2022 was an eventful year for all of us. We're tremendously pleased about how our team has developed – also internationally. What did we get up to this year and what's coming in 2023? How can we help minimize the uncertainty some WordPress agencies and freelancers are facing? What would we like to see happening soon? Our review and outlook for the next twelve months.

Raidboxes is growing

Over 16,000 customers from 55 countries – what our team has achieved in the last few months is pretty impressive. Especially when you look at how satisfied agencies and freelancers are with Raidboxes, in particular with our support. There's unlikely to be any other WordPress host that manages as well as we do to get top marks on a regular basis.

A rating of 4.98 stars at Trusted Shops speaks for itself. All this is only possible thanks to our great team. In support, in development, in administration, in sales and in marketing. A success that also inspires others: Since last year, we've grown from 42 to 55 employees.

We continue to attach great importance to making our team as diverse as possible. Even, and especially, when our commitment to more diversity isn't well received by everyone, as we've seen in some comments on social media. We're pleased and proud that even more international employees in Germany and across Europe have joined our team.

English is increasingly becoming the standard for internal communication, both on Slack and in our meetings. This is how we ensure that the entire team really does feel included. Raidboxes supports the German-speaking team with optional English courses, in addition to the individual educational budget all full-time and part-time employees are provided with.

On average, we've been onboarding one new team member a month. To make the process more professional and streamlined, a dedicated team has set up a new internal onboarding. Supported by our project management tool Asana – in addition to individual personal support – we ensure that no information gets lost. 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 meet the team who welcomed us very openly. For me, the best thing about Raidboxes is the working environment where I feel supported at all times. I feel very comfortable and safe in this company.

Yuliia, Working Student Brand Design

I completed the entire onboarding from my home office in Dresden. That whole process was very simple and well structured. But the best thing about Raidboxes is really the team. You immediately feel welcome and accepted, which makes the start very pleasant. I can recommend Raidboxes to anyone who wants to work independently and enjoys 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 further international development. After months of intensive talks and getting to know each other, Raidboxes became part of team.blue. Our team already knew in advance as we'd let the cat out of the bag early. It was impossible 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. Raidboxes continues to be there for you with its entire team as an independent company. Our employees have also noticed the "deal" so far only in the fact that we're growing further, with more financial power behind us. Together with team.blue, we can now work even harder to optimize our product and our infrastructure.

Team.blue was created in 2019 from the merger of three customer-focused hosting groups: Combell, TransIP and Register. The company is based in Belgium, in the middle of Europe. From the moment our CEOs 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 dedicated hosting for the WordPress creative industry. See the benefits of our dedicated managed WordPress hosting, which is unique in the market.

Team.blue and Raidboxes pursue the same mission: Together we will dedicate ourselves even more to the development of solutions for WordPress freelancers and agencies. Numerous opportunities for cooperation also ensure that we can execute our plans for internationalization more professionally.

Our relaunch

In February we finally got to go live with a completely revamped brand presence. New web design, new web development, new logo, redesigned WordPress magazine, new materials and presentations. The project challenged us at times but was also very motivating. In the end, we were still happy when the relaunch finally went live. Anyone who's ever implemented a complete redesign certainly knows what dimensions such a project quickly takes on.

After Raidboxes evolved greatly as a company in recent years, we wanted to develop a new corporate identity that better represents the new, more "adult" yet still "wild" team. In the forefront was the analysis:

• What is our internal relationship to our brand?
• How do outsiders experience our brand?
• How do people share and talk about Raidboxes?
• What associations did the old appearance convey? What did we want to keep of those associations and what did we want to change?

With the active support of the agency 360Vier, we implemented a new appearance that was deliberately intended to be different from the previous one. Away from the familiar unconventional logo and the color gradients typical for us and towards something new. And we wanted to do all of this 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
• Kindness
• Sustainability
• Performance
• Unconventionality

The new logo in particular attracted a lot of attention because it was in the logo that the biggest differences to the old appearance became clear. Our customers had to get used to the new design, but we got very positive feedback after the release. Today, the modern, light appearance is indispensable. And we in marketing are very happy to have made this important decision, even if it cost us a few sleepless nights 🙂

With the relaunch, the project was far from complete. First of all, we needed to further optimize the performance of the website development, because fast WordPress servers alone don't necessarily help here.

Last but not least, we're continuously revising existing landing pages as well as our magazine to provide you with the best possible user experience (UX).

Sustainability

At Raidboxes, it's always been our aim to become the greenest WordPress host. Web hosting consumes lots of resources and we compensate our use by financially supporting numerous reforestation and carbon emission projects. It has been a matter of course for us for many years that our data centers and office run on 100% green electricity from hydro and wind power. Here you can find an overview of all our sustainability measures.

Thanks to the efforts of our customers, Raidboxes has so far been able to donate over 440,000 trees. For every WordPress or WooCommerce website you host with us, we plant a tree for you through our partner Eden Reforestation Projects. This year alone, we could add 150,000 new trees to the total.

Another partner of ours is Greenspark. Through this initiative, we've offset an additional 800 tons of CO² since the beginning of the cooperation.

An important step in recent months: We've had ourselves certified according to the standard of the Economy of the Common Good and are now officially Common Good Balanced. Raidboxes stands for a corporate philosophy that focuses on sustainability in all areas.

Thanks to the systemic approach of common good accounting, we now make 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 is that we now support WordPress Multisites – directly from the Raidboxes Dashboard. Whether 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 lets you create a network of sub-sites within a single instance of WordPress. To learn more, check out our article What is a WordPress Multisite and when you should use it.

Setting up and successfully configuring a WordPress Multisite on your own can take you a fair amount of time and effort. Starting from the extension of the wp-config file to the management of the correct multisite domain mapping.

We at Raidboxes want to free you as much as possible from all the tedious tasks that arise when running and managing your WordPress and WooCommerce projects. We want you to be able to fully concentrate on your passion and your important tasks. As part of our managed WordPress hosting, our packages from the Pro plan are optimized for WordPress multisites.

Social Media @ Raidboxes

Over the course of our relaunch, our appearance in social media posts also changed a lot. Thanks for the implementation goes to Pascal who's responsible for social media and video. For him, our new corporate identity gives fresh and colorful impulses for the designs of our tiles, carousels and videos. 

Since the second half of the year, we've been investing a lot of time and effort in the production of (portrait) videos that provide insights into employees' experiences, Raidboxes as a company and also explaining technical topics in simple terms. For this purpose, we moved some desks and made a Content Creation Corner a few weeks ago – our very own Raidboxes Studio.

From next year we'll be producing more videos in our Content Corner and also recording our Raidboxes podcast. So you can look forward to even more content from Raidboxes on WordPress and other topics that move us. On Facebook alone, we reached 5.4 million impressions with our posts (organic and paid). On LinkedIn, we welcomed about 600 new followers this year.

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

The most successful blog posts 2022

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

It never ceases to amaze our content team which posts are among the most viewed. After all, this interest doesn't always follow what we'd anticipated in our content strategy 😉 Here are the top 10 from this year across all languages:

1. The 16 Most Popular WordPress Page Builders in Comparison
2. WordPress Image Sizes: How Images Work in WordPress
3. Colour Psychology: Colors and Their Effect in Web Design
4. How to Solve the Four Most Common WordPress Errors
5. How to Use Elementor: Your Full Setup Guide for the WordPress Website Builder
6. The Six Best WordPress Download Manager Plugins for Free
7. WooCommerce: The Advantages & Disadvantages of the Popular Shop Plugin
8. Seven Tips for Starting 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 and what additional topics would you like to see? Feel free to let us know in the comments at the end of the post.

Two new e-books

With almost 800 downloads in the last seven months – our ebooks are certainly popular. Our resources cover managing WordPress projects, customer acquisition for WordPress agencies and freelancers and choosing the right project management tool. This year we published two new ebooks with two more to follow in January and March 2023):

Content marketing for agencies and freelancers

By now, word has spread 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? That's exactly what you'll find out in our ebook on content marketing, written by Jan Tissler.

It doesn't matter which channels you publish content on for your company, agency or as a freelancer, good content attracts more customers, increases your reach and pays off in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). But a few questions naturally arise at this point:

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

Our ebook "Content Marketing for Agencies and Freelancers" answers all these questions and more – you can download it now for free.

Social media for agencies & freelancers

Your content will only be recommended to others 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 audience out. The ebook Social Media for Agencies and Freelancers, written by our esteemed guest author Jan Tissler, guides you step by step to more visibility.

All companies, agencies and freelancers want to bring their content to the forefront on social networks. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to stand out from the mass of postings. That's why it's all the more important to have an individual but also targeted social media strategy. Among other things, Jan addresses the following points:

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

Our ebook will help you take your social media posts to the next level. Click here to download it for free.

English language ebooks

So far, we publish our e-books in German, because the translation effort is once again 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 around WordPress and online marketing has been difficult for us. After all, we are happy every time when we can talk in person with our customers, agencies, freelancers and with friendly faces from the WordPress community.

That's why we were really happy to find out that many of the events we were going to sponsor and/or represent at, were able to take place in person this year:

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

In 2023, there will again be several events, such as WordCamp Europe in Athens or WordCamp Switzerland in Murten. We will communicate in good time via our social media channels on which occasions you can meet us and where. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or via our newsletter.

Attendees were invited to come and try out our Raidboxes Dashboard in a live demo. At events we also show how we can make your WordPress projects even faster compared to your current setup. Of course, we're 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 & our outlook for 2023

Our managing directors Johannes and Torben and the entire team are happy to have found a strong partner in team.blue for our growth in the future. We're also pleased that the topic of the Common Good Economy is now firmly anchored in our company statutes and places the cornerstone for the planned B-Corp certification. Torben and Johannes are thus committed to addressing all stakeholder needs, and to making a significant positive impact on society through Raidboxes.

We all want Raidboxes to be and remain a very special place to work. As part of team.blue, we'll do everything in our power to ensure our employees enjoy working at Raidboxes. Our values such as transparency, freedom, diversity and equality will continue to be lived throughout the company.

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

60 percent of Raidboxes employees now work completely remotely. This gives us boundless opportunities to work with people internationally. Do you want to become part of our team? Take a look at our open positions.

We're aware that the last few months have been challenging for many agencies, companies and freelancers – and the hard times aren't over. The economic situation has worsened for many. And yet, our thoughts are primarily with those who have to deal with significantly worse effects of war and displacement.

Thanks to our customers, we were able to grow further in 2022 – and we'd like to give something back. This year, we've once again decided against sending Christmas cards and increasing our advertising budget and instead donated 5,000 euros via Betterplace.org to the Tafeln, a food bank organization in Germany. Would you like to make a contribution too? You can find all the information about the appeal for donations on Betterplace.org.

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

We achieve this with our Dashboard but most of all with our support, which actually helps you when you reach your limits with WordPress, WooCommerce and your business idea. All that's left to say is: 

Goodbye 2022 👋 - Welcome 2023 🕊️