Looking back at an… Interesting 2020

Rocket.net 2021
  • 5 min read

2020 has been an interesting year to say the least! While the world has had a pretty difficult time coping with COVID-19, there have definitely still been a few upsides. 

One of those being Rocket.net’s official launch!

Rocket.net has seen impeccable growth over the past six months and we are just getting started. 

First of all, we want to thank all of our customers for giving us the opportunity to provide for your business. We definitely wouldn’t be here without you, and we look forward to many successful years together. 

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our partners for supporting our vision. Thanks to the amazing teams at Performive, Cloudflare, and Imunify360, we were able to make our dream a reality.

So what exactly happened this year at Rocket.net? Just how impeccable is our growth? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Here’s some of the key milestones we achieved at Rocket.net in 2020:

  • Officially Launched June 30, 2020
  • Successfully rebranded from onRocket.com to Rocket.net
  • Our first $100,000 in annual revenue
  • 280TB of Bandwidth Transferred
  • 7 billion requests successfully delivered at 98% cache hit ratio
  • Millions and Millions of WordPress attacks prevented

Now, you may be asking yourself “How the heck is this possible as a new company?!” and my answer is always the same… 

While Rocket.net may be a new brand, our team is extremely seasoned. With 17+ years of experience in the hosting industry (over 10 of them with WordPress) we could hit the ground running.

So let’s dive into some of our milestones…

Official Launch

In February 2020, we assembled what I consider to be the dream team and worked together to build something that’s not only unique, but that also provides real value. For me personally, the greatest satisfaction comes from seeing a customer truly benefit from your product. 

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On June 30 2020, we officially launched Rocket under the onRocket.com brand. We then spent countless hours building what is now the easiest (and arguably the fastest and most secure) all-in-one WordPress platform available on the market.

Read more about our Launch story – Blood, sweat, and tears – The Startup Journey

Revenue Growth

One of the toughest and scariest parts of launching a new business (especially in hosting) is generating revenue and onboarding your first set of customers, and even more so as a bootstrapped company. 

After working with friends and family and fine-tuning our platform, we kicked off our very first marketing campaigns in August 2020. We saw some instant success from our campaigns which came as a big shock, as typically, it takes at least 30 days for these campaigns to really produce results. More importantly, we started to see our first set of unrecognizable names on the platform. 

Another surprising win for Rocket.net was finding new customers thanks to our affiliate channel, through which we were introduced to hundreds of wonderful WordPress influencers. During their tests and interactions with Rocket.net, the conversations shifted from “how to promote together?” to “how could we work together?”.

Within the first 6 months of launching and testing several marketing campaigns, we officially crossed the $100,000 revenue mark. You read that right, $100,000 in revenue within 6 months of launching! 

Rocket 2020 Revenue - Looking back at an… Interesting 2020 -

This is something we’re extremely proud of, as it was definitely not an easy task. But as you can see, growth is really ramping up and will continue to explode in 2021.

Customer Wins

As a new company, it can be tough to win over customers. Not only are we a new brand, but moving can be a headache.

Getting your first 100 customers is always the hardest part.

We’ve definitely learned a lot from our customers since launching. Being so close to the platform during its inception, it was critical for us not only to validate both our mission and our vision, but also to truly understand the value it can provide. 

Not only have we been able to create some amazing partnerships with our Agency customers, but we’ve been able to really push our Platform to the max. From Agencies managing hundreds of WordPress sites, to single sites generating 40k requests a minute – truly amazing.

CF Requests - Looking back at an… Interesting 2020 -

At Rocket.net, we always talk about how customer-centric we are. That will never change. Not only do we talk to our customers, but more importantly, we listen. Listening led to many key features, caching improvements, and an overall better experience for both our business as well as our customers.

Looking ahead to 2021

We’re looking forward to helping agencies and customers alike prepare for the upcoming Google changes for core web vitals in May, 2021. With our platform providing sub 100ms TTFB and accelerated delivery via http/2 and http/3, we provide our customers with everything they need to stay ahead of the curve.

That said, we will also continue to invest heavily in our platform. You can expect to see us deliver on more features, improvements, and continued dedication to our customers’ success.

While we don’t want to give too much away, you can expect to see some of the following:

Rocket Team Expansion

As we grow our business, we’re growing our team, too.

Scaling your team can be a real challenge. Not only do you need to find the right talent, but you have to ensure the customer experience can continue to meet expectations.

We’ve learned a lot over the years and one of the things we pride ourselves most on is our customer service. We made sure to create a #core-values channel in our company’s Slack where we continue to develop and discuss who we are. As we expand and grow the team I can assure you the culture will stay consistent.

We will be looking for new team members to join us in South Florida and around the world. Don’t worry though, if you’re used to talking to Aaron, Josip, or myself in chat/slack/tickets – that’s never going to change! I personally love working with customers, especially when I get to see the impact our platform makes first hand.

Web hosting your passion? Drop us a line – hello@rocket.net

More Website Resources

At Rocket.net, we truly want to ensure maximum success for everyone on our Platform. After closely analyzing the usage of our Platform and working with our customers, we were able to increase the total amount of visitors included with each plan by tenfold!

Already on Rocket.net? Well we have good news, this change not only applies to you too, but it has already been made to your account.

Product Development

Just like 2020, in 2021 and beyond we will continue to heavily invest in our Platform’s performance, security, and features. We will be publishing our roadmap directly in Mission Control not only so customers can see what’s on the horizon, but to get them involved and help us too! We want to make sure we’re building the best possible features to support our customers and their business.

Here are just some of the suggestions we’ve received that will be landing in early 2021:

  • One click phpMyAdmin Access
  • Staging Enhancements
    • Re-sync staging with Production
    • Create staging from a backup
    • Smarter Staging to Production publishing
  • Web-based File Manager
  • Public API

Have an idea? We would love to hear it! Drop us a line at hello@rocket.net and let’s talk.

Have a Happy, Healthy, and Safe New Year!

We hope everyone has a happy and healthy New Year filled with lots of success. At Rocket.net, we look forward to our contribution to that success and will be hitting the ground running in 2021!

Ben Gabler
CEO, Rocket.net

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