In the past, I was either forced to use command line interfaces or outdated cPanels to manage my hosting. Those days are over. Cloudways is a true hosting partner for my web agencies.
I’m Oliver, a web geek at heart, white label web agency owner and stay-at-home dad. I know right, I must be mad!
NO LABEL Studios is a white label web agency offering the design, build & deployment of WordPress websites and funnels to marketing agencies who wish to outsource and scale. We take the technical hassle out of website design so our clients can concentrate on what they do best for their clients.
Our marketing agency partners are located in the UK, Finland, and other countries.
Picture This Scene If You Can…
I’m hosting on a pals’ Dedicated Root Server. He teaches me the ropes and I learn all the useful CLI commands. I feel like a DevOps god among mere mortals. I’m totally geeking out and really enjoy blasting CLI commands until the cows come home.
It was fun… for a while anyway.
Then comes the realization that I’m actually spending more and more time using command prompt than creating websites for clients. My efficiency goes way down and I’m struggling to deliver on time.
ABANDON SHIIIP!
The Quest for an Alternative Host
When it was time to move on I made a promise to myself that I’d 100% avoid shared hosting. I’ve used it in the past. It may be cheap as chips, but it is also really bad.
The number of times I lost hosting contracts due to downtime, slow resolution from support and servers being restarted due to a few bad eggs, was astonishing, to say the least.
I wanted the same dedicated server infrastructure that the dedicated host offered but with the GUI. My plan was clear.
DigitalOcean
I knew of DigitalOcean and decided to try them out. They have a good reputation and come in at a reasonable price tag for 1GB RAM, 1 CPU and so on. This was ideal so I signed up for a month.
It quickly became apparent that my knowledge of servers wasn’t vast enough to know much about Distributions, and terms like “Droplets” just made me feel alienated and confused.
So, due to bad vibes and a desire for simplicity, I went on the hunt again.
Ads Proved to Be Useful, for Once!
Now if you’re like me, ads are the worst. They appear all over the place, block your screen when you visit a site on a mobile and rarely present anything of any real interest. I really dislike ads.
That wasn’t the case when I saw an advert for Cloudways. It said on it…
A worry-free Managed Hosting Experience
The advert also said it had FIVE cloud providers (no droplet or distribution nonsense), 24/7 expert support (no waiting for days to be acknowledged), unlimited apps per server (no shared hosting restrictions), free SSL and migration (I was paying extra for SSL!!).
If I’m honest, it sounded way too good to be true.
Taking Cloudways for a Test Drive
I visited the website, did some reading and was convinced enough to take them up on their free 3-day trial.
I got to work testing the server setup process, cloning a site using their migration plugin and having a go at editing server and application settings.
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It was like Cloudways was designed for someone like me. The following GIF visually and accurately represented how I felt about Cloudways. Don’t tell my wife!
I found my hosting soulmate!
I found my hosting soulmate. #happyAgencyOwner
Moving It All over to Cloudways
The very next day, back in January 2018, I signed up for an account and got myself a DigitalOcean secure server, running the latest Cloudways optimized WordPress version, chose the specs I wanted and the server location, and in less than 5 minutes, my new server was there in a central dashboard, ready to be used.
I moved all 15 sites over to Cloudways using their migration plugin, which made the entire process stupidly simple and hassle-free, just like their ad said!
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The Outcome
In a matter of about 3 days, I’d gone from a DevOps nightmare to a truly seamless and easy to manage central dashboard set up with dedicated servers and 1-Click install WordPress apps that you can migrate without any technical knowledge.
If you are keen to get away from a similar DevOps nightmare or move to reliable and dedicated hosting, instead of awful shared hosting, then I strongly encourage you to try Cloudways and make them your new hosting provider/platform.
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.
