2022 was an eventful year for all of us. We are all the more pleased with how our team has developed, including internationally. What was this year, what's coming in 2023? How can we help minimize the uncertainty that some WordPress agencies and freelancers are facing? And what would we like to see in the coming months? Our review and outlook.

Raidboxes grows strongly

Over 16,000 customers from 55 countries - it's impressive what our team has achieved in recent months. Especially when you look at how satisfied agencies and freelancers are with Raidboxes and, above all, with our support. Probably no other WordPress host manages to regularly achieve top marks like we do.

A rating of 4.98 stars at Trusted Shops speaks for itself. We can only achieve all this thanks to our great team. In support, development, administration, sales and marketing. A success that also inspires others: since last year, we have grown from 42 employees to 55.

We continue to attach great importance to making our team as diverse as possible. Even and especially when our commitment to greater diversity is not well received by everyone, as we notice in some comments on social media. We are particularly proud that the first international employees have joined our team this year.

English is becoming increasingly standard in internal communication, both on Slack and in our meetings. This is how we ensure that the entire team feels that they are really covered - Raidboxes supports the German-speaking team with optional English courses, in addition to the training budget for our employees.

On average, at least one new induction every month: in order to become more professional, a dedicated team has set up a new internal onboarding process. Supported by our project management tool Asana - in addition to individual personal support - we ensure that no information is lost. And this is what new employees think about our onboarding and their start in the team:

Although I started my onboarding remotely, it was a great experience. On my first days at work, I was given everything I needed and learned a lot about the company values. In addition, all newcomers had the opportunity to get to know the team, who were very welcoming. For me, the best thing about Raidboxes is the working environment, which supports me at all times. I feel very comfortable and safe here.

Yuliia, Working Student Brand Design

The induction took place entirely from my home office in Dresden. It went really smoothly. But the best thing about Raidboxes is really the team. You immediately feel welcome and included, which makes the start very pleasant. I can recommend Raidboxes to anyone who wants to work independently and in a relaxed atmosphere.

Nadine, Working Student Content Marketing

Raidboxes and team.blue - even stronger together

In June, Raidboxes reached an important milestone for its future and international development. After months of intensive discussions and joint exploration, Raidboxes became part of team.blue. Our team already knew in advance - it was not easy for us to wait with the important news until the final signing of the contracts.

Nothing has changed for our customers as a result of the merger, as Raidboxes and its entire team are still there for you as an independent company. Our employees have also only noticed the "deal" so far in that we are growing more strongly, with more financial power behind us. Together with team.blue, we can now work even harder to optimize our product and infrastructure.

Team.blue was formed in 2019 from the merger of three customer-oriented hosting groups: Combell, TransIP and Register. The company is based in Belgium, in the heart of Europe. From the moment our managing directors Torben and Johannes first spoke to team.blue, the needs of our customers were at the forefront. We quickly got the impression that the company was a good fit for us and our values.

The conversations strategically focused on how we can work together to advance the next level of software and specialized hosting for the WordPress creative industry. See the benefits of our specialized managed WordPress hosting, which is unique in the market.

Team.blue and Raidboxes are pursuing the same mission: together, we will focus even more on developing solutions for WordPress freelancers and agencies. Numerous opportunities for cooperation also ensure that we can plan our planned internationalization more professionally.

Our relaunch

In February, Raidboxes went live with a completely revamped brand identity. New web design, new web development, new logo, redesigned WordPress magazine, new materials and presentations: A project that was very challenging but also very motivating. In the end, we were still happy when the relaunch finally went live. Anyone who has ever implemented a complete redesign will certainly know the dimensions that such a project quickly takes on.

After Raidboxes has evolved significantly as a company in recent years, we wanted to develop a new corporate identity that better represents the new, more "grown-up" yet still "wild" team. The first step was an analysis:

• How do we relate to our brand internally?
• How do outsiders experience them?
• How do people share and talk about Raidboxes?
• What associations did the old appearance convey, what did we want to keep, what did we want to change?

With the active support of the 360Vier agency, we implemented a new look that was deliberately different from the previous one. Away from the familiar unconventional logo and the color gradients typical for us, towards something new. And all without losing our old identity.

At the same time, our brand identity, just like our content, should illustrate our team and company values:

• Freedom
• Transparency
• Friendliness
• Sustainability
• Performance orientation
• Unconventionality

The new logo in particular attracted a lot of attention, as this is where the biggest differences to the old appearance became clear. Our customers had to get used to the new design, but we quickly received very positive feedback. Today, the modern, light appearance is indispensable. And we in marketing are very happy to have made this important decision, despite a few sleepless nights 🙂

The relaunch was by no means the end of the project. The first task was to further optimize the performance of the website development, because fast WordPress servers alone do not necessarily help here.

Last but not least, we are constantly revising existing landing pages as well as our magazine in order to offer you the best possibleuser experience (UX).

Sustainability

Raidboxes has always worked to be the greenest WordPress host. Web hosting consumes a lot of resources. We compensate for this by providing financial support for numerous reforestation projects and projects to combat CO² emissions. It has been a matter of course for us for many years that our data centers and our office run on 100% green electricity from hydro and wind power. You can find an overview of all our sustainability measures here.

So far, Raidboxes has been able to donate over 440,000 trees thanks to the efforts of our customers. For every website with WordPress or WooCommerce that you host with us, we plant a tree for you - together with our partner Eden Reforestation Projects. This year alone, 150,000 new trees were added.

Greenspark is another partner of ours, and through this initiative we have offset an additional 800 tons of CO² since the start of our collaboration.

An important step in the last few months: We have been certified in accordance with the Economy for the Common Good standard and are now officially certified for the common good. Raidboxes stands for a corporate philosophy that focuses on sustainability in all areas.

Thanks to the systemic approach of accounting for the common good, we are now making it more transparent what our team and our company stand for. We can also better measure ourselves against this success, now and in the future. In addition, Raidboxes is currently striving to become a Benefit Corporation ("B Corporation").

Our product

The most important new feature of our Managed WordPress Hosting: We now support WordPress multisites - directly from the Raidboxes dashboard. Whether using a subdirectory, subdomain or multidomain, you can now create a new multisite or migrate your existing multisite network to Raidboxes in just a few steps.

WordPress Multisites are a powerful tool to centrally manage complex WordPress projects or to scale multiple similar websites. The feature allows you to create a network of subsites within a single instance of WordPress. See our article What is a WordPress Multisite and when you should use it.

However, it takes a lot of time to set up and successfully configure such a multisite independently. Starting with the extension of the wp-config file through to managing the correct multisite domain mapping.

At Raidboxes, we want to free you as much as possible from all the tedious tasks involved in administering your websites with WordPress and WooCommerce. This allows you to concentrate fully on your passion and your actual tasks. As part of our managed WordPress hosting, our packages from the Pro tariff upwards are therefore optimized for WordPress multisites.

Social Media @ Raidboxes

As part of the relaunch, our social media presence has also changed significantly, with the support of Pascal, who is responsible for social media and video. For him, our new corporate identity pays fresh and colorful tribute to the designs of our tiles, carousels and, more recently, videos. 

Since the second half of the year, we have been investing a lot of time and effort in the production of (vertical) videos that provide insights into our employees and Raidboxes, but also explain technical topics in a simple way. Our Content Creation Corner has been ready for a few weeks now: a few weeks ago, we removed some office desks and set up our own Raidboxes Studio.

Starting next year, we will be producing more videos and recording a Raidboxes podcast. So look forward to even more content from Raidboxes, on WordPress and other topics that move us. On Facebook alone, we achieved 5.4 million impressions with our posts (organic and paid). On LinkedIn, we welcomed around 600 new followers this year.

Here is an example of a first production from our new Raidboxes studio:

The most successful blog posts in 2022

530 blog posts, professionally translated into 9 different languages: Our WordPress magazine is an absolute flagship. In the German-speaking WordPress scene, but increasingly also throughout Europe. Some blog posts now have more views in other languages than in German.

It always surprises our content team which posts are among the most viewed. After all, this interest doesn't always follow the content strategy we've come up with 😉 Here are the top 10 from this year, across all languages:

1. A comparison of the 16 most popular WordPress page builders
2. WordPress image sizes: How images work in WordPress
3. Color psychology: Colors and their effect in web design
4. How to solve the 4 most common WordPress errors
5. Elementor: Your complete guide to the WordPress page builder
6. The 6 best free download manager plugins for WordPress
7. WooCommerce: The advantages & disadvantages of the popular store plugin
8. 7 tips to get started as a freelancer on Fiverr
9. WordPress hosting comparison 2022: What do our 250+ website speed tests show?
10. CSS Grid - the big guide

What are your personal highlights on our blog, or what would you like to see added? Feel free to use the comment function at the end of the post.

Two new e-books

Almost 800 downloads in the last seven months, our e-books are popular. Whether it's about managing WordPress projects, customer acquisition for WordPress agencies and freelancers or choosing the right project management tool. This year, we published two new e-books (two more will follow in January and March 2023):

Content marketing for agencies and freelancers

Word has gotten around that your online marketing will be much more successful with the right content. But how do you find content ideas that really appeal to your target groups? Which topics are worthwhile? And how do you measure success? You can find out exactly that in our e-book on content marketing, written by Jan Tissler.

No matter on which channels you publish content for your company, your agency or as a freelancer: good content attracts more customers, increases your reach and pays off in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). But this quickly raises a few questions:

• What exactly does "good" content actually look like?
• What is the best way to market your content?
• How does content marketing work and how can you implement it as easily as possible?

This is exactly what "Content Marketing for Agencies and Freelancers" is all about, you can download it here.

Social media for agencies & freelancers

Your content will only be recommended if you use the right networks and have the right social media strategy. But here, too, you need to rely on targeted methods and tools that will draw your target group out of their comfort zone. The e-book Social Media for Agencies and Freelancers, also written by our esteemed guest author Jan Tissler, will guide you step by step to greater visibility.

All companies, agencies and freelancers want to promote their content on social networks. It is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out from the mass of postings. This makes an individual but also targeted social media strategy all the more important. Jan addresses the following points, among others:

• How do you use your scarce social media resources in the most targeted way possible?
• Which social networks offer the best possible visibility with manageable effort?
• What content on social media is suitable for raising awareness of your products or services?
• Can you measure whether the measures are actually financially worthwhile?

Our e-book will help you take your social media posts to the next level. Click here to download.

English-language e-books

So far, we have published our e-books in German, as the effort involved in translation is significantly higher than for our blog posts. For example, when it comes to the design of the e-books. But in 2023, we want to translate and publish all e-books in English as well.

Raidboxes and the WordPress community

The "corona time-out" of all events related to WordPress and online marketing has been difficult for us. After all, we're always happy to be able to exchange ideas "live" - with our customers, agencies, freelancers and friends from the WordPress community.

All the better that the first events that we sponsored and/or at which we were represented with a stand were able to take place again this year:

• The WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal
• The OMR Festival in Hamburg
• The Digital People Summit in Cologne

A number of events are also planned for 2023, such as WordCamp Europe in Athens and WordCamp Switzerland in Murten. We will communicate in good time via our social media channels where you can meet us. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or via our newsletter.

Come by and let us show you our highly acclaimed Raidboxes Dashboard live. Or we can tell you how you can make your WordPress projects even faster compared to your current setup. Of course, we are also happy to "just" get to know you. Exchange ideas with us: What additional features would you like to see? How can we make your everyday life with WordPress and WooCommerce even easier and more efficient?

Responsibility & outlook 2023

Our managing directors Johannes and Torben and the entire team are delighted to have found a strong partner for our growth in team.blue. We are also pleased that the topic of the common good is now firmly anchored in our company statutes as the cornerstone for the planned B-Corp certification. Torben and Johannes have thus committed themselves to focusing on all stakeholder needs and making a significant positive impact on society with Raidboxes.

We all want Raidboxes to be and remain a very special place to work. As part of team.blue, we will also do everything we can to ensure that our employees enjoy working at Raidboxes. Our values such as transparency, freedom, diversity and equality should be practiced throughout the company.

Over the past six years, we have been very fortunate to build a truly talented, focused and incredibly motivated team of now 55 "Raidboxers". We will continue to intensify this growth with the help of team.blue and are looking forward to additional great additions to the Raidboxes team.

Incidentally, 60 percent of Raidboxes employees now work completely remotely. The same applies here: unlimited and international opportunities to work with us. Want to become part of our team? Then take a look at our vacancies.

We are aware that the last few months have been a challenge for many agencies, companies and freelancers - and that they still are. The economic situation has worsened for some. And yet our thoughts are primarily with those who are struggling with the much worse effects of war and displacement.

Thanks to our customers, we continued to grow in 2022 - and we want to give something back, in addition to our other commitments. This year, we have once again dispensed with Christmas mail and increased advertising expenditure and instead donated 5,000 euros via Betterplace.org to the Tafeln, a charity organization for people in need in Germany. Would you like to take part? You can find all the information about the appeal for donations at Betterplace.org.

Together with our international customers as well as our employees, we hope that 2023 will be a better year. We want to help minimize the economic consequences, which always have a very personal impact. By pursuing our vision even more strongly than before that anyone can create a high-performance website or online store with WordPress, with equal technical opportunities for everyone.

We achieve this with our dashboard, but above all with our support, which will actually help you if you reach your limits with WordPress, WooCommerce and your business idea. With this in mind:

Goodbye 2022 👋 - Welcome 2023 🕊️