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About Brand On Fire LLC
Brand On Fire LLC is a web design and development agency, which also offers internet marketing consultation and hosting to its clients. They become their clients’ partners in growing their business and boosting their brand. Brand On Fire started working in WordPress in 2011. Since then, they have supported small to medium-sized businesses all over the world, and have been able to successfully implement a variety of unique projects in different industries.
Cloudways: What’s your agency name, and where is your agency’s headquarters situated?
Brandon Ernst: My agency is called Brand on Fire LLC. It is located in San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA.
Cloudways: Tell us about yourself. What is your designation at the agency? What are your core responsibilities?
Brandon Ernst: I am the Founder & CEO, and I work with a team of independent contractors, supporting our projects, developers, designers, etc.
Cloudways: What services does your agency provide, and how do you solve your customer’s problem?
Brandon Ernst: We provide services like web design and development, website hosting, and a wide variety of marketing services, including SEO/SEM/SMM, content marketing, reputation management, brand guides, and more.
Cloudways: How did you first hear about Cloudways? Name one major problem that you were facing that made you switch to Cloudways. Something that was the tipping point, and how Cloudways fixed that for you.
Brandon Ernst: I was looking around the internet on WordPress forums for the best hosting providers. I was looking for both costs, so I could resell the hosting at a reasonable margin to my clients and reliability, as I don’t want to spend time dealing with server issues, downtime, etc. Cloudways was the perfect intersection between both cost and reliability. I initially started testing it with around 10 sites for a month or so, and when I found that it was running smoothly – better than the previous hosting, I migrated all the rest of our 50 sites over with the help of their amazing team. Shoutout to Phil for the awesome help!
Miro vs. Mural: The Best Whiteboard Collaboration Tool for AgenciesCloudways: Before Cloudways, which hosting solution did you use? Are you using any other hosting service currently? If “Yes” Why?
Brandon Ernst: We were using a VPS from InMotionHosting to host all of our sites. As I’m not a systems administrator, I had to rely on their support for any performance issues or customizations frequently. We aren’t using any other hosting provider anymore, as Cloudways fits all of our needs.
Cloudways: What was your experience like with Cloudways when you first signed up? Please tell us about first impressions.
Brandon Ernst: Everything was extremely easy to manage. The only hiccups were the fact that we had 50+ migrations, and I didn’t want to submit a separate ticket for each migration with its own login details, etc. That’s when I reached out to the team to ask what could be done, and they were able to help seamlessly migrate all 50 sites with one ticket. Since then, it has been really smooth sailing. I’ve only needed the support team for a few small things, and they’ve been enormously helpful. Way better than I’ve ever experienced before – with no wait times on the Silver plan of support (paying more than $100/month in total).
Cloudways: In your opinion, what sets us apart from other hosting providers? How has our in-built support for Php-based apps such as WordPress, Laravel, and Magento made matters easier for you?
Brandon Ernst: Cloudways allows you to take advantage of the scalability and power of platforms like Digital Ocean, VULTR, etc., without being a systems administrator or having expertise with a server. Before, it would have been expensive for me to upgrade a single VPS running a lot of sites. Now, I have my sites broken up across multiple, smaller servers that are dedicated to specific clients or projects, increasing reliability, security, and scalability.
Clickup vs. Monday: The Best Project Management Tool for AgenciesCloudways: How do you use Cloudways to solve your client’s problem(s)?
Brandon Ernst: There are a few ways Cloudways has benefited our clients. Mainly, there is never any downtime, and if something goes wrong, the team is right there to help. We also take advantage of the Staging mechanism for our Enterprise clients, who want to have backend access to their site while minimizing all possibility of downtime.
Cloudways: How has Cloudways contributed to the success of your agency? Tell us about how Cloudways’ features align with your needs.
Brandon Ernst: Cloudways solved all of the hosting issues we had with reliability and downtime in a previous host without a major increase in our budget. The benefits far outweigh any increase in costs. Had we upgraded to a higher-end VPS with our previous host, there was no guarantee problems would be resolved, and we would be spending almost exactly the same as we are spending now with Cloudways. I still would have needed to be an expert systems administrator to manage our hosting, which I don’t have the time to become. Cloudways alleviated all those problems and increased our ability to serve our customers.
Cloudways: Out of five cloud providers available on Cloudways which one(s) do you prefer to use and why?
Brandon Ernst: Digital Ocean. Lowest cost and still extremely reliable.
Cloudways: How do you resell Cloudways to your clients?
Brandon Ernst: We have a fixed hosting fee annually and offer either a dedicated or shared server.
Cloudways: If you could briefly describe the values you perceive from Cloudways?
Brandon Ernst: Cloudways team members have always displayed positivity and a “can-do” attitude when faced with any problem. They’ve always been friendly and helpful, willing to go the extra mile.
Cloudways: How do you feel about being a part of the Cloudways Agency Partnership Program? What additional value does the program provide you? Do you think this program is going to help your agency grow in the long run?
Brandon Ernst: We are new to the program and excited to see what comes!
Cloudways: Do you think that by switching to Cloudways, you were able to free up resources at your end? If yes, how were you able to utilize those?
Brandon Ernst: Yes, I saved a great deal of time. I was spending full days dealing with hosting problems before, which was just killing my ability to serve my clients and grow my business with everything on my plate.
Cloudways: Thank you Brandon for being with us and sharing your valuable insights on your journey with Cloudways.
Brandon Ernst: Thank you Cloudways. It’s been a pleasure being with you.
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