About
An independent WordPress hosting company founded and run by Andrei and Elena Chira — personally involved in everything from platform performance to client conversations.
Founders
Co-founder & CTO
Andrei has been managing WordPress production servers since 2007. He runs the technical side of Kiravo and writes about the engineering choices behind the platform — performance, security, and how to keep WordPress fast under real load.
More from Andrei
Co-founder & COO
Elena runs the operations side of Kiravo and writes about the business of hosting — pricing, customer service, the WordPress ecosystem — from the perspective of someone who's spent two decades building the kind of company she'd want to buy from.
More from ElenaPrinciples
Three principles, borrowed from Japanese craftsmanship. They aren't marketing slogans — they're how we decide what to ship, what to charge, and how to talk to clients.
From the Japanese principle of Makoto (誠) — absolute honesty. We say what we mean, charge what we said we would, and tell you the truth about what your project actually needs.
Transparent pricing
Our pricing is clear and straightforward, with no hidden fees or surprise increases on renewal. The price you see is the price you pay.
Honest recommendations
We give honest advice, even if it means recommending a different solution. The goal is the right fit for your project, not the sale.
Clear communication
We communicate openly and clearly. You have the right to be informed, and truth is a form of respect.
From the Japanese principle of Omotenashi (無表裏) — care for the guest without expectation of return. In our world: treating your project the way you'd treat it yourself, whether it's a billable task or not.
A carefully managed migration
We move your site manually — files, database, plugins, mailboxes — and only flip DNS once you've verified the new copy looks right. Zero downtime is the standard, not the upsell.
Thoughtful, expert support
You get detailed and patient answers from WordPress specialists who take the time to understand the issue and provide well-reasoned solutions — not just quick scripts.
Proactive assistance
We offer performance and security audits to help you prevent problems, not just react to them.
From the Japanese principle of Kansō (簡素) — stripping away the non-essential. We apply it in the panel UI, in how we write to customers, and in how we price.
A clean, intuitive control panel
We removed the daemon-level controls owners never touch, the duplicate menus, the legacy modules. What's left is the set of things you actually use.
A specialised service
We focus only on WordPress. That lets us do one thing exceptionally well — a more stable, more optimised platform than a generalist could ever ship.
Direct and clear communication
We explain things in plain English, in the level of detail you actually need — and we cut the jargon that mostly exists to sound impressive.
Evolution
Eighteen years of running production WordPress servers — starting with one VPS we tuned by hand, and ending with AMD EPYC clusters in three European datacentres. The principles above didn't arrive on day one; they're what eighteen years taught us.
2007
We started in August 2007, exploring different services and gaining practical experience: building and maintaining WordPress sites, then offering audits and performance optimisations. That period gave us a real-world view of the frustrations website owners actually face.
2012
Working with clients on generic, one-size-fits-all hosting made one thing painfully clear: a poorly optimised host can hold a project back. We decided to build the solution ourselves and launched Simplenet, our first specialised hosting brand, in Romania. The first servers were VPSs from Digital Ocean on which we manually installed and tuned Nginx, PHP-FPM and MySQL — that stack became the foundation of our expertise.
2013
We set our pricing on Makoto: simple, transparent, predictable. No "special offers" that double on renewal. A promise we still keep — we charge the same prices today as we did in 2013, even though the resources in each plan have grown consistently with technology.
2014
Andrei spoke at WordCamp Romania — an event organised by Presslabs, the other pioneers of WordPress hosting in our country. The presentation was "How WordPress changed my life." A chance to share our journey and connect with the local community.
2016
An early commitment we made was to never let our infrastructure go stale. Every 3–4 years we reinvest significantly in new hardware and proactively migrate every client to the latest, most powerful servers at no extra cost — as we're doing right now with the move to AMD EPYC 5th Gen.
2024
Andrei returned to WordCamp Romania with a more advanced session: "Mastering Website Performance — a deep dive into WordPress optimisation." Years of tuning real production sites, condensed into one talk for the community.
2025
Two milestones in one year. Our first official block theme was accepted into the WordPress.org repository. At the same time, we partnered with leading European cloud providers to build a platform that met our performance and stability standards — and launched Kiravo to bring the same honest, focused service to clients worldwide. Simplenet remains our trusted name in Romania; Kiravo is the international brand built on a decade-plus of proven expertise.
Testimonials
Reviews left on third-party platforms — Trustpilot, Google, HostSearch — over the years. We can't edit them; you can verify them.
★★★★★
Working with Kiravo has been an absolute pleasure over the past 3+ years. I've collaborated with them on dozens of WordPress projects, and they've consistently delivered top-notch hosting combined with solid technical SEO support. I've been a web developer for over 12 years, so I know when I've found a good one.
Williams Rosian
★★★★★
Kiravo is the fifth hosting service I've used, and the first I've ever created a Google review for. Their customer service is first class: very responsive, always getting to the heart of the matter quickly, and then sorting things out patiently and expediently. I recommend Kiravo without hesitation.
Philip Sheldrake
★★★★★
My experience with this hosting company has been excellent. Reliable service and responsive, helpful technical support. Highly recommended!
BurpeeGirl
★★★★★
Andrei Chira from Kiravo is someone with significant experience in the field. What I liked is that he's attentive to the client's needs and always tries to offer the best option for the person in front of him. I can only recommend him with confidence.
Millye Attila Csaba
★★★★★
I recommend Kiravo because: 1) they solve any problem fast — I've had many challenges with the sites I manage and they've helped every time, 2) low price for what they offer, 3) ultra-fast response times. After seeing how they handle one of my sites, I moved all the others to them.
Paul Ardeleanu
★★★★★
I've been a client at Kiravo since 2013 and I'm happy with the service. Beyond getting a free audit from Andrei Chira, he also recommended a smaller plan because there was no point paying premium if I wasn't using the resources. Worth noting — not many would recommend a downgrade; most try to upsell.
Gabi Miron
