Focus & Flexibility: How Storyware Achieves 99.99% Uptime & DIY Control with Cloudways

About Storyware

Storyware, led by CEO Todd Wickersty, specializes in web development for nonprofits and universities. Its journey from a multi-platform service provider to a focused web development studio highlights its adaptability and commitment to efficiency.

Typically, Storyware undertakes website redesigns using WordPress as the CMS. Its expertise in extending WordPress and API integrations has made it a preferred choice among clients. The company’s strong reputation is built on recommendations from partners and existing customers.

In addition to development, Storyware offers continuous website management, including hosting services through its partnership with Cloudways. This partnership has resulted in significant benefits such as cost savings, reduced downtime, and enhanced support.

Cloudways: Could you please tell us about your role, what you do, and what services your company offers?

Todd Wickersty: I am the CEO & Founder of Storyware, a web development studio specializing in creating websites and web applications for nonprofits, universities, and similar organizations.

Our primary services are web design, development, and maintenance . We also work with other design studios and agencies who seek a dependable web development partner.

Cloudways: How has your web development studio grown over the years, and what makes your company special?

Todd Wickersty: We started working with various technologies and platforms, trying to be everything to everyone.

Over the years, we’ve learned from experience that honing in on particular solutions and services has enabled us to become very efficient and, therefore, successful.

What makes us special are our people and processes. We are focused first and foremost on our customers through the creation and continuous improvement of our processes.

These processes enable us to be flexible and efficient while enabling our customers to scale and make changes easily.

Cloudways: What does a typical project look like for your company, and why do customers choose your company?

Todd Wickersty: Our typical project is a website redesign, usually leveraging WordPress as the CMS. We will extend WordPress for each customer, building on top of native WordPress functionality to create a more intuitive content management experience.

Most of our projects include API integrations with other platforms or services.

Our customers choose Storyware because we come highly recommended by our partners and existing customers. This goes back to our customer-centric approach fueled by our people and processes.

Cloudways: Do you manage websites for your clients continuously, or just develop them? If you manage them, does that include hosting?

Todd Wickersty: Yes, we do both! We include hosting in our maintenance plans , and our hosting partner has been Cloudways for several years.

We recommend, implement, and manage hosting services on Cloudways for all our maintenance customers.

In addition, we handle all of the communication with Cloudways on behalf of our customers. Related to that, we leverage Cloudways’ advanced support options, which is a fantastic service.

Cloudways: Could you share your experience with Cloudways? Specifically, how long have you been using our services, and what motivated you to choose it?

Todd Wickersty: We have been using Cloudways since 2021. We succeeded with a managed hosting solution with a previous provider for several years.

After a few years, downtime incidents increased, and their support deteriorated. After a number of downtime incidents, we decided to find another hosting provider and decided on Cloudways.

Cloudways has the level of support we need as a company and offers a modern tech stack. Most customers save at least $11/month on hosting when we switch their sites from SiteGround to Cloudways .

We have experienced less downtime than other providers, and the support is instantaneous. We love the freedom and flexibility of controlling our own cloud server without having to manage it completely.

Cloudways: Please share any measurable improvements Cloudways has brought about and highlight its most valuable features.

Todd Wickersty: In a 30-day period, we usually run at 99.99% uptime across all servers we manage through Cloudways, according to our monitoring tools . That lines up with our anecdotal experience as well. Fewer emergencies on the weekends make everyone happy.

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The service we have leveraged the most is the ability to customize our deployment process, for which we use Envoyer, through Cloudways Custom PHP applications on DigitalOcean.

We also enjoy the ability to do some admin tasks that would otherwise be tedious with the click of a button – adding Let’s Encrypt , whitelisting IP addresses for server and MySQL access , and adding cron jobs, among other things.

Cloudways: Do you use Cloudways Support and DigitalOcean servers? If so, could you share your experience and reasons for choosing them?

Todd Wickersty: Yes, we take advantage of Cloudways support for certain server administration tasks or for troubleshooting issues. In our experience, the response times are quick and reliable.

Yes, we are using DigitalOcean. We chose DigitalOcean for its reputation, ease of use , and competitive pricing.

Cloudways: What value does Cloudways provide to your business? Is there anything else you would like to add?

Todd Wickersty: We can keep costs low and scale servers as needed to pass that value onto our clients. There are many hosting companies in the market today, but we’ve been happy with Cloudways for a while now and have no reason to look elsewhere.

Our websites are still chugging along nicely with record uptimes. No need to fix what ain’t broken! We value that stability and look forward to seeing how the service evolves.

Cloudways: Why would you recommend Cloudways to others from the same industry? How would you describe your hosting using Cloudways?

Todd Wickersty: We recommend Cloudways to anyone who builds websites looking for a nice balance between do-it-yourself and managed hosting.

Cloudways gives you flexibility without requiring you to spend all your time administering servers. It is especially beneficial for small to medium-sized agencies like ourselves that do not have a fleet of server admins.

We have experienced less downtime and greater flexibility after using Cloudways.