Backups are not the hard part — restores are
Every host advertises backups. Almost nobody tests restores. For an agency holding client sites, the gap between the two is the difference between an incident and a catastrophe.
White-label nameservers for agencies — glue records, delegation and getting it right
Running ns1.youragency.com instead of your host’s nameservers looks professional and quietly improves client retention. It also has failure modes worth understanding before you switch.
DNS TTLs and the art of the zero-downtime cutover
Most migration downtime is self-inflicted and comes down to TTLs set wrong, set too late, or set on the wrong records. Here is how caching actually behaves and how to plan a cutover around it.
Migrating your client book without a single angry phone call
Fifty sites, fifty DNS zones, hundreds of mailboxes — and one imagined catastrophe. A well-run migration is a checklist executed in a sensible order. Here is the checklist, and what to demand from the host receiving it.
Migrating mailboxes with imapsync — a practical runbook
Moving mailboxes between providers without losing mail, flags or folder structure. The imapsync invocations we actually use, the flags that matter, and how to sequence a cutover.
Email deliverability is a sales advantage: what your hosting lets you promise clients
Most deliverability problems are decided by infrastructure choices made long before anyone hits send. If your stack authenticates every domain by default, you can promise what competitors cannot — and charge for keeping it true.
Hosting email and the website in different places — MX, autoconfig and the bits everyone forgets
Splitting mail and web hosting across two providers is common and entirely sensible. It also breaks mail client setup in ways that are easy to miss. Here is the full DNS picture.
Selling hosting under your own brand: how white-label works end to end
Your clients already believe you host their websites. White-label hosting makes the invoice, the margin and the infrastructure match the perception — here is how it works, from your nameservers down to the metal.
The bulk sender rules, explained — what Gmail and Yahoo actually require
Since February 2024, sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail comes with hard requirements. Here is each one, what it means technically, and how to verify you meet it.
Why your agency shouldn’t be a sysadmin: what “managed” should actually include
Somewhere in your agency, a designer is moonlighting as a systems administrator. Here is what managed hosting should actually cover — and three questions that reveal whether yours covers any of it.