Founded in 2009 by Tom Mirabella in New Jersey, Wingman Planning began when local business owners kept asking Tom for help building websites. What started as informal requests soon blossomed into a full-service digital marketing agency that’s become an integral part of their local business community.

Today, with over 1150 websites built, Wingman Planning has established itself as a powerhouse in the digital marketing space. Their services span website design, SEO, paid advertising, social media management, and graphic design – everything from business cards to complete brand identity packages.

The Challenge: Finding a Hosting Solution That Could Keep Up

As Wingman Planning grew, its previous hosting infrastructure became a critical bottleneck. The team’s experience with their previous hosting provider was far from ideal.

With our previous provider, we felt like we weren’t getting the level of service that we owed to our customers. When you came to them with a technical issue, they were unable to help and simply directed you to speak with a developer. – Toni Shrewsberry, Director of Website Development

For Allan Portera, Director of Marketing at Wingmann Planning, who had been using various hosting solutions for years, the technical limitations were equally frustrating. The cPanel-based systems he was familiar with had become clumsy, and the agency needed a hosting solution that could:

• Handle rapid scaling as they migrated multiple client websites
• Provide reliable technical support for hosting-related issues
• Offer an intuitive interface that wouldn’t slow down their development process
• Deliver consistent performance without the lag common with other providers

The Solution: SiteGround’s Comprehensive Hosting Platform

Discovery Through Partnership

The transition to SiteGround came through a recommendation related to their preferred website theme, but Allan had actually discovered SiteGround several years prior and had been using the platform for six to eight years personally before bringing it to Wingman Planning. 

When I started my own little personal marketing agency, someone had referred SiteGround to me and I know all the features really stood out to me, and that was what drew me in.

Streamlined Management with Site Tools

The switch proved to be transformative, starting with SiteGround’s Site Tools interface. 

You guys kind of reinvented cPanel. That’s my big takeaway. Everything just works. It’s the unified dashboard. It’s the ease of use. It’s so easy. – Allan Portera, Director of Marketing 

Toni, as a newcomer to the platform, particularly appreciated the user-friendly approach:

It makes it easy for people who aren’t developers or understand code. It’s almost like in layman’s terms and everything is very clear and concise and you understand what each thing needs to do.

Performance That Actually Delivers

The agency quickly adopted several key SiteGround features that streamlined their development process:

WordPress Staging Environments

SiteGround’s WordPress Staging functionality became an immediate game-changer for the team’s workflow.

 I love how easy it is to go from a staging to a live environment. It’s a timesaver. It helps us launch sites extremely quickly without any downtime. – Toni Shrewsberry, Director of Website Development

SSL Certificate Management

Managing SSL certificates across hundreds of client websites was previously a significant administrative burden. SiteGround’s automated SSL certificate provisioning and renewal eliminated this pain point entirely. 

The built-in SSL certificates save us so much from having expired certificates and having to renew every year. Oh my god, I can’t even tell you how much that’s changed. – Allan Portera, Director of Marketing

SiteGround Migrator Plugin 

The SiteGround Migrator plugin became a particular favorite for the team handling multiple website transitions. 

I love the migration tool, it just makes the transition so seamless. The automated migration tool handles the complex process of moving websites between hosting providers, including files, databases, and configurations. – Toni Shrewsberry, Director of Website Development

Temporary Domains

For testing and development, SiteGround’s temporary domain feature proved invaluable for Wingman Planning:

 The temporary domains make it very easy to just deploy new websites. I never had that experience anywhere else. This feature allows developers to work on websites before the final domain is configured, streamlining the development process. – Allan Portera, Director of Marketing

File Management and Monitoring

Allan particularly appreciates the advanced file management capabilities: 

I like being able to just go through the file manager and like reviewing things by the inode usage and being able to like clean up our websites, and if we find out there’s a caching plugin that’s making or a backup plugin that’s making all these backups, we need to delete those. It’s easy to identify problems.

This level of visibility into resource usage helps the agency maintain optimal performance across all client websites and identify potential issues before they impact site performance.

Support That Goes the Extra Mile

The biggest game-changer has been SiteGround’s customer support quality. Unlike their previous provider, SiteGround’s team takes ownership of problems.

With SiteGround, they dig in and say, ‘we’re going to get this solved. If they can’t fix it directly, they give you the tools to solve it yourself. – Toni Shrewsberry, Director of Website Development

Allan has become such a frequent user of the support that Toni jokes he’s “their best friend”. The support team has educated Allan on advanced topics that extended far beyond basic hosting issues. 

They’ve educated me on things that I never thought I’d be able to do, like cron jobs. They taught me how to clean up the file manager, you know, all these things that we take notes.

The hands-on approach of SiteGround’s support team sets them apart from typical hosting providers. 

They’re able to tap into our accounts and just sometimes even fix things for us or look at logs that we’re not able to see and just easily identify what the problem is. We’re constantly migrating websites and each website is very much unique. So, we’ve run into some old PHP problems and it’s been a breeze.  – Allan Portera, Director of Marketing

AI-Powered Support Integration

SiteGround’s AI support integration has streamlined many routine support interactions. 

Тhe customer support with the AI integration is pretty awesome because half the time I don’t even need to talk to someone. The AI just answers it, which is great.  – Allan Portera, Director of Marketing

The Results: Scaling Success with Confidence

Financial Impact

The switch to SiteGround delivered immediate cost savings without sacrificing quality or features. 

We’ve been able to save hundreds of dollars per year and we have much more resources with you guys. – Allan Portera, Director of Marketing

This cost efficiency allowed the agency to reinvest savings into growth initiatives while providing better service to clients.

Operational Efficiency

The agency’s migration capabilities have dramatically improved. They successfully migrated 15 sites in just two months with complete confidence in the process.

Seamless Scaling

As the agency continues to grow, SiteGround’s infrastructure scales effortlessly with its needs. 

It’s easy to scale. We started out with one server and now we’re on our third and it’s been probably two years since we’ve been using it. So it’s extremely easy to scale. – Toni Shrewsberry, Director of Website Development

Time Savings on Technical Issues

When asked directly about time spent on technical issues, both Allan and Toni responded definitively: “Definitely,” confirming they’re spending significantly less time on technical problems compared to their previous hosting provider.

Website Performance Excellence

Client satisfaction with website performance has reached new heights.

Our clients love the speed. The speed’s a huge thing. It’s never ever ever slow. There’s never delay. If it is, it’s always our fault. – Allan Portera, Director of Marketing

This performance consistency has become a competitive advantage for Wingman Planning, allowing them to deliver superior results that clients notice and appreciate.

The Bottom Line: Complete Hosting Confidence 

I’m not lying when I say SiteGround is the best web hosting company on Earth. For what we do, there’s nothing else that compares.- Allan Portera, Director of Marketing

By defaulting all clients to SiteGround, Wingman Planning is literally staking its business reputation on the platform’s reliability. It’s the ultimate vote of confidence from an agency that’s tried the alternatives and found them lacking.

Most of our clients don’t know hosting and that’s not their thing. They’re working in plumbing or building houses. They let us handle what we do best.- Toni Shrewsberry, Director of Website Development