{"id":7983,"date":"2015-08-17T02:04:30","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T08:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.siteground.com\/blog\/?p=7983"},"modified":"2025-03-18T13:48:23","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T13:48:23","slug":"ivycat-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siteground.com\/blog\/ivycat-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Case Study: It Pays off to Focus on Core Business and Entrust Customers’ Hosting to Professionals"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A few months ago the website design and development company IvyCat approached us with a serious problem. Their business suffered, team morale was low and customer happiness was at risk. They couldn’t handle their hosting business alone anymore and needed professional help. Today we are happy to share their success story and the path we walked together to reach it.
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<\/span>The Background – One-stop Shop for Website Design, Development and Hosting<\/span><\/h2>\n

Since early 2000, the US-based company\u00a0IvyCat<\/a> have been designing and launching websites. Passionate about WordPress, they have focused their business primarily on the design and development of WordPress sites and popular plugins, as well as the subsequent website maintenance and support services. They have also been obsessed with providing timely, friendly and expert customer service.<\/p>\n

For the last 15 years, IvyCat also hosted their customers\u2019 websites themselves.<\/p>\n

<\/span>The Challenges of Providing Hosting as an Add-on Service<\/span><\/h2>\n

Initially, IvyCat team thought that providing hosting services was a great add-on for their\u00a0web design and development clients. As their customer base grew into the hundreds however, the IvyCat team began to experience the pains of keeping their hosting service high-quality, reasonably priced and well supported. Gradually, it became a more and more complicated task to be good at both web design & development work and at hosting, with the available resources.<\/p>\n

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Eric Amundson, Founder at IvyCat, explained: \u201cAt IvyCat, we reached a crossroads near the end of last year: we have enough hosting business that we need more help with support. And looking at our numbers for last year, around 85% of our income came from our WordPress and web design services, leaving only 15% of our income representing our hosting and domain services. The hosting service however\u00a0causes about 85% of the stress at IvyCat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As hosting grew into a stressful and unrewarding line of business, finding a solution to alleviate the company\u2019s pains and at the same time improve their customer experience became a top priority.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Selecting a Professional Hosting Partner<\/span><\/h2>\n

After much consideration IvyCat decided that the best solution for their customers and the prosperity of their business was to stop providing the hosting service themselves and to find a professional hosting partner. It was crucial that the hosting partner offered not only a high quality product, but also provided the excellent customer service that the IvyCat customers were used to.<\/p>\n

IvyCat did a thorough review of the hosting market and short-listed several providers. They tested and evaluated them based on the following criteria:<\/p>\n