS upgrade isn't just for sites that take payments or record personal details -- it can give even the most basic site a competitive advantage. Read more about the service, and sign up, on our HTTPS page.