Excerpt Talks Episode #3 – Michael Eisenwasser of Rapyd Cloud
In this episode of Excerpt Talks, we talked with Michael Eisenwasser, co-founder and GM of Rapyd Cloud about how agencies can offer WordPress-powered membership sites on a subscription model – achieving profit margins close to $500 per month.
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TL;DR
Productize Your Services
Instead of relying on one-off projects, agencies should turn their expertise into recurring subscription packages. This model brings predictability and allows for ongoing improvement and customer retention.
Target Niche, High-Value Segments
Michael recommends focusing on a specific niche – like membership websites, e-learning platforms, or private communities—where your expertise provides outsized value. Specialization helps differentiate you in a crowded market.
Build Strategic Partnerships
For smaller teams, collaboration is essential. Partner with companies that complement what you offer – whether it’s hosting, security, or performance optimization. Strategic partnerships can enhance your service offering and credibility.
Make Performance and Reliability Part of Your Value Proposition
When clients run high-traffic WordPress websites, speed, uptime, and scalability are critical. As Michael put it, customers will happily pay a premium “for peace of mind.”
Engage with the WordPress Ecosystem
Show up in person. Go to WordCamps, connect on LinkedIn, and meet other agency owners and developers. As Michael emphasized, real-world networking leads to collaborations, partnerships, and insights you can’t get online.
Transcript
Lawrence Ladomery
Thank you, Michael, for joining us for this third episode of the Expert Talks. As I mentioned earlier, I’m familiar with Rapyd Cloud and have been following your story for a couple of years. It’s exciting to see a company that caters to high-traffic membership sites and similar use cases. Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about Rapyd Cloud.
Michael Eisenwasser
Thank you, Lawrence, and thanks for having me. I’m the Co-Founder and General Manager of Rapyd Cloud, a high-performance hosting company for WordPress — specifically for dynamic sites with large numbers of concurrent users. Where other hosts struggle, Rapyd Cloud maintains very high performance and speed, even as traffic scales up.
A bit about my background — I also founded BuddyBoss, one of the best-known community-building platforms in the WordPress space. I started it in 2010 with a business partner, and it was acquired last year, in 2024.
Lawrence Ladomery
Right, BuddyBoss is a well-known brand in the community space. You mentioned Rapyd Cloud was built to address scaling and concurrency issues — those must be major challenges for membership or event-driven sites, where many people log in at the same time.
Michael Eisenwasser
Exactly. Rapyd Cloud was built to solve the problems our own BuddyBoss customers faced. At BuddyBoss, we had tens of thousands of customers running communities. Traditional WordPress hosts are typically optimized for static or cached publishing sites — but dynamic, logged-in sites can’t be cached in the same way.
Think of Facebook: every user sees different content — messages, notifications, profiles. That’s dynamic data. Membership platforms, e-commerce, e-learning — all face the same challenge. Rapyd Cloud ensures performance remains fast, even when hundreds or thousands of users are logged in simultaneously.
Lawrence Ladomery
That makes sense. So that’s also your main differentiator — how do you position Rapyd Cloud in such a crowded hosting market?
Michael Eisenwasser
Our primary differentiator is performance. We’re called Rapyd for a reason — we’re fast.
In third-party testing by WP Lift, they compared us to other major hosts — WP Engine, Cloudways, Kinsta, and others — and simulated 5,000 concurrent users. Most competitors slowed by 300–400%, while Rapyd Cloud slowed by just 11%.
Beyond speed, we offer:
- Best-in-class security (in partnership with Monarx and Patchstack)
- 24/7 live chat support
- An easy-to-use managed dashboard
- Free site migration and assessment
Lawrence Ladomery
I noticed you also partner with other WordPress companies. Can you share a bit about those collaborations?
Michael Eisenwasser
Sure. We partner with Monarx for server-level security — they scan for malware and fix issues automatically. For plugin and theme vulnerability scanning, we partner with Patchstack.
For our built-in CDN, we work with NOC, and our infrastructure runs on AWS to ensure best-in-class speed and reliability. These partnerships allow us to provide a premium, complete hosting package.
Lawrence Ladomery
Let’s talk about affiliates. I know from experience that marketing a higher-end product can be challenging. How do you approach affiliate partnerships?
Michael Eisenwasser
We’ve had good success with affiliates because of our niche. We offer a flat $150 commission per referral, which is higher than average because we operate in the mid-to-high hosting range.
Our affiliates often target specific customer bases — like BuddyBoss users, e-learning professionals, or e-commerce site owners — which makes their promotions highly relevant and effective. For high-performing affiliates (20+ referrals per month), we’re open to custom arrangements as well.
Lawrence Ladomery
Let’s look at a sample agency partnership scenario — say an agency is offering a membership package for about $1,000/month. In your experience, what would the typical hosting cost be?
Michael Eisenwasser
Our Business 3 plan costs $191/month if paid monthly, or about $159/month annually. That plan is suitable for a BuddyBoss community app setup with a few hundred concurrent users.
Lower tiers start at $29/month, but those are better suited for smaller or static sites. All plans include staging environments, and from the Starter 1 tier upward, multi-site capability is available.
Lawrence Ladomery
If we add BuddyBoss licenses, plugins, and light maintenance, the total cost might be around $500/month — with the agency charging $1,000. Does that sound realistic?
Michael Eisenwasser
Yes, that’s reasonable. The variation mostly depends on how resource-heavy the site is — the number of plugins, API calls, concurrent users, and the amount of developer support required. But the overall stack and cost breakdown you mentioned is accurate.
Lawrence Ladomery
Do you see customers achieving significant revenue from these setups?
Michael Eisenwasser
Absolutely. Some of our customers have hundreds of thousands of visitors and generate tens of thousands in monthly membership revenue.
Lawrence Ladomery
How do you support agencies running critical events or live campaigns?
Michael Eisenwasser
Every customer gets 24/7 live chat support, handled by a team familiar with both hosting and BuddyBoss. We also offer Enhanced Support ($100/month) with a dedicated account manager, and Elite Support ($500/month) with a private Slack channel for direct access to our team.
For live events, we can temporarily scale resources — CPU, RAM, and more — on a scheduled basis without downtime. Agencies often request that before big launches or campaigns.
Lawrence Ladomery
Are you seeing more demand for private communities as people move away from Facebook groups and similar platforms?
Michael Eisenwasser
Yes — this trend really accelerated during COVID. People want more control over their data, experience, and community tone. Facebook promotes negativity because it drives engagement, but that’s not what most businesses want.
With BuddyBoss and similar tools, people can own their communities, control design, add custom features, and even monetize access — all under their own brand.
Lawrence Ladomery
Let’s talk about partnerships again — what kinds of businesses do you usually partner with?
Michael Eisenwasser
Mostly agencies that build custom WordPress solutions for membership, e-commerce, or e-learning clients. They need a reliable, high-performance host and appreciate that we offer free migrations, performance audits, and optimizations.
Agencies can start as affiliates, and as they grow, we develop deeper, more collaborative relationships.
Lawrence Ladomery
AI is transforming everything. How is Rapyd Cloud using it?
Michael Eisenwasser
Internally, our developers use AI for faster coding and testing. Our support AI is trained on our internal knowledge base, which allows it to answer common questions quickly — freeing up our human team for more complex issues.
We’re also exploring AI-driven performance analysis and optimization tools for customers.
Lawrence Ladomery
Anything new or exciting coming soon?
Michael Eisenwasser
Yes — we recently launched our Rapyd Cloud 2.0 Dashboard. It introduces multi-site management, improved WooCommerce integration, faster deployments, and an overall smoother experience.
We’re migrating every customer to 2.0 because it provides so much value.
Lawrence Ladomery
I remember the first version — it was already solid. The new one sounds even better.
Michael Eisenwasser
It’s not a total overhaul, but it’s a big step forward based on user feedback.
Lawrence Ladomery
Final question — what advice would you give WordPress professionals about collaboration in the ecosystem?
Michael Eisenwasser
Human connection is the key. Go to WordCamps, meet other developers and business owners, and build relationships.
There are three major WordCamps every year — US, Europe, and Asia — plus many local ones. WordCamp Asia 2025 in Mumbai will probably be the biggest ever.
Beyond that, get active on LinkedIn, join webinars, and don’t isolate yourself. Collaboration leads to growth.
Lawrence Ladomery
I couldn’t agree more. WordCamps have been incredible for us — both for networking and understanding where the market is heading.
Where can people learn more about Rapyd Cloud?
Michael Eisenwasser
Visit rapyd.cloud for more information, and check feedback.rapyd.cloud or our public roadmap. We’re also active on LinkedIn — both the company and myself. Feel free to connect.
Lawrence Ladomery
Thank you, Michael. This has been an excellent discussion — and a great look at the evolving world of WordPress hosting and private communities.
