Digital Agency Smart Web Development Scales to 60 Sites With 30-40% Faster Loads and Cloudways AI Agents

About Smart Web Development

Heinrich Liesner runs Smart Web Development, an agency based in Dungarvan, Ireland, building conversion focused websites for a specific kind of client. Many of his customers are psychotherapists and holistic therapists, alongside businesses in the medical device space, where visitors are often making sensitive decisions and expect a site that simply works.

Since becoming a Cloudways customer in 2020, Liesner’s portfolio has grown considerably, and managing that many WordPress installations for clients who rarely think about hosting at all requires a platform that quietly does its job in the background, without asking him to become a server administrator in the process.

Before Cloudways, that kind of quiet reliability was hard to come by. Liesner had spent years on shared hosting platforms that left him second guessing his own backups, and today he runs dozens of client sites, is testing early AI agent deployments, and recommends Cloudways to other agency owners without hesitation. Here is how that shift happened.

– Smart Web Development’s service lineup spans mobile-first design, e-commerce, social media management, and online training platforms. (Source: smartwebdevelopment.net)

The Challenge: Backups Without Certainty

Before moving to Cloudways, Liesner hosted his clients’ WordPress sites on shared hosting platforms from providers in both the UK and Ireland. Speed was one issue, but the bigger problem was the hosting panel itself and what he could and could not trust it to do.

Switching providers rarely helped, since most of them relied on the same underlying tools.

As Heinrich Liesner described it, “even if you go to more sophisticated hosting companies, providers, they still would work with cPanel.” Changing vendors did not change the fundamental experience.

“You will not be a hundred percent sure that the backup worked. And when you restore it, you might come up with a completely different result.” — Heinrich Liesner

For an agency built around client trust, that kind of guesswork was not sustainable. Liesner needed a platform where a backup meant an actual, restorable backup, every time, regardless of how many client sites depended on it.

The Solution: From Hosting to AI Agents

Liesner’s first impression of the Cloudways platform was disbelief that something could be this straightforward after years of cPanel.

As Heinrich Liesner put it, “I think it cannot be it. There must be something more complicated behind it. But it wasn’t.” He could create a backup at any time, copy a site to the same server or a different one, and apply that copy back to the original without disrupting a live client website.

– The Cloudways platform shows a simple backup setup, with schedule time, frequency, and retention chosen from dropdowns, plus a one-click ‘Take Backup Now’ option. (Source: unified.cloudways.com)

Migration was similarly uneventful. He moved most of his early sites over himself using a WordPress migration plugin, later switching to Cloudways’ own migration tool, and found both approaches worked seamlessly.

He was also able to bring a colleague onto the platform directly, splitting hosting management across his small team, and he credits the proactive alerts about server or security issues, plus responsive support, with never leaving a problem unresolved.

That same comfort with the platform shaped how he approached Cloudways’ managed AI agents. Liesner deployed the Hermes agent on a dedicated instance, added his own OpenAI API key, and connected it to WhatsApp through the browser.

– Cloudways dashboard shows Agent Details, SSH credentials, OpenAI as the LLM provider, WhatsApp as a connected channel, and automated daily backups. (Source: unified.cloudways.com)

“The setup was extremely easy. I connected it via the browser to WhatsApp, and it’s good to know that it sits on my platform that I’m so used to instead of going elsewhere.” — Heinrich Liesner

That comfort factor mattered more to Liesner than trying something entirely new. Testing an AI agent on infrastructure he already trusted felt like a lower risk way to start experimenting, rather than adding another unfamiliar vendor into the mix.

As a next step, he’s planning to explore OpenClaw, staying within the same platform he already relies on.

The Result: Faster Sites, Steady Growth

Since 2020, Liesner’s hosted portfolio has grown from roughly 25 websites to his current total of 60, spread across Cloudways servers he manages directly.

Client site load times improved by 30 to 40 percent after migrating to Cloudways.

Portfolio has grown to 60 websites, up from roughly 25 in his first year on the platform.

– Smart Web Development’s results include 3x more leads, a 95% retention rate, and over $23 million in revenue generated. (Source: smartwebdevelopment.net)

Outages have not been a concern either.

As Heinrich Liesner explained, “I did not have long outages. I’ve never experienced a prolonged outage of a web server on Cloudways.” When a server does flag a minor issue, he gets notified immediately and typically sees it resolved within minutes.

“If you want a reliable, easy to use hosting platform that is very price sensitive, Cloudways is your partner.” — Heinrich Liesner

For Liesner, that reliability has become invisible in the best way. His clients do not know where their sites are hosted, only that they stay up, and many have stayed with him for years without ever needing to ask.

He is also looking ahead, experimenting with AI powered page building plugins and a static site platform, and expects AI to work its way further into his services over time. For now, moving from uncertain backups to a fast, monitored environment with early AI agent support has been enough to make him an easy advocate for other agencies weighing the same decision.

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