Case Studies > Convesio

How Convesio saw a 300% increase in the number of sites onboarded in the first 60 days on WP Cloud

Convesio, a leader in high-performance WordPress hosting for mission-critical sites, faced a challenge: agencies loved their enterprise-grade infrastructure for demanding projects but wouldn’t migrate their entire portfolio due to cost barriers. Through a strategic partnership with WP Cloud, Convesio successfully bridged this gap, offering enterprise-level performance at competitive prices. This case study examines how this partnership transformed Convesio’s business model and delivered measurable benefits to both the company and its customers.

Background

Founded in 2020, Convesio set out to provide high-performance WordPress hosting solutions for mid-market to enterprise-level e-commerce stores and mission-critical applications. With a globally distributed group of 35 teammates, Convesio quickly established itself as a premium WordPress hosting provider.

But don’t call Convesio a hosting company. Tom Fanelli, the founder of Convesio, calls the company a “platform as a service for WordPress” that provides both infrastructure and extensive support. A year and a half after launch, Convesio had built a best-in-class, enterprise level solution partnering business. Convesio had positioned themselves as the last line of defense before someone switches to e-commerce platform Shopify.

Convesio had also originally focused heavily on agency clients. The Convesio team loved talking shop with agencies and meeting the frontline needs of agencies. But Convesio’s team was finding that agencies frequently only brought their most demanding sites to Convesio; while keeping smaller sites with lower-cost providers like Kinsta and WP Engine. Convesio’s enterprise-level pricing made it difficult to justify an agency’s entire portfolio. It was simply just easier for agencies to partition up their client base to different providers.

“We built a Ferrari,” says Fanelli, describing the best-in-class, high-end enterprise solution that the team had built from the ground up. But the kinds of small businesses that many agencies work with – the plumbers, the doctors, the lawyers, the landscaping services – didn’t need a Ferrari with bespoke scaling and spiking features. Agencies and that market segment needed a hosting equivalent of a Toyota Camry: quiet reliability at a low cost.

The challenge

Convesio was characteristically determined. At first, they continued to pursue this not insignificant market segment actively. “You want to do business with everyone,” said Fanelli, when thinking back. Convesio continued to refine their product to reach out to agencies. But in their pursuit of this “Camry” business segment, agencies kept asking how much Convesio could save them on a per-site basis. Convesio quickly found itself in a race to the bottom.

At the same time, the businesses that were flocking to Convesio were mid-market to enterprise customers with complex WordPress sites. “We’re talking online learning sites, big membership sites, WooCommerce, e-commerce sites, custom deployments of headless solutions, all sorts of out-of-the-box sites that traditional hosting wasn’t a good fit for,” says Fanelli. And so Convesio pivoted to focus heavily on mission-critical commerce-enabled sites.

This strategic shift allowed Convesio to differentiate through their innovative support model, becoming one of the first hosting companies to support customers via Slack. “The moment of delight people get working in Slack with a company with actual people and not a ticketing system is an exceptional experience,” Fanelli explains. This direct communication channel proved particularly valuable to mid-market and enterprise clients whose revenue depended on their sites functioning properly.

For these businesses, Convesio’s support wasn’t just reactive – it was proactively engaged. Their team would monitor sites in real-time during scaling events, providing live updates through Slack about performance metrics. “During large scaling events, we’ll put an engineer to watch and monitor in real time your site’s performance. And in Slack we’ll be giving you a real-time feed,” notes Fanelli. This level of hands-on support, along with services like implementing New Relic diagnostics and producing performance reports, became Convesio’s hallmark for serving mid-market and enterprise clients whose businesses couldn’t afford downtime.

Despite the tremendous success in the mid-market to enterprise segment, Convesio still felt the call of the agency market. They succeeded at servicing what Fanelli called the “scale market” but they still had eyes for the “start market.”

Enter WP Cloud

What Convesio needed was a solution that would allow it to serve agencies’ entire portfolios without sacrificing the quality and reliability its brand had become known for in the mid-market to enterprise. Fanelli is clear that Convesio never “abandoned” the agency market; they wisely pivoted to focus on matching their product to market trends. But Convesio needed to bridge the gap between the enterprise-level WordPress infrastructure it had developed and a market that didn’t have the margins to justify a higher hosting cost. How could they bring a Ferrari-quality service to a Camry-budget market?

In the hosting industry, lower budgets always mean lower quality service and less reliability. However quality of service and reliability were non-negotiables for Convesio. The challenge seemed irreconcilable.

Then Convesio started talking to WP Cloud

For Convesio, WP Cloud offered the perfect balance of enterprise-grade features with economical pricing. It provided high uptime, bursting capabilities, and many of the key elements of Convesio’s own architecture, but with “the scale of Automattic behind it.” This meant Convesio could finally offer agencies a solution that didn’t compromise on Convesio’s standards, while meeting agencies’ lower budget restrictions.

While many hosting companies use WP Cloud as a premium offering for their discount hosting brand, Convesio saw WP Cloud differently. It recognized WP Cloud as a platform that could maintain the high standards it demanded while finally making its services economically viable for agencies’ complete site portfolio.

What especially impressed Fanelli was WP Cloud’s multi-region data center failover capability. “You have some very cool features that are really hard for hosting companies to replicate. To get that out of the box on a site that’s a competitively priced WordPress site is unheard of in the industry.”

After evaluating several alternatives, Convesio partnered with WP Cloud and Automattic to develop a solution that would maintain performance standards while dramatically lowering the starting price – making enterprise-grade hosting more accessible than ever.

Technical implementation

The integration with WP Cloud provides Convesio with:

  • API-driven setup allowing for rapid scaling and client onboarding
  • Full-page edge caching and CDN integration for enhanced performance
  • Auto-scaling and bursting technology to handle traffic spikes across all service tiers
  • Real-time failover across multiple data centers ensuring 100% uptime
  • Unlimited bandwidth to eliminate unexpected costs, which is particularly beneficial for publishers

Technical Infrastructure Benefits

The WP Cloud infrastructure provided Convesio with specific technical advantages:

  • Integrated full-stack solution:
    • Built-in CDN and edge caching
    • Automatic scaling without manual intervention
    • Multi-data center redundancy
  • Optimized resource allocation:
    • Engineering teams focused on customer success rather than infrastructure management
    • Slack-based support integration for rapid technical issue resolutionAutomated provisioning for new client sites
  • Scalability for high-traffic events:
    • Ecommerce sales events
    • Viral content spikes
    • High-traffic membership sites

Business impact

Convesio’s integration with WP Cloud didn’t just expand their market reach and increase the bottom line. The integration fundamentally transformed Convesio’s business model, allowing them to serve segments they had reluctantly stepped away from without compromising their core values of performance and reliability.

Performance Without Compromise

True to Convesio’s unwavering standards, their Agency Express plans powered by WP Cloud have achieved 100% uptime to date. This isn’t just a statistic, it’s validation of Fanelli’s insistence that quality and reliability remain non-negotiable, even at lower price points.

The platform delivers enhanced site performance through comprehensive full-page caching and edge delivery systems, ensuring visitors experience the same speed regardless of whether they’re accessing a small business website or a large enterprise application. Most importantly, Convesio maintained its coveted 99.99% SLA across all service tiers, providing its signature peace of mind to businesses of all sizes. Even during unexpected traffic spikes, what Fanelli calls “moments of glory” that can turn into a client’s “worst nightmares” for unprepared sites, mission-critical applications benefit from seamless failover capabilities that prevent disruptions.

From Ferrari to Fleet: Democratizing Enterprise-Grade Hosting

“Our decision to sort of hold our ground at this price point that we’re at and not go into the lower end is really what has enabled us to have the freedom and flexibility to provide the level of value that we provide to our customers,” Fanelli had explained about their earlier strategy approach. With WP Cloud, everything changed.

With prices now starting as low as $10 per site per month, a dramatic notable shift from the previous $700 enterprise plans, Convesio finally bridged the gap between premium service and accessible pricing. This wasn’t just about offering a cheaper alternative; it was about maintaining the same service levels as their enterprise plans while making them accessible to a broader market.

The result? Agencies began consolidating their entire portfolios on Convesio’s platform. As Fanelli described in a recent conversation with an agency, “They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m bringing everything over. The only reason I didn’t move my entire portfolio is because I have this deal at a big hosting company that was advantageous financially for me.’”

Now, with competitive pricing backed by enterprise-level performance, that barrier has disappeared.

Operational Excellence Unleashed

Beyond client acquisition, the WP Cloud partnership streamlined Convesio’s infrastructure management, substantially reducing its internal support burden. This shift allowed their team of experts to focus less on troubleshooting technical issues and more on their preferred role as strategic partners in their clients’ success.

The API-driven setup that impressed Fanelli from the start has enabled faster expansion, allowing Convesio to scale and onboard clients without concerns about managing server capacity levels. This agility proves particularly valuable for the commerce-enabled sites Convesio specializes in, where scaling needs can change rapidly.

Perhaps most telling is how the partnership enhanced Convesio’s already exceptional support model. The integrated support system with the WP Cloud team, leveraging the Slack-based communication that Convesio pioneered, ensures the rapid resolution of technical concerns. As Fanelli pointed out, “Having that direct line between our customers and us and the WP Cloud team is important because of its speed of execution.”

Client Reactions: A Resounding Success

Since launching its Agency Express plans powered by WP Cloud, agencies have been raving about performance and value of these plans:

  • Better site performance due to full-page caching and edge delivery.
  • No surprise costs—unlimited bandwidth means predictable pricing, especially for site owners.
  • Seamless WordPress experience—the WP Cloud team manages WordPress updates and security, freeing Convesio and its clients to focus on other matters.

We trust Convesio with our most important clients, so when we learned about their new agency plans, we quickly decided to consolidate our portfolio on Convesio. They handled all our migrations, and were able to quickly transition us off our prior hosting with the same level of performance and support previously only available to our largest sites.

— Brian Razzaque, Managing Member, BrandTrellis

These testimonials encapsulate exactly what Fanelli hoped to achieve: bringing together the entire portfolio of agency sites under Convesio’s umbrella, delivering the white-glove service they’re known for, but at a price point that makes business sense for all parties involved.

Convesio’s WP Cloud sites improve to earn A Level grades for performance

Convesio acquired Mo Better Garage’s portfolio of sites from a leading WordPress hosting provider. Unhappy with their current performance and looking for an affordable high performance alternative, Convesio’s Express plans were exactly what they needed. Before moving to Convesio’s solution powered by WP Cloud the site had average performance and web vitals grades. Another site was worse yet with a D grade from the independent benchmarking service GTMetrix. 

Weeks later after migrating to WP Cloud, the sites were both upgraded to A grades:

Key lessons: strategic insights for hosting providers

Convesio’s journey with WP Cloud offers valuable insights for hosting companies facing similar market challenges. Through this partnership, several key lessons emerged that can guide others considering strategic pivots:

1. Quality partnerships expand possibilities

Unlike traditional market expansion that often requires compromise, Convesio demonstrated that the right partnership can unlock new market segments without sacrificing quality standards. By partnering with WP Cloud, Convesio maintained its commitment to performance while accessing price points it couldn’t achieve independently.

2. Leverage API-first infrastructure for agility

The API-driven nature of WP Cloud proved transformative for Convesio’s ability to quickly adapt to market opportunities. Before implementation, entering new market segments involved significant technical hurdles. With WP Cloud’s API-first approach, Convesio rapidly built and deployed a competitive offering that maintained their exacting standards.

This technical agility translated directly to business agility, allowing Convesio to respond to market demands more efficiently than building solutions from scratch. As Fanelli explains, “Every product that we offer that we put on our shelf has gotta be the best. That’s the litmus test for us.”

3. Invert your market approach when necessary

Perhaps most striking about Convesio’s story is how it inverted the traditional market entry strategy. While most hosting companies start with entry-level offerings and work upmarket, Convesio established themselves at the enterprise level first and then expanded downward.

This unorthodox approach allowed Convesio to establish its brand reputation with the most demanding clients first, creating credibility that made their more accessible “Ferrari” level offerings instantly trustworthy to a Camry, fleet market.

4. Maintain your core values through transitions

Throughout their evolution, Convesio never compromised on their foundational principles of quality, reliability, and exceptional support. Even as they expanded to serve price-sensitive segments, they ensured these values remained intact.

This consistency paid dividends in brand perception. As Fanelli emphasizes, “We don’t have to worry about the price per site. I would like to take hosting and give it away to agencies because there’s so much other value working with Convesio.” This trust-driven approach has let Convesio expand offerings to agencies for mutually beneficial features. There’s more to come for Convesio and its work in this market segment.

Results: the power of strategic transformation

The partnership with WP Cloud transformed Convesio’s business model, allowing them to expand beyond the enterprise market without compromising their commitment to performance and reliability. By leveraging WP Cloud’s infrastructure, Convesio now offers a comprehensive hosting solution for agencies of all sizes, capturing full portfolio migrations that were previously out of reach.

By showing evidence to its agency partner and clients, that their sites would improve their performance from C to A grades, for lower prices, Convesio saw a rapid influx of interest for its Agency Express plans that led to a 300% increase in sites hosted in the base plan in just the first 60 days of offering WP Cloud hosting. Moreover, Convesio expects that these wins will continue as they are able to offer enterprise scale performance to agencies for as little as $10 per site per month.

As Convesio CEO Tom Fanelli summarizes:

WP Cloud allowed us to expand our market without sacrificing performance. Before WP Cloud, agencies would bring their hardest-to-host sites to us but leave their lower-maintenance sites elsewhere. Now, we can offer a complete solution—at a competitive price—without compromising quality.

For hosting companies facing similar challenges of market expansion while maintaining quality standards, Convesio’s journey demonstrates that with the right strategic partnerships, you don’t have to choose between excellence and accessibility. You can deliver both.

Additional Reading

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