Moving From Yoast To SEOPress
16 Aug 2021
So today I signed up for an SEOPress Pro account and migrated my site over to them from Yoast.
Since writing this post, I’ve switched back to Yoast as the admin UI for SEO Press is just horrible to use. I’ll see how it goes with Yoast over the next few months and make a decision when my license is due to expire.
I did this because of the recent acquisition of Yoast by Newfold Digital. If you don’t know, Newfold are a hosting company that own popular shared hosts like Bluehost and Hostgator.
The problem I have with the acquisition is that hosts like Bluehost and Hostgator have a well-earned reputation for providing a shitty hosting service that is fraught with vendor lock in.
Worst still, they often use Dark Patterns to entice unsuspecting people in by offering discounts and outright lies with regards to the “excellent” performance.
Having used both Bluehost and Hostgator in the past, I can promise you that their server performance is shockingly bad, and their customer service is worse.
So I was sad to learn that Yoast — a company I’ve been a paid up member for for a couple of years now, and a plugin I’ve used for much longer than that — have decided to jump into bed with such a company.
SEOPress
I’ve been thinking about moving away from Yoast for a while, but that was because of the price more than anything. The acquisition was the final straw though.
I previously tried RankMath, but that didn’t go too well, so I abandoned that idea. Luckily for me I’ve had no such issues with SEOPress; the migration was seamless, there’s feature parity with Yoast and it’s a third of the price.
Win / win / win.
Once I’ve found my feet with SEOPress, I’ll likely write about my thoughts on the plugin in a little more detail, but for now it seems like it was a good choice.
Have all these WordPress acquisitions got you concerned? They certainly have me concerned. Let me know your thoughts using the reply button below.