About Root Solutions
Proudly independent and technically led, Root Solutions has been crafting bespoke digital experiences from its York base since 2006. Founder Simon Gamester brings more than two decades of development expertise to every project, serving clients that range from start-ups and charities to local authorities and established brands.
The agency’s offering has evolved significantly alongside the web itself. What began as full‑stack bespoke solutions for e‑commerce and e‑learning now embraces a hybrid model, where powerful open‑source software like WordPress is tailored to deliver the same quality at a lower cost, without compromising on depth or performance.
Despite choosing premium providers, Simon regularly encountered downtime and support delays that fell short of his own exacting standards. As a business built on long‑term client relationships, unreliable infrastructure undermined the very trust Root Solutions worked so hard to earn.
In early 2024, Simon began testing Cloudways with his own site. The migration tool, responsive live support, and seamless scaling quickly proved their value. Today, every Root Solutions client benefits from faster load times, rock-solid reliability, and a hosting platform that lets the team focus on what matters most: building platforms that genuinely work.
Cloudways: Can you introduce Root Solutions, your typical clients, and how your web design and development offering has evolved since founding the agency in 2006?
Simon Gamester: Our business was founded in 2006. I have been working in web design and development since 1999, supporting and maintaining websites and servers across multiple business/sectors before going it alone in 2006 and founding Root Solutions. We design, build, and support high‑quality, bespoke websites for businesses of every size, from start‑ups and charities to local authorities and established brands.
– Root Solution has worked with councils, national organisations, charities, and ambitious private sector brands across the UK. (Source: Root Solutions)
Our early focus was on full-stack bespoke solutions for e-commerce, e-learning, and the travel sector. As the industry evolved, our focus on many of our projects shifted to a hybrid approach, building bespoke solutions on top of open source software such as WordPress. This allows us to provide better value to our clients whilst achieving the same high-quality end product at a lower cost.
Cloudways: Before Cloudways, what hosting challenges were limiting performance, scalability, or client satisfaction, and how did those issues affect day-to-day operations?
Simon Gamester: Since 2006, web hosting has changed significantly, both from an architectural (transitioning from dedicated to reliable, stable virtual hosting) and a support standpoint.
We were early adopters of virtual servers in the 2000s, and commonly experienced frequent downtime events despite choosing premium hosting providers. Our experience also found that support response times were below our expectations and those of our clients.
– A portfolio shaped by 20+ years of thoughtful design, technical precision, and trusted client partnerships. (Source: Root Solutions)
Cloudways: What factors ultimately influenced your decision to choose Cloudways over other hosting providers, and what concerns did you need reassurance on?
Simon Gamester: Given our experiences with support, we wanted a managed hosting provider and discovered Cloudways; we felt that we would benefit from a company that provided support, expertise, and a stable, secure platform for our clients, and Cloudways offered a particular set of expertise (WordPress/Apache/MySQL) suitable for the needs of our clients.
Our main concerns were around support and the challenges of migration. Cloudway’s migration tool was therefore a key factor, particularly as we were able to carry out multiple test migrations before making the switch. As Cloudways appeared to have all these areas covered, we wanted to test this for ourselves using our own website.
We started working with Cloudways in early 2024, initially setting up a small, Flexible Server for our own website before committing to moving our portfolio of clients over to the new platform.
Cloudways: Can you describe your migration experience to Cloudways, including timelines, team effort involved, and how smoothly client websites transitioned?
Simon Gamester: Throughout the first half of 2024, we migrated all of our clients seamlessly over to the Cloudways Platform with a migration workflow that was transparent and highly effective. Our clients were reassured by being able to preview their sites on an easy-to-configure pre-production server prior to deployment.
– Cloudways’ WordPress Migrator enabled Root Solutions to migrate client sites quickly and securely, with full control over testing and deployment.
On the few occasions where we encountered issues, these were caught within our planned migration workflow well before going live – and of course, we were overwhelmed by the quality and responsiveness of Cloudways Support team, who were always on hand to quickly get issues resolved.
Cloudways: After moving to Cloudways, what specific, measurable improvements did you notice in site speed, reliability, security, or operational efficiency across client projects?
Simon Gamester: In addition to the monitoring data provided within the Cloudways Platform, we also have our own uptime monitoring server, which monitors server response times. As we transitioned our sites over to Cloudways, these were noticeably quicker over a sustained period of time throughout a typical week.
Our clients also benefited from better deployment workflows as new staging environments could be easily set up to allow us to quickly test updates or new features.
Local backups enabled us to quickly replicate development environments from live to ensure we could quickly replicate reported issues and develop fixes. Testing was also improved by integrating GIT to all our production websites, which was again easy to do using the Cloudways Platform.
As some of our clients’ businesses have grown, we’ve also been required on occasion to vertically scale our servers, both in terms of RAM / CPU and storage. In all cases, I’m happy to report that we’ve never encountered any issues with scaling, and the process has always been seamless and quick to complete with minimal disruption.
Cloudways: As your clients grew and traffic demands increased, how did you identify when a Flexible server was no longer sufficient, and what signals prompted you to explore Cloudways Autonomous?
Simon Gamester: Since December 2025, we’ve also deployed Cloudways Autonomous for one of our larger clients, who were expected to outgrow their Flexible Server prior to their January peak.
The availability of usable performance analytics and logging (all available within the Cloudways Platform) and conversations within the Support team meant we were able to identify the need to upgrade to Autonomous at the right time. The transition to the Autonomous distributed hosting platform provided a huge step up in performance for our client.
– With built-in autoscaling and load balancing, Cloudways Autonomous provided the performance headroom needed for Root Solutions’ high-traffic client sites.
Cloudways: After moving your client site to Cloudways Autonomous, what tangible improvements did you observe in performance, stability, or operational excellence during peak traffic periods?
Simon Gamester: We noticed an overall improvement in performance, irrespective of load from external factors. Previously, we would experience slower page loading times during peak hours of the day, but after moving to Cloudways Autonomous, performance remained consistent throughout these periods.
This was a measurable improvement in operational performance for the team of site administrators who were no longer hindered by page load times and were able to complete tasks more efficiently as a result. Overall, the main difference is that service is seamless and consistent irrespective of peak traffic periods and load.
Cloudways: Which Cloudways features or add-ons have become essential for your agency, and how do they support complex WordPress and bespoke projects?
Simon Gamester: Elastic Mail is a core component of our hosting offering. Having previously relied on third-party mail services such as Google or other SMTP providers, which frequently suffer from expired tokens or changed passwords, Elastic Mail is a highly reliable proposition that provides a long-term email delivery solution for our clients.
We also use Malware Protection for a number of our clients, as it can be quickly deployed through the Cloudways Platform. It’s easy to implement, competitively priced, and flexible, so we can add to clients as and when we need to.
– With integrated add-ons like Malware Protection, Cloudflare, DNS Made Easy, and Elastic Email, Root Solutions streamlined operations without relying on third-party tools.
Cloudways: Based on your experience, how does Cloudways compare with other hosting providers you’ve used in terms of support quality, flexibility, and value?
Simon Gamester: The standout feature for us is live chat support; the level of responsiveness is unmatched. The engineers are proactive in trying to resolve your issue and are immediately available to chat with, compared to other companies we have used, who are reliant on a ticketing system with longer lead times and SLAs.
With Cloudways, you have immediate access to engineers able to resolve your issue, which is something we value highly, having a similar approach in our own company.
Cloudways: What advice would you give web design and development agencies considering Cloudways, especially regarding scaling client sites and managing teams?
Simon Gamester: Experiment with the offerings Cloudways offers; it’s easy to configure and spin up servers to test applications of your choice and benchmark before making long-term decisions. The pricing doesn’t require long-term commitments, so you can test your needs and to see what will work for your budget.
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