How Marcadanmia Uses Fast Servers on MODX to Outperform Most Agencies with Cloudways

About Marcadanmia

Based on the center of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Marcadanmia is a marketing agency that is a well known as a core contributor of MODX CMS and has a solid base of customers for providing assert in choosing the best solution for content management and a robust platform that could absorb all the infrastructure they need.

Not only do they design websites, but also manage websites for their clients. Marcadanmia was on the hunt for a reliable foundation that would set no limits for their clients. That’s when they came across Cloudways.

Cloudways: Can you tell us what Marcadanmia is all about? What’s your vision, and what industries do you serve?

Roca: Marcadanmia is a marketing agency based in Brazil focused on branding, everything that can enhance the visibility of the brand. We offer several solutions, whether it is a design or even an app. We serve public governmental companies (B2G) as a focus and private companies (B2B).

Cloudways: What challenges were you facing with your hosting that compelled you to start looking for a better solution?

Roca: We always work with hosting companies in the market to ensure quality and security. In 2011, we started a partnership with Rackspace Cloud until it was sold to LiquidWeb in 2016, so the quality was not satisfactory (older servers). In addition to the high price made us discontinued the service.

Cloudways: What specific solution were you looking for? According to you, what was the ideal solution to the problem?

Roca: We were looking for a PaaS solution that would provide scalable PHP with good performance for multiple apps. Of course, this was the essential requirement to change platforms and security and native backup. At the time (2017), Cloudways had resources above expectations, making us wise decisions.

Cloudways: How did you come across Cloudways? Did you hear anything about Cloudways prior to using it? Were you using any other hosting solution before?

Roca: Cloudways at the time (2017) was popular because it provided DigitalOcean servers, where the cost-benefit was very interesting. But I read a lot of positive reviews on ProductHunt about the company, but as I said earlier, we used Rackspace Cloud.

Cloudways: What was your experience with Cloudways when you first signed up? Please tell us your first impressions.

Roca: The first was security. The system has several options to passively prevent access (SFTP and SSH); the fact that you can create and/or clone different apps from a server minimizes the effort for those who work with many domains and the autonomy of being able to carry out configurations per app and per server.

Cloudways: How did you figure Cloudways had the best solution for your problems?

Roca: We did several compatibility, performance, and latency tests with the framework we use using DigitalOcean servers, where the result was very satisfactory.

Cloudways: What features of Cloudways helped you scale and optimize MODX CMS websites?

Roca: Separate settings for each app help maintain security, as well as versioning via backup and deploy via Git.

Cloudways: You are an integral part of the MODX Community and a contributor to the MODX 3 version from Brazil. Can you please tell us a bit more about the contribution role you played in the MODX 3 version?

Roca: My history with MODX is old since 2011 when I was looking for a framework on the web where I had the freedom to program static and dynamic sites without relying on plastered codes. I was migrating from ASP to .NET, but I gave up because of the cost of having Windows servers at the time, so I switched to PHP, and to this day, our agency maintains this open-source culture. But since then, my contribution to MODX in Brazil has only been collaborating with translations into Portuguese (PT/BR). As a MODX ambassador, I am encouraging Brazilian developers and designers to use the open-source framework.

Cloudways: You are hosting 40+ of your MODX Apps on Cloudways. Can you please let us know what are the features that convinced you to host these applications? And in your opinion, what sets us apart from other hosting providers?

Roca: Cloudways’ support is very efficient, and this is a good differential despite not having a native language of my country, but the system is very complete, and I haven’t seen any bugs during the time that we are customers, and each time the platform has been gaining more resources, but something important is being able to scale the server at any time if you need to.

Cloudways: What three features do you consider to be Cloudways’ most important?

Roca: Scaling, versioning, and cost-effectiveness.

Cloudways: Out of five cloud providers available on Cloudways, which one(s) do you prefer to use and why?

Roca: DigitalOcean serves the profile well with the best cost-benefit for the profile of customers that we have today.

Cloudways: What kind of websites are you building with MODX CMS for yourself or for your clients?

Roca: We have a variety of customer profiles from private, public, and non-governmental companies, from institutional websites, on-demand systems, and API integrations, both built with MODX.

Cloudways: Do you have any advice for MODX CMS users that may face the same problem as you did?

Roca: My advice before choosing a good CMS/Framework is if it provides security and freedom, today, we have some popular open-source CMS on the market, but they are vulnerable to attacks, and this for an agency can jeopardize credibility with clients.

Development time is also relevant. Thanks to the cache system, we have already managed to build complete websites in less than 72 hours, thanks to the resources that MODX offers and the high performance when processing pages. It really is worth rethinking what CMS you currently use and trying out MODX.

Cloudways: Can you share any specific KPI or metric that shows how Cloudways works better with MODX CMS?

Roca: MODX has a cache system; it is not necessary to consult the database when processing static data; in this case, it is not necessary to use Varnish Cache. In numbers, this means that in an analysis of the last 90 days, a server’s CPU consumed less than 20% of its capacity. That is, I can have several domains with less server processing capacity; obviously, it depends on the type of site that will be hosted.

Cloudways: Thank you for your time, Roca Oliveira. We wish you the very best on your journey with Marcadanmia.

Roca: Thanks Shahzeb, Obrigado Bye!

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