Agency · 86 client sites
Northgate Studio
An agency running client sites on eleven different hosts, moved onto one dashboard over six weekends.
-58%
hours spent on hosting tickets each month, measured ninety days after the move
Why they moved
Northgate builds and maintains websites for 86 clients. Over ten years those sites had landed on eleven different hosts, whichever one each client already paid for. Every update meant eleven logins, eleven backup systems and eleven support queues, and the team spent more hours on hosting tickets than on design.
The brief was simple: one place to see every site, a staging copy for every client, and no client noticing the move.

Six weekends, client by client
Weekend 1
The twelve smallest brochure sites moved first, to prove the runbook end to end.
Weekends 2–3
Forty client sites in batches, each with a staging copy the client approved before DNS changed.
Weekends 4–5
The WooCommerce stores, moved overnight with orders paused for under ten minutes.
Weekend 6
The last eleven sites, then the old hosting accounts closed and billing consolidated.
Six weekends, 86 sites, no client
escalations
Northgate came off eleven hosts and eleven sets of credentials. Every client now has its own isolated site, staging copy and backup history in one dashboard.
86
client sites moved in six weekends
0
client escalations during the move
11 to 1
hosting accounts the team
now manages
The setup they run now
Architecture
One isolated container per client
Staging
One-click staging for every site
Access
Per-client roles, agency single sign-on
Billing
One invoice, costs split by client
“Our clients didn’t notice the move, which was the point. Our team noticed straight away: the hosting tickets just stopped.”

Leslie Alexander
Managing Director, Northgate Studio
