It’s similar to every small business story. You start out doing something you love. Maybe you’re selling products, offering services, or simply sharing your craft or expertise online or offline. But somewhere along the way, you ask yourself, “Could this be a real business? And if so, what more can I do to help it grow and thrive?”

That’s exactly where Jessica and Aaron Randhawa found themselves in 2016 with their food blog, The Forked Spoon.

The Turning Point Every Business Owner Faces

Jessica started her blog on the free Blogger platform back in 2011 as a simple way to share family travels. Her space gradually transformed into a collection of personal stories mixed with food recipes. She moved to Squarespace, and for years, it stayed that way – a hobby, something she did out of passion. She earned a bit from brand sponsorships, but nothing significant.

Then one day, a fellow blogger shared their monthly income figures. The numbers stunned Jessica. She turned to her husband Aaron and asked a question you might be asking yourself right now: “What would it take to turn this into a real business?”

The Squarespace Bottleneck

In 2017, following that eye-opening conversation about successful blogging, Jessica and Aaron began to seriously evaluate their setup. Squarespace was holding them back in ways they hadn’t fully recognized.

“We decided to switch everything over to WordPress to focus more on SEO since Squarespace at the time wasn’t able to do much for SEO.” – Aaron Ranhawa

The problems were significant and multifaceted:

• SEO capabilities were virtually nonexistent
• Oversized images were killing performance
• Limited monetization potential
• Technical limitations prevented the kind of optimization they needed for serious traffic growth

“The site was slow. It was a hot mess. Our images were way too big and heavy, which Squarespace didn’t care about.” Aaron recalls.

Sound familiar?

The SiteGround Difference

In mid-2017, The Forked Spoon made the leap from Squarespace to WordPress hosting with SiteGround. By 2018, they were focusing heavily on SEO, optimizing existing content, improving site speed, and publishing consistently.

The results came faster than they expected.

“In 2018, after focusing on SEO and everything being on SiteGround and WordPress, we started seeing month-over-month growth of 40% starting from 30,000 visitors.” 

Within just one month, they qualified for Mediavine, an advertising network that required a minimum of 50,000 sessions at the time. They’d increased their traffic by nearly 70% in 30 days.

But that was just the beginning. By November 2019 – roughly two years after the migration – The Forked Spoon was attracting 2.5 million sessions per month. That’s an 80x increase from their starting point.

“I was like, why didn’t we do this sooner!? Imagine where we would be now!” Jessica says.

The results were in:

• Within 30 days: 70% increase in traffic, qualifying for premium ad networks
• Within 18 months: 2.5 million sessions per month
• Growth rate: 40% month-over-month for 18 consecutive months
• Overall result: An 80x traffic increase from their starting point

A Migration That’s Worth It

Infrastructure That Grows With You

No business owner should have to worry about whether their website hosting can handle their success. 

The Forked Spoon started on a basic SiteGround hosting plan and scaled to cloud hosting as their traffic exploded. Simply because SiteGround’s infrastructure is built to grow with you.

“We love having you guys utilize Google’s cloud as a backbone, it just never goes down,” Aaron explains.

The Uptime Factor

Just like for any online presence, so in the food blogging world, downtime is a constant concern. Community forums regularly fill with complaints about outages, power failures, and networking issues. During those crises, The Forked Spoon stayed live.That’s not just convenience—that’s revenue you’re capturing while others are losing it.

“We’re in a lot of communities online for food bloggers, and we always hear, ‘Is anybody else down? Is this company down?’ And with SiteGround, we’ve never heard any excuses. You guys are always up,” Aaron shares.

Jessica and Aaron admit they deliberately kept quiet about their hosting provider for years, treating it as a competitive advantage in an industry where uptime directly impacts revenue during peak traffic moments.

“Uptime is a huge thing in food blogging, and we’ve just kind of kept you guys in our pocket, been quiet about it to keep it as a competitive advantage.” – Aaron Randhawa

Website Management Tools That Actually Work 

Managing the technical side of a high-traffic blog requires tools that make your work easier, not more complicated. This was SiteGround’s thought behind Site Tools – their custom-built website control panel replacing traditional cPanel. 

And Aaron found it did streamline his daily workflow.

“Site Tools is way better than cPanel. So much more intuitive. It’s got everything we’ve ever needed. I love the simplicity, and it’s easy to get to.” 

You need to be able to manage your site quickly, especially in critical situations, so you can get back to running your business. When something goes wrong—a plugin breaks, an update causes issues—you can restore from SiteGround’s automated daily backups in minutes, not hours.

“Having everything automatically backed up on your servers… I’ve had to roll back plugin updates or all of a sudden, something’s wrong with WordPress, and had to roll back a WordPress update–it’s really easy to do that with SiteGround’s Site Tools.”

Support That Doesn’t Make You Wait

For Jessica and Aaron, who manage everything from recipe development to website maintenance, knowing help is available around the clock just gives them this extra layer of peace of mind. When you’re running a business by yourself or with a small team, you can’t afford to wait hours for technical support.

“Another thing we really like is the 24/7 support. It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, I’m always going to be able to talk to somebody. I don’t think I’ve ever had to wait more than two minutes to get a hold of somebody on chat.”- Aaron Randhawa

The Investment That Actually Pays Off

When they first considered making the switch to WordPress hosting with SiteGround, the investment in changing platforms and the cost of managed hosting services gave them pause. When you’re evaluating hosting costs, it’s easy to focus on the monthly price. But here’s the real question: What’s the cost of staying where you are?

For The Forked Spoon, the leap they took in 2017 wasn’t just about changing hosting providers. It was about removing the technical barriers standing between them and their business goals.

And the return became clear quickly. Within weeks, they qualified for premium ad networks. Within months, their traffic had multiplied. Within two years, they were running a highly profitable digital business.

Eight Years And Counting

Since 2017, The Forked Spoon has remained with SiteGround. In an industry where business owners constantly chase better deals or performance promises, that loyalty tells you something.

“We’ve had no issues or reason to switch,” Jessica says simply.

That’s eight years without a single reason to look elsewhere. No downtime during crucial traffic spikes. No scrambling to find support during emergencies. No wondering if their infrastructure could handle their next growth phase.

Your Next Chapter Starts With a Decision

From a personal blog documenting travels to a food publication with 2.5 million monthly sessions, The Forked Spoon’s story shows what’s possible when technical limitations are removed. When you can stop worrying about whether your site will stay up and focus on what you do best.

Ready to remove the technical barriers holding your business back? Join thousands of entrepreneurs who’ve chosen SiteGround to power their growth—from your early days, to your days of glory, we grow with you.