“We’ve made it our mission to be the best in the business. We use our in-depth knowledge of the industry and cutting-edge AI tools to guarantee our clients get the top-notch service they deserve.”

In over 16 years, they remain dedicated to their mission. Adapting Social’s team of experts has increased revenue, search engine visibility, website traffic, brand identity, and social media following for thousands of brands and businesses.

“Our team of design and marketing experts urgently implement our strategies for you so you can focus on your business, while we focus on building a brand your target market will remember. We help our clients become the next and best versions of themselves.”

But even the best agencies face challenges. For Adapting Social, those challenges came from their previous web hosting providers. Their client sites were plagued by recurring downtime, slow-loading pages, and security vulnerabilities.

In our conversation with Christopher Iafelice, Chief Operating Officer at Adapting Social, he shares how Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting solved these issues and how it empowered them to deliver even better results for their clients.

Get inspired by their success story and see what Kinsta can do for you!

Snapshot

• Industry: Digital marketing and design Agency
• Business size: 50 employees

The problem

Adapting Social worked with several hosting providers before discovering Kinsta.

Prior to discovering Kinsta, we’d worked with a few different hosting providers, including GoDaddy, BlueHost, and Network Solutions.

Unfortunately, Adapting Social kept running into problems that made it difficult for them to provide their customers with the smooth online experience they deserved.

We had to do something. We were constantly dealing with website downtime, which meant lost traffic and potential lost revenue for our clients.

• Frequent downtime is the #1 problem: Recurring downtime was the most frustrating issue for the Adapting Social team. The worst part? These outages were often unpredictable and long.

“It was disheartening to witness the frustration of our clients as their websites were repeatedly taken offline. This undermines their trust in us and hinders their ability to reach their business goals.”

• Vulnerable client sites: The security vulnerabilities in these hosting platforms left client websites exposed to potential attacks.

“We were reluctant to host client websites on these platforms because of their unreliable performance and potential negative impact on our reputation. We realized that we weren’t just having trouble ourselves but also that, because of all these limitations, we couldn’t provide the best service to our clients.”

• Complex site management with no server control: “On another note, not being able to control where our servers were and having no way to oversee all our client websites at once just made things more complicated.”

Staying wasn’t an option anymore as these website issues were hurting their bottom line. So Adapting Social’s Creative Director, Caitlin Morris, led the search for a better solution.

“Caitlin and I did a lot of research and evaluated many hosting providers. We were looking for a solution that would meet the needs of both our clients and our team.”

“We needed a hosting solution that matched our commitment to excellence and gave us the confidence to offer hosting services to our clients. One that was reliable, performed well, and kept our clients’ websites safe and secure. That’s when we discovered Kinsta.“

The solution

Adapting Social’s search for a reliable hosting provider led them to Kinsta, a platform that quickly proved to be the ideal solution for their needs.

Kinsta really stood out for us because of its great features that make it easier to manage websites and make our workflows more efficient.

Key features and their impact

• Free staging environment: Each WordPress install at Kinsta can have its own free WordPress staging environment, completely separate from the live production site.

“The fully-powered staging environments let us safely test updates and changes before deploying them to live sites, which helps us avoid errors or downtime.”

• One-click backups: Kinsta provides daily automatic WordPress backups, as well as system-generated backups for all user sites, including Adapting Social’s websites. These backups, along with each site’s manual backups, are available as restore points in MyKinsta.

“One-click backup creation and restoration gave us peace of mind knowing that we could easily revert to a previous state if needed.”

• MyKinsta dashboard: MyKinsta is an integrated, single intuitive dashboard for deploying, hosting, and managing all Kinsta-hosted web projects. It saved Adapting Social the time and effort of managing plugins, themes, and user access directly from one place.

“Being able to update plugins and themes directly within the MyKinsta dashboard saved us a lot of time and effort. Another great thing about MyKinsta is that you can add as many users as you want and control what each one can access. This helped us work better with our clients.”

• Global CDN and free SSL: Kinsta partnered with Cloudflare, an HTTP/2 and IPv6-enabled content delivery network with 200+ locations, to turbocharge all its assets and media around the globe. 

“Kinsta CDN was a total game-changer for us. It allowed us to optimize website delivery based on visitor location, which improved load times and the overall user experience.”

“We also loved that Kinsta offers free SSL certificates with automatic renewals. This kept our clients’ websites secure without them having to worry about it.”

With these new features, Adapting Social can now offer clients a more reliable, secure, and efficient service thanks to more powerful and feature-rich managed WordPress hosting.

The results

Since partnering with Kinsta, Adapting Social has achieved remarkable improvements across various aspects of its business.

Kinsta really impressed me… We’ve successfully moved over 50 client sites to Kinsta, and we’ve retained them all — which we think says a lot about how reliable and high-performing the platform really is.

“The migration was completed flawlessly, and the client’s website saw an immediate improvement in performance, reliability, SEO, and security.”

“We’ve even integrated Kinsta into our standard service offerings because we know we can rely on them to help our clients make a big impact. We’re not just saying these results are good—we’ve got the data to back it up.”

Greater engagement with 33% faster page load times

When Adapting Social saw their average page load time drop from 4.2 seconds to just 2.8 seconds, it was a huge win. That’s a 33% improvement in site speed!

And those seconds resulted in reduced bounce rates, which made all the difference. This ultimately has a big impact on user retention and overall site success. More visitors are staying on their clients’ sites longer, exploring their content, and engaging with it.

“Since moving to Kinsta, we’ve seen some big improvements across our websites, operations, and user experience. Our client sites now load much faster, which has led to lower bounce rates, more engagement, and better search engine rankings.“

And it doesn’t stop there. “Best of all, we’ve completely eliminated downtime incidents, so our client sites are always up and running.”

Up to 767% increase in search engine traffic for a client site

With much faster websites, the SEO of their client sites saw notable boosts. One client of Adapting Social had a 767% increase in search engine traffic, with search engine ranking increasing from page 9 to page 1.

When Google sees a fast, well-performing site, it tends to reward it with higher search rankings, which is important for attracting new visitors.

“By offering a high-performance hosting environment, we make sure that our clients’ websites make a great first impression and engage their target audience effectively.”

And this fits right in with Adapting Social’s goal of providing tailored digital marketing experiences that deliver results.

250 hours saved annually with streamlined site maintenance

With the MyKinsta dashboard and tools, Adapting Social cut their weekly maintenance from 15 hours to just under 10.

This 5-hour reduction adds up to over 250 hours a year—equivalent to about six full workweeks for the team. Adapting Social now has extra time to innovate, tackle new projects, and strengthen client relationships, driving faster growth and delivering even greater value to its clients.

“We’ve made some big changes to our internal processes to make our operations more efficient. Kinsta’s dashboard and tools have made it easier for us to manage our websites, so we can focus more on what’s important.

By freeing up the team’s time, Adapting Social can now respond more quickly to customer needs which allows them to better serve their clients.

“Kinsta gives us the tools we need to deliver better results for our clients, and we’re excited to leverage more of their features. With tools like Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Edge Caching, we’re set to make our websites even faster and more efficient.”

Looking ahead, Adapting Social is excited to explore Kinsta’s multisite capabilities. This will help them manage complex website networks and push the boundaries of what’s possible as a full-service digital marketing agency.

10% growth in monthly leads and sales

When your site runs smoother and faster, great things follow. For Adapting Social, this translated into a 10% boost in monthly leads and sales for their clients after moving to Kinsta.

“The results speak for themselves: a 10% increase in leads and sales for our clients and a 98% client satisfaction rate, which shows how powerful Kinsta’s platform is and how committed we are to excellence.”

The difference is clear: with Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting and its easy-to-use dashboard, clients feel more in control of their websites.

“We know that a better user experience helps our clients, too. Kinsta’s user-friendly interface and great features let our clients take more control of their websites, which makes them feel more in charge and more involved. That’s where the satisfaction comes from.”

Christopher also adds, “But these numbers don’t tell the whole story. Our clients are also really happy with the extra security and backup processes Kinsta provides.“

Kinsta fuels Adapting Social’s growth

For Adapting Social, Kinsta not only solved their problems with its previous web host, but it also became a driving force behind their overall growth and success.

As COO Christopher puts it, the impact of Kinsta has been remarkable.

“Since we teamed up with Kinsta, Adapting Social has hit some pretty impressive milestones… I’m really proud of how successful we’ve been together, and I’m excited to see how our partnership with Kinsta will continue to drive our growth and innovation in the years to come.”

By choosing Kinsta, Adapting Socials overcame critical issues like frequent downtime and slow client sites hurting their agency’s bottom line and reputation. The team also saw impressive results, including a 33% drop in page load times, a 700%+ traffic boost, and a 95% client satisfaction rate.

The post Adapting Social delivers 767% more site traffic and saves 250+ hours appeared first on Kinsta®.

Its university faculty members share information on research results, projects, and academic conferences by creating their own websites on the Waseda WWW Service platform.

With now hundreds of user sites, Mr. Matsuura of Waseda University’s IT Strategies Division shares the challenges of managing Waseda WWW Service, and how they turned to Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting to solve them. 

Read on to discover how Kinsta powered and supported Waseda University’s large-scale infrastructure project involving the migration of hundreds of sites.

The problem

Waseda University faced security concerns, inefficient site management, and a costly, complex hosting environment. They needed a solution to anticipate potential attacks, and take a proactive approach in securing user sites.

When asked about the goals that prompted them to change their hosting solution, Mr. Matsuura answered:

“We are constantly working to strengthen the security of our campus services, and it is imperative that we continually review and improve them.”

With that aim, they decided to focus on:

1. Ensuring the security of WordPress and PHP through effective version control.
   “Software version control is crucial to the security of WordPress and PHP. We aimed to investigate whether we could find a way to do this more safely and reliably than in the past.”
2. Balancing the freedom for users to manage their sites while ensuring these sites are secure.
   “Waseda WWW Service allows many users to create and manage their own sites with a high degree of freedom. While maintaining this flexibility, administrators have to monitor usage from a security perspective and ensure that sites are not abandoned after they are no longer needed. For example, we conduct a periodic inventory of the sites we manage. If we find unused sites, we need to take action, such as deleting them upon confirming with the user.”

Complex system and incurring high hosting cost

Dealing with overlapping systems and external service integrations complicates the daily operations of Waseda team:

“The old service had some overlapping systems for the same purpose and was intertwined with external services. Amid mounting costs for the maintenance and operation of the overall system, it was clear that we had to take action.”

“For these reasons, we gathered information in search of a new solution to ensure a secure system and a superior user experience.“

The solution

To streamline operations and resolve the issues with the old service, Waseda found Kinsta as a solution with robust security features and a strong focus on version control.

Choosing Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting

Mr. Matsuura and his team looked at a number of hosting provider candidates. They narrowed their requirements down to those that could:

• Manage software versions and vulnerabilities
• Install plugins freely on a per-site basis
• Use the WAF/CDN system already in place at the university
• Handle migration from the old service with ease
• Ease the workload of periodic site inventory and maintenance

After a thorough search, Kinsta emerged as a leading solution.

“Ultimately, Kinsta met all of these criteria, and we moved forward with testing Kinsta’s platform. It was easy to test the system with a small number of sites to check the requirements, and so the POC (proof of concept) proceeded smoothly.”

Free unlimited migrations made simple

With hundreds of user sites, migrating them all to a new platform could be a huge undertaking for Mr. Matsuura and his team. Fortunately, Kinsta offers free, unlimited migrations for WordPress sites, handled by a dedicated team of migration experts.

Kinsta’s migration team and support engineers made it easy to migrate the sites for free, which was incredibly helpful.

“I also vividly remember how receptive they were to our many detailed requests, and the fact that they were also able to handle static PHP sites and complex configurations was a great source of reassurance. And so while checking the functionality along the way, we proceeded with a phased migration.”

The result

Kinsta powers Waseda University with its secure, flexible, and easy-to-manage hosting solution that allows Waseda to guarantee a top-notch user experience (UX) while making back-end security management more efficient.

Enhanced web security and compliance

We are very happy with Kinsta. While providing users with a reasonable degree of freedom in content management, Kinsta maintains strict adherence to security requirements.

“For example, only the latest version of PHP can be used, which allows us to avoid situations where individual administrators forget to upgrade and are left with an outdated version of PHP. Automatic notification of plugin vulnerabilities is another useful feature.”

“Moving to Kinsta has taken our security to the next level. At the same time, we have been able to maintain traditional content management functions, such as uploading static files via FTP, editing pages using WordPress and installing plugins. It has also made operational tasks more efficient.”

Streamlined site management and maintenance

By centralizing site management with the MyKinsta dashboard, Waseda University has significantly reduced the time and effort needed to maintain each of its user sites.

“The nature of the university’s services means that many users will create sites according to their individual needs. That is why the process of setting up a site had to be made more efficient.”

In the past, FTP and DB account information was provided to users on physical paper or PDF documents, but after moving to Kinsta, it can now be completed easily in the ‘MyKinsta’ control panel.

Tasks that once required complex coordination or third-party services can now be handled internally with more efficiency and greater control:

“As for the site inventory process, we can now check each site’s resource usage in MyKinsta. With our old system, we had to request information from an external company, but the process has become much simpler with Kinsta.”

Kinsta supports large-scale infrastructure migration and system renewal

Kinsta handles a lot of the routine maintenance, updates, and security management so the university’s IT staff can focus on other initiatives.

“With the help of Kinsta’s migration and support engineers, we were also able to complete the migration successfully.”

“We appreciate that Kinsta provided the site migration within their normal scope of service, covering not just WordPress but also HTML static sites. It was helpful that they flexibly handled special settings particular to the old system, such as character encoding, redirect, and server-side includes (SSI) settings.”

The post Waseda University fortifies data security and simplifies site management with Kinsta appeared first on Kinsta®.

Their mission is no less than to become the most drinkable tea on the planet. Their products are a celebration of Australia, and a huge part of their endeavor is to connect Australia and invite people to enjoy tea together.

When you hear Troy talk about tea, you’ll immediately sense that tea is not just a drink for him and his crew, it’s a passion: “We’re about what can we enjoy together. And tea it is. Campfires it is. Land and country it is. We’re trying to wrap that up in a teabag.”

Blak Brews reached a major milestone when Troy was cast for Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars TV show and won the grand prize and Gordon Ramsay’s mentorship!

Troy shares his journey and experience on the show, and together with his web developer, Istephan Cingoz, they explain how Troy’s appearance on Food Stars and major success of winning the show affected his business and website, and what’s next for Blak Brews.

Join us as we unveil Blak Brews’ stunning adventure and success and how they conquered a massive traffic spike with Kinsta’s help.

The problem

When Troy started Blak Brews in late 2022, he chose Shopify to launch the site. It’s a platform that provides an out-of-the-box, hosted solution to launching an online store. Shopify served Blak Brews well, but then something happened: Troy was selected to compete on Gordon Ramsay’s team!

The show started filming; not only did Troy have to face challenges on-set (like the complete reimagining and rebranding of a classic Australian snack, delivering a fine dining experience, or making Vegemite appealing to American audiences), but he also needed to make sure Blak Brews’ site was up-to-speed and ready to handle thousands of simultaneous visitors and requests before Food Stars started airing.

CMS limitations and expected traffic spikes

Right after the show Food Stars ended, Troy and Istephan began preparing the Blak Brews website for increased traffic to ensure it would run smoothly. During their review of different options, they realized the need for a solution that was not only more customizable but also more cost-effective.

“With Shopify, we had to keep adding more premium subscriptions to programs to do what we want to do,” Troy explains. “That’s when Istephan’s expertise came in especially handy.”

Through his web development background, he was able to find the perfect match for Blak Brews’ website and advised the switch from Shopify.

Troy was locked into Shopify, and we saw fees increasing unjustifiably. For the growth they were expecting, costs would have been over the roof.

Thus the migration from Shopify to WooCommerce was initiated to create a fresh, new site that could appeal to increased traffic while each episode of Food Stars would be on air.

Steph explained: “We were already envisioning what the potential estimate of visitors could be on the site at the same time. One thousand. Two thousand – easily. We needed to make sure that Shopify could do this. Yes, they can, but it’s through the roof. With WooCommerce, it’s a lot more open; customers can do so much more, and it’s way more cost-effective because it’s all open-source. Lot more choices, lot more variables. And it’s great for projects like this.”

Besides a more optimizable, cost-effective platform and clean code, Istephan also wanted to ensure that all pages loaded fast under heavy traffic. As an expert in optimizing sites, he understands the importance of speed testing and site performance:

You can have the most beautiful website in the world, but if each webpage is loading 4-5 seconds, your conversions are going to decrease.

The solution

A platform to handle heavy traffic and simultaneous requests

Istephan, with his extensive expertise in website development, has spent over seven years researching managed hosting providers to find the best fit for each site’s specific requirements.

He is willing to go the extra mile to make sure his clients’ sites are in good hands. Istephan recalls looking into one of Kinsta’s resources during his research.

For many sites, I used Flywheel, which was good at first, however, it started to degrade in quality. What I loved was Kinsta’s side-by-side take, the comparison ‘Flywheel vs. Kinsta.’ That blew me away; how comprehensive that blog post was, and that got me really excited when I had my frustrations at Flywheel.

“I was working with WPX hosting; however, the volume of traffic that Troy was having wasn’t going to work. Because they wouldn’t be able to handle thousands of visitors simultaneously, and that’s what Kinsta was able to help with.”

As part of the process, Istephan considered other Managed WordPress hosting providers he had previously worked with but decided to go with Kinsta. He was confident that the platform could handle the traffic load.

Reliable hosting with support that cares

Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars was a life-changing experience for Troy, which he said “was not comparable to any moments in life.”

Troy and Istephan had a couple of months to start preparing the site for increased traffic. They wanted a platform they could trust—one that could give them confidence that the site would stay up no matter what.

Troy worked hard on the show, had fun, and earned the success that he wanted to celebrate carelessly: “When the show aired, it was so exciting. It was just intense. We did a few viewing parties in different locations. I made sure I remembered it and showed it to people.”

Kinsta’s role was crucial in providing a safe and steady environment for Blak Brews’ website. Istephan explains how he wanted to make sure that Troy could live and celebrate his achievements to the fullest without the need to worry about his site’s uptime: “You don’t want to have any downtime in those moments, that’s crucial. I can’t just go up to Troy and say: hey, your website crashed while you were having a party. That’s not good.”

Hosting the site on Kinsta’s platform gave Troy and Istephan confidence that the site would be in good hands and the traffic would be no issue.

Istephan expands with his compliments on Kinsta’s support: “One of the biggest reliefs is ensuring you have a hosting provider that can handle that, keeping everything at ease.”

You know you’re going to be looked after, especially with support. You can get support with Kinsta within 2 minutes if anything goes disastrous.

“Their techies are very easy to talk to, and they’ll help you guide help if there’s a plugin conflict, and you’re not going to be in the dark as opposed to other hosting providers where they don’t have support 24/7.”

User-friendly platform and built-in tools

Kinsta’s custom-built dashboard is specifically designed to simplify the maintenance and development of websites. It also provides users with easy access to their company’s billing information, allowing them to upgrade or downgrade their subscriptions as needed.

MyKinsta helped ease workflows for Blak Brews. Istephan reflected on the fact that a functional and easy-to-use dashboard is crucial.

The dashboard is very easy to show to clients; they can access billing, and they’ll look after you. And unlike cPanel, MyKinsta feels more comfortable.

Custom Managed WordPress plan for scalable sites

As the broadcast of the final episode approached, Troy and Istephan wanted to make sure that they were prepared for traffic spikes and thus chose to upgrade to a dedicated server solution.

With Kinsta’s custom plan, they were able to configure the server and take measures to optimize the site for increased traffic.

Istephan complimented this scalability, easy access to billing information, and client care:

One of the big perks of Kinsta is that it has small plans all the way up to enterprise. No matter what, you feel confident that your client’s gonna be safe and sound. Downgrading and upgrading is also very easy, depending on where you want to be at. Very helpful.

The result

Seamless season finale with 24/7 expert support

The airing of the final episode finally came and as part of the process, Troy and Istephan decided to bump the site up to a Kinsta custom plan to ensure its smooth running.

Istephan also ran numerous tests priorly and, to be on the safe side, opened a support ticket for the airtime of Food Stars’ final episode and had one of Kinsta’s support engineers monitor the site and assist him throughout the show’s runtime.

I was pleased that the support engineer was happy to stay around for the next two hours, helping to monitor. You wouldn’t expect to do such a thing from a support agent on chat. It was incredible. It helped ease the tension.

They didn’t just use us as another support ticket. It was more human. An interaction. They understood what we were up for and understood the risks.

Troy’s big win on Food Stars

On Gordon’s team on the show, Troy faced many challenges that tested his creativity, endurance, and devotion. He mastered each challenge and made it to the final four.

The grand finale came, and Troy presented his deeply moving pitch on the show to the mentors and an audience of hundreds of people on site, and even more watching from their homes; winning the show’s mentors’ and the audience’s hearts.

But it wasn’t the only thing he won. Troy has won Food Stars!

Peak performance under high-traffic pressure

A massive task waited for Istephan as well during the finale of the show; he needed to make sure Blak Brews’ site was running smoothly without any glitches during checkout.

While Istephan had a chat open with Kinsta’s support, he kept monitoring the site’s metrics and performance.

Five hundred visitors for the entire hour on the site, all at the same time. With Kinsta, we were able to handle that, piece of cake. We didn’t even sweat! People were able to add to their cart and then check out – there was no wait time. It loaded as if there was only one person on the site. It just empowered us.

Bright future for Blak Brews

Kinsta has lived up to Troy and Istephan’s expectations. Troy has many plans for building Blak Brews’ brand into a global company with its roots in Australia. He is looking to align with respectful partners, brands, and identities across the globe.

What does the future hold for Blak Brews’ website? They are looking to take advantage of Kinsta’s tools and services more.

“We’re going to have a wholesale subdomain soon, and we’re gonna be able to have that. It’s very affordable and justifiable,” Istephan explains.

They also plan to elevate the site by adding pairing it with an application:

Kinsta is perfect for WordPress and application—it’s all-in-one. Billing, support, dashboard… all in there it’s great! We’ll always host on Kinsta.

The conclusion

Moving from Shopify to WooCommerce and hosting Blak Brews’ site on Kinsta has helped Troy and Istephan gain confidence during the first major peak on the website. Troy celebrated his success without site downtime or other issues shadowing his joy, while Istephan was confident in his work with state-of-the-art tools and expert support by his side.

But this is just the beginning for Blak Brews. Nothing stands in the way of the company’s growth. Troy has started working on his plan for the upcoming years, and his exciting journey continues to spread his passion for flavors. He’s looking forward to delivering cups of tea and a drop of Indigenous culture and the Native tastes of Australia to people all over the world. Kinsta will be proud to support him in this venture!

The post Blak Brews smoothly handles traffic spikes after winning Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars appeared first on Kinsta®.