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Herdling
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While it’s one of, if not the oldest professions, herdsmen aren’t often represented in video game format, and after playing Okomotive’s Herdling, I struggle to understand why. Sure, if you asked me to come up with my dream game tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t start with “herding cattle”, but Herdling takes the idea and expands it into a mystical, uncanny world filled with fantastic beasts and terrifying foes.

Your role is simple: finding, taming, caring for, and guiding a herd of great calico-patterned horned beasts called Calicorns and ushering them to the mountain’s peak. Along the way, you’ll encounter various puzzles, obstacles, and foes.

Review info

Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2
Available on: Nintendo Switch 2, PC, Xbox, and PS5
Release date: August 21, 2025

  • Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S at Amazon for $29.99

From its painterly art style to its rich, emotive music, the world of Herdling is vivid and expansive, and delightful to explore thanks to a decent variety of mechanics in each level and plenty to discover and explore.

You’ll traverse verdant fields, discover abandoned man-made structures, both modern and mystical, and cross treacherous woods and mountain climes to reach the summit. While it’s not terribly long, offering 4-6 hours of gameplay, Herdling is littered with collectibles and discoverable content, making for a good amount of replayability.

Seen, but not herd

The game opens in a seemingly deserted city, as the protagonist awakens on the streets with a seemingly singular purpose: to find and herd Calicorns. This slightly claustrophobic cityscape acts as your tutorial ground, though there’s little to no instruction.

Things aren’t all as they seem, though; the presence of human life is tangible everywhere in the early stages of the game, whether that’s in trains hurtling past the open fields, lights flickering in buildings, or cars crossing open highways. Still, the manufactured world seems at odds with your new companions, so you dust off the concrete and head out into the open plains on your quest to reach the mountain’s peak, gathering more fluffy friends along the way.

It’s unclear why, bar the Calicorns, you seem to be so alone in this slightly uncanny world; Herdling asks not why, but how you’ll navigate the treacherous path to the summit. And that “how” is largely dictated by your herd.

You’ll find a host of Calicorns along your journey, which you can tame with a good old-fashioned head scratch and name. By standing behind them and facing in the direction you want to travel in and waving your shepherd’s crook, you can steer your Calicorns and command them to stop, go, or slow down.

(Image credit: Okomotive)

You can also activate stampede mode for a speed boost, which is refuelled by guiding your herd over blue flowers and increases the more Calicorns you have tamed. Performance drops are fairly frequent during stampede mode, and as you’d expect, it becomes more challenging to guide your flock at high speeds.

In narrower portions of the map, navigation can be frustrating, especially as you collect more Calicorns, and there were more than a few moments where I feared I’d never safely negotiate the herd out of some slightly jammy corners. On the one hand, that could be by design, but I’m never a fan of chance taking the reins.

You’ll find yourself inventing all kinds of methods to keep your herd compact and controlled, but sometimes even pausing their motion can’t stop the scamps from going on walkabouts. After all, they are wild animals.

Your Calicorns aren’t your wards; they’re your companions, and help you as much as you do them! (Image credit: Okomotive)

Until you find your dream

The game is largely linear, but that doesn’t make your journey easy; you’ll have to decide on the best paths to take, navigate in and out of some tight spots with your growing, occasionally mischievous herd, and care for them to ensure they survive their passage – and yes, that does mean they can die.

Upon taking damage, the Calicorns’ vibrant coat, often dusted with petals from running amidst the flower fields and storing up stampede powers, will become slick with blood, a wound you can only heal by scrambling about the map level in search of berries to feed your friends. There is also an Immortal mode for the faint of heart; thankfully, in my first playthrough, I didn’t need it.

Nobody wants to ruin a perfect run with a herd member’s passing, but it’s doubly heartbreaking when you factor in how personable and cute these creatures are. Each has a unique design, with different horn shapes, sizes, and ages, expressed through their quizzical and expressive wide red eyes.

Some even have personality traits that play out as you rest in camp between levels. Needy Calicorns will follow you around camp until they receive affection, while playful ones will try to engage you in a game of fetch. It’s incredibly charming and raises the stakes in the game overall.

Image 1 of 4

(Image credit: Okomotive)(Image credit: Okomotive)(Image credit: Okomotive)(Image credit: Okomotive)

As the game progresses, the world expands to include more mysticism. Ancient monuments and grand structures become the backdrop for your quest, and the farther you climb, the more enchanting the world becomes; and the farther you feel from the vaguely post-apocalyptic vibes in the earlier game levels as your protagonist becomes increasingly enmeshed with their herd.

There are environmental threats at different levels, including spiky surfaces and even ice calving beneath your Calicorn’s feet (or hooves? You can’t really see them…), but the real fear factor comes from the cryptid-esque giant owls that seem to have a real taste for Calicorn.

These are the primary antagonists in Herdling, but their menace takes various forms. From high-stakes stealth navigation through the birds’ nest to high-speed chases as they snipe at you from the air, these great beasts pose a genuinely terrifying threat to your herd.

(Image credit: Okomotive)

You can really appreciate the calmer moments in the game in contrast to the terror, though. The great, sprawling landscapes are gorgeous, and the soft-touch sound design wonderfully captures the emotion of every moment. Activating stampede mode launches a tremendous Galop-esque burst of sound and color, where more peaceful moments feature little more than the sounds of nature and the sprinkling of keys.

Of course, as Herdling is an indie title, it does lack polish in areas; animations are occasionally a bit awkward, especially as Calicorns descend slopes, and tight or enclosed spaces can be challenging to navigate. That’s especially true as your herd grows, which may well be by design, but if you’re playing using a controller like I did on my Switch 2, you might find yourself in peril (or just fiddling with herd positioning) more often than you’d like, which can impact the pace of the game.

Still, I really enjoyed my time as a Calicorn shepherd. The game hints at themes of homeship, nature, found family, death, and rebirth, giving the player ample perspectives through which to enjoy its wordless narrative. Herdling cleverly implements its key herding mechanic but offers enough ways to play and explore that players of all ages and skillsets can enjoy this minimalist yet profound odyssey to find a new home.

(Image credit: Okomotive)

Should I play Herdling?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

Herdling has a handful of dedicated accessibility settings. You can toggle controller vibration, sprint, auto-run, display HUD, herding direction indicator, Calicorn immortality, and button holds. There are no dialogue lines, but there are various language settings for the menus and tutorial.

How I reviewed Herdling

I played through Herdling twice (10 hours) on Nintendo Switch 2 using both the Pro Controller, Joy-Con 2, and handheld mode.

During my time with the game, I compared my experience with other indie titles, especially those launched on Switch 2, making certain to note any issues with performance or game quality.

First reviewed August 2025

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Herdling review | Rock Paper Shotgun
Game Reviews

Herdling review | Rock Paper Shotgun

by admin


Herdling review
Another soaring piece of apocalyptic tourism from the makers of Far: Lone Sail, built around a novel set of herding mechanics the developers could have explored further.

  • Developer: Okomotive
  • Publisher: Panic
  • Release: August 8th 2025
  • On: Windows
  • From: Steam, Epic Games Store
  • Price: $20/£16/€19
  • Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7 12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060, Windows 11


Switzerland-based Okomotive are here to escape from dystopia once again. In their previous Far: Lone Sails and its sequel, you played a child operating a cutaway landship that often resembled a rampaging beast – the last surviving specimen of a race of monstrous engines, carrying you rightward through empty cities and petrified industry towards some kind of new beginning. Okomotive’s latest game Herdling flips the poles of the metaphor somewhat, even as it shifts to 3D movement: rather than a bestial machine, you’re driving a herd of intriguingly robotic “Calicorn” beasts to a promised land beyond the peaks.


The game starts with your character – another tenacious, faceless kid in red – waking up beneath a flyover and discovering the first of the Calicorns in an alleyway. You usher your hairy charges through desolate streets haunted by the roar of traffic, coming to a tourist billboard that shows some Calicorns gazing up at a mountain – this being your unspoken final destination.

The very end of the game and that billboard are basically the same thing, in that both seek to capitalise upon yearnings for a rustic, unpolluted Elsewhere. As a story about ‘getting back to nature’, I don’t think Herdling has much to say. It feels less sophisticated than Lone Sails, more straightforwardly utopian in its tale of an impoverished sprog and companion creatures retreating from the woebegone scrapyard of modernity. But as a study of human/animal relations and how they can be performed by game design, it’s sort of engrossing. Also, it has Okomotive’s usual captivating soundscape, and those mountains are certainly easy on the eyes.

Image credit: Panic / Rock Paper Shotgun


Sometimes when analysing a game, it’s helpful to start by forgetting all context. What is a herd, according to Herdling alone? It’s a single shape – a blob that stretches into a wedge during motion, and congeals into a rough oval when at rest. You stand behind the blob and wave your sorcerous shepherd’s staff to send a conduit of flowers through its heart, as though tracing a compass needle. The herd then moves in the direction of the line.


Scramble around the outside of the blob and wave your staff again to whistle it onto a different trajectory. Hold a button to make it move slower, when you’re navigating dangerous terrain. Slash it back and forth to have the blob power through denser undergrowth. Double-tap another button to stop the blob in place. Hammer and hold that button to have the blob knuckle down against gale-force winds – a brief challenge towards the end of the game.


Usefully, you do not shape and steer the blob in first-person. You’re given a third-person camera that gently pulls back into panorama when there’s something spectacular on the horizon. Without the convenience of that drone camera – so subtle in its shifts, so easy to take for granted – Herdling would be a much harder experience, and possibly a more intriguing one. You’d be part of the blob, down there in the stink and heave of bovine musculature, unable to scry the routes and obstacles.

Your Calicorns are branded blue, yellow and red, and these colours also suffuse the world and highlight its sparse spread of collectibles. Blue flowers fill up a gauge that allows you to channel the wind and initiate a stampede – whether for the sheer glee of it, or to force the herd up a slippery glacier. Red flowers initiate or prolong a stampede automatically: they’re Mario Kart speed pads. Yellow flowers pollinate fur with a painterly energy that can be vented to restore old murals, unlocking the path through certain ruins that plug into backstory dream visions of primordial Calicorns and their shepherds. The three primary colours repeat obsessively throughout those ruins, as though the geography itself were the hide of a Calicorn.

Image credit: Panic / Rock Paper Shotgun


Beyond the urban prologue, you’ll rescue a dozen other Calicorns along the route to that promised mountain. The “taming” process is necessarily streamlined: you might have to fetch a wounded Calicorn a health-restoring fruit to earn its trust, but mostly, you just walk up and do a QTE, as in the rather less cuddly Far Cry Primal. Then you get to name them. I named all mine after colleagues, which was very amusing until I ran out of colleagues and had to tunnel into Rock Paper Shotgun’s recent history of departures and layoffs.


The Calicorns come in all shapes and sizes. Some are built like Yorkshire terriers, bobbling along adorably on stumpy legs. Others are ponderous emperor penguins in cassocks. Some of the Calicorns have or acquire traits, such as “Brave” (that would be hardware editor James) and “Rascal” (that would be our old editor in chief Graham – RPS in peace).


Detailed in the pause menus, these behaviours didn’t make a huge impression on me during my review playthrough, even at periodic campfire intervals where the herd spreads out in a stagey way, and you can do things like hoik a ball to play fetch. You can also pet Calicorns, pull twigs and branches from their hides, and adorn them with the baubles and harnesses that litter the landscape. These last three actions don’t have any functional impact that I noticed: they’re simply an opportunity to express affection, a chance to bond with individual Calicorns.

Image credit: Panic / Rock Paper Shotgun


I can’t say I ever really bonded with my Calicorns. Partly, this was because I decorated them at random, according to my gamerbrain understanding that Thou Shalt Leave No Collectible Behind. By the end of Herdling – my playthrough lasted four hours – it was like leading a battalion of bellowing Christmas trees.


The wider complexity is that the game’s efforts to sell you on the individuality of Calicorns are at odds with the practical need to treat them as a blob, a tension I’d have loved Okomotive to do a lot more with. The major consequence of taming Calicorns is that the blob becomes harder to wield. Calicorns may bumble about a little, snagging on spiked scenery or breakable objects, even falling off cliffs at scripted intervals if you’re not watchful. It’s fiddly enough that you start to think twice about later additions. When I was deep in the woods, trying to navigate a labyrinth of smashable alarm totems and evade the fury of massive demon owls, I found myself regretting the addition of Ollie (our guides editor) to my herd, “Affectionate” though he may be.

The owls are Herdling’s antagonists, a predator population who, if I’m deciphering the wordless backstory correctly, have driven the Calicorn from their old stomping grounds. They are harrowing presences, their ivory masks glimmering in the mists, but they’re also, surely, stand-ins for the real villains of the piece: all those bloody humans who built the awful urban junk you’re journeying away from.

That last observation falls flat, of course, because in Herdling you are playing a human, presiding over nonhuman animal lives in what is at least partly a self-serving fashion. Caretaking responsibilities aside, you periodically require the Calicorns to shove boulders and trunks out of the path. They also willingly serve as platforms when you need to scale a ledge and complete a very simple terrain puzzle – handy, given that you don’t have a jump button. In this way, Herdling explores a desire to be intimate with other creatures while also using them.

Watch on YouTube

The game’s real shepherd could be its score, another surging collection of heart-inflating orchestral tracks from composer Joel Schoch. As in Far: Lone Sails, this as much an album as a videogame, which explains the tight running length: the snow-blown hills and escarpments often feel secondary, structured around the peaks and troughs of the music.

The invisible orchestra is another kind of herd that mirrors the one you drive before you – sometimes devolving to individual performers when your beasts are scattered, only to gather itself furiously when the Calicorns are in full flight. It’s a lovely audible modelling of a disorderly group of beings in motion. It’s also an audible expression of your power over those beings and the limits of their simulated autonomy.



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Product Reviews

Kinsta review | TechRadar

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Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

When it comes to best web hosting and website management, there is no shortage of options. The vast majority of companies out there offer affordable services that are good enough to get the job done. For us, Kinsta is the stand-out choice for hosting for agencies.

Kinsta is a cloud-based hosting solution providing services for WordPress websites, web applications, databases, and static sites. They provide access to high-performance servers and features such as staging environments, automatic backups, enterprise-level Cloudflare integration, and more.

Kinsta also includes quality security features such as DDoS protection, SSL certificate with wildcard support, and malware scanning and removal.

    Kinsta subscription options:

  • 12 month plan – $284 per month ($3,408 total cost)

From the main website, you can access Kinsta’s official blog. It’s easy on the eye and filled with a myriad of articles, most of which are related to WordPress and software development. In addition to this, Kinsta offers a fresh and video-packed YouTube channel and relatively active presence on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

(Image credit: Future)

Kinsta features

Kinsta offers high-end CPUs, as well as global availability thanks to Google’s C2 and C3D machines on its premium tier network. By using these top-of-the-line CPUs, you are guaranteed that your website will be up and running faster than ever before.

To further improve the speed of your website, Kinsta also offers a global content delivery network with over 260 locations around the world. This allows Kinsta to deliver fast pages and serve cached assets from your visitors’ closest location.

Kinsta also comes with built-in application performance monitoring (APM), which is its custom-designed performance monitoring tool specifically for WordPress sites. We used this feature to identify any potential issues or bottlenecks slowing down our site during our test of the hosting service.

Kinsta’s DevKinsata feature provides a comprehensive development environment that makes it easy to develop applications locally on your computer. DevKinsata includes many helpful features such as version control which allows developers to roll back to previous versions of their code if needed, easy debugging capabilities with Xdebug integration, and deployments to production servers with just one click.

With the new Kinsta Cloudflare integration, we took advantage of a wildcard SSL certificate which let us secure our subdomains with just one certificate. A wildcard SSL is an SSL certificate that secures both a root domain and its individual subdomains. This is in contrast to other types of certificates that require you to list each individual subdomain on the certificate.

As part of its Cloudflare integration, Kinsta offers customers a unique benefit – reserved IP addresses. Reserved IPs are unique IP addresses assigned to each Kinsta customer site. These IP addresses are reserved exclusively for use by that specific customer and ensure that the DNS A-record IP address will not be shared by other sites on Cloudflare’s network. In some cases, this can cause problems if a service blocks a spam site that happens to share the same Cloudflare IP address as your site.

We were also impressed with the Kinsta Brotli Compression Tool (a lossless compression format that is supported by all major browsers and achieves better compression ratios than gzip).

Kinsta also released a tool called Edge Caching. This is an incredibly powerful tool for websites running WordPress that can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to serve cached HTML to site visitors. Edge Caching is included free with all Kinsta plans, and no additional plugins are required.

Kinsta’s Edge Caching works by saving your website/page cache to Cloudflare’s global network of over 260 data centers. When site visitors load your website, cached responses will be delivered from the location closest to them, helping to reduce latency and ensure faster loading times.

With the help of the Early Hints, you can further improve site speed. Early hints is a modern web standard that defines a new 103 HTTP status code. Enabling this web standard on your site, it gives your site visitors’ browsers the chance to download certain resources in advance or in parallel with others. This results in a faster page rendering speed.

A curiosity of Kinsta’s hosting, but one that we found made sense, is the apparent lack of a temporary URL for checking the site runs accurately. However, this is a feature that can be easily turned on and off, and lasts for around 60 minutes when enabled. Given that a site doesn’t need to be seen by the public or crawlers before launch, this is useful.

For web hosting services in Australia, Kinsta CDN is in six Australian cities, including Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.

(Image credit: Future)

Is Kinsta easy to use? 

We find Kinsta easy to use – from signing up to navigating through the dashboard. The web host provides you with an intuitive dashboard that makes hosting your website easy. The dashboard let us quickly access all the features and settings in one place, which makes it simple to manage our website’s performance and security.

With Kinsta, you can also set up and manage multiple websites from one account, as well as deploy applications, databases or static sites, meaning you don’t have to switch between different accounts every time you want to make changes or update your site or create a new web app.

Kinsta also has a number of helpful features that make managing your website easier. All these features are designed so that even those who aren’t tech-savvy can easily manage their website without too much hassle.

As a fully managed WordPress hosting provider, Kinsta’s prices are higher than other web hosts (Image credit: Future)

Kinsta plans and pricing

Kinsta offers different plans, ranging from $35/month to $1700/month. All plans include free wildcard SSL, CDN, staging, and unlimited migrations. But what do you get when you purchase one of these plans? The Single plans starts at $35/month and allows you to install 1 WordPress, 10 GB of storage space, 125 GB free CDN, and 35,000 visits per month. The Single-site plans scale with each step up getting more site visits, storage, and CDN bandwidth. Each Single site plan denotes the support amount of visits. The plans go as high as 1,250,000+ visits, 15 GB+ storage and 1000GB CDN bandwidth.

Multiple-site plans support multiple WordPress installs. Each plan name denotes the amount of WordPress installs supported. Each multiple-site plan supports multisite network and site cloning. For WP 2 ($70/mo) you get two WordPress installs, with 70,000 visits, 250 GB of CDN bandwidth, and 20 GB storage. As the plans increase in price the resources, site visits, and amount of WordPress installs increase too. The WP 40 plan ($450/mo) supports 40 WordPress installs, 60 GB storage, 1500 GB of CDN, and 75,000 monthly visits.

Kinsta also offers an Enterprise Plan for multiple sites, which starts at $675/month and includes 60+ WordPress installs, 100+ GB of space, 1,250,000+ visits, and a 30-day backup retention.

All the above plans come with unlimited free migrations and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you are not satisfied with the service, you can request a refund. Select plans on Single and Multiple-site tiers also include a one month free trial.

Agency Hosting

Kinsta’s Agency program is targeted, price-wise, at established digital agencies. The Agency 20 plan, which we tested, offers support for 20 WordPress installs, so potentially 20 clients. It also includes an extra site, for your agency. 500,000 visits, 50GB of storage, and 1,000GB CDN storage makes this an attractive starting point, but Agency 40 ($375/month with annual billing) and Agency 60 ($563/month under the same terms) are also available, with corresponding increases in installs.

These plans also include a white label provision, removing the Kinsta branding for reselling the hosting to the client, and access to beta tools. Backups, advanced caching, and migrations are also included with these packages, along with that all-important developer support. A number of tools are available here, from easy site cloning to Git integration and access to the Kinsta API.

We used GTmetrix to measure the uptime and response time of our Kinsta site (Image credit: GTmetrix)

Kinsta speed and experience

Kinsta argues that it is almost a certainty that users will see “faster page load times, along with back-end (WordPress dashboard) speed” when hosting with them. Faster than what, we asked ourselves. Faster than the average speed, faster than lightning or faster than Superman?

In any case, GTmetrix (a tool we used to test the speed performance of Kinsta’s main website) appears to agree with them given that it rated the performance of their website with an A (91%), which is not a result we often see. All major core metrics related to the speed were above the average, which looks pretty promising.

When it comes to uptime, Kinsta’s technical team monitors all of its users’ websites at all times, which means that they will be notified if any downtime occurs and lasts longer than five minutes, and, thus, prompt them to rush to resolve the issue. After monitoring Kinsta’s main website for a month using UptimeRobot, we couldn’t find a single trace of downtime, which does inspire confidence.

Latest results

We recently ran more tests on Kinsta for our best hosting for agencies guide. We did the same test we do for every host. We migrate a simple website and perform some baseline WordPress benchmark test and do some Siege testing for concurrent visitors. We used the Agency 20 plan. While these don’t show what the server is like under load. It does show a good baseline score for site performance.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyWordPress benchmark

Performance metric

Result

Operations with large text data

6.68

Random binary data operations

8.24

Recursive mathematical calculations

7.32

Iterative mathematical calculations

8.63

Filesystem

Row 5 – Cell 1

Filesystem write ability

9.71

Local file copy and access speed

9.56

Small file IO test

10

Database

Row 9 – Cell 1

Importing large amount of data to database

9.23

Simple queries on single table

9.88

Complex database queries on multiple tables

8.23

Object cache

Row 13 – Cell 1

Persistent object cache enabled

0

Network

Row 15 – Cell 1

Network download speed test

10

Server score

8.1

Swipe to scroll horizontallySiege

Performance metric

5 concurrent visitors

9 concurrent visitors

Transactions

8484

13580

Availability

96.37

96.36

Elapsed time

299.43

299.19

Data transferred

91.72

145.90

Response time

0.17

0.18

Transaction rate

28.33

45.39

Throughput

0.31

0.49

Concurrency

4.87

8.11

Successful transactions

8164

13068

Longest transaction

1.33

39.76

Failed transactions

320

513

Shortest transaction

0.09

0.08

Kinsta security

Kinsta is one such provider that offers quality security measures (in our opinion) including SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates. An SSL certificate is a type of digital certificate that provides encryption and authentication for data sent over the internet. It helps protect user information, like credit card numbers and passwords, from being accessed by malicious third parties.

An SSL certificate also helps verify the identity of a website so that users know they are connecting to the correct server and not a malicious one.

Kinsta uses Cloudflare’s infrastructure to provide wildcard SSL certificates with 128-bit or higher encryption as well as 2048-bit RSA keys. Kinsta says its servers are also constantly monitored 24/7 for any signs of suspicious activity or hacking, which is good to know. Kinsta also offers a 99.9% SLA-backed uptime guarantee.

There’s also a Malware Security Pledge in which Kinsta’s team will help restore a site in the event of an attack. Kinsta have earned SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance so security standards are high and hopefully you’ll never have to use that.

You’ll find plenty of how-to guides in Kinsta’s knowledgebase (Image credit: Future)

Customer support

Kinsta offers knowledgeable sales representatives who can help you find the hosting plan that best fits your website or project.

If you want a deeper dive into all of Kinsta’s features, consider scheduling a personalized demo with one of its experts. This is an excellent way to get familiar with Kinsta’s powerful dashboard and hosting features, as well as ask any questions that come up during the process.

We had a few questions about our website and contacted Kinsta through its question form on the website. They got back to us the next day with answers tailored specifically to our hosting dilemma.

Kinsta’s support team is available 24/7/365 via live chat in the MyKinsta dashboard so that you can quickly receive help. You can also open up tickets here if there are ever any issues with your site.

As noted, we also tried Kinsta’s Agency 20 plan, arranging for a site to be migrated via a backup. The support operative who took ownership of this task completed it within a couple of hours, a timescale that included not just scanning the ZIP file for potential issues, but also fully migrating it and testing the site.

We later ran into an issue trying to point a domain at the hosting. This requires a bit more clicking and settings configuration than with other hosts (switching nameservers is just one aspect of this), but while I found this baffling at first, the support team member who walked me through it helped me solve it within 15 minutes.

Kinsta also offers free webinars to its customers (Image credit: Future)

There are more than a few self-help options including regularly updated documentation, free e-books, free webinars, a newsletter and a blog we mentioned before, and everything is dedicated to bringing knowledge about WordPress to its users. In addition to this, Kinsta’s YouTube channel is filled with step-by-step guides and the new ones are coming out on a week-to-week basis at the very least.

As an alternative, you can reach Kinsta’s “timely and knowledgeable” support via email and chat.

Kinsta alternatives

Much like Kinsta, Flywheel is a fellow US-based host specialized in “top-of-the-line” managed WordPress hosting solutions. Both of them strive to be beginner-friendly, offer well-rounded, feature-packed packages and are on the high-priced side of the spectrum. However, Kinsta’s least expensive solution starts at a whopping $30, half as much as what is offered by Flywheel. Therefore, if the price is the key criterion (since both hosts are competent) for you, you could save some bucks by going with Flywheel.

Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting options on the market today, even when it comes to managed WordPress hosting. In comparison with Kinsta, Bluehost has a myriad of hosting types and options besides WordPress and its WordPress plans are well-structured and suitable for newcomers. If you are, however, looking for premium managed WordPress options, you might find yourself at home with Kinsta.

DreamHost is a US-based provider supplying WordPress-optimized hosting solutions and related services, including a domain registration, which is something you won’t get with Kinsta. Another thing they don’t provide is a website builder and you’ll have that as an option with DreamHost. What is more, in addition to offering more hosting options, DreamHost has more pocket-friendly plans, so you’ll save some money as well.

Although HostGator does not specialize in WordPress hosting, it has a few rather attractive solutions on the offer. Nonetheless, if you are looking for a premium fully managed WordPress hosting (and you are ready to shell out the money) Kinsta might be a better pick. If you would rather have something simpler and more on the affordable side, HostGator is an excellent choice.

WP Engine is also a great alternative as it offers a wide range of services, from shared hosting to managed WordPress hosting and dedicated servers. WP Engine is known for its fast speeds and reliable uptime, as well as its excellent customer service and support team.

SiteGround is another great option if you’re looking for an alternative to Kinsta. This provider offers a variety of hosting plans that range from shared hosting to VPS and cloud solutions. SiteGround also has excellent customer service and support, which makes it a great choice if you need help getting started or have questions about how to use their services.

Is Kinsta right for you? 

Kinsta offers a range of features to help businesses get up and running quickly and easily, including easy scalability, managed updates, automated daily backups, and 24/7 support.

Kinsta offers a range of features to help businesses get up and running quickly and easily, including automatic scaling, managed updates, automated daily backups,SSH access, WP CLI, a powerful API, Application Performance Monitoring, and 24/7/365 support in 10 languages, with a response time within a minute and 98% client satisfaction.

Kinsta also prides itself on its performance and reliability – It’s caching technology ensures websites load faster than ever before; this helps keep visitors on your site longer which can lead to increased conversions.

Kinsta FAQs

Is Kinsta only for WordPress?

No! While Kinsta is an excellent choice for WordPress websites, that’s not all it can do. It also supports static sites, application hosting, and database hosting.

Do I need a security plugin with Kinsta?

No – and that’s one of the many advantages of using Kinsta hosting. The security at Kinsta is built into the platform itself; all accounts are automatically scanned daily for malicious code and activity and protected with regular backups as well as enterprise-grade DDOS protection.

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Discounty Review - Long Live The Empire
Game Reviews

Discounty Review – Long Live The Empire

by admin



In the aftermath of Stardew Valley’s success and popularity, there have been many attempts by other developers to carve their own piece of the pixel farm life simulator pie. Whereas those games so often put you in the role of a poor farmer or some other position of struggle, Discounty does the opposite, having you effectively play as the bad guys in Stardew Valley: the outsider that has everything and is trying to weasel into the community. You’re not literally playing a mirror of that game’s story, but it’s awfully close–instead of being the new farmer in a small, struggling town, you’re instead the new owner of the big-brand supermarket that’s attempting to monopolize the economy and push out existing vendors to increase your profit margins. It altogether makes for a game that is fun to play (in that hypnotic sort of way that’s recognizable in so many games that romanticize retail work), but it is ultimately narratively quite uncomfortable at times and too muddled in its storytelling to utilize that discomfort to deliver a compelling message.

Granted, you’re merely the pawn in the palm of the hand of a much greedier capitalist: your aunt. Roped into moving to her small harbor town of Blomkest to help out with her struggling market, you arrive to find she’s sold out to the Discounty chain and rebranded. Your aunt is immediately portrayed as a suspicious person, keeping secrets locked away in sheds, making backroom deals with banks, and firing employees without a second thought. It’s all in the name of expanding her supermarket business empire, and you’re her most loyal pawn, charming locals into going along with your expansions and acquiring their wares so that citizens have to go to Discounty to buy food and home supplies.

And Jordan wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

It feels scummy, especially since your character has zero backbone, pushing the buck on responsibility and ignoring the consequences of their actions for a big chunk of the game’s story, which primarily deals with a hurting community that needs healing.

Discounty comes very close to tackling this story in a nuanced and measured way. An unfair and demanding boss puts you immediately on the backfoot, creating the implication that you’re powerless. And as the sole employee for most of the story, you have to handle all of the store’s responsibilities solo for six days a week, eight hours a day. That leaves you precious little free time to actually go out and talk to people and try to help them with their problems. At face value, it appears as if Discounty is presenting the viewpoint of an overworked and underpaid retail worker not having the bandwidth to address societal problems–a fairly accurate reflection of a lot of people in real life day-to-day. It’s hard to dismantle the machine when you’re an unwilling cog caught up in its design.

The protagonist isn’t characterized that way though; instead, they’re propped up as the savior that Blomkest’s economy needs. You decide the fate of these people, and you willingly go against their wants in the name of capitalism. The story tries to make you feel bad about this a few times (which in itself is annoying, as there’s no choice to not make the decisions that you’re being condemned for), with citizens coming into your store and expressing their displeasure at your prices, monopolization of the economy, and willingness to destroy existing infrastructure and town history in the name of expanding the size of your store. But they immediately forgive you and go back to regularly shopping with you the very next day, draining any sort of narrative consequence from your actions.

When first starting out, you have to add everything up by hand and it’s so SLOW.

So often, Discounty feels like it’s on the verge of making a point about this–the game almost delves into the subject of how, in the grand scheme of things, we bemoan large corporations and big-name brands but then are all too quick to rely on them. But it’s so muddled by the game’s insistence to constantly divert attention away from this subject matter. It wants to be a “cozy” game, and dealing with nuanced issues that make you think aren’t cozy. Pretty much every story beat is shuffled under the rug as soon as it’s brought up, creating spikes in tone that ricochet between outlandish silliness and discomforting reality, and don’t allow space for the player to sit with any of what they learned because there are shelves to stock. Discounty has a barebones narrative framework that leaves you wanting for an answer that the story feels ill-equipped to give because it accidentally stumbled into asking the question.

These hang-ups with the story aside, the moment-to-moment gameplay of Discounty is pretty fun. Most of it sees you frantically running around your own store to keep shelves stocked or take payment at the cash register. As your business grows, new challenges arise. Customers can track in dirt that you need to take time to clean, for example, and as your stock grows, finding enough space for all your shelving can prove a challenging puzzle. But finding solutions to these problems in the constant drive to push efficiency and customer satisfaction are regularly rewarding. With each shift, you’ll notice shortcomings you can shore up or places where you can improve, and with careful consideration (and the profits you earn), you can put your plans into action.

Lots of businesses in town serve multiple purposes given everyone’s dire situation, like the hardware store doubling as the dump.

Need more customers coming in to buy the surplus of cabbage you accidentally ordered? Buy an eye-catching prop that will compel more people to add cabbage to their grocery lists and print out some flyers to plaster around town to drive up the number of people who visit in the coming week. Discover that dirt keeps piling up next to the milk? Shift your shelves around so that there are two avenues to reach your milk section, lessening the traffic through the formerly singular lane, and then move the cleaning supplies next to the milk section so you can easily grab them. Struggling to add up customer’s large orders even with the built in calculator and stressing about how often people complain about the speed of service? Invest in a scanner that cuts out the need to add up the individual price of each item.

As Discounty’s story continues, you’ll unlock more challenges, like daily and weekly quotas that net you a bonus currency to unlock new items to stock the store with. You’ll have story-driven milestones to accomplish the likes of raising a huge sum to afford another expansion or finding a way to make a deal with several suppliers to grow your business. The chase to achieve these goals becomes the driving force in Discounty, and even if the narrative payoff for these tasks is hit-or-miss each time, the sensation of hitting another milestone and checking off a job on your to-do list is regularly fulfilling. Discounty grades your performance each day as well, so the act of simply streamlining your business to make it even more productive than it was the day before is gratifying too and creates smaller milestones that you can pursue between the larger goals that typically take several in-game weeks to work toward.

You will buy so many shelves in a playthrough, single-handedly propping up this poor man’s whole business.

When you’re not working in the store, you’re free to explore the town and talk to its various citizens. Each has a memorable personality and design, setting a high standard on first meeting that the game doesn’t always meet in subsequent interactions. Outside of specific story beats, each citizen only has a handful of things to say, so speaking to them three or four times can exhaust all their dialogue and cause them to start repeating earlier conversations. This can get annoying, especially with the citizens that you have to speak to dozens of times because they’re shop vendors that you buy furniture from or suppliers that you obtain special goods from–clicking through the same dialogue chains over and over becomes grating quickly.

Talking to the other characters can push forward other plot points too, including a few that center around mysterious happenings that plague the town. Why are the woods closed and covered in a strange purple mist? What’s up with the huge population of rats congregating in random parts around town? What is your aunt keeping in the locked shed and why does she keep saying that you don’t have to worry about it? These mysteries are largely character-driven, and the reward for your sleuthing is learning more about the denizens that call Blomkest their home. They aren’t all that challenging to puzzle through, with the clue needed to proceed usually falling into your lap just by putting time into the store. But they’re all fun distractions and get you more involved with the colorful cast of characters, making solving each mystery far more worthwhile than just going up to people and trying to talk to them normally.

The characters in Discounty are really fun! It’s a shame they often have so little to say.

With some caveats, I’d recommend Discounty. The story will make you regularly feel like you’re the bad guy in all this, and technically you are even if it’s no fault of your own. But it’s easy to ignore the riffraff and the trouble you’re causing your fellow citizens in your constant pursuit of bringing a factory-level of efficiency to your growing supermarket, and driving up profits for the sole purpose of buying upgrades that will let you drive profits even further. Maybe Stardew Valley’s JojaMart had the right idea after all.



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The Dark Queen Of Mortholme review
Game Reviews

The Dark Queen Of Mortholme review

by admin


The Dark Queen Of Mortholme review

This “short-form, second-person indie” where you play the final boss tells a more traditional and restrained story that its premise might suggest, but it’s still a worthwhile and thoughtful micro-treatise on storytelling, curiosity, stagnation, and heroism.

  • Developer: Mosu
  • Publisher: Monster Theater
  • Release: Out now
  • On: Windows
  • From: Steam/GOG/Itch.io
  • Price: £5 /€6 /$6
  • Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, Windows 11

There’s a beautiful, wordless moment about ten minutes in to The Dark Queen Of Mortholme. As the titular queen, you’ve just casually mace-flattened the same plucky interloper for the Nth time, then snapped their corpse out of existence in a wreath of electric purple fire with all the ceremony of clearing toast crumbs from a bench.

Watch on YouTube

Each time, just as the queen is about to plonk herself back down on her throne, the hero galumphs trumpetously back through the doorway for another pop. Here’s our premise: both an inversion of Soulsian conventions and a wry tribute, in the way all inversions are. And who hasn’t considered how maddeningly Sisyphean it must feel to be on the receiving end of such smug under-doggedness? “Struggle in the face of overwhelming odds”. “Testament to the persistence of the human spirit”. Mate. You are fucking immortal.

We’ve felt the queen’s frustration grow, forced to consider the toll imposed by folklorish infamy on the actual person behind the myth (every time I try to let my hair down some wanker tries to climb up it, says Rapunzel). But on this occasion, something has changed. The hero is late. And there’s an unmistakable hint of longing as the queen looks toward the door. It’s not completely clear if she’s starting to, y’know, actually enjoy all this. But there is both simple truth and stark tragedy in it: unchallenged dominance must feel unbearably stagnant after the initial high wears off. You eat the same soup daily for decades, you might find yourself oddly fond of the fly that decides to one day show up for swimming lessons.

The hero stands completely still during the first fight, and so falls easily to a lazy, disdainful mace swipe. They soon decide that moving is probably a good idea. So, you get a few new moves: a gap-closing spike, and a devastating magic fire that telegraphs its arrival, sportsmanlike as all supermoves should be.

Image credit: Mosu/Rock Paper Shotgun

So, of course, the hero works out how to deal with each move in turn. Later, an achievement pops named “out of tricks?” for using each of the queen’s attacks. A trophy that feels like a admission of defeat – a perfect use of digital paraphernalia as storytelling device I wish was more common. Through these warnings of stagnation, glimpses of potential growth present themselves; dialogue options that offer curiosity or dismissiveness. We soon learn the queen doesn’t even know the layout of her own castle. If she did, she might have done a better job of hiding all those treasure chests.

But no, and so the hero returns with chainmail. Then a shortbow. Then a glowing sword and, for the first time, removes the entirety of one of the queen’s four health bar segments. And I realise, then, that they’re going to win eventually. Bloodstains build up until they coat the floor, but my moves are the same each time. The queen, unchallenged, has been given no reason to stay curious, and so has become stagnant. And now, faced for the first time with something that might inspire her to leave and learn some fancier footwork, she’s probably going to die here. Bloody typical, really: a real reason to change showing up just as it becomes too late to do so.

A boss fight demands a theme, and the music here is all apocalyptic organ pipes, rasping with grandeur and nightmares. Somewhere buried in the mix is a toybox melodica; deeply annoying in the way its plastic honking demands focus as soon as I notice it. That’s the hero, I decide, and I think this is the first time I’ve found myself seriously thinking about boss themes; are they meant to celebrate the grandeur and spectacle of the boss, or the struggle of the hero? The best, I think, do both and neither. Odes not to individuals, but to the moment. The dance.

Image credit: Mosu/Rock Paper Shotgun

That bastard melodica aside, I have two large problems with The Dark Queen Of Mortholme, an otherwise thumbs-up worthwhile distraction that wastes not a second of runtime in its crushingly inevitable set-up and and crescendo. The first is a line from the queen about halfway through. Something to the tune of “against the might of the status quo, your actions don’t matter”. Ending Explained, you dumb baby! Less on the nose than “got your nose”, honestly.

And the other is not actually in the game, but on the game’s Steam page. “Experience a (macabre, short-form), second-person indie” – immediately relegating the queen to the status of camera lens, of supporting role. You may notice that these two things share a common thread: they both insist on telling me how I’m supposed to feel about a story short enough to offer ample time for self reflection on the average lunchbreak.

But, hey, I can respect it. It’s not my story, after all. Deeply unpopular take maybe, but an artist’s work belongs to them, I’m just visiting. I can’t begrudge the nudges too hard, bumpy as they are. Still, I’m compelled to offer a read in the form of a deeply self-indulgent anecdote. Although, if you want a quick verdict, only interesting games inspire deeply self-indulgent anecdotes, yes.

Image credit: Mosu/Rock Paper Shotgun

A writer and person I have a great deal of respect for on both counts once told me, over a plate of stone-cold fried calamari on a pleasant Los Angeles evening I would soon make less pleasant through a callow and selfish acquiescence to my own need to get embarrassingly obliterated in even the most casual of social situations (thus fulfilling my cliched tourist understanding of the average way an LA evening unfolds), that they had become disillusioned with the power of stories to enact meaningful change in the world. I fell back on a pop-science factoid I’m fond of – that of perceptual filling-in. So much is blur and chaos. Dry and tangled, and we cannot live without the artifice of beginnings, middles, and ends. The motivation and the obstacles. The reasons for going along with this chaotic mess in the first place.

Stories can’t lose their power because they’re the fuel, the driver. I cannot remember what they said next, because I am a ridiculous prick who often forgets to listen to other people when I am too busy waiting for their approval at my having said something I believe to be insightful. I am convinced to this day that if I’d have just listened, I’d have a more more nuanced view on these things that I currently do. Maybe they would have disabused me of this notion completely, but it’s one I still hold: stories are all we’ve got, and good stories from elsewhere are the only thing powerful enough to change how we see the stories that are assigned to us.

At least, that’s the story I tell myself. The story the Dark Queen Of Mortholme tells is one where the hero still gets all the best lines. In this, it’s quite traditional, despite its novel framing. The queen’s real tragedy, as with so many characters that threaten to break convention, is that whatever she does, she’s still trapped in a story. And, either through aims or just convention, it’s someone else’s story at that.

“Perhaps it would be a mercy,” muses the queen on the possibility of the hero’s defeat and surrender. “To be relieved of the burden of trying?”, the hero replies. “No thanks!” (Princess!)

Sounds good, right? And I love it, honestly. It made me feel like fighting. But god, if anything could convince you that, really, there are no new stories, then what better than a game that presents itself as subversion, and ends up in exactly the same place as everything else.



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WP Engine's landing page
Product Reviews

WP Engine review | TechRadar

by admin



Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

One in twelve people online visit a website hosted on WP Engine daily. They host over one and a half million sites across 150 countries and still maintain a customer satisfaction rate of 96%. That is reliable hosting.

WP Engine uses its own caching system and content delivery system (CDN) and your get your choice of data centers in North America, Europe, or Asia. Plus, your websites are hosted on the fast Google Cloud Platform. This all means your customers should have a better user experience because of faster loading times and reliability.

WP Engine manages your WordPress site for you making the day-to-day running of your site easier allowing you to focus on your business. In addition, WP Engine provides features like automatic plugin updates, malware detection, and automated backups. Although managed hosting comes at a higher cost than unmanaged, it’s not until a vulnerability is discovered at 2am on a Saturday that the value of having someone look over the security and updates of your server becomes really noticeable.

If you run a digital or marketing agency, WP Engine also offers a hosting solution to support managing multiple clients. Whether you have 5 or 50+ clients on your books, shared and container-based servers are available, complete with the same managed WordPress experience and updates to PHP, MySQL, and of course, WordPress itself.

The startup spec for these hosting plans is 25GB of storage, supporting 50,000 visits per month, two sandbox sites and five live sites. Various configurations can be selected, designed to enable easy scaling as your client base expands and your business evolves. Specific agency hosting features are included, such as bulk site management, Git integration and other developer tools, and as the plans increase in price, things like WooCommerce optimizations, Stripe Connect checkouts, data insights, and a dedicated WP Engine API.

The cheapest WP Engine plan starts at $25/month (Image credit: Future)

WP Engine Plans and pricing

WP Engine have three main types of hosting: WordPress Hosting, WooCommerce Hosting, and Headless.

WordPress hosting has five plans which are all on a shared infrastructure. The most basic plan is Startup which provides hosting for one site, 25,000 monthly visits (with a 50GB bandwidth cap which is enough for the average website), and 10GB local storage.

With this plan you get chat only support, security patching, plugin risk scans, daily backups, EverCache, and global CDN. This plan is $20/mo and refreshingly there are no confusing renewal prices.

From there onwards, the plans support 3, 10, and 30 sites and the bandwidth, storage space, and monthly visits increase as you would expect. There is also the option to completely customize your plan starting from $600/mo.

For WooCommerce, the plans are similar in their specs and what they support but they come with lots of features as standard such as elastic search capabilities, support for unlimited products, Live Cart, and more. These plans are slightly more expensive than the WordPress hosting plans and the custom plan costs a minimum of $800/mo.

You can use the Page Performance tool to diagnose issues with a slow-loading site (Image credit: WP Engine)

Features

The core reasons to choose WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, but these are hard to quantify. Some features stand out when you browse the interface, however, that can give you some insight into the service offered.

WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool designed to help you speed up your WordPress site by offering meaningful metrics on performance.

Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, how long it took to load in its entirety, and the total size of the page. It even includes historical data on your site’s performance over the past six months and recommendations on how you can reduce page load.

You can develop your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine)

Avoid embarrassing mistakes on your site by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your developers to make extensive changes to your site without affecting your customers.

WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine)

In a relatively unusual move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those typically restricted are plugins that have been noted to cause performance issues and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made alternatives available that don’t put a high load on the server.

Interface and in use

WP Engine’s interface is professional and well laid out, but the powerful features might mean a steep learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right at home here, but otherwise you’ll need to spend some time on the support site.

Creating a site in WP Engine is made simple, thanks to a straightforward process. Whether you’re hosting on a domain, or building a staging site, the process is automated, so you don’t need to do anything. Once the name of the site has been set, and you’ve decided on adding WordPress on its own, or Word Press with WooCommerce, it will self-install while you make a coffee.

Note that WP Engine doesn’t offer any AI-guided site generation tools here. Anything you create will have to be done manually through the current WordPress theme management environment.

One of the main attractions for many customers is promised easy migration. Intended to make it simple to move a WordPress site from one host to another, WP Engine offers a dedicated plugin specifically for this purpose. Using it is simple enough – you install the downloadable plugin on the source (old) web host, create a secure key when prompted, then paste this into the plugin on your WP Engine hosting. In testing, the migration of a site around 500MB in size was pretty slick, completing in just a few minutes.

The WP Engine support center has detailed guides on using each of the service’s key features (Image credit: WP Engine)

Support

A managed WordPress service should offer extra value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The support site includes videos and articles of a quality you’d expect from a paid training course, with help on deeper WordPress functionality that many WordPress hosts don’t go into.

There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response was quick and the agent knowledgeable. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.

While WP Engine has a strong collection of support resources, we found that its sales team were not as well-informed as they could be. Specifically on the topic of agency hosting plans, they seemed to be unaware as to some of the intricacies. We have been separately informed by WP Engine contacts that the agency hosting plans rely on shared hosting for the Agency Essential plans, scaling up to container-based hosting for Agency Plus and Agency Pro. However, two conversations via the online chat tool revealed that the sales team were under the impression that all agency plans use container hosting.

If you’re planning to use WP Engine for agency hosting, and as it isn’t easy to find the answer within the support resources, you might consider requesting a call or email conversation with their tech support to establish whether they suit your requirements.

Testing

Testing the performance of WP Engine – specifically, the Essential Startup – I was intrigued to find that while reasonably slick, it seemed slower than other hosts. Now, I’ll preface this with the knowledge that WP Engine specifically aims for efficient WordPress hosting. It is known to block some plugins that can affect performance; it opts for its own caching plugin, for example. So, gauging performance with benchmarking tools on WP Engine is a little different to other hosts.

However, the tests delivered results around 30% slower than other hosts. Given that the comparisons were with plans for a similar budget and server specification, I was surprised at how poorly WP Engine scored.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyWordPress Benchmark

Performance metric

Result

Operations with large text data

6.9

Random binary data operations

7.93

Recursive mathematical calculations

5.06

Iterative mathematical calculations

7.9

Filesystem

Row 5 – Cell 1

Filesystem write ability

7.79

Local file copy and access speed

8.25

Small file IO test

9.76

Database

Row 9 – Cell 1

Importing large amount of data to database

1.94

Simple queries on single table

6.66

Complex database queries on multiple tables

5.78

Object cache

Row 13 – Cell 1

Persistent object cache enabled

0

Network

Row 15 – Cell 1

Network download speed test

9.5

Server score

6.4

Swipe to scroll horizontallySiege

Performance Metric

5 concurrent visitors

9 concurrent visitors

Transactions

9583

17028

Availability

96.28

96.31

Elapsed time

299.70

299.33

Data transferred

106.33

189.25

Response time

0.15

0.15

Transaction rate

31.98

56.89

Throughput

0.36

0.63

Concurrency

4.84

8.15

Successful transactions

9578

17028

Failed transactions

370

652

Longest transaction

2.25

5.67

The competition

If it’s the higher level of customer support you value in a managed WordPress host, Liquid Web often tops customer satisfaction polls. It has a focus on high-end products like virtual private servers (VPS) and dedicated servers, so if your needs extend beyond a high-performance WordPress site into other software solutions, we recommend checking it out.

TsoHost is another managed web hosting provider we recommend. The price can ramp up, with even the most basic VPS options starting at $52 per month, but you get a level of on-hands customer support that’s virtually unrivaled.

If managed WordPress hosting is your primary motivation, however, one of WP Engine’s key competitors is Kinsta. Both offer a managed hosting environment specifically geared towards WordPress, along with a similar price point. However, Kinsta doesn’t allow manually migrated data, so if you prefer to be more hands-on, WP Engine is the better option.

You might opt for Kinsta in another scenario, however. While WP Engine has a solid set of agency hosting plans, we found that while it omits smaller scale agency plans, Kinsta bundles in more features and boasts superior performance.

Final verdict

WP Engine is not the cheapest hosting around and it doesn’t seem to be the fastest either. It’s also not the first WordPress host we’d recommend to newcomers, as the breadth of tools can be intimidating.

WP Engine used to be the champion of WordPress hosting but I think that’s starting to change with hosts like SiteGround and Kinsta taking over.



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Herdling Review - Companion Quest
Game Reviews

Herdling Review – Companion Quest

by admin



About a week ago, on the same day I started playing Okomotive’s Herdling, I accidentally hit a squirrel with my car. The critter darted into the road, and I tried to evade them, but I failed.

They died. It devastated me.

I called my wife, physically shaking and tearful, to tell her what happened. I sat in my car for a bit when I got to my destination, needing to regain my composure. Though I knew my intent was pure, I found it hard to accept that I had taken their life away. To no one’s surprise, if you’re familiar with my work, I saw them not as “roadkill,” but as a being with their own interests and goals, however simple those may seem compared to those of humans. It wasn’t an ideal starting point for heading into Herdling, a game about trying to guide a family of vulnerable animals out of the city and return them safely to their natural habitat. But I’m sure, even on a normal day, Herdling was going to connect with me deeply on account of its moving depictions of human-animal kindness and companionship.

In Herdling, you play a nameless, voiceless, apparently homeless child who awakens one day in their bed under a bridge and encounters a large, hairy creature with their snout stuck in a bit of litter. You’ll learn this animal, resembling something like a buffalo, is called a calicorn. Paintings on the wall nearby indicate that the calicorn doesn’t belong in the city. Instead, a far-off mountain range seems to beckon them to return home. Removing the litter from their face, you tame them with a kind petting, then you give them a name of your choosing–my daughter chose Sonic for our calicorn. Picking up a makeshift staff made of a stick lined with vibrant flowers, you’ll find that you can then begin guiding the creature home by gently herding them ahead of you.

Like Okomotive’s past games, Far: Lone Sails and Far: Changing Tides–but perhaps most of all like Journey–Herdling’s story is told without words and relies on environmental clues. The minimalistic approach works well; all you really need to understand is that the calicorn wants to get home. The game illustrates this well by making the city feel dire. Flipped cars, dilapidated buildings, and a palette of greys and other stormy colors make it feel unwelcoming not just for the calicorn, but for you, too. Maybe the quest to get the calicorn to safety can also be your salvation.

Though the story is not without hardship, the relationship between the child and the calicorns is always one expressing kindness.

That connection between human and nonhuman animal is the focus of the game, and Okomotive does wonders with this core idea. It doesn’t take long before your sole calicorn becomes two, then three, and eventually perhaps even a dozen. Each time, you’ll tame the calicorn by showing them they can trust you, warmly welcoming them into the pack, and giving each a name. Because each calicorn has a unique look–like different fur patterns and differently shaped or sized horns–and can express their own personalities, it’s gratifying to get to know each of them. As humans, we understand each of us is unique in our world, and we have the same understanding of animals we keep as pets. But sometimes people seem to feel as though a group of, say, cows or chickens, isn’t more than a herd of animals that all behave the same. It’s never true, and why would it be? The calicorns express their differences so beautifully, illustrating the universal truth of animal personhood.

Giving them names is such an exciting, repeatable moment for this reason. Having met one calicorn on a boat, my daughter suggested we name them Captain. Another looked especially cranky due to how their brow hung over their eyes, so we named them Grump. Each animal had their own name, which brought us closer to them. Periodically, we’d come upon resting places, and I’d need to gather firewood to create a cozy campfire for myself and the herd. At that time, one of my calicorns, Melody, really loved to play fetch with a clump of colorful vines formed into a sphere we’d found. Others, like Benson, were more restful, waiting by the area where we’d soon sleep. Sonic, meanwhile, tended to follow me around, like a family dog who never leaves their favorite companion’s side.

It’s a heartwarming joy to get to know each of the calicorns I found on my journey to the mountain, and it’s because of the loving bonds I’d formed with each of them that its central gameplay mechanic works so well, both in my hands and in my heart. As the herd grows, leading them from the back, like a shepherd, becomes more cumbersome. The group gets wider, a bit more unpredictable, and difficult to steer. Some may occasionally lag behind or run ahead just enough that I’d quickly call them all to a halt so that I could redirect all my furry friends into a more tightly knit huddle.

Traversing narrow bridges, creeping around and barely avoiding the nests of large, territorial birds, and dodging cracks in ice all contribute to the game’s puzzle-platforming loop. The imprecise nature of the herd’s movement patterns is made manageable thanks to the game’s controls. In the most life-threatening of situations, you can tell the herd to walk especially slowly, granting you and the herd the ability to more carefully dodge hazards. In several sections, the opposite is in order, and you have to instruct the herd to form a stampede, quickly getting up an icy slide or escaping predators.

Traversing the world involves clearing obstacles that can sometimes threaten the well-being of the calicorns.

Calicorns may or may not die in the story; it depends on how well you do to keep them safe. I felt the weight of this responsibility intensely. I’d gotten to know each of them so well. The game allows you to pet any of them whenever you’d like, and regularly, you may find it necessary to clean them, as twigs and brush get stuck in their fur. These mechanics were sometimes tricky to use because the prompts to perform such actions were often missing, seemingly because the game couldn’t always distinguish which of the many huddled calicorns I wanted to target with my hugs or brushstrokes. It was a small technical hiccup that thankfully didn’t ever sabotage the more life-threatening moments. When they’re injured, they limp or bleed, and in those moments, I’d panic to find them the healing berries that are sometimes scattered around the world. It was my impassioned intent to get every one of them home safely. Anything less was going to devastate me.

As burdensome as that was meant to feel, there are even more moments of elation and beauty. Sometimes, it’s the calicorns who do the saving, reminding me that we are friends. I am not their “owner.” They are my allies. One of the game’s best moments, which thankfully can repeat a few times during your travels, is when the herd makes it to an open space free of hazards, allowing you and your calicorns to run freely. It reminded me of those videos of formerly factory-farmed animals who are rescued by a sanctuary and see grass for the first time. It means something very special to them, and I’m just glad to witness it.

As the calicorns pass through tall, colorful grass, they gain a speed boost that lets them really run ahead. Their fur healthily changes color, matching the vibrant brush. Without words, the story makes it certain: They love this. And because they do, I grow closer to all of them. I’m happy for them. If only for a short while, I’ve helped them find something like home, and together we’re overjoyed. This drives me to continue onward toward our final destination.

You can almost feel the breeze when you and your animal companions scurry across an open field.

The incredible soundtrack feels dynamic, often playing off of your own pace, picking up or slowing down as your herd does, but it’s in these stampede moments where the emotions really swirl, thanks to how the music crescendos when you and the group move swiftly. If you slow down, so too will the music–which for me always meant speeding up to really feel the moment when space allowed. Herdling’s soundtrack is the best I’ve heard, not just this year, but in some time. It wonderfully matches the spirit of the gentle creatures, inviting them back to nature with its blend of percussion, wind, and string instruments that embody the feelings of escaping a concrete jungle and galloping through a liberating plain.

For me, Herdling is a game about rediscovering one’s purpose. It is not the purpose of the calicorns to be stuck rudderless in a dying cityscape, where litter and neglect team to wear them down to nothingness. Neither does it seem to be the protagonist’s purpose to be there, based on the sad squalor they’re found in to start the game. Together, the child and their ever-growing herd of companions–not pets–go on an often heartwarming, sometimes heart-wrenching, adventure back to nature. It’s a journey I’ll remember for a long time thanks to its depiction of animals as unique individuals who, very much like us, are chiefly seeking love and safety. It was one of my favorite experiences in video games to help them find that safety and to feel that love.



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Jiushark JF15K
Gaming Gear

Jiushark JF15K Review: An air cooler like none other

by admin



Why you can trust Tom’s Hardware


Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

While Jiushark isn’t a well-known brand in U.S. enthusiast and PC building circles, we’ve covered the company in the past, highlighting some of its unique products like the Jiushark M.2 Three SSD cooler the JF800 dual-tower air cooler, which performed extremely well.

Next up from the company is another unique product, the JF15K, an air cooler that’s very different than traditional designs. It features heatsinks almost twice as wide as traditional coolers, with a length of 179mm, and is cooled by four 100 mm fans instead of one or two larger fans.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Will Jiushark’s latest make our list of best CPU coolers on the market? Let’s look at its features and our test results first. But even if you love the JF15K, it’s not available in the U.S. You’ll have to import it from Asia through a site like Taobao if you want one for your PC!

Cooler specifications

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Cooler

Jiushark JF15K

Colors

Black or White

MSRP

N/A

Lighting

ARGB lighting strips

Warranty

1 year

Socket Compatibility

Intel Socket LGA 1851/1700/1200/115x/2011 AMD AM5 / AM4

Radiator Dimensions

179 (L) x 114 (W) x 153mm (H)

Maximum TDP (Our Testing)

242W with Intel Core i7-14700K and AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Packing and included contents

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The packaging for the cooler showcases the cooler’s size and its RGB lighting, with the specifications listed on the side. Opening the box reveals the manual and mounting accessories.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The cooler sits underneath, protected by molded foam and cardboard.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Included in the box are the following:

  • Dual-tower heatsink
  • Four 100mm fans
  • Installation manual
  • Mounting accessories for Intel and AMD platforms
  • Thermal grease

Features of Jiushark’s JF15K air cooler

▶ Double-wide dual-tower air cooler

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

This cooler is unlike any other on the market, incorporating two double-wide heatsinks to dissipate heat.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶ It isn’t as big as it looks!

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

It might appear to be similar in size to a 240mm AIO, but it’s not quite that long. Most 240mm liquid coolers have a length of approximately 277 mm, while the Jiushark’s JF15K is “only” 179 mm long.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶ Six copper heatpipes

The cooler uses six copper heatpipes to move heat away from the CPU into the fins of the heatsinks. Its CPU coldplate, however, looks like it might benefit from being a bit beefier.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶ ARGB lighting strips

The tops of the cooler incorporate large ARGB light strips to help it stand out even in the dark. For those who don’t like illumination, a non-ARGB version of this cooler is also available – or you could just leave the ARGB cable disconnected.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶ Four fans – yes, four

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Because the JF15K incorporates two double-wide heatsinks, it follows that it would use four fans. But these aren’t your typical 120 or 140 mm fans, they’re a bit smaller than normal. Jiushark lists these fans as being 100 mm, but they appear to be 90mm based on the 179mm width of the heatsinks.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Size (L x W x D)

100mm x 100m x 20mm

Bearing

Hydraulic

Fan Speed

1000-2700RPM +- 10%

Air Pressure

0.58-3.12 mmH20

Airflow

19.49-55.46 CFM

Life expectancy

>20,000 hours

▶ RAM airflow

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The unique design of this air cooler has two fans above RAM slots, providing airflow, which may be useful to those looking to overclock their memory for the fastest performance possible.

AM5 and 1851 installation

1. You’ll first need to apply the included backplate if you’re using an Intel CPU. AMD users will remove the default mounting mechanism.

2. Next, you’ll need to install the standoffs.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

3. Take the mounting bars and apply them to the standoffs, then secure them with the included screws.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

4. Apply the included thermal paste to your CPU. If you have any questions on how to do this properly, please refer to our handy how to apply thermal paste guide.

5. Remove the middle fans from the cooler, then set the coldplate against the CPU and secure it with a screwdriver.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

6. Reinsert the middle fans.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

7. Finally, connect the PWM and ARGB cables to the corresponding motherboard headers and you’re done.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Real world testing configuration – Intel LGA1700 and AMD AM5 platform

My testing emphasizes results that are comparable to real-world use. This means I test CPU coolers inside a closed desktop case, which increases cooling difficulty compared to other testing methods. Many will test CPU coolers outside of a case, on an open test bench. Open benches have lowered ambient temperatures, which in turn makes weak coolers appear stronger than they actually are. And some publications have used generic thermal plates to test cooling solutions.

I reject both of these methods because they don’t accurately reflect the real-world conditions where a CPU cooler is used.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

CPU

Intel Core i7-14700K

GPU

ASRock Steel Legend Radeon 7900 GRE

Motherboard

MSI Z790 Project Zero

Case

MSI Pano 100L PZ Black

System Fans

Iceberg Thermal IceGale Silent

There are many factors other than the CPU cooler that can influence your cooling performance, including the case you use and the fans installed in it. A system’s motherboard can also influence this, especially if it suffers from bending, which results in poor cooler contact with the CPU.

In order to prevent socket bending from impacting our cooling results, we’ve installed Thermalright’s LGA 1700 contact frame into our testing rig. If your motherboard is affected by bending, your thermal results will be worse than those shown below. Not all motherboards are affected equally by this issue. I tested Raptor Lake CPUs in two motherboards. And while one of them showed significant thermal improvements after installing Thermalright’s LGA1700 contact frame, the other motherboard showed no difference in temperatures whatsoever! Check out our review of the contact frame for more information.

We’ve recently added testing of AMD’s flagship sixteen-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This is one beast of a CPU, providing the best gaming and multithreaded performance on the market – it can also prove quite challenging thermally when PBO is enabled for overclocking.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

CPU

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

GPU

MSI Ventus 3X RTX 4070Ti Super

Motherboard

MSI X870E Carbon Wifi

Case

MSI MAG Pano 100R PZ



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A top-down view of the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni with the robot exiting the base station
Product Reviews

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: a chatty but effective robot vacuum that shows off how well a roller can mop

by admin



Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni: Two-minute review

I’ll say one thing about Ecovacs Robotics: the brand might make too many robot vacuums that I, as a reviewer, can’t keep up with, but they all seem well thought out and catering to different needs and budgets. In 2024, it released a good-value robovac that I really liked in my Ecovacs Deebot T30 Omni review, and it’s impressed again with a higher-end model in the Deebot X8 Pro Omni reviewed here.

The X8 has plenty of smarts on board, with Ecovacs’ voice assistant Yiko now better at understanding commands and having a more conversational interaction than its previous iterations on older Deebots. Even if you don’t interact with Yiko, the X8 has plenty of automated voice prompts that I very quickly found to be annoying – there’s only so many times you can hear it say “don’t worry” when its auto-emptying. While you can’t switch these off, you can mute the volume entirely and depend on the app notifications to find out if the robot needs help at any time (like if it’s stuck somewhere).

There’s Google Assistant and Alexa support as well, but Yiko can handle a few extra commands that I found the other two voice assistants couldn’t handle. To futureproof your smart home, the X8 Pro Omni also has Matter support, so you can control several smart devices via a single hub.

There’s a camera on board that the bot uses to ‘see’ its surroundings for better navigation and obstacle avoidance, but it also provides a live feed that requires a passcode to be set up for access. There’s a Patrol mode here that turns the X8 Pro Omni bot into a security unit and it saves a bunch of photos for you to view whenever you like. You can also speak to your pets or kids if you need to check in on them (spy?) while you’re at work. I’ve asked Ecovacs for clarification on how secure the camera is from hackers and will update this review as soon as I hear back.

These smart bells and whistles are all great, but this robot vacuum shines at its most important function: cleaning. It’s arguably one of the best automated cleaners I’ve tested in 2025, with edge cleaning its biggest asset thanks to an extending side brush and wet roller while vacuuming and mopping respectively. In fact, I’ve seen the X8 Pro Omni travel far closer to walls and furniture than many of its competitors, thus allowing its extendable parts to do their job effectively.

The Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni can get very close to walls and furniture to clean, much closer than other bots I’ve tested previously (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

  • Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni at ECOVACS for $1,169.99

It puts its 18,000Pa of suction power to good use, with my carpets looking fresh and clean after a single run on its highest suction setting. It did a better job than what I saw in my Roborock Qrevo Edge review despite 18,500Pa of suction. And its roller mop was quite impressive compared to the mops pads I’d gotten used to previously, and that’s despite Ecovacs saying there’s no pressure applied by the roller on the floor.

There’s also a detergent dispenser on board and use of the soap is automatic provided you toggle it on in the app – Ecovacs says there’s always a ratio of 200:1 detergent and water mix in the pipeline to ensure the correct usage. Even without detergent I found my floors were left stain-free after every mop – in fact, it was better than I experienced in my Narwal Freo Z10 review that, at the time, I said had excellent mopping skills.

In four weeks of testing, the X8 Pro Omni got entangled in a cable just once because the side brush pulled a low-hanging wire towards the bumper, but otherwise its obstacle avoidance is very good. Even more impressive is its overall navigation – it invariably took the path of least resistance in my apartment, which meant it got its tasks done relatively quickly and, importantly, without consuming too much battery life.

Even the base station performance is top notch, with the onboard bin getting cleaned quite well each time it empties, and the wet-roller cleaning is impeccable. Water consumption is also lower than any other robovac I’ve tested before – I’ve previously had to refill the clean water after every full cleaning cycle in my small inner-city apartment, but this time I’ve had to do so once every four or five sessions (depending on its routine).

All in all, this was excellent performance from not just the robot vacuum, but I commend Ecovacs for streamlining its app experience as well. It’s much nicer to use, with plenty of customization options to suit your personal cleaning needs. Importantly, these custom routines are now very easy to access.

It’s relatively noisier than some of its newer competitors, and it can’t perform the climbing feats of the more expensive Dreame X50 Ultra, but if you value excellent cleaning performance above all else, I’d find it very easy to recommend the Deebot X8 Pro Omni – and it’s often discounted.

It doesn’t necessarily stand out visually, but the gold accents lend the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni some class (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: price & availability

  • Available since March 2025
  • List price: $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$2,499
  • Incurs ongoing costs for dust bags and detergent

There are quite a few all-in-one robot vacuum cleaners at the same price point that Ecovacs Robotics is selling the X8 Pro Omni, but I think the Deebot can justify its premium cost on its feature set and performance.

It’s listed for $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$2,499 at full price but, at the time of writing, US and UK customers could pick it up for $899.99 / £999 respectively directly from the Ecovacs website. In Australia, it has dropped to AU$2,199 previously, but I suspect there’ll be better discounts around the world during major shopping events like Black Friday sales. It’s also available from select third-party retailers, including Amazon.

This price gets you not just excellent performance (explained below in detail), but you also get an impressive set of features, including voice assistant and Matter integration for a smarter home setup. With that in mind, I think the X8 Pro Omni is well priced compared to some of the other robovacs on the market, although Ecovacs has cheaper models that clean really well, as proved by the Deebot T30 Omni.

As an example of competitor pricing, the Narwal Freo Z Ultra cost $1,499/ AU$2,499 (unavailable in the UK) and is a good machine, but has 12,000Pa of suction compared to the Deebot’s 18,000Pa. Matching the suction power at 18,500Pa is the Roborock Qrevo Edge, but I found it hard to recommend at its list price of $1,599.99 / AU$2,799 (unavailable in the UK) based on its performance alone. On the other hand, Ecovacs’ own Deebot T50 Max Pro Omni has 18,500Pa suction, the Yiko voice assistant and promises good cleaning at a lower price point of $799.99 / £799 / AU$1,799.

If you want more suction power, you’ll have to pay a lot more. For example, the Roborock Saros 10 with its whopping 22,000Pa of power will set you back $1,599.99 / £1,499.99 / AU$2,999 at full price, but is often discounted to match the X8’s retail cost. The Dreame X50 Ultra Complete with 20,000Pa of suction is also expensive compared to the X8 Pro Omni, coming in at a list price of $1,699.99 / £1,299 / AU$2,999, but it can climb low steps that many of the newer machines can’t.

As with any other hybrid robot vacuum, there is the ongoing cost of purchasing dust bags and detergent to take into consideration, although the latter is an optional add-on but I can see the need for it in homes with toddlers and pets. Unlike other brands, though, Ecovacs doesn’t supply a bottle of detergent in the box – at least not in Australia, where the testing for this review was conducted, due to “customs issues with international shipments” – so that’s $49.98 / £44 right off the bat for two 1L bottles in the US and UK (frequently discounted), but the same two-pack isn’t available in Australia where a 1L bottle retails for AU$37.50.

The antibacterial dust bags come in packs of three and are available directly from Ecovacs Robotics for $24.99 / £17.99 / AU$29.90 at the time of writing.

Despite the ongoing cost, I think the Deebot X8 Pro Omni balances its feature set, performance and price well, but I’d recommend picking it up during a sale as it’s frequently discounted.

• Value score: 4 / 5

The three-prong button on the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni doesn’t look functional, but it has three tasks it can perform when needed (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Suction power:

18,000Pa

Onboard bin capacity:

220ml

Dust bag capacity:

3L

Clean water tank capacity:

4L

Dirty water tank capacity:

4L

Reservoir capacity:

110ml clean; 95ml dirty

Mop lift:

10mm

Noise level:

up to 75dB

Battery capacity:

6,400mAh

Runtime:

up to 228 minutes / up to 240sqm (2,580 sq ft)

Charging time:

4.6 hours

Dimensions:

Robot = 353 x 351.5 x 98 mm; base station = 350 x 477 x 533 mm

Weight:

Robot = 5.3kg; base station = 7.6kg

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: Design

  • Gold accents give it a classy look
  • Extending side brush and wet roller mop
  • Taller than the average robot but lacks a turret; tall but slim base station

I only had to take the robot out to see that Deebot X8 Pro Omni exudes class, thanks to some gold-colored accents on the otherwise black machine. Unlike the Narwal Freo Z10 that I reviewed prior to the X8 (which was a 11kg weight straight out of the box), the Deebot comes packed in layers, which makes it very easy to set up.

Robot design

Once you remove the wash tray from the top of the box, the next item to emerge is the X8 robot. The first thing that distinguishes it from many other robovacs is the lack of a top turret that typically houses the navigation tech. In the X8 Pro Omni, though, all the necessary sensors are on the front and the sides.

The lack of a turret means the X8 can roll under many low-lying pieces of furniture, although it’s doesn’t have the slimline form factor of the Roborock Saros 10R – it’s a little taller, standing at 9.8cm/3.8in compared to the Saros at 8cm/3in, so there needs to be a minimum clearance of 10cm/4in for the Deebot to clean where many other robovacs can’t.

A black plastic disc with the Ecovacs logo in gold covers the top of the robot, with a cutout to show off a gold three-pronged button. There’s a tiny power icon in the center of the button to indicate that it’s functional, but it’s easy to miss and can appear purely decorative, although it lights up when in use and charging. Its functionality is listed on a large piece of cardboard inside the packaging: a short press to start or pause, a double press to extend or retract the wet roller, and a three-second long press to send the bot back to its dock. In the four weeks I spent with the machine, I never found the need to use the button – the robot does everything seamlessly.

Also under the top cover is a removable 220ml/7.4oz dustbin whose filter can be taken out for regular cleaning, plus a toggle switch for power, a Wi-Fi indicator light and a QR code to begin your app setup.

Image 1 of 3

After four weeks of use, there was barely any hair tangled anywhere (just one strand around a large wheel)(Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)The V-shaped bristles of the central brush are very effective at avoiding entanglements(Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)The wet roller was a lot more effective at streak-free mopping than circular mop pads(Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

On the front of the robot are LiDAR sensors that it uses for mapping your home, while a camera also peeping through the same front window adds visual information that’s paired with artificial intelligence (AIVI) to navigate around obstacles. Along the sides are edge sensors that prevent it from banging into a wall or furniture, yet allowing the bot to get really close for effective cleaning. A mic and speaker are also housed within the front window.

The back of the robot has two charging points, but there’s also a water compartment inside with a clean capacity of 110ml and 95ml for dirty mop water. While you never have to worry about the water reservoir after setup, it can be released using an inset lever.

The side brush extends, but given the Deebot X8 Pro Omni travels very close to obstacles, it even managed to clean corners (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

As with nearly every other Deebot I’ve tested (and many other brands besides), the underside of the robot houses the central bar brush that sports bristles arranged in a V shape to help it gather hair and fur without itself getting entangled. A single side brush towards the front of the bot rotates at varying speeds automatically depending on the size of the debris it senses – it slows down for larger pieces, similar to some of the high-end Roborocks. It can also extend out to reach into corners and clean along edges – both of which it manages to do better than many of its competitors because the robot itself gets really close to walls.

The rear of the undercarriage is dominated by a wet roller rather than circular mop pads which, according to Ecovacs, spins at a speed of 200rpm and has a scraper in its holder that constantly cleans out the dirty water as it rotates. 16 nozzles keep it supplied with clean water (and detergent if you’re using any).

The main wheels are quite large and, for the first time in any robot vacuum I’ve tested, I found them to be quite noisy when traveling over the tiles in my home. The sound was akin to very hard or brittle plastic moving over a rough surface, but in my time testing the X8 Pro Omni, I didn’t notice too much wear and tear on the wheels to account for the sound. A small omnidirectional caster wheel completes the robot’s physical setup.

It’s easy to remove the onboard bin in the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni to clean out the filter regularly (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

Base station design

The base station itself isn’t much to write home about and is quite similar to several other models on the market. However, the gold accents on the lids of the two water tanks and branding on the front of the dock makes it look quite smart. The tanks have a 4L capacity each and are very easy to lift up, refill or clean out, then replace back on the dock.

Image 1 of 3

Water tanks are easy to access and fill or clean(Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)There are plenty of parts you can wash out if you want to, including the soap dispenser (on top of the tanks) and the wash trays(Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)Even the robot’s onboard water compartment comes off easily of you want to give it a quick rinse (the inside filter can get grimy)(Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

Below the tanks is a covered nook that houses the detergent dispenser and a 3L dust bag. The dispenser is very easy to slide out and refill, while changing the dust bag is also very intuitive. It’s the cover for this nook that takes a little effort to remove each time you need access to either of its two inmates – it clips in very tightly indeed and you’ll need to pull it with some force from the bottom of the panel.

Under the covered nook is the cavity for the robot, which sits on a washing tray. Inside the cavity, on the rear wall of the base station, you’ll notice nozzles and charging points that keep the robot doing what it needs to do.

The base station is about as tall as many other brands offer, but it’s a little slimmer than, say, a Narwal dock. It will still need a decent amount of space to house, with enough clearance on the top to allow you to remove and replace the tanks.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: Performance

  • Excellent vacuuming on high suction; top-notch mopping at most waterflow levels
  • Arguably one of the best edge cleaners in the business
  • Very good navigation and obstacle avoidance

The X8 Pro Omni for this review was tested in a 40sqm/430sqft inner-city apartment in Sydney, Australia, with the single bedroom fully carpeted, but the rest of the rooms featuring matte-finish tiles. The bathroom, however, has smoother tiles than the rest of the hard floors and it was part of the full map that the X8 had to clean. There are no stairs in the apartment to test cliff sensors, but there are a couple of low thresholds that were useful to test the X8 Pro Omni’s ability to clear some obstacles.

It’s also important for me to mention that I have no pets, but I’ve always found my bedroom carpet covered in my own (long) hair within 3-4 days of cleaning it, and is usually a very good test for any vacuum cleaner that I review.

Before starting the first cleaning session, I not only set up some custom routines (called Scenario Cleans in the Ecovacs Home app), but I also went through the advanced settings to toggle on some key features, including the carpet-first option as I have mixed flooring. This ensured that no matter what custom cleaning routine I might use, carpets were always vacuumed first to minimize the risk of them getting wet (more on the app experience later).

Overall performance of the X8 Pro Omni was excellent, but it’s important to note that it’s best used for the regular maintenance cleaning sessions that you might need on a daily or a weekly basis. It can’t replace the best cordless vacuum cleaners, but it definitely reduces the human effort and time spent on keeping your floors spick and span.

Water usage in the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni is not a lot compared to other models I’ve tested (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

Vacuuming

Let’s start the performance section with the most basic function: vacuuming. I’ve already mentioned earlier in this review that the X8 Pro Omni was one of the best cleaning machines I’ve tested recently, exceeding the vacuuming performance I got from a Roborock and a Narwal that I tested prior to the Deebot. It really does put the 18,000Pa – which is in no way class-leading now – to very good use, particularly at its higher suction settings.

I usually have to set most robovacs to their maximum suction setting to get a decent clean on the bedroom carpet which, as I’ve described above, can get covered in my own hair within days. It’s been rare for me to see that carpet completely hair free after a single session even using the highest power level on other robovacs, but the X8 Pro Omni was been able to do just that each and every time it’s done a bedroom clean on its Max setting.

The Deebot’s got four suction settings and while I wasn’t particularly keen on the Quiet option which reduces the power significantly, I found the Standard and Strong settings to be perfect for hard floors, not once needing to step it up to Max on tiles.

The Deebot X8 Pro Omni repeatedly does 360º rotations around furniture legs to ensure good cleaning (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

The X8 Pro Omni has a suction-boost option which, as the name suggests, automatically increases power when it detects carpets, but I wasn’t able to notice the dynamic suction from sound alone when it went from hard floor to the mid-pile rug in my living room, although it seemed to do a very good job anyway. The audible change in suction was heard when it was vacuuming tiles in my kitchen, just under a cabinet – go figure.

To check its vacuuming abilities further, I conducted TechRadar’s standard tests of sprinkling tea dust and oats (representing two different-sized debris) on both hard floors and carpets. Doing a Zone clean and set at Strong suction, you can see from the video clip below that the X8 Pro Omni did a fantastic job on the tiles, even sucking up the tea dust from along the edge of the room.

If you look closely, you’ll also notice that the side brush slows down when it detects larger debris (oats) to make sure they all get pulled towards the bar brush.

On the carpet, which was also just a Zone clean done as a separate test, I set the robot to Max suction and found it cleared up the oats very well indeed, although tea dust that went deep into the fibers remained, and is visible in the video clip as a dark patch. I used my finger to loosen the carpet fibers and let the X8 run over it again, and voila, it was all cleaned up.

For both tests, I had the X8 Pro Omni set at moving in the Deep Clean pattern, which covers maximum floor space but time consuming, and I didn’t find the need to go over either of the spots with my Dyson V15s Detect Submarine.

Mopping

This is the first robot vacuum I’ve tested that features a wet roller rather than a pair of rotating mop pads and I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Needless to say, the X8 Pro Omni exceeded my expectations and then some with the way it tackled my hard floors. I will go so far as to say this was arguably the best mopping I’ve seen in a while by a robot vacuum.

From shaved Toblerone on the kitchen floor (I was making Toblerone cheesecake at the time) to a partially dried dollop of coriander-mint chutney, I was very impressed with how well it mopped up different (dry) spills.

I specify dry because you really don’t want a robot vacuum to clean a wet spill like cereal milk or curry sauce as everything in the undercarriage will get wet with the sticky liquid or the sauce, including the wheels and side brush. Cleaning the bot after that will be a chore in itself.

It’s fun to watch the wet roller slide in and out from under the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni bot (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

As with many other robot vacuums like itself, the X8 Pro Omni has three waterflow settings (Low, Medium and High) with a total of 50 levels. The lowest settings would be good for sensitive wood floors but, for me, I’ve always found higher waterflow rates better for my tiles, so I had the Deebot set at level 40 most of the time as I found 45 and 50 made my tiles very wet indeed, while 30 and lower barely left a damp streak.

My kitchen floors, in particular, need regular mopping and, given it’s right beside the dining room, this area of my apartment was a good test for the X8 Pro Omni. I found that in its Deep Cleaning speed and water level set to 45 but no detergent, there was a visible difference on my floor after its first run compared to what the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine had done prior to switching to the Deebot.

In fact, I’m not sure how much difference adding the detergent has done to my floors because it mopped up dusty footprints and dried, dusty water stains very well without any soap, and it did just as good a job with.

The stress test I put the X8 under was mopping up a partially dried dollop of coriander and mint chutney – it took a couple of passes at water level 40 with detergent in the dispenser to mop it up entirely, no stain left on the floor. The issue here was that the rotating side brush scattered a tiny bit of dry chutney away, but given it was set to Deep Clean, the bot moved over the entire zone twice (more on this below in the navigation section), running perpendicular to its initial path, which meant that scattered bit got mopped up later.

I enjoyed watching the extendable roller sneak in and out of the robot as soon as it sensed something on its side. This could be a wall or a furniture leg, but I found that it hardly left a dry spot.

On the product listing page on the Ecovacs website, the brand says there’s no pressure applied by the wet roller on the floor, but given how well I saw it mop, I’d be surprised if this spec listing is correct. There’s surely some pressure being applied for such effective mopping.

Another thing I love about the roller is that it’s streak-free, particularly on the lower or mid waterflow rates. The only time I saw streaks (and not dirty ones, mind, just marks to show a mop has passed) was when the roller was saturated with clean water.

With the sole exception of one Zone cleaning session when it took the wrong path out of its dock to get to where it needed to in a different room, the Deebot X8 Pro Omni never once strayed from the path of least resistance.

It’s impressive navigation extends to doing full 360º rotations around furniture legs, and while the side brush didn’t always extend when I expected it to, the robot itself got so close to walls and furniture that I never had cause for complaint when it came to its navigation just millimeters from what is essentially an obstacle.

It’s three different “cleaning speeds” (or its movement pattern in a given space) are a little hit and miss if you really want a thorough job done. The best movement pattern I found was the Deep Cleaning, which means the robot cleans a space twice, first running in parallel lines just centimeters apart, then traveling perpendicular to ensure no spot is missed.

The other two cleaning speeds – Standard and Quick – aren’t bad, but because the parallel pathways are slightly more spread out compared to Deep Cleaning, I found that the occasional hair strand or speck of debris got missed. That said, “cleaning speed” as Ecovacs calls it is apt as these determine how quickly the X8 Pro Omni finishes its cleaning task.

Obstacle avoidance is also fantastic, as you can see from the video above when I conducted TechRadar’s standard test – creating an obstacle course of a slipper, shoe, a cable, socks and a tissue box. It avoided every single one of them without a hiccup, a feat I’ve not yet seen from any robot vacuum I’ve tested to date.

The only time the Deebot X8 Pro Omni got entangled with a cable, it was the side brush that pulled it into the bumper (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

However, during one vacuum-only session in my bedroom, it got entangled in a USB-C cable that had one end dangling close to the floor and the side brush pulled it lower (see above image). I could hear Yiko complaining and a notification popped up on my phone that the X8 Pro Omni needed help. I disentangled it and it carried on with its work after I used a voice command to “restart cleaning”.

During a full-house clean, I shut a door to one room to see how it would react to its map not quite being accurate and it had no issues. It got close to the door, pivoted a little on an axis to see if it could spot an opening, but carried on doing what it needed to in the rest of the apartment without any complaints.

Base station performance

Whether it’s sucking out all the dirt and debris from the onboard dustbin or cleaning the wet roller, the X8 Pro Omni base station performance is so good that it justifies the high price tag this machine demands.

Only the tiniest amount of dirt remains inside the onboard dustbin after each vacuuming run that you, honestly, never have to worry about. The only time you’ll need to remove the small onboard bin is when the filter needs cleaning or replacing, or if something gets stuck inside that requires manual removal (never once happened during my testing).

The dustbag inside the base station has a 3L capacity, so it will last you a long while, albeit that will depend on how often you clean, how large your home is and whether you have pets.

Image 1 of 2

Using the detergent dispenser is optional, and the 3L dust bag could last a while(Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)With use, the inside of the base station can begin to look a little worse for wear, but it doesn’t hamper performace(Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

Dispensing detergent happened as required, as did filling up the robot’s onboard 110ml clean water compartment. Even pumping out dirty water from the 90ml partition worked well during my testing – you can remove this compartment to clean out the filter inside.

The washing of the roller was impeccable. It looked nearly new after my running it a few times a week for four weeks and the shortest two-hour hot-air drying is more than enough to ensure there’s no trace of dampness that could encourage bacterial or fungal growth. In fact, at the end of my four-week trial period, I found the roller soft to the touch as it was on day one.

The wash tray can also be cleaned out automatically by the machine from time to time, so the only hands-on task you’ll have to do regularly is clean out the dirty water and refill the fresh water. Every couple of months or so, you’ll also need to swap out the dust bag or refill the detergent dispenser if you’ve been using soap for mopping. The ‘health’ of all the accessories and parts is listed in the app, so you’ll know when to do what anyway.

Battery life

Ecovacs says there’s a 6,400mAh battery pack powering the X8 Pro Omni robot, which is rated for up to 228 minutes or a maximum area coverage of 240sqm / 2,580sq ft. In my testing – which admittedly was done in a much smaller space – I found that a number like that is nigh impossible to achieve unless you run the robot at the lowest settings possible, which I doubt anyone will want to do.

In Standard suction and medium waterflow levels during a full 40sqm clean doing a single vacuum-and-mop pass, the X8’s battery dropped to 20%. Bumping it up to Max suction and high waterflow rates, I found the robot needed to go back for a top up at the mains after completing five out of the six rooms in its map – about 78 minutes. Both these tests were conducted at the Deep Clean speed, so more time consuming.

Extrapolating that for Standard or Quiet cleans, you will be able to run the X8 Pro Omni for around 150 minutes, but keep in mind that it boasts dynamic suction as well, so total battery life will depend on how many carpets it encounters or how tough the cleaning job is.

That’s not bad battery life, but it’s not class-leading as models like the Narwal Freo Z10 and Dreame X40 Ultra can outdo the X8. Larger homes will find that a full cleaning task may well require recharging to complete. That said, the X8 is smart enough to learn how much battery it needs to finish a job, so a full-home clean may not necessarily take all day.

• Performance score: 4.5 / 5

No matter the cleaning task, the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni performs it well (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: app control

  • Improved Ecovacs Home app
  • More streamlined setup for robot and base station settings
  • Map might need extensive editing, but is easy to do

I’ve previously not been very impressed with the Ecovacs Home app as it wasn’t as streamlined as I would have liked, but that’s changed now – the updated version of the app that I used with the X8 Pro Omni is a significant improvement.

It’s now easier to access the custom cleaning routines – renamed Scenario Cleans from just plain ol’ Scenarios – as they’re listed on the homepage of the device, and each of these are also very easy to customize and set up.

To access more settings options, the Ecovacs Home app has always allowed you to ‘Enter’ a more detailed page with your home’s map laid out, but now the robot and base station advanced settings are right there on that same screen – the robot stuff is right at the bottom while switching tabs gives you the base station setup. This is a much better app experience than I encountered only a few months ago from the time of publication of this review.

Mapping with the Deebot X8 Pro Omni is quick and it’s remarkably easy to edit the final map (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

As I’ve already mentioned, there’s the Yiko voice assistant on board and, in all honesty, I really don’t see the need for verbal communication with the device, but my inner lazy self took a shine to it for a very short time. All routines and settings work so well, that Yiko doesn’t need to be there, but it was nice to see that it can understand commands better than before.

During my testing, it didn’t comprehend its own name (see the screenshot below where it hears its name as “you go”), but that didn’t stop it from performing the task I asked it to do (pause cleaning). I immediately asked it to restart again – no problem whatsoever.

You can give Yiko back-to-back commands and you’ll hear its voice prompts very often, so much so that it can get annoying (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

You’ll also hear a lot of oral prompts every time the robot has to perform a task. This can quickly get very annoying, particularly when the self-empty of the bin takes place because it’s a long, drawn-out message telling you “don’t worry” about the loud noises. There’s sadly no way to turn these off, but you can drop the volume right down to ‘mute’, but this also means you won’t hear when the bot needs help. Thankfully there are app notifications to help with that. The volume is also associated with a ‘ding’ sound the robot makes every time you adjust a setting – these too will be muted if you turn the volume slider right down.

There’s plenty of control via the Ecovacs Home app, which has evolved to become more streamlined than before (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

Every setting on the app is well explained and easy to understand in case you want to use it, but I would advise that you take some time to go through all options before you begin using the X8 Pro Omni so that you get the best results possible.

For example, you can set and forget the cleaning sequence for the whole house and, no matter which rooms you choose for whatever custom routine you might have, the X8 Pro Omni will follow that. This can be edited at any time too. As I’ve mentioned before, you can also toggle on carpet-first cleaning in the robot settings, set how you want the auto-empty to take place or how often you want the wet roller washed. You even get control over how long you want the base station to spend drying it with hot air. You’ll also need to toggle on auto detergent use, otherwise the base station won’t use soap even if you’ve filled the dispenser.

There is a lot of control here, although it would be nice to see Ecovacs allow the user to choose how many passes the X8 will do when on an automatic AI-powered cleaning run (it’s always just one in this mode).

• App score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni?

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Attribute

Notes

Score

Value

Compared to other similarly specced models, the X8 Pro Omni is very competitively priced, balancing feature set, power, performance and cost quite well – plus it’s often discounted.

4 / 5

Design

It’s a very low-maintenance design with several parts that can be taken out to wash if necessary. And it exudes class. The lack of a turret means it can even roll under some low-lying furniture.

4.5 / 5

Performance

As long as you avoid using the X8 to clean wet spills, it will handle your regular cleaning with aplomb. It will even maintain itself well without too much intervention from you.

4.5 / 5

App control

The updated Ecovacs Home app is a lot more streamlined now and easier to use.

4 / 5

Don’t buy it if…

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: Also consider

How I tested the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni

  • Used three to four times a week for four weeks
  • Tried various suction and waterflow levels in a 40sqm test space with mixed flooring
  • Experimented with the Yiko voice assistant and tweaked various advanced settings

It’s very easy to recommend the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni, despite its higher price tag (Image credit: Sharmishta Sarkar / TechRadar)

I received my review unit of the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni in the third of week of July 2025 and spent the next four weeks running it on various settings and custom routines mostly three times a week, but it has done more sessions during the last week when I conducted my obstacle course test.

I found that once all the settings were as I’d want them, the X8 Pro Omni just did what it needed to do without any fuss. During that time, I found it didn’t use as much clean water as other robot vacuums (especially compared to the Narwal Freo Z10 I tested prior to it) and, hence, found I didn’t need to keep refilling the clean-water tank as much. Of course, that’s also because the test space is small (just 40sqm/430sqft) and has mixed flooring with carpet in the bedroom and a large rug in the living room.

I set up four different custom routines, or Shortcut Cleans as the app labels them, and tested each one 2-3 times over the course of the four-week testing period. I also ran single-room and zone cleaning sessions to see how the X8 Pro Omni performs in its auto-cleaning mode.

While I began testing the X8 without any detergent for the first week, I added a small quantity to the dispenser on week 2 of testing.

I put it through TechRadar’s usual tests for vacuuming and mopping (using oats and tea from a bag for the former, and a dollop of chutney for the latter). I also conducted our standard obstacle avoidance test, but threw in two types of socks and a tissue box for good measure.

As you’ve probably already read, the X8 Pro Omni passed all its tests with flying colors, with only the one hiccup when it got entangled in a low-hanging cable during a vacuum-only session.

Read more about how we test vacuum cleaners

[First reviewed August 2025]

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni: Price Comparison



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The government’s spending review: Citizen data and digital identity projects need high security by default

by admin



The UK government’s spending review in June set out its plans to invest in Britain’s renewal: its security, health and economy.

Digital technologies featured heavily in the review with government pledging that it will provide “funding directly to departments to build strong digital and technology foundations, modernize public service delivery, and drive a major overhaul in government productivity and efficiency.”

One of the ways it has done this is by introducing a GOV.UK Wallet and a GOV.UK App, which aims to deliver more personalized customer experiences and verifiable digital credentials for citizens.


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This is now available to the public in beta form. The government is also creating a new National Data Library to join up data across the public sector and a single patient NHS record, which is due to be available by 2028, so that every part of the health service has a full picture of a patient’s care.

However, if the UK is to realize the benefits of its digital ambitions, it must ensure the public can trust the systems underpinning them.

Sam Peters

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Chief Product Officer, ISMS.online.

The pros and cons of centralizing data

Centralizing citizen data and digital identities has clear benefits. It enables more joined up services, reduces duplications allows for more seamless, personalized user experiences and could improve access and efficiency across the NHS and other public services.

For the NHS, for example, a single patient record could help doctors and specialists deliver better, more consistent care across the health service. For citizens interacting with government departments, a unified app and wallet could simplify administrative tasks and improve digital inclusion.

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has said in recent interviews that, “People’s private data will not be shared outside of government.” However, despite the Technology Secretary’s assurances, this approach does come with significant risks. Centralized citizen data represents some of the most sensitive information any organization could hold. Health records, identity details and government interactions, combined in a single system, are a goldmine for cybercriminals.

And no doubt there will be some concerns from the public regarding its security – particularly in light of recent, very public, high profile cyber-attacks. Over the last 18 months, the UK has seen a series cyber attacks on both public and private sector organizations, including health authorities and councils, as well as the recent M&S and Qantas data breaches.

These incidents have highlighted the vulnerability of critical services and the real-world impact of compromised data, from patient safety to public confidence.

As these services become more integrated and reliant on shared data infrastructure, the risk of a breach also grows. A single point of access to multiple datasets can become a high-value target for threat actors. The more data an attacker can obtain from one place, the more appealing, and damaging, a breach can be.

A proactive approach to information security

With these very real threats, a proactive, systems-led approach to information security must be embedded from the outset.

The government needs to ensure that privacy by design and security by default is in every digital service developed. This means applying rigorous access controls, encryption, and secure development practices across every data touchpoint. That said, it is crucial that continuous monitoring for vulnerabilities and suspicious activities happens throughout the system lifecycle – and not just after deployment.

Similarly, the systems need to ensure that they comply with UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act and other relevant standards.

These requirements must be seen not as a burden by the government but as the bedrock of responsible digital innovation.

Building a high-security posture

To meet these heightened security demands, following the guidance provided by internationally recognized security standards, such as ISO 27001, can be a logical place to start to get ahead of the increased risks to highly personal data this approach represents.

Standards such as ISO 27001 offer a structured, repeatable framework for managing risk, protecting information assets and demonstrating compliance. But it’s more than a tick-box exercise, it is a cultural shift in how risk is understood, communicated, and mitigated across every layer of an organization.

If the government embeds the principles of ISO 27001 into its delivery of these new services from the outset, rather than retrofitting them post-launch, it can design services that are both secure and scalable. It can ensure that it is identifying and evaluating new and emerging threats as digital services evolve.

It will also mitigate risks through policy, controls and continual improvement. But it will also be able to demonstrate accountability and transparency to the public – which is key.

Transparency is key to building public trust

Security isn’t just about systems, it is also about perception. The government’s digital strategy must be underpinned by public trust. Clear communication about how data is used, who has access, what safeguards are in place and what recourse citizens have in the event of a breach is essential.

Publishing high-level information security policies, adopting standards like ISO 27001 and engaging with the public on data protection issues will help foster the confidence needed to make digital services work.

Public sector leaders must ensure that information security is not treated as an afterthought. That means prioritizing risk management now – not waiting for a breach to expose the consequences of delay.

We list the best identity management solution.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro’s Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro



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