Websites as a Service (WaaS) bundles web design, maintenance, and development for a fixed monthly fee, and you can find lots of WaaS solutions on the market.
Dollie could be ideal, as it uses the power of the number one Content Management System (CMS), WordPress, to help you grow your business using dependable, open-source technology. The revolutionary “Dollie Hub Builder” enables you to build your entire WaaS using WordPress without any scalability and security issues that Multisite or building your own infrastructure presents.
This post will highlight one specific option among a wealth of WaaS solutions – Dollie. Throughout this guide, we’ll look at the services’ key features and what you could do with them. Let’s begin!
What is Dollie?
Software as a Service (SaaS) is big business, with spending continuing to grow year-on-year. One extension of this is WaaS.
Much like SaaS, WaaS is a distribution model that provides cloud services and websites to customers as a turnkey product. Dollie is a market leader in the field:
Dollie offers a suite of tools that provide you with the unparalleled ability to sell white-label websites, existing WordPress products, or even a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) from your WordPress website, making it a standout player in the WaaS market.
Overview of Dollie’s Features
We’ll look at Dollie’s functionality and feature set in detail later on, but for now, here’s a quick overview of what it provides:
- The core service is a set of three tools to help you sell recurring cloud services to your customers (Hub Builder), manage sites (Control HQ), and offer cloud hosting (Private Cloud).
- Each site gets an individual custom dashboard that gives you analytics, performance metrics, and handy site management tools.
- The Done For You service lets you delegate your cloud services’ development, customization, and scaling to Dollie’s team of experts. They’ll create your professional, white-label platform based on your specific requirements. This includes consultation, full setup, design, and even performance reviews on a regular basis.
As such, Dollie offers a lot inside the box. It means the solution can adapt to the needs of many different types of businesses. We’ll look at this in more detail next.
Who Can Benefit from Dollie?
In a nutshell, anyone who wants to deliver professional and exemplary cloud services to customers will benefit from Dollie. However, there are specific niches the service caters to that other WaaS solutions can’t provide. We’ll talk about this in detail later.
However, if your budget is tight, Dollie will definitely appeal. It uses a hybrid approach of an annual fee ($50–200) coupled with billing based on use. This means you can scale when you’re ready, without fear.
Exploring Dollie’s Key Features
In this next section, we’ll look at what Dollie offers. There are three parts: The Hub Builder, Control HQ, and Private Cloud. Let’s begin by discussing what the Dollie Hub Builder provides.
Dollie Hub Builder
If you want to sell WordPress products from your site, what better way to do it than with the number one e-commerce plugin for the platform, WooCommerce?
This is what the Hub Builder lets you do. It is the heart and soul of Dollie’s offering for WaaS builders.
You connect your WordPress site to Dollie using the Hub Builder plugin. The Hub Builder plugin allows you to create a WordPress site, turn it into a Blueprint, and then sell sites under your brand from your domain. There are myriad options here to help you tailor the sales process to your needs.
There are also comprehensive options to customize user roles and permissions, client dashboard settings, and plenty more:
From here, you can use WordPress’s functionality and plugins to build your sales hub. Whether you are building a support site, a membership site, or an affiliate e-commerce site, Dollie allows you to install all the plugins you need to create your vision.
Integrations with your favorite plugins such as MemberPress, Easy Digital Downloads, ACF, Elementor, Gravit Forms, and more are not limited or restricted when building with Dollie.
In addition to unparalleled freedom to install the plugins you need, you also maintain full control over design, branding, pricing, and ownership of customer data.
On Dollie’s dashboard, you can get an overview of your customer numbers, sites, and total monetary sales.
This is in addition to all of the tools you get within Control HQ to manage sites. There’s so much in the box that we can’t cover it all in one article. However, you get a complete solution in Dollie to help with site management. We will be expanding on this in our next article.
Dollie Private Cloud
In our opinion, one of the key selling points of Dollie is how fast it takes to launch a site. This is thanks to the Private Cloud tool. It obfuscates almost all of the technical considerations in three clicks. This is where your customer websites are hosted. Your WaaS is fully white-labeled. Here are the top features:
- Seamless Scalability: Whether you’re managing 10 sites or 10,000, Dollie’s Private Cloud adjusts effortlessly, ensuring your WaaS platform can grow without limitations.
- Peak Performance & Security: Harnessing next-gen container technology, every site enjoys its own dedicated environment, guaranteeing swift load times and robust security against threats.
- Smart Caching for Dynamic Sites: With features like Redis Object Caching at your disposal, Dollie ensures both static and dynamic sites (like eCommerce platforms) are served with unrivaled speed.
- Unyielding Resource Allocation: Every site benefits from dedicated PHP workers, RAM, CPU, and an isolated MySQL container, ensuring consistent high performance and responsiveness.5. Proactive Security Protocols: With a built-in web firewall, daily backups, and vigilant security monitoring, Dollie offers a fortified haven for every site in your Private Cloud.
How to Get Started Building Your WaaS
You first click the Add Site button on the main dashboard page, then choose how you’d like to launch or connect a site:
From there, add a name for your site, and click to choose either a clean install or a ‘Blueprint’ for a specific type of site:
From here, click the Create button, and Dollie will create your site and launch it:
It’s important to note that Dollie gives you enterprise-grade performance for each and every site you launch. You also get a Web Application Firewall (WAF) as a first, rock-solid layer of protection against malicious attacks on your server.
While Dollie does hide away lots of the technical underbelly when creating a site, you can still customize the setup to your liking.
The Developer Tools include all of the goodies you need here, such as PHP choices, tools for file permissions, log viewers, WP-CLI integration, and more.
Combine this with object and smart caching and a whole host of impressive technical ‘specs’, and you have one impressive platform to build from.
Dollie Control HQ
In a nutshell, Control HQ is your command center where you can see all your customer sites in one place. Its key features are:
- Bulk Update Manager: Update the plugins and themes of WordPress itself across your entire WaaS in seconds.
- Support Tools: Uptime monitor, backup manager, page speed insights, and an overview dashboard for each site.
- Bring Your Team. Your entire team can use control to run your day-to-day operations. Build new WaaS templates, provide support, and use powerful add-ons like Atarim.
This provides a gorgeous third-party dashboard to help you manage all of your WordPress sites from one place and simplify your daily workflow.
You can import sites from many other site management or WaaS solutions, such as WPMUDev, ManageWP, WP Umbrella, and more. Even better, managing as many sites as needed is free.
When it comes to managing your site, you have a plethora of options. You can access practically every metric you need from Control HQ, such as uptime monitoring, Google Lighthouse reports, activity reporting, and more.
However, you can also look to manage the themes and plugins of each install from Control HQ:
If you need to add new plugins or themes, there’s integration with the WordPress Plugin Directory, and an uploader to help you install premium plugins:
It could be that you never need to log directly into a WordPress site to make necessary changes. This is excellent news for you, your clients, and your overall security.
The Power of WaaS with Dollie
In our opinion, Dollie is number one among WaaS solutions for a few reasons. Not only does it use WordPress, but it’s super flexible too. Next, we’ll look at a few ways businesses leverage Dollie, starting with arguably a primary use case.
Benefits for WordPress Agencies
An agency will have a lot of moving parts, and you’ll often work on multiple projects at once. Dollie can be perfect here. For example, you can offer clients site care plans or enterprise-grade hosting under your own brand and domain.
Using the Hub Builder, you could even create your client portal on your WordPress website:
In this guise, the Hub Builder becomes almost like a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM). This is perfect for billing and support services, all from a singular dashboard.
Opportunities for WP Product Creators
Existing WordPress product creators can also use Dollie’s Hub Builder to turn-key products into hosted solutions. This is where the companion Hub Builder plugin shines. For example, you can customize the dashboard for your customers and set default user roles.
Blueprints will help you create a starting point for client sites, and you can also customize this experience too:
Of course, you also get to manage sites from ‘afar’ using Control HQ. The combination of Dollie’s tools gives you full control over your service.
Advantages for WaaS Builders
Dollie gives SaaS and WaaS builders flexibility, dependability, and performance to launch a platform that can prosper and scale using WordPress.
If you already have a WaaS setup using a solution such as ManageWP or WP Umbrella, you can migrate those customers over using Control HQ and the Migrate Guru plugin. What’s more, there are full instructions to do this on the dashboard.
When it comes to setting up products, you’ll do this within WordPress using WooCommerce:
This gives you a familiar and fast way to set up your product lines. Once you connect a product to a Blueprint, customers will be able to use your product hub as your main storefront.
Potential for Startups & Entrepreneurs
Dollie will also be ideal for startups that want to create an MVP fast. You achieve this without code and with help, thanks to the Done For You service. This provides a turnkey service that includes the following:
- Consultation, including growth strategies, pricing, and more.
- Design and setup encompassing domain setup, full hub design based on your branding, testing, and other business-critical tasks.
- Regular code performance reviews to make sure your products are optimal, performant, and fast to launch.
With Done For You, you also have priority support – valuable if you want to ask questions and get help in a flash.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
If you need a quick summary of what Dollie is and its offerings, look no further. Here are some quickfire questions and answers to help you understand the leader among WordPress WaaS solutions.
Dollie offers a unique blend of power and flexibility by harnessing the capabilities of WordPress. With tools like the Private Cloud, Control HQ, and Hub Builder, Dollie provides a comprehensive suite for businesses to white-label, sell, and manage their cloud services. The platform’s adaptability caters to a wide range of business needs, making it a standout choice in the WaaS realm.
Dollie elevates the WordPress experience by offering a seamless way to sell cloud services directly from a WordPress website. Users can maintain full control over design, branding, pricing, and customer data. With Dollie’s Hub Builder, the familiar WordPress environment becomes a powerful sales hub.
Absolutely. One of Dollie’s standout features is its scalability. Whether you’re starting out or managing thousands of sites, Dollie’s infrastructure ensures optimal performance. The platform’s “pay as you grow” billing model ensures that businesses can scale without financial strain.
Dollie places a high emphasis on-site security and performance. Every site launched benefits from enterprise-grade performance and a dedicated Web Application Firewall (WAF) for protection. The platform’s Private Cloud tool ensures that each site gets dedicated resources, isolating it from potential threats and ensuring peak performance.
Dollie’s “Done For You” service is a testament to its commitment to users. This service allows businesses to delegate their cloud services’ development, customization, and scaling to Dollie’s expert team. From consultation to regular performance reviews, Dollie ensures that businesses have all the support they need to thrive.
Conclusion: Why Pick Dollie Over Other WaaS Solutions?
In short, Dollie is a leader among WaaS solutions because it not only offers the best in functionality, features, and support, it also runs on WordPress.
No matter what cloud services you’d like to sell – custom hosting, maintenance, and more – Dollie’s turnkey solution provides scalability and can integrate with WordPress while also helping you control your income and scalability.
Do you agree that Dollie is a leader among WaaS solutions? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!
