And when you do it right, you get lots of flexibility and customizable options to craft a beautiful and powerful site. Another essential factor that you must pay attention to is the Content Management System (CMS) for your website. I cannot stress enough the power of content in this digitally-driven age. Creating an online customer base is not only a choice but a need, and that’s possible with high-quality content that your target audience is craving for. And when it comes to CMS, you might have listened to great things about WordPress. Those are true, but there are certain limits in its core programming that might restrict you in customization and flexibility, among other factors. For this, there’s an excellent alternative, and that’s TYPO3. TYPO3 is a CMS that helps you customize more, offers more settings for multiple users, and can handle larger websites. Let’s dig deeper to find out more about TYPO3 and why this can be a good WordPress alternative for you.
What is TYPO3?
TYPO3 is a PHP-based open-source and free web content management system (CMS). It was originally authored by a Danish developer, Kasper Skårhøj, in 1997. The aim of creating TYPO3 CMS was to develop a system capable of separating content and design because sites started becoming more complex than ever. Currently, it is developed by 300+ contributors. It has a big global community with around 900 members. TYPO3 is great for websites, online applications, and intranet. It supports sites of all scales, from small to multinational corporations. According to Wikipedia, TYPO3 is used in 500k+ installations currently. It finds usage in many global organizations, with a majority of them are from German-speaking countries. Notable sites based on TYPO3 are Airbus, Air France, the Technical University of Berlin, and more.
Some of its unique features:
Highly scalable enough to support big enterprises Supports thousands of extensions to expand functionalities Offers greater editorial control Provides customized, granular access Extends unmatched support to multilingual workspaces Supports various content types like images, tables, forms, plain text, multimedia, etc. It runs on every operating system and device. Offers blazing-fast site speed for better engagement and conversions Secure platform and respects user privacy Backed by a vibrant community and sturdy commercial ecosystem
How does it differ from WordPress?
As I said, WordPress comes with certain restrictions to customize it or increase its flexibility. But, at the same time, it’s excellent for beginners who don’t have coding knowledge. This is why many prefer WordPress due to its simplicity and user-friendliness. WordPress is excellent for anyone who wants to start a simple blog, hobby site, portfolio site, small business site, business page, etc. But what about coding experts who need a little more flexibility and functionalities to make their site look exactly what they dreamed of? TYPO3 can help them a lot. You need to ‘hang out’ with TYPO3 and understand how it works. Next, you could control your business management systems, test new things over the production website, and so on.
Although it can power small sites perfectly, TYPO3 is more suitable for enterprises with its advanced features. It uses a tree structure for pages and posts, while WordPress does it in a list. Installation may get tougher for TYPO3 as it is designed for experienced developers, while WordPress is super easy to install and use for everyone. TYPO3 has enterprise-grade security and features such as audit logs, security review, access manager, etc. WordPress is the most used and common CMS; hence, a bit risky security-wise, and the plugins and themes by 3rd parties could be vulnerable to attacks. TYPO3 is highly extensible, so there is no problem with connecting to any applications. As for WordPress, using too many plugins or themes might slow down the site.
However, choosing one among them is a matter of usage, skill level, and personal preference. So, if you have chosen TYPO3, there is an option to get it started with self-managed hosting or use a managed web hosting service. The latter is referred to, so you don’t have to manage everything and concentrate on growing your business more. And for choosing a TYPO3 managed hosting service, here are some of the reliable hosts you can go for.
A2 Hosting
Get a fine-tuned, superbly fast web hosting service from A2 Hosting tailored to meet your unique demands. Don’t worry about bounce rates, conversion rates, and SEO rankings if you have chosen A2 Hosting. It’s because they host your site on their high-performing SwiftServer platform with optimized servers. They give you the flexibility to choose a server location of your preference, along with a LiteSpeed server and free SSDs. You can also choose a Turbo Server-powered plan that offers 20 times faster page loading speed than ordinary servers. Their Turbo Servers include AMD EPYC server and NVMEe drives. As a result, you can expect 9X higher traffic, 3X faster write/read speeds, 2X faster TTFB, and 40% faster CPUs. In addition to this, you won’t find trouble in setting up your TYPO3 software. Just use Softaculous from the control panel and install it in one click, and you are good to go. They will also notify you with an automated email whenever a new version of TYPO3 software is available. You can even update the software effortlessly in one 1-click.
The perpetual security practices that A2 Hosting adopts can help prevent cyberattacks. They offer HackScan Protection free of cost to mitigate hacks before they cause any trouble. Features included in their security kit are a dual firewall, brute force prevention, KernelCare rebootless updates, reinforced DDoS protection, and more. A2 Hosting is developer-friendly since its inception in 2003. Hence, they offer many versions of different development software, including both older and latest ones. Coming to their Guru support service, which is excellent, and they also do FREE account migration. They guarantee 99.90% server uptime to make your site highly available and reliable. A2 Hosting is one of the most affordable TYPO3 web hosts, with prices starting from as low as $2.99/month (when billed for 3 years) for 1 site, 100 GB SSD a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Cloudways
Use Cloudways to deploy TYPO3 applications without any worries and leverage the best performance from leading cloud providers like AWS, DigitalOcean, GCP, Linode, and Vultr to power your apps. Installing TYPO3 apps on the cloud provider of your choice is easy-breezy in a few clicks. Choose the PHP application available under the drop-down menu; name your project, server, and applications, and manage everything with ease. You can also select the server locations, specifications and launch your site. It allows you to open the configured Composer to install the TYPO3 CMS. Experience lightning-fast performance and incredible page loading speed using their SSD-based hosting to accelerate your business process. They use an optimized application stack using pre-configured systems such as Nginx, Apache, PHP-FPM, etc. Integrate with CloudwaysCDN to offer an exceptional user experience no matter where your visitors are located.
Cloudways offers optimized caching solutions like Memcached, Varnish, and Redis to ensure faster and stable performance. Their servers come with PHP 7 and HTTP/2 to ensure secure end-to-end communications from applications to visitors. Their managed TYPO3 hosting offers safety to your servers and sites with dedicated firewalls to filter malicious traffic and block them. Cloudways also comes with auto-healing servers to tackle common server issues while protecting it from sudden crashes. They protect all accounts with 2-Factor authentication and provide security from unauthorized access and intrusions. Apart from all these security features, Cloudways offers IP whitelisting to have reliable traffic only, easy SSL installation for FREE, and high availability of automated and on-demand backups. Cloudways enables seamless vertical scaling of RAM and storage without changing server specifications. You can choose from over 55 global data centers, get multiple PHP versions like PHP 5.6 and PHP 7.x, and switch them based on the demands. Cloudways supports Git integration, server and application cloning, staging area and URLs, and secure SSH & SFTP access. Collaborate effectively by adding team members, assign roles, and use a single account to manage multiple teams. Cloudways plans start at just $10/month for 1GB RAM, 25 GB storage, 1 CPU, and 1 TB bandwidth.
Platform.sh
Get the most out of your TYPO3 hosting by choosing Platform.sh. From agile development to enterprise-level production for TYPO3 projects, it helps you discover ways to find a flawless web hosting experience. Expedite TYPO3 projects and onboard your developers easily with this host. It manages your operations and infrastructure to help focus your team on developing great codes, testing them, and launching websites. Platform.sh is capable of creating an exact production replica so you can test every code change, and when satisfied, launch successfully. Scale up or down with grace without involving any downtimes with the solid infrastructure of Platform.sh. Their German region provides you with top-level compliance and data security. In addition to that, you get efficient app lifecycle management and sturdy infrastructure. Platform.sh empowers your TYPO3 developers by offering tools such as Git to configure your server cluster automatically and manage projects from your terminal directly. Everything you do in the Platform.sh user interface, you can also do it in the terminal using their command-line interface. As they offer Composer support, you don’t have to keep checking the vendor directory. Simply push the composer.json and let them handle the rest.
FastComet
The managed TYPO3 hosting by FastComet helps you stay focus on essential aspects of your business and grow it exponentially as they handle everything else. Performance beyond expectations and useful features are some of the few things making FastComet a wise choice. Access your database and files with 300% extra speed using an SSD-only cloud compared to non-SSD web hosting services. FastComet uses free Cloudflare CDN to help distribute content anywhere in the world. They also use the most powerful and popular hosting control panel – cPanel for easy hosting account management in 29 languages.
FastComet offers optimized TYPO3 hosting, including solutions like FastGuard for security, RocketBooster (Varnish-based Cachewall) for speed, LiteSpeed cache, and Observer Resource Monitoring. You also get the latest versions of MySQL and PHP, SSD-only cloud, HTTP/2, Opcode caching, Let’s Encrypt SSL, and optimized static-content processing. All your data is safe with weekly and daily backups for FREE, along with efficient migrations of your emails, files, and databases without downtime. They also offer free domain transfer and allow you to use it for one year. Integrate FastComet with 450+ available apps in seconds and get unlimited priority support 24/7. Their pricing starts at $3.95/month.
InterServer
InterServer is also a good option if you are looking for a TYPO3 hosting provider to build a highly scalable site. They offer shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting for TYPO3. All the packages they offer include a 1-click install script, which you can use to set up your site. This platform makes sure your site runs with outstanding speed and stability using industry-grade practices and solutions. InterServer leverages ultra-SSD storage for faster site speed. They also guarantee 99.90% uptime, so your site remains available to your users most of the time.
InterServer’s team updates all the plugins and TYPO3 core software, making sure there is no room left for security vulnerability. Furthermore, they offer InterShield protection to secure your site from attacks. In addition to this, you get a maximum of 30 backup copies daily of your site to ensure you lose no data. They also do FREE site migration if you already use TYPO3 hosting from other hosting providers. You can integrate with 450+ cloud apps, get unlimited email accounts, unlimited bandwidth, and storage.
TMDHosting
TMDHosting is known for its superior performance and exceptional speed for fully-managed TYPO3 web hosting. They offer FREE installation of TYPO3 software, and if you need to migrate your website, their Dedicated Transfer team can also do this free of charge. You can extend your hosting features for TYPO3 to add new ones by installing hundreds of useful plugins every month for FREE. To enhance your site’s aesthetics, you can choose a template that you desire and let them install it for you. With their 10+ experience in web hosting, TMDHosting takes care of your TYPO3 software updates to help you leverage better performance, speed, and security. They provide Softaculous for easy 1-click installs for 300+ applications, free Cloudflare CDN to distribute content to your customers with faster page loading speeds and reliability.
TMDHosting offers Intel-powered SSD drives and three layers of cache – APC, opCache, and Varnish for 20x faster page loading and help improve your SEO rankings. You can leverage Spam Experts, a leading email security software that’s integrated into your hosting plan for FREE so you can have a spam-free web hosting service. In addition to this, they offer a web-based firewall by BitNinja to block online threats. Manage your files, emails, and application using the powerful control panel, cPanel, included in all their plans. They offer FREE daily and weekly backups of your files to ensure data security and perform data restores. TMDHosting offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee as well. Their pricing starts from $2.95/month with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Conclusion
Don’t make a typo while choosing a TYPO3 web hosting solution to empower your site and business 😎. Please choose any of the TYPO3 hosting providers I mentioned above and start managing your content without worries to take your content game to the next level along with your business value.
