Web Agency XO Pandora Scales 95+ Clients with 5x Hosting Resources & Instant Support with Cloudways

About XO Pandora

XO Pandora started small in 2004. Now, it’s a full-service web agency with a team of five. They serve over 95 clients. Their work includes website design, development, SEO, and more. The agency helps mid to large businesses across many different industries. Every day brings exciting new challenges for them.

Finding a good website hosting was a real struggle. They tried many providers, even managing their own servers. Costs and poor support caused headaches. Switching clients to Cloudways solved these big problems. Cloudways offered fair prices and easy scaling. Most importantly, their support team was incredibly fast and helpful.

Moving clients to Cloudways was smooth. The results were amazing! Websites loaded much faster and ran more reliably. Scaling up for busy times was simple with just one click. The Cloudways partnership also made winning and supporting clients easier for XO Pandora. Discover how this switch transformed their business.

Cloudways: Can you tell us about your business? What role do you play in the team, how big your team is, who your target clients are, and what makes your agency stand out?

Jacob Stansky: XO Pandora started as a single-person web design shop in 2004 and has since grown into a full-service web development agency, serving over 95 clients nationwide. We provide web development, website design, CMS conversion, email marketing, ADA Compliance, and SEO solutions.

As the President and CEO of the company, it’s my responsibility to drive the company’s growth by attracting new clients and developing innovative service offerings and client services. However, I still jump in with daily website updates for clients at every level. I’m also the new website or redesign website project concept designer.

XO Pandora’s target clients are mid to enterprise-level clients in almost any industry. I’ve felt this is one of the aspects that makes us unique as an agency. Our day can span from updating photos of racing pigs and carnival rides for our fair clients to troubleshooting annual renewal custom coding solutions for a large-scale membership management system. Our diverse client base keeps every day interesting.

I feel what makes us stand out can be summed up in one word: experience.

We know when to help a client out with something they don’t understand. We know how/when to communicate. We know how to appraise and price any project. We understand accountability and timelines. We know how to make the client feel valued. We know how to break down complex phases of a project as well as how to present opportunities the client doesn’t see or know about. We know how to help a client from DNS to SEO. What we provide our clients is the culmination of 20+ years of working with clients.

Cloudways: Which hosting providers were you using, and what specific challenges did you face, whether it was speed, downtime, support, or client management?

Jacob Stansky: When we started, we were always suggesting hosting services like GoDaddy or HostGator (circa 2004). Then we decided to build our server and host clients, which proved to be a disaster. We reverted to simply directing clients to hosting solutions, having them set up accounts, and then inviting us to manage those accounts. This ensured we didn’t have to worry about billing aspects, such as updating a credit card on file for X number of client accounts or separating invoicing.

Around 2020, we began managing hosting for our larger clients, using WP Engine as our hosting provider. We’d purchase the dedicated servers and then invoice our clients for their portion of the server. WP Engine was an excellent service, but their pricing structure was not practical for many clients. They didn’t offer a “scalable” option at a reasonable price, so many event-based clients did not fit their model.

Overall, WP Engine pricing was severely misaligned with the marketplace. Slowly, chat support went from 1-2 minutes to get a tech to 30+ minutes to get a tech. Then, there was the big fallout with Matt Mullenweg. This sent a significant shockwave through our industry, forcing us to explore alternative options, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. That’s when we found Cloudways.’

– Unlike WP Engine’s 30-min support waits, Cloudways resolved issues in minutes while offering 5x more resources per dollar.

Cloudways: Were there moments where slow performance or unreliable uptime impacted your clients, your reputation, or your internal operations?

Jacob Stansky: In the 21+ years of working with websites, I must say that we’ve always been fortunate, as performance or uptime has rarely been a factor for us. This goes back to “what makes our agency stand out,” but when those situations did arise, we always dropped everything to help our clients. In an odd way, such issues only made us more invaluable in our clients’ eyes. Yes, it’s a situation that disrupts your day, but overall, it’s so rare nowadays that it’s just part of the business model (one that cares about its clients).

If we receive complaints of slow website performance or notice it ourselves, we’re always keen to identify the root of the issue (malware, brute force attacks, PHP leaks, poor-performing plugins, clients uploading large images to pages, etc.) and help resolve the issue. From there, we communicate with our clients about the problem, how it was determined, and the safeguards we put in place to mitigate such potential issues in the future. This is what we mean by “full service” – it’s not just that we offer a wide range of online business aspects, but that the client can rest assured knowing we are properly managing their account.

Cloudways: What criteria mattered the most: ease of use, performance, scalability, customer support, or something else entirely?

Jacob Stansky: I believe this question pertains to “why the switch to Cloudways?” and I can honestly say it was the pricing model that got us interested enough to explore Cloudways further. What sealed the deal was:

• Support
• A server management dashboard that gave access to manage server services directly
• Five cloud provider options
• Ease of scalability with individual control over server options (space, CPU, etc.)
• A user-friendly dashboard
• Integrated services like a malware scanner, Elastic Mail, etc.

– Cloudways’ scaling slider dynamically adjusts server resources during traffic spikes.

But most importantly, and most impressive, is the Cloudways Support team. Since we first moved over to Cloudways in September 2024, I think I have been on no fewer than 100 to 125 support chats for various reasons (issues, education, consulting/general questions), and every single time chat support has resolved the need within a single chat and in an impressively quick time. Some chats required digging deep into an issue, and the support agent simply took the initiative to go as deep as needed to resolve the issue with a positive attitude.

Cloudways: Did you compare it directly with previous solutions? If so, what stood out in Cloudways’ offering compared to your previous host(s)?

Yes, after WP Engine, we started exploring other hosting solutions. Kinsta was one, and it was a close call until we saw you have to pay extra (per application) to set the Memory above 256M. It’s those little “nickel and dime” things that agitate us enough to say “nope.” There are always direct solutions with AWS or Google, but we’re more of a design/development agency, not IT experts. Working with AWS directly takes a certain level of skillset. Having Cloudways as our intermediary between complex AWS server management is extremely worth the cost difference.

Cloudways: How easy was it to set up and migrate your sites to Cloudways? Did you run into any issues, and how was the support during this phase?

Jacob Stansky: This piggybacks on my “what criteria mattered the most” reply, but when we first started migrating, we had a lot of need to connect with chat support. We encountered some minor, yet silly, issues that we overlooked, as well as some more serious technical problems.

Overall, the migration process was extremely easy. We manually migrated over 40 clients (some with multiple websites) in a week. We know Cloudways provided a free migration service, but the process was so easy that we wanted to have manual control to help with DNS changes and timing for our clients.

Cloudways impressed us from the start with an easy-to-use interface and sealed the deal with their 5+ Star support service.

Cloudways: Have you noticed improvements in load speed, uptime reliability, or the ability to scale during high traffic periods?

Jacob Stansky: Yes. We had a client on another hosting provider start to complain that their site was slow and blamed the build. I cloned their site to one of our Cloudways servers and showed the client the pure difference a hosting solution makes using GT Metrix reporting comparisons. Their hosting solution was generating a D grade while the same website on Cloudways was generating an A grade.

We ran a few tests versus WP Engine servers (multiple tiers) and found Cloudways to be organically faster. The WP Engine team was actually requesting we share our testing out of their curiosity (which we gladly did).

These tests were done on the Linode servers. When we set up an AWS server on Cloudways, the results were even more staggering.

Just two weeks ago, we needed to scale a client’s server as they headed into their annual event (17-day festival) and were able to perform this with one-click ease and basically no downtime.

– Cloudways’ managed dashboard simplifies Linode/AWS server configuration while automating maintenance tasks.

Cloudways: You’re part of Cloudways’ Agency Partnership Program. How does this program support your agency model, whether through tools, resources, or collaboration?

Jacob Stansky: As an Agency Partner with Cloudways, we can confidently provide hosting solutions for our clients. We can set up their hosting environment for them without the burden of having them start a hosting account and then inviting us in. This eliminates project start delays and reduces the need for multiple emails educating clients on hosting. This also ensures we have direct access to website support management.

We can also give the client peace of mind that they are not on shared hosting without visibility. While they do sit on a server (our server) with other clients, we’re the ones managing who we add to a given server and managing the server resources to ensure their website is performing at its peak. The client knows they are getting a high-powered hosting solution for a fraction of the cost if they had to do it themselves.

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Cloudways: How has the Agency Program helped you streamline client projects? Has it created new growth opportunities or made it easier to bring on new clients?

Jacob Stansky: Yes to every aspect of this question. Once the client agrees to use our Cloudways servers for their hosting, we can begin work on their project immediately. We know the specs are set up correctly to ensure their website runs at peak performance. If there’s an issue, we know we can easily connect with support directly, rather than playing the “send me the verification code” game through the client.

It’s making growth opportunities easier because we can offer our clients a slice of a highly powerful, perfectly customized, and managed hosting solution at a rate they couldn’t achieve on their own. We’re able to take on this burden because of the level of service Cloudways provides, which keeps our internal need for troubleshooting to a minimum. It’s not 100% turnkey, but it’s an extremely manageable aspect of our business plan.

Cloudways: Would you recommend Cloudways to other agencies or businesses? If so, what would you say to someone who’s struggling with their current host and considering Cloudways?

Jacob Stansky: I would 100% recommend Cloudways to other agencies or businesses. If you are an agency that assists clients with website hosting support, you’re going to get a percentage of your billable time back to work on other revenue-generating production because the Cloudways Support is so thorough and proficient.

The Cloudways Pricing models outshine those of similar services, such as Kinsta or WP Engine. Kinsta charges an extra fee to have a memory limit above 256 MB, a level that falls below the needs of the majority of WordPress websites (a minimum of 512 MB is a standard).

– Cloudways’ transparent pricing lets XO Pandora profitably host clients from startups to enterprises.

Other hosting providers at this level are pricing-based on visitor or bandwidth usage, which is impractical for most clients, and scaling is not an easy “self-service” function. Cloudways offers slider-based scaling, forecasting, and single-click upgrading.

Coudways’ support will give you valuable time back. The server dashboard control options will reduce the number of support interactions you’ll need to initiate, and the pricing will allow you to provide a higher tier of solutions to clients on the most competitive scale.

Lastly, having an agency partner representative is not just a “fluff offering.” They regularly check in, are always willing to jump on a Zoom call to review or catch up, and play an active role in helping us grow.