Running a digital agency can get complicated: There is just too much to do. It is a never-ending ride of unending revisions, bizarre development challenges, creativity blockers, and emotional breakdowns.
However, creating digital experiences is satisfying and very rewarding, something the SFP team goes through every day.
“We have been in the field for over 16 years. Now, in our 16th year of business, we’ve worked with over 1,000 customers looking for something more than a generic web template,” says Robert Theodorow, CEO of SFP.
Theodorow’s team builds a wide variety of ecommerce solutions based on popular frameworks, Magento and WooCommerce.
“We’ve also built our own custom ecommerce product (EF3), leveraging the Laravel framework, for clients that have unique or specific business rules,” Theodorow explains.
They have worked in a diverse range of industries from high tech IT security to sports and entertainment, handling projects for small businesses to federal government contracts, and everything in between.
Theodorow’s Team at SFP
The Problem: Experiencing Degraded Performance
In the beginning, they hosted ecommerce applications on shared environments, within dedicated boxes set up for enterprise customers.
“As our customer base increased in size, and we started using new heavyweight frameworks such as Magento 2, we started experiencing site speed & performance issues, fork bombs, and severe downtimes,” Theodorow tells about his experience with shared hosting.
They needed a new hosting solution to grow their customer base and keep existing customers happy.
The Solution: Finding a Decent Host
So, Theodorow started searching for a solution that could help them fix hosting woes and focus on growth rather than chasing hosting problems. After researching several hosting options, he settled for a managed cloud hosting platform. One of his Magento development partners introduced Theodorow to Cloudways and described the smooth hosting experience for their projects.
“Cloudways was recommended to us by one of our experienced Magento development partners.”
Fearing how the managed cloud hosting will turn out, Theodorow planned and decided to take it slow.
SFP Planning & Meeting Room
Since the first cloud migration was free, he moved a Magento application to Cloudways to try it out.
“Having nearly all of my personal experience in the shared/dedicated hosting arena, I wasn’t sure what to expect when migrating our first Magento application to Cloudways,” Theodorow says.
However, it went well for the Theodorow and SFP.
“It was a very smooth experience for us, as the Cloudways engineers handled the migration and provided a staging URL for us to review prior to making any DNS changes and going live in the new environment.”
In fact, the transition was so smooth that SFP started offering additional improvements to its clients. Theodorow says, “We were able to offer improvements such as Varnish caching and other performance benefits to our clients” that were not available (or possible) in shared hosting environment.
The Result: Expectations Exceeded!
As SFP moves to grow its clientele, Cloudways continues to add value throughout the entire client lifecycle.
“We’ve really enjoyed the vertical scaling component of the service. As the needs of our clients change and grow, Cloudways offers a very friendly dashboard to easily scale our services and best meet those needs.”
Theodorow’s team can now launch servers and take their client’s sites live within minutes. Cloudways 1-click installation has made their work effortless.
“We can fire up new servers in a matter of minutes to build and manage our web applications.”
While SFP offers web development and design services, Cloudways has become an integral part of its offerings. SFP teams can easily create their client accounts and share servers with the click of a button.
“Our Cloudways experience has far exceeded expectations. The live chat customer service has been comforting, and web application performance improvements have made our clients very happy.”
Now, no matter what product they are developing, Theodorow’s team knows they can always rely on Cloudways for hosting and support, allowing them to become even more productive.
SFP Gaming Area
Cloudways ensures that SFP has a reliable managed cloud hosting partner that takes care of all server management hassles, leaving Theodorow free to focus on growing his business.
“We are grateful to have found an ideal managed cloud hosting platform for our customers, and look to grow our hosting business through Cloudways.”
Theodorow and his team of nearly 20 web professionals share a passion for great design, clean code, client satisfaction, and a culture that values big idea thinking. And Cloudways is the infrastructure partner that helps them turn their dreams into reality.
Abdur Rahman
Abdur Rahman is the Magento whizz at Cloudways. He is growth ambitious, and aims to learn & share information about Ecommerce & Magento Development through practice and experimentation. He loves to travel and explore new ideas whenever he finds time. Get in touch with him at [email protected]
