MainWP is a small US-based WordPress development agency with a team of coders and designers dispersed around the globe.
From the beginning, the team has strived to develop ways to simplify WordPress management for marketers, brands, and bloggers. Our goal was to create the most effective, self-hosted, and an open source WordPress management suite.
Soon after the product launch, our user base started growing, maybe faster than we expected.
It Was Time for a Change!
As the product, and the number of users, continued to grow, we started experiencing issues with our server that we used to host our codebase and customer-facing assets. In effect, our servers had become the bottleneck in our service delivery.
Developing a high-quality product required much more than just a conventional hosting that we used at the time. It didn’t take us long to figure out that we need more flexibility and reliability so we can focus on the development instead of wasting resources on chasing server-side problems.
How We Came Across Cloudways?
We took our time to pick a new “home” for our websites and development environment. This required long, comprehensive research and extensive testing on multiple combinations of different solutions. We just knew that we need to find a perfect solution, so we don’t have to do it all over again.
Options were narrowing down, and quickly, Cloudways jumped to the top of our list. Everything seemed just perfect. It seemed that we were very near to finding a winner.
Rock-Solid, Managed Cloud Hosting Platform
After running extensive tests, we believed that we have found the best performing and cost-effective solution for MainWP. A custom, easy-to-use panel allowed us to manage everything, and we could rest easy knowing that our business is on a rock-solid platform (and performing well).
One of the best aspects of the new hosting was the scalability of the Cloudways Platform. We got a solution that can quickly grow with MainWP and fulfill our present and future needs.
What Does It Mean for the MainWP Plugin Development?
Developing a WordPress plugin as a self-hosted solution can be tricky. There are so many different server setups, and we had to make sure that our product would work on as many as possible right out of the box.
Here is where Cloudways displayed its full potential. With the super-intuitive and easy-to-use panel, it enabled us to quickly re-adjust our development environment and emulate a variety of different setups that we can expect our users to use in their business operations.
In no time, we were able to move our test sites through multiple server options with different settings. It was effortless for us to test our product on a wide range of entry-level to high-end servers, and elevate our pre-release process to a whole new level.
Results Were Amazing!
The real proof that we have made the right choice was the reduced number of support requests. One of the biggest set of problems for a developer of a self-hosted solution is server-side issues, which is next to impossible to catch in the development and initial test process.
It was a real benefit for us to point resources that were being used for debugging to developing new features and improving our product.
Cloudways and MainWP Users
Soon after our Cloudways journey started, it was evident that Cloudways is not only the best option for us but also one of the best solutions out there for our clients too.
We made and published a series of performance tests where we showed that our plugins work as expected and provide the best MainWP experience. It was just common sense to bump Cloudways to the top of MainWP recommended hosts.
Mustaasam Saleem
Mustaasam is the WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways. Where he actively works and loves sharing his knowledge with the WordPress Community. When he is not working, you can find him playing squash with his friends, or defending in Football, and listening to music.
