Plesk Success Stories Archives

How Beebyte Became a Leading Swedish WordPress Hosting Provider

There are two options when choosing a hosting service provider: pay a huge amount of money to a very large provider and sacrifice control and service. Or work with a company like Beebyte, a smaller provider, and get high performance, flexibility, and great customer service. All at a highly competitive rate.

Beebyte has been a Plesk partner for a year and a half now. It offers a unique and custom-built control panel for virtual servers, VPS, and shared hosting. Recently, we’ve decided to celebrate Beebyte’s journey to success by talking about the business and its partnership with Plesk.

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The Start of Beebyte and its WordPress Solution

Like many Plesk partners, Beebyte has a small but dedicated team. However, it started with just two people – Niclas Alvebratt and Simon Ekstrand, running everything—including 24/7 support. Having used it on other projects, they have always been Plesk-friendly. Knowing there was a good market for it in Sweden, where the business is based, they decided to set up a small hosting business under the name Beebyte.

Thanks to their previous experience and network, Beebyte got off to a flying start. Knowing that Plesk helps entrepreneurs get started with small business, setting up a business with Plesk was a no-brainer.

After some time and gaining a certain volume of customers, Beebyte grew to a four-person team and started using Plesk’s WordPress Toolkit. Both Plesk and Beebyte attended WordCamp Nijmeijin in 2019. Earlier Beebyte had attended WordCamp Stockholm and WordCamp Norrköping and gained a good reputation within the Swedish WordPress community.

Beebyte now offers Shared WordPress hosting as one of its main, high-performance solutions. With the help of its solutions, the PHP code is processed faster and visitors get a better experience with a faster page. In Beebyte’s web host, there are smart features for WordPress management such as staging and copying sites, installing and updating free SSL certificates. You can also secure installation with Beebyte’s WordPress security tools and manage updates directly from the web host’s control panel (based on Plesk). Additionally, Beebyte delivers its in-house developed monitoring engine and great customer service within a single pane of administration for both end-users and resellers.

How does Beebyte use Plesk?

Beebyte has over a decade of experience on both Windows and Linux platforms. It offers high availability, 100% SSD-based servers and shared hosting. With all services delivered from its state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly data centers in Sweden. As well as senior consultancy services at very competitive rates.

One of the ways Beebyte uses Plesk is to help reduce the number of customer support tickets. Since using Plesk, the tickets have drastically decreased, because a ticket based on the platform can be solved super-fast. On the technical side, Beebyte has a secure, solid platform – but non-tech-savvy customers may struggle. However, with Plesk, the company can resolve everything quite fast.

It also uses Plesk with an automated reseller program, where their customers can resell their full-service catalog. Customers can also add their own branding, and handle payments in a very flexible way. You can find more info on the Beebyte and Plesk combined offering here.

What has Beebyte achieved since Plesk?

Today, Beebyte is at the top when it comes to WordPress and e-commerce hosting in Sweden. Regardless of whether it’s shared hosting, VPS, or multi-server load-balanced solutions. Thanks to its success, Beebyte can focus on delivering new features to all its users. Such as the Iris monitoring tool that combines with Plesk and is neatly integrated into its user portal.

Beebyte is also committed to running a sustainable business that is part of a greater whole. For example, every month it gives employees one day off to engage in social work in a local area, such as helping the homeless or night patrolling. Driven by the belief that a healthy conscience goes hand in hand with a profitable business.

In line with this approach, the founders also support the Free Software Foundation and the Tor network to help communities in countries with authoritarian regimes with high censorship and privacy concerns.

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How HostPress Became Leading Managed WordPress Company with Plesk

HostPress Becomes Leading Managed WP Company With Plesk

Finding the right WordPress hosting solution isn’t easy. So Marcus Krämer decided to build his own. To do it, he needed a hosting business management solution that would run fast and function safely. Today he runs HostPress, a managed WordPress company based on Plesk that powers the websites of many leading brands.

WordPress Hosting “Made in Germany”

My name is Marcus Krämer. I am the Managing Director of HostPress.

HostPress started out as a small team in Saarland, Western Germany. Today, the loyal Plesk customer is a managed WordPress hosting company that has grown to become, according to a global market analysis by Cloud Spectator, the number one WordPress hosting company among German providers.

With both its server location and company headquarters in the country, the company proudly bares the “Made in Germany” stamp. This renowned reliability of German engineering plus the over 10 years of web hosting experience of the team no doubt has much to do with its international success.

But as you probably know, the arena of managed WordPress hosting isn’t such a simple nut to crack. Powering over a third of the websites on the web, there’s no shortage of providers offering their specialized solutions, each with supposedly unique features and benefits.

Marcus Krämer, the founder and Managing Director of HostPress, knew a thing or two about the standard of the managed WordPress hosting market. Despite the wide range of solutions on offer, he couldn’t find one that suited the performance he needed:

We were in the meantime on another solution, with another managed hoster, but the performance did not suit us.

And yet, to build his own that did, he would need to first find a web hosting platform that was fit for the job.

Seeking A High Performance Web Hosting Platform

Managing a web server without a control panel is a task that requires a lot of time and expertise. Not only that, but it runs the risk of being unsafe for customers and affecting their performance.

HostPress’s challenge was, therefore, pretty simple: to find a software solution for its server management that was both safe and efficient.

We did not want to program it ourselves, we wanted to have a safe, tested solution.

The good news for HostPress was there are many web based interfaces and control panels for managing servers to choose from. Problem solved. Well, it would be, apart from one small detail. While each control panel offers the same fundamental features — domain management, email, FTP, app installs, etc. — the specific feature set, layout, performance, and level of control offered by each varies widely.

For HostPress, the key was finding a robust control panel that was safe and tested. They also wanted a high level of performance, and ideally something they were already familiar with. This brought the options down from dozens to very few.

Finding A New Solution With a Familiar Platform

We chose Plesk.

Marcus had known Plesk for 14 years, having used it since 2005 with another managed hosting company. So he knew the Plesk control panel was easy to install and set up — not least thanks to nearly two decades of experience and development.

When it came to choosing a solution for his server management, Plesk was the obvious choice:

We noticed OK, we need a base, one platform with which we will for sure be able to deliver hosting.

With his team, Marcus set up cloud infrastructure, installed Plesk on it, and almost instantly began reaping the benefits of the leading WebOps platform.

As a web-based control panel, Plesk allowed Marcus to get his business set up and running immediately.

We performed the migration manually, but it was simple, because Plesk is very easy to install and to set up.

It also allows everything to be managed for the day-to-day operation of a website from one place. His customers particularly like how the interface is clear to do everything from setting up a website and email account to managing databases and backups — no matter how many websites you have.

One particular feature of Plesk that provides a lot of benefit for HostPress is the WordPress Toolkit. With many clients with high performing websites like Mister Spex and FoodSpring, HostPress need to manage multiple WordPress instances easily. From Plesk’s easy-to-use dashboard, Marcus can manage many sites in one click, from making updates for various plugins, seeing which templates are installed, selecting SEO indexing, and activating maintenance mode and debugging.

In Marcus’s words,

You can do everything from the interface!

Becoming The Best in Managed WordPress Hosting

The market analysis by Cloud Spectator analysed 17 specialised WordPress hosting providers based on criteria such as general support and documented experiences to developer features and its own standardized tests.

Among the tested providers, HostPress came out third overall — receiving a bronze medal and the title of Germany’s best WordPress hosting provider.

Going from success to success, HostPress know that with Plesk, they have a platform they can rely on when it matters most. Marcus does admit that Plesk isn’t perfect:

Nothing is annoying with Plesk. There are certainly things one might still improve for the sake of optimizing usability.

Fortunately, Marcus makes full use of the Plesk dev team. Whenever he feels the need for improving a certain feature or optimising usability, he speaks to them, they listen, and they solve the issue often there and then.

This reliable support has no doubt been a lifeline for Marcus in setting up his own managed WordPress hosting company and growing it to such great heights. Marcus has now been running HostPress for over a decade and continues today to offer an impeccable service for his many customers around the world.

In encouraging others who are just entering the market, Marcus has a few words of advice to offer. As you may expect, this advice is chiefly practical: use the support of Plesk, don’t install all the extensions right away, only those you need.

But perhaps the biggest lesson to takeaway from Marcus and HostPress is that, when you notice something lacking in the market or a product/service you can improve, take the leap and find the right ones to collaborate with. The risk will pay off.

And now over to you! Have you had trouble finding the right WordPress hosting solution, and been inspired by the HostPress story? Let us know in the comments below.

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How Simplyyourself.online Found More Time For Their Clients

Simplyyourself.online Web Agency Success Story - Plesk

Miłosz Ryćko-Bożeński lives in Gdańsk, Poland and runs a Web Agency co-owned by his wife. Together they have over 40 years experience in all things internet-related. Most of their customers are small and mid-sized businesses (B2B) and Simplyyourself.online is responsible for clients’ websites. From design and brand creation to development to marketing strategy and campaign execution.

Let’s be honest – nowadays it’s not too difficult to get into website building. One of the things that sets us apart from the freelancer and agency crowd is our focus on security, marketing and convenience. In our opinion it’s best for our clients if they focus on running their business instead of being distracted by creating or managing their websites.

Plesk WordPress Toolkit helped us create a product which fits the needs of a conscious market. Thanks to that, we can focus on giving value, sharing knowledge and helping our clients develop their online businesses. But it was not always smooth-sailing – Here’s our story.

How Simplyyourself.online partnered with Plesk

"Without Plesk I wouldn’t have time to share my knowledge with my clients."

Two years ago, we decided to completely revamp the way our business runs. I wanted to find a solution that would allow me to utilize my wide range of technical skills. Plus offer me almost endless automatization.

At first, I was looking for free, open-source solutions. But then I found Plesk. And I fell in love with its possibilities right from the start. Plesk addresses the needs of people like me – understanding how crucial ease of use is. By pairing Plesk’s flexibility with my technical skills, I was able to create a highly automated product. Thanks to Plesk, my server ‘just works’.

"We love the transparency Plesk offers"

Another reason Simplyyourself.online loves Plesk is the transparency it offers.The market is full of agencies who offer websites and hosting, but don’t give clients access to the server or WordPress admin panel. In our opinion, such an approach is unethical. With Plesk we can continue to perform our tasks, while also giving our clients freedom of action, plus a sense of security.

"Plesk works

When correctly configured, it works uninterrupted."

Plesk works. This may sound like a simplistic description, but it’s one of Plesk’s biggest advantages. By simply working, Plesk allows me to focus on sharing my knowledge with my clients. And helping them to improve their business.

How our business has improved

Since introducing Plesk and DigitalOcean, business has improved for us in a number of ways. Especially since our cost have lowered, as have our stress levels – We have more time. Also we have a market advantage.

Cost reduction.

Before partnering with Plesk, I considered hiring a dedicated server administrator. But, with Plesk, this was unnecessary. As it gave me operational freedom, allowing me to manage everything easily myself. With more time to dedicate to clients, I was also able to significantly lower the costs of my services.

Time and stress.

Thanks to Plesk WordPress Toolkit and Smart Updates, managing my clients’ websites is almost maintenance-free. Moreover, if I have any issues, I simply contact the highly-qualified Plesk team, who always give timely responses. No longer do I have to worry that something will stop working any moment. Now I can act with a ‘don’t touch a running system’ phrase in mind.

Market advantage.

Our partnership not only saves us time, but also gives us a market advantage. With more time, I can now offer a wider range of services. So I can fully meet all of my clients’ needs, including beginners, as well as advanced users, who may want to use specialized tools, like, for example, Docker.

Simplyyourself.online’s bright future

We have exciting plans in the pipeline. As an ongoing project, we want to further develop our services, as well as provide 99.99% yearly uptime. Moreover, we want to work on implementing High Availability solutions, and eventually translate our offer into English. Another plan for the future is to become a Plesk partner, and help in the development of the WordPress Toolkit.

We hope to maintain our strong and trusted relationship with Plesk WordPress Toolkit and DigitalOcean going forward. With them on board, I can continue to save valuable time, and work on helping my clients improve their business instead.

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Duetsoft Profits Grow by 25% Using Plesk WordPress Toolkit & DigitalOcean

Duetsoft success story with Plesk and DigitalOcean - Plesk

Khandaker Ikrama, owner of Duetsoft web development agency, sheds light on how Plesk’s WordPress Toolkit helps his agency work effectively. Managing custom development and web design for WordPress on multiple customer websites. Read the story of Duetsoft, Plesk and DigitalOcean below.

Why we partnered with Plesk

My agency began as a very small company two years ago. At that time, the agency’s ability to deliver services was wholly dependent on me and my skills. However, I soon made the decision to scale my business.

The problem was that all my customer’s had different site and maintenance priorities. And, unfortunately, I didn’t have a team large enough to cover all of their needs well. So I needed to find a reputable company to outsource all of these maintenance tasks.

Plesk came into the picture when I read a piece of content on WPMayor about How To Manage Multiple WordPress Sites Efficiently.

When I realized I could keep over a dozen websites simultaneously updated and supported with Plesk, I was relieved. Now I could put that extra time towards other activities – ones which might net the company a higher profit margin.

“Automation is a term I was familiar with - in this context it simply means having software or a tool that can perform a routine job automatically, without the need for constant input.”

Moreover, the fact that, with Plesk, I wouldn’t need to hire and manage a lot of freelancers was a bonus.

Duetsoft’s smooth transition to Plesk

“Plesk is super easy to install and configure on DigitalOcean in just a few clicks.”

Getting started with Plesk was as easy as 1-2-3: We used the Plesk One Click App from the DigitalOcean Marketplace. Then started with one website on DigitalOcean. The first test website went really well, and it just grew from there. The transition going forward was just as smooth as the test and startup phase.

I can honestly say that testing new plugins, features and design ideas is easy with the WordPress Toolkit Extension. You simply test everything in a sandbox before publishing live on the website. Furthermore, you don’t need any extra plugins or separate servers for this – the WordPress Toolkit in Plesk manages everything.

“The WordPress Toolkit is an agency dream, giving you an array of tools for customization, management, security, hosting, and automation for all your websites and the infrastructure they rely on.”

Overall, our partnership with Plesk has been one of honesty and transparency. And we always receive timely responses. This enables my agency to make sure our clients always have support on everything from basic requests to Remote Management or Smart Updates powered by AI from Plesk’s Extension Catalog.

Business benefits for Duetsoft

The initial goal in using Plesk and the WordPress Toolkit was to automate and offload WordPress maintenance tasks. However, I got much more than I originally bargained for. There were three key areas in which Plesk helped my agency grow:

1. Revenues increased with more clients

‘’Since we started working with Plesk on DigitalOcean, revenue has increased - a lot!”

It wasn’t only about making various WordPress maintenance tasks easier and automating them as much as we could. But also about having the capacity to no longer turn clients away. Now, I can capture them all.

2. Profitability has gone up with investment in automation

The total amount of revenue coming in isn’t the only way I’m reaping the rewards either. Profit margins are much higher now, too. With the WordPress Toolkit, agency team members can now focus on tackling tasks that play to their strengths. It’s this investment in automation and task orchestration that’s made my operations run much more efficiently.

3. Greater functionality gave added value to customers

Since Plesk are WordPress specialists, and provide so many different features and functionality, I now feel as though my customers are truly taken care of. It’s this added value from features like Smart Updates powered by AI or Remote WordPress Management that has contributed to my agency’s growth.

Future goals for our Plesk partnership

Last year, a lot of our goals were based on basic financials. Now we want to move forward in 2019 (and beyond). We anticipate to continue to experience the same level of growth.

“My agency experienced a 25% increase in profitability”

I also hope to expand further on our value-added services. Managed services are becoming increasingly popular with businesses around the world. eCommerce, in particular, is an area that I hope to do more with, as it’s a particular niche with a lot of ongoing needs. However, I believe that my agency, in conjunction with Plesk managed services, can easily take care of them.

Managing WordPress for one website or thousands doesn’t have to be a chore. And it shouldn’t be something that holds your company back from scaling, or generating a solid profit margin either. If you want to give the best to both your customers and your agency, then you need to work with an infrastructure provider and partner you can rely on. Thankfully I found trusted partners in Plesk WordPress Toolkit and DigitalOcean.

About Duetsoft

Duetsoft is an intentionally small web development agency based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They focus on custom development and web design for WordPress, the CMS of choice for businesses of all sizes. Whether they are individuals, resellers, ISVs, SMBs, or enterprises.

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How Plesk Brought Order to My Agency – Rise.co

The success story of how Plesk helped Rise.co get aligned and serve their clients better than ever, as told by Kahl Orr.

One of the most challenging realities of scaling your business is being able to organize everything well. With more success comes more complexity I discovered – as the founder of web design and development startup, Rise.

I’m a web developer and entrepreneur, who developed a passion for coding and building websites when I was only in middle school. I’ve since turned that early love of web development into a thriving, digital startup that’s growing fast.

Rise.co is on track to breaking the half-million-dollar annual revenue mark this year alone. A true milestone that’s built on the back of designing and developing high-quality websites for a veritable army of very satisfied customers.

One thing is clear: I wouldn’t be where I am today without the capabilities of Plesk.

When Everything Was All Over the Place

As Rise.co expanded, it went from a solo operation, run just by me, to a team of 10 that I manage. Accounting for this growth was client work that became more demanding, with some clients owning dozens and dozens of websites. Due to this explosion of work, we outgrew our usual way of doing things.

We were hosting websites for our clients all over the place, under different hosting platforms. Managing them was difficult, and our processes weren’t able to be streamlined. When we needed to host about 100 websites for one client, we knew we needed a way to better organize things. That’s when we found Plesk.

A big reason for this disarray was our hosting solutions couldn’t support the magnitude of work we were taking on. I had that Aha! moment when I considered the hosting solutions we were providing clients with multiple websites. They were letting us down in terms of management, efficiency and ease of use.

That’s when I knew that we couldn’t support our breakneck growth if we stayed with our old website management habits. And so the search for a new and better hosting solution was underway. Luckily, I spoke to our team at Rackspace, who provides our IT support. They immediately recommended moving all our sites to a Plesk environment.

How Plesk Became a Game-Changer for Rise.co

With any new platform, there’s always a learning curve, but I found that Plesk’s platform allowed us to learn it without any friction. That’s really saying something when you consider how feature-rich Plesk is.

We were not used to being able to manage all websites in one place or being able to quickly and easily set up and manage WordPress installs. Once we learned the platform, however, we were able to build efficient processes for our team to manage, update and maintain bulk sites from one Plesk environment.

Rise.co moved to Plesk to help better serve our larger clients with numerous websites. Now, we can set a Plesk install for all our larger clients with many websites. We can easily set up WordPress, update and maintain sites, manage databases and PHP versions at per-site level. All within one Plesk account.

It’s made our web administration and development teams’ lives so much easier. After only working in this more efficient environment for a short time, I was already able to see the difference. Here’s what our results were:

More productivity from ease of use
Better site management
Increased efficiency and processes
The ability for our IT support (Rackspace) to easily step in and help when needed

Needless to say, because of these positive results, I envision a long-term partnership with Plesk.

How We Use Plesk Today

Currently, things are running like clockwork on Plesk. I really appreciate how the platform enables us to showcase our design and development savvy to our clients without missing a beat. Plesk’s platform is our go-to solution in order to manage bulk websites for a single client.

We work with several franchise corporations that have more than 100 locations and websites. Plesk allows us to offer them our services for bulk websites with confidence. All the headaches of a disunited hosting setup are now a thing of the past.

If I had to narrow down all the benefits the platform has given us to just a few bullet points, they would be:

The capacity to manage bulk websites in one place
The ability to easily manage single databases and server settings at the per-site level
The reality that Rackspace supports your platform, which means we didn’t need to switch support teams (always a plus!)

Of course, the benefits of Plesk aren’t just contained to its platform. In other words, I’ve seen measurable gains in my business that correlate to when I started using Plesk.

What Rise.co Has Done Since Switching to Plesk

One of the best ways that I can think of to illustrate how a platform like Plesk empowers my agency is in the numbers and how it’s positively affected how I run it.

Year over year, my agency has already more than doubled its revenue. Such staggering growth—coming in such a short period of time—would not be possible without the streamlining of our hosting that Plesk has enabled.

The other side of the equation is what my life now looks like now. All thanks to the security of having such a better platform to serve our clients. These days, I can confidently transition into actually running my company as opposed to just working on our projects, like:

Growing my agency further by netting more clients
Delighting my existing client base
Leading my team to provide first-rate service to our customers

Plesk has been such a good fit with Rise that I really wish I’d discovered it sooner. The only thing I will advise anyone interested in using Plesk is to work with someone already experienced with Plesk. So that they can help get you up and running much quicker!

Rise is a fast-growing web development agency, building high-end, custom websites and web and mobile apps for national brands.

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