Vic Dorfman
Co-founder of MemberHost. Founded MemberFix in 2012.
Vic Dorfman co-founded MemberHost with Denny Cave and Risto Karaivanov. In 2012 he founded MemberFix, MemberHost's sister company, which has built and supported WordPress membership sites ever since.
After a decade of work with hundreds of membership customers, he saw that general-purpose WordPress hosting was not set up for logged-in, plugin-heavy sites. On this site he writes about what those sites need from a server: caching that leaves logged-in members alone, PHP workers, load testing, database cleanup, and moving hosts without losing members.
Articles by Vic
- How to Load Test a Membership Site With Logged-In Members
A step-by-step way to load test a WordPress membership site as logged-in members, with a free k6 script, how to read results, and how to compare hosts fairly.
- Server Requirements for Membership and LMS Plugins (2026 Reference)
PHP, database and memory minimums for WordPress, WooCommerce, MemberPress, LearnDash, LifterLMS, BuddyBoss, PMPro and MemberMouse, from each vendor's own docs.
- Page Caching on a Membership Site: What to Cache and What to Exclude
Cache public pages, bypass the login cookie, exclude account, checkout and course pages. What each membership plugin's docs say, and how to prove it works.
- VPS vs Managed Hosting for a Membership Site: Who Runs the Server?
Shared, managed WordPress, VPS or managed VPS for a membership site? A responsibility matrix shows who patches, backs up, monitors and tunes each one.
- WordPress Database Optimization for Membership Sites
Find growing tables, slow queries and lock waits in a WordPress membership database. Learn what to clean safely and which member records to preserve.
- WordPress Slow When Logged In? Find the Cause on a Membership Site
Fast logged out, slow logged in? Nine checks, in order, to tell a host problem from a plugin, database or cache problem on a WordPress membership site.
- WP-Cron and Action Scheduler: Why Renewals and Drips Run Late
By default, WP-Cron checks due jobs on page loads, so renewals, drips and reminders can run late. Learn how to replace the trigger safely with WP-CLI.
- WP Engine Pricing for Membership Sites, Kinsta and Cloudways Compared
WP Engine Essential costs $35 a month (from $28 billed annually) and Business from $400. How WP Engine, Kinsta and Cloudways count traffic and charge overages.
- A 30,000-contact email list kept crashing a membership site. Here's what broke.
Pharmacy Badass University, a membership for independent pharmacy owners, kept going down when its emails went out. What MemberFix found on the old Cloudways server, what we fixed there, and what changed after the move to MemberHost.
- How to Move a Membership Site to a New Host Without Breaking Payments or Logins
Migrating a WordPress membership, course or community site is different from moving a blog. The payment webhooks, renewals, logins, email and course data to protect, with each plugin's own guidance and a checklist.
- PHP Workers Explained for Membership Sites, With a Sizing Calculator
What a PHP worker is, why logged-in members keep more workers busy than blog readers, how to measure what your site needs, and a calculator that does the sum.
- Redis Object Cache for Membership Sites: When It Helps and When to Leave It Off
Should a membership site run Redis object caching? LearnDash, BuddyBoss and LifterLMS support it, MemberPress lists it as a problem. What each plugin's own docs say, and how to test it safely.
- Why Is BuddyBoss Slow? The Causes and the Fixes That Work
BuddyBoss slows down when a community outgrows its caching and hosting. The causes BuddyBoss documents itself, how to find yours with Query Monitor, and the fixes to try in order.
- MemberHost vs Cloudways (Flexible and Autonomous) for Membership Sites
Cloudways Flexible, Cloudways Autonomous and MemberHost compared for membership, course and community sites: infrastructure, scaling, support scope and what the uptime terms cover.
- MemberHost vs Kinsta for Membership and Course Sites
Looking at a Kinsta alternative for a MemberPress, LearnDash or BuddyBoss site? How Kinsta and MemberHost differ on PHP threads, object caching, plugin support and uptime terms.
- MemberHost vs Levamo for Membership and BuddyBoss Sites
Levamo (formerly Rapyd Cloud) and MemberHost both host logged-in WordPress sites. How they differ on infrastructure, support scope, caching and uptime terms, and who each suits.
- MemberHost vs Rocket.net for Membership and Course Sites
How Rocket.net's Managed and Enterprise plans compare with MemberHost for logged-in WordPress sites: edge caching, PHP workers, support scope and what the uptime guarantee covers.
- MemberHost vs SiteGround for Membership and Course Sites
Considering a SiteGround alternative for a membership or course site? SiteGround's shared and Cloud plans compared with MemberHost on resources, caching, support scope and uptime terms.
- MemberHost vs WP Engine for Membership, Course and Community Sites
Weighing a WP Engine alternative for a membership site? How WP Engine's Essential and Core plans compare with MemberHost on resources, logged-in caching, plugin support and uptime terms.
- LearnDash Hosting: What Actually Makes It Fast
Why page caching can't fix a slow LearnDash site: CPU speed, PHP workers, OPcache, and Redis, straight from the LearnDash webinar we co-hosted.
- Reliable WordPress Hosting for Membership Sites (2026)
An uptime percentage says nothing about launch day. What reliability means for a membership site, what hosting SLAs actually pay out, and how to prepare.
- The Fastest WordPress Hosting for Membership Sites (2026)
A 100/100 PageSpeed score can hide slow logged-in pages. What actually makes membership hosting fast once members log in and the page cache stops helping.
- Measuring WordPress Server Speed and Performance
How we measure WordPress backend speed on heavy membership and LMS sites: the tests, tools and numbers that matter more than a PageSpeed score.
- Case Study: Speeding Up an Authority Membership Site
Membership site case study: a slow authority site whose host blamed its plugins, and how moving idealme.com to MemberHost made it fast under member load.
Ultra performant WordPress hosting for your membership site
Your site has unique technical needs: lots of heavy plugins, hundreds of concurrent users, traffic spikes. Big box hosting companies do not even know about these needs, let alone how to address them properly. But we do.