Anton Bild has been building websites for around 5 years now, with a passion for creating online magazines and knowledge platforms. Before he started a new WordPress business, he worked as technical support for some of the biggest tech names in the industry. We’re thrilled to have him with us today as he talks about how he used Cloudways to improve user experience.
Farhan: Hi Anton, please tell us a little bit about yourself. How and when did you start? What are some of the projects that you are proud of?
Anton: Hi Farhan. My name is Anton and I come from a small country in Europe. I started creating websites around 4-5 years ago.
I have always had an interest in computers and writing. Thus, it came natural to create websites that I fill with content.
I write a lot about cooking and fitness, as I have a huge interest in both. But I also have a website in my native language, called Teknika.se, where I mainly write about computers, laptops and Internet security.
I’m a true nerd, so Teknika is a project that I am very passionate about.
Farhan: You’ve been building websites for more than 4 years. What’s your favorite web development technology (custom PHP, WordPress, Joomla, etc)? What are your areas of interest when it comes to web development?
Anton: WordPress, without a doubt. I’ve tried creating websites in notepad using only HTML, maybe 15 years ago. But it was not for me.
WordPress is very user-friendly and a joy to use. I’ve been using several themes, from the bloated ones to the frameworks where I have to do some coding myself.
WordPress fits all types of levels, from the complete beginner to advanced users.
I really enjoy optimizing my website in every possible way. From user experience to content creation, web graphics, and website speed.
Going “under the hood” of both the website and server is quite interesting, and there is a lot to learn.
I’ve seen a couple of Cloudways lectures about speeding up your website and I’d recommend anyone who builds websites to dive into those lessons.
Cloudways also have a huge knowledge base with very valuable information. For example, this article was very useful.
Farhan: You started as a technical support and ended up as a web developer. Could you please tell us about your motivation behind it? What is your experience with WordPress and how important it is for your business?
Anton: I enjoy IT and I like helping people, so technical support was quite ok. But answering the same questions every day and dealing with difficult customers can get pretty frustrating after a few years. So, I decided it was time to do something different.
WordPress is crucial to my business, as my business is my website. Without it, I wouldn’t make any money. If WordPress were to be wiped off the face of the earth, then I would have to look into Joomla or some similar framework.
I like the fact that WordPress has made it so accessible for people like myself to build websites. Believe me, I have no talent for either coding nor graphics – but with WordPress as a base, I can create something that is at least ok.
Farhan: You love writing articles. How do you manage your multiple roles? Are you running any blogging site with Cloudways?
Anton: It can be hectic. I work a lot. Days, evenings, weekends, holidays, and so on. I work much more than when I had a 9 to 5 job. It’s not unusual that I work from 8 in the morning to 9-10 in the evening.
I have to write content, manage the website, taxes, work relations and the list goes on. So, I need to wear many hats. But I am motivated, I enjoy what I do and my wife is supportive – so it works out. But believe me, the amount of Excel sheets and folders I have is crazy.
I have several sites on Cloudways. I wouldn’t call any of my sites blogs – they are more like small magazines. It’s not only me writing for my websites, I also hire people to write articles, which helps a lot.
After moving one of my sites to Cloudways and using it for a while, I decided to do the same with the rest of my sites. The speed, support and functionality were far greater than anything I’ve used previously. We’re talking about a night and day difference.
Farhan: Where did you first hear about Cloudways? What was your first impression about it?
Anton: I’m not really sure where I heard about Cloudways first.
In the beginning, I used a shared hosting server, which was very troublesome. Downtime and sometimes poor speeds. I also read that it could have a negative effect on security.
Thus, I moved over to a self-managed VPS. Which felt like being thrown out in the ocean, without being able to swim. The gap between the amount of work and my lack of knowledge on how to run a VPS was far too much.
I was reading about how to manage your own server for several days, but I met problem after problem from day one. It was extremely time-consuming. I lost around two weeks trying to set everything up correctly.
Then I heard about managed VPS hosting. Which, in my country, was incredibly expensive. Like a sign from the sky, I, somehow, found Cloudways. Most likely I read about you guys on a forum.
I looked into it and it sounded great. Exactly what I was looking for. I bought a small VPS and tried it out.
Speeds were top-notch, support was quick and it was extremely easy to install and manage. Fast-forward a few years and now I’m sitting on +10 servers with Cloudways.
Farhan: What made you switch from the previous hosting solution to Cloudways? How Cloudways helped you tackle the challenges and fulfilling your desired requirements?
Anton: The thing with shared hosting is that you are not alone. Your speeds depend on your neighbors, i.e the other websites on the server. If they are spammy, hacked, or have a lot of visitors – it can affect my website negatively.
The speeds were quite poor, and if a site used too much bandwidth, it could be “out of reach” for an hour or so.
I didn’t want to run a business that way. I want it to be fast, secure, easy to manage, and stable.
Cloudways provided me with all the above. People always say “if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”. I think Cloudways and my wife are the only things that go against that rule. Without sounding cliché.
I’ve not had a single problem with Cloudways during my years here, with my 10+ servers and 23 applications.
Whenever I’ve had a problem, it’s been on my own end (website or registrar). When I have contacted support, they have always been very quick, informative, and responsive. No matter the issue. I think that is very rare nowadays.
Since I have a technical support and customer service background, I appreciate the support Cloudways has for me as a user. You can tell that the management actually put an effort into the support quality.
Farhan: As you mentioned, you are running 10+ servers and 23 applications with Cloudways. So, what types of websites are you mainly hosting? What’s your favorite cloud server and why (Linode, DO, Vultr, AWS, or GCP)?
Anton: Most of my sites are magazine types. I usually refer to them as “knowledge bases”. Whatever the topic is, my aim is to fill the website with as much information about that topic as possible. When people think of fishing, I want people to think of my site – because they know that it’s almost an encyclopedia.
The number of articles varies of course. Some sites get more attention than others. But that is my goal with each individual site.
I use Digital Ocean and Vultr. My newest servers use Vultr’s new High Frequency VPS’s. When I have tested and compared them, I’ve noticed that those servers give me most bang for the buck. Superb speeds!
In terms of stability, both DO and Vultr are awesome.
Farhan: What would have happened if you had not made the purchase?
Anton: If I would never have found Cloudways, I would for sure be a lot poorer than I am today. I would probably buy an overpriced managed VPS hosting solution.
If not, I would probably have spent weeks, if not months, to learn and manage my own VPS. Which would probably have led to security and stability issues in the long-run.
But who knows. Maybe I would have fallen back to shared hosting again and lived with the poor speeds.
Farhan: How long have you been with Cloudways and how’s your experience so far? Would you recommend Cloudways to anyone?
Anton: I had to go through my invoices in the control panel to see how long I’ve been with Cloudways. The first invoice was dated back to 2018. In other words, 3 years.
My experience has been splendid. Since moving all of my websites here, the thought of going someplace else has never even crossed my mind. I have everything I have here, and I hope it continues that way.
Considering what I do – I am active on several business and marketing forums. I always recommend Cloudways there. I’m actually surprised that some people still use those expensive shared hosting, especially for a business. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I did that.
Farhan: How does Cloudways stand out from the rest? What do you think about the performance, speed, and security offered by Cloudways?
Anton: Cloudways stands out in every possible way to me, as a business owner.
Speed is flawless. It, of course, depends on more variables than just the server. But from my tests, Cloudways performs much better than any other hosting I’ve used before. When comparing sites that use the same theme as me, but different hosting, I always come out on top. Always.
When I moved my websites from other hosting providers, I always did several speed tests. Every time the speeds increased dramatically when I moved to Cloudways. We’re talking 1-2 seconds faster, which is a lot, considering I only switched servers.
Security is also a reason why I love Cloudways. 2FA, free SSL Certificates, firewalls for the servers, bot protection, and so on. I’ve never had a breach during my 3 years here and I hope it continues like that. Cloudways also sends me emails when users have been locked out and such. I feel very safe.
Price is a big one. I pay around $10 for one VPS. That’s insanely cheap! Updates, security, optimized settings and all that time-consuming stuff is handled by Cloudways. On my previous hosting, which had bad speeds and poor UI, I paid $60 for the managed hosting.
Cloudways is, without a doubt, the most price-worthy hosting I’ve come across – and I have done a lot of research and testing prior.
User experience should be mentioned as well. I am a tech-nerd, but when it comes to running a server, I am in deep waters. The UI on Cloudways is fantastic. I can make changes and test things within seconds, which would take days or weeks to figure out on self-managed hosting.
It’s easy and fast to navigate through the control panel on Cloudways, even for those who have no experience what-so-ever.
Cloudways’ massive blog containing guides, tips, and instructions is a gold mine as well. Whatever I search for on the blog, there are always a couple of blog posts to help me out.
This is the number one thing I love about Cloudways. The speed, security, and stability are great and vital for my business. But the user support is on another level.
I have never in my life seen a company with this great support. Both in terms of problem solving, user interface, and the knowledge shared in the blog. The care for their customers is unique and one of the reasons why I have more trust in them than in any other company. Ever.
Farhan: Any pictures you’d like to share of stats, performance, team, or anything else?
Anton: I’ve attached 3 pictures.
Picture 1: This is the Google result from one of my homepages. It runs smooth as butter. It’s not 100, but over 90 is totally fine. It’s better than average. If I would try to get it higher, I would most likely have to sacrifice some of the user experience.
Keep in mind that this page has a lot of pictures on it. It’s the typical frontpage of a magazine. So I’m very happy with this result.
Picture 2: This picture is from the same site as picture 1, but it’s from testing an article.
The article contains over 2k words, around 14 images and a bunch of code with flashy designs. The layout is quite simple and I have managed to decrease the size of the page to around 400 kb.
Picture 3: This is the result from another website. The article is kind of the same as above, with around 14 pictures, lots of text, buttons, CSS code and so on.
This website is not updated properly. The logo is not compressed, the theme is not updated to the latest version and a bunch of plugins are outdated, too. I don’t even think I have configured the cache plugin yet. I haven’t checked the server settings either.
Yet, it performs quite well. When compared with my competition, it’s much, much faster.
Farhan Ayub
Farhan is a community manager at Cloudways. He loves to work with WordPress and has a passion for web development. Mostly, he spends his time interacting with the people in the WordPress community. Apart from his work life, Farhan spends his time gaming and playing sports. Feel free to contact him at [email protected]
