We recently wrote about what it actually means to hire a full-service WordPress agency. That post covered the big picture: the partnership, the ongoing relationship, the fact that we don’t disappear after launch.
This one’s about something more concrete. When you host a site with us or hire us to build one, there’s a stack of premium WordPress plugins, licenses, and setup work already handled before you ever log in. Most of it would cost you hundreds of dollars a year and several hours of research to put together on your own. And a lot of it, small business owners don’t even know they’re missing until something breaks.
Here’s what’s actually included with Privatenode WordPress hosting and web design.
Premium WordPress Plugins Included with Our Web Design Services
When we build your WordPress site, you get access to some of the best commercial plugins in the ecosystem without having to buy, renew, or manage the licenses yourself. Two of the big ones:
Gravity Forms. The gold standard for WordPress forms. Contact forms, quote requests, multi-step applications, conditional logic, file uploads, integrations with pretty much every CRM and email tool out there. If you’ve ever tried to build a serious form with the free options, you know the difference. A standalone Gravity Forms license runs $259 per year.
Admin Columns Pro. This one’s invisible to your visitors but huge for you as the site owner. It transforms the WordPress admin into something genuinely useful: custom columns, inline editing, smart filters, the ability to actually find and manage your content at scale. Essential for sites with real content volume. Runs $149 per year on its own.
These are limited to clients who let us design the site, because that’s how the developer licensing works. But if we built it, you’ve got them.
Premium Plugins Included with Every Managed WordPress Hosting Plan
Whether we built your site or migrated it to us, every hosting account gets the following baked in:
WP Rocket. The best caching and performance plugin for WordPress, full stop. It handles page caching, file optimization, lazy loading, and a dozen other speed improvements that most site owners never think about. Without it, your site is slower than it needs to be and search engines notice. Runs $59 per year if you buy it yourself.
Ollie Pro and Ollie Menu Designer. These extend the WordPress block editor with better design patterns, more layout options, and a proper menu designer that doesn’t fight you. The result is a site that’s nicer to edit and easier to keep looking good as you add content over time. Ollie Pro is $89 per year on its own.
Pie Calendar. A clean, well-built calendar and events plugin for when you need to display events, classes, meetings, or schedules on your site. Most small businesses don’t need it on day one, but when they do, it’s already there. Runs $99 per year standalone.
HappyFiles. A media library organizer for WordPress. If you’ve ever lost an image in a WordPress media library with thousands of files, you know why this matters. HappyFiles gives you folders, categories, and a proper filing system for images, documents, and other media. $59 per year on its own.
None of this gets billed as an extra. It’s just part of hosting with us.
WordPress Security, Performance, and SEO Setup We Handle for You
This is the part that most people underestimate. Plugins are easy. The configuration and integration work is where small businesses get stuck.
Cloudflare DNS and security configuration. We don’t just point your domain at Cloudflare and call it a day. We configure DNS properly, set up security rules, turn on the right performance features, and make sure your email records are correct so your mail doesn’t break. Cloudflare’s free tier is genuinely excellent, but only if someone takes the time to set it up right. Most hosts won’t touch it.
Turnstile spam protection on Gravity Forms. Spam is the silent killer of small business contact forms. You get a pile of junk submissions, you stop checking, and real leads slip through. Turnstile is Cloudflare’s alternative to reCAPTCHA: invisible to legitimate visitors, brutal on bots. We wire it into your Gravity Forms setup so your inbox stays usable.
Google Business Profile setup and optimization. If you’re a local business in the Triangle, your Google Business Profile does more heavy lifting than most of your website. We’ll set it up properly, optimize the listing, pick the right categories, and get you showing up in local search. This is easily a few hundred dollars of work from a standalone SEO consultant, and it’s included when we build your site.
Reliable Email Delivery with MailGun Routing
Hosting-sent email is notoriously unreliable. Contact form submissions get flagged as spam, land in junk folders, or never arrive at all. We set up MailGun to handle your site’s transactional email (form submissions, order confirmations, password resets) so it actually gets where it’s going.
MailGun starts at $35 per month when you buy it yourself. For our Rapid Website Design clients, it’s already included. For everyone else, it’s an easy add-on.
What You’d Pay to Assemble This Yourself
We recently wrote about what it actually means to hire a full-service WordPress agency. That post covered the big picture: the partnership, the ongoing relationship, the fact that we don’t disappear after launch.
This one’s about something more concrete. When you host a site with us or hire us to build one, there’s a stack of premium WordPress plugins, licenses, and setup work already handled before you ever log in. Most of it would cost you hundreds of dollars a year and several hours of research to put together on your own. And a lot of it, small business owners don’t even know they’re missing until something breaks.
Here’s what’s actually included with Privatenode WordPress hosting and web design.
Premium WordPress Plugins Included with Our Web Design Services
When we build your WordPress site, you get access to some of the best commercial plugins in the ecosystem without having to buy, renew, or manage the licenses yourself. Two of the big ones:
Gravity Forms. The gold standard for WordPress forms. Contact forms, quote requests, multi-step applications, conditional logic, file uploads, integrations with pretty much every CRM and email tool out there. If you’ve ever tried to build a serious form with the free options, you know the difference. A standalone Gravity Forms license runs $259 per year.
Admin Columns Pro. This one’s invisible to your visitors but huge for you as the site owner. It transforms the WordPress admin into something genuinely useful: custom columns, inline editing, smart filters, the ability to actually find and manage your content at scale. Essential for sites with real content volume. Runs $149 per year on its own.
These are limited to clients who let us design the site, because that’s how the developer licensing works. But if we built it, you’ve got them.
Premium Plugins Included with Every Managed WordPress Hosting Plan
Whether we built your site or migrated it to us, every hosting account gets the following baked in:
WP Rocket. The best caching and performance plugin for WordPress, full stop. It handles page caching, file optimization, lazy loading, and a dozen other speed improvements that most site owners never think about. Without it, your site is slower than it needs to be and search engines notice. Runs $59 per year if you buy it yourself.
Ollie Pro and Ollie Menu Designer. These extend the WordPress block editor with better design patterns, more layout options, and a proper menu designer that doesn’t fight you. The result is a site that’s nicer to edit and easier to keep looking good as you add content over time. Ollie Pro is $89 per year on its own.
Pie Calendar. A clean, well-built calendar and events plugin for when you need to display events, classes, meetings, or schedules on your site. Most small businesses don’t need it on day one, but when they do, it’s already there. Runs $99 per year standalone.
HappyFiles. A media library organizer for WordPress. If you’ve ever lost an image in a WordPress media library with thousands of files, you know why this matters. HappyFiles gives you folders, categories, and a proper filing system for images, documents, and other media. $59 per year on its own.
None of this gets billed as an extra. It’s just part of hosting with us.
WordPress Security, Performance, and SEO Setup We Handle for You
This is the part that most people underestimate. Plugins are easy. The configuration and integration work is where small businesses get stuck.
Cloudflare DNS and security configuration. We don’t just point your domain at Cloudflare and call it a day. We configure DNS properly, set up security rules, turn on the right performance features, and make sure your email records are correct so your mail doesn’t break. Cloudflare’s free tier is genuinely excellent, but only if someone takes the time to set it up right. Most hosts won’t touch it.
Turnstile spam protection on Gravity Forms. Spam is the silent killer of small business contact forms. You get a pile of junk submissions, you stop checking, and real leads slip through. Turnstile is Cloudflare’s alternative to reCAPTCHA: invisible to legitimate visitors, brutal on bots. We wire it into your Gravity Forms setup so your inbox stays usable.
Google Business Profile setup and optimization. If you’re a local business in the Triangle, your Google Business Profile does more heavy lifting than most of your website. We’ll set it up properly, optimize the listing, pick the right categories, and get you showing up in local search. This is easily a few hundred dollars of work from a standalone SEO consultant, and it’s included when we build your site.
Reliable Email Delivery with MailGun Routing
Hosting-sent email is notoriously unreliable. Contact form submissions get flagged as spam, land in junk folders, or never arrive at all. We set up MailGun to handle your site’s transactional email (form submissions, order confirmations, password resets) so it actually gets where it’s going.
MailGun starts at $35 per month when you buy it yourself. For our Rapid Website Design clients, it’s already included. For everyone else, it’s an easy add-on.
What You’d Pay to Assemble This Yourself
If you tried to replicate this stack on a typical cheap host, here’s what you’d be looking at in annual licenses and service fees:
- Gravity Forms: $259/yr
- Admin Columns Pro: $149/yr
- Ollie Pro: $89/yr
- Pie Calendar: $99/yr
- WP Rocket: $59/yr
- HappyFiles: $59/yr
- MailGun: $420/yr (minimum)
That’s over $1,100 a year in plugin licenses and service fees alone, before anyone has touched a line of configuration. Add in the Cloudflare setup, Turnstile integration, and Google Business Profile optimization, and you’re looking at several hundred more in consulting hours plus a weekend of your own time figuring out how to wire it all together.
And none of that includes the managed part. No updates, no monitoring, no backups, no support when something goes sideways.
Why This Matters for Your Small Business Website
We include all of this because we’ve been building WordPress sites for 22 years, and we know what it takes to make one actually work for a small business. Skipping any of it doesn’t save you money, it just shifts the cost to you in time, missed leads, or a site that slowly falls apart.
If you’re comparing us to another host or agency, a fair question to ask them is: “What’s included, and what would I have to buy or set up separately?” You’ll learn a lot from the answer.
And if you want a site where the answer is “pretty much everything,” let’s talk.
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