Great Value, High Performance Hosting
Giggio is an all-in-one system that allows entertainers and event suppliers to easily manage all aspects of their business, improving and simplifying admin and speeding up cashflows.
Giggio’s platform allows anyone in the events industry to manage all of their admin from one integrated and centralised location. Their users include entertainers from musicians, magicians, belly dancers, as well as suppliers of products such as photo booths and casino tables.
A complete CRM system, Giggio allows its users to manage their enquiries, process their online confirmations, generate PDF invoices, take payments and create reports for their end of year accounts.
In the case study below, Giggio’s Managing Director Martyn Rowland, explains what they were looking for in a cloud partner, and why they chose Secura to deliver cloud hosting for the business.
Click the header above for the full text transcript of the Giggio case study video.
Martyn: I’m Martyn. I’m the founder of Giggio, which is an all-in-one system for entertainers and events suppliers to manage all aspects of their business.
Giggio allows anyone in the events industry to manage all their admin. So we’ve got all kinds of users, from entertainers like singers, magicians, bands, and belly dancers to suppliers like photo booths and casino tables. Giggio allows our users to manage their enquiries, process online confirmations, generate PDF invoices, take card payments, and create reports for their end-of-year accounts.
We got to a point where some users were complaining to us about the speed of the system when they were running reports or queries on the database. We target lots of niches within the entertainment world, and within each of these niches, the communities are relatively well-connected and talk to each other, whether it’s as colleagues, at events, or in Facebook groups and forums. And it means our reputation has always been really important. I mean, I started seeing people who mentioned these speed issues in groups online and we knew it needed addressing.
So we needed three things from our hosting partner. We needed reliability. If our server was down, not only will our users not be able to access their booking details or their website enquiry forms and online confirmation pages, they could also be at risk of losing out on business. We needed scalability. So, if we needed more RAM or disk space, we needed to be able to amend it all independently. And we also needed fast support. If we do need help, we need to know that their support is there for us.
The reason we went with Secura was from the initial meeting I had with their tech team, they made the whole process seem so much less daunting than we thought it would be and we knew we were in safe hands. And not only was the quote they provided for us pretty much a like for like setup but on all upstate machines, they could also for a similar price to what we’re currently paying, offer much more for our money. So for the same kind of price, we would not only be moving to a newer technology but also go from a single server to a two server set up, one for web, one for database. And we’d be moving to a newer operating system with much more flexibility with regards to space, CPU, RAM, and backups. But more importantly than all of that, they’d be holding our hand through the entire migration process; with so many changes to the infrastructure that we’ve been using for nearly 10 years that was really important for us.
Since migrating to Secura, our issues with the speed and scalability are all sorted. But better than that is the suggestions they give us on how to improve our setup. With Secura now in our business, they’re able to offer additional services that they know will help us. A few months ago, we used Secura’s Database Administration as a Service. We had them optimise and index our database, something which gains a notable increase in performance.
The technology at Secura is great. But for us, the people is what makes Secura stand out. Secura know our business and I feel they always have our best interests at heart.
Virtual Private Cloud
The Virtual Private Cloud is highly scalable, providing Giggio with a flexible and cost-effective hosting solution.
Responsive Support
Secura’s customer service desk is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, providing Giggio with the high levels of support they required.
Giggio had started to notice some user complaints about the speed of the system, especially when running reports or querying databases. Being in the entertainment industry, with its small niche communities that are often well connected, Giggio realised their reputation was very important and they needed to fix their system issues quickly.
With their current server setup, they weren’t getting the flexibility they needed to add more disk space on demand or pay for only the resource they had used.
Giggio identified three key areas that they needed from a new hosting solution. The first was reliability: if their server was down, not only would their users be unable to access their booking details but also their website enquiry forms and online confirmation pages, which could result in a loss of business.
The second key area was scalability. Giggio wanted to be able to add RAM or disk space on-the-go and independently, without having to pay for unused capacity. Lastly, Giggio required fast support, for the peace-of-mind that if they needed to talk to someone about their solution, it was easily accessible, with rapid response times.
Secura was able to provide Giggio with a near like-for-like quote but on new and improved technology, providing a cost-effective and fully supported solution. This included a two server setup, one for web and one for database, with a new operating system which gave them improved flexibility and the ability to scale on demand.
Since migrating to Secura, Giggio has experienced no issues with the speed and scalability of their platform. The Secura team worked hard to develop a thorough understanding of the Giggio business, and we were also able to offer additional services that we knew could improve their platform. One example of this is Secura’s Database Administration as a Service (DBAaaS). Secura optimised and indexed Giggio’s database, which again resulted in a notable increase in performance.
Giggio and their customers enjoy fast, highly available hosting.
The inherent scalability of the VPC gives Giggio the ability to scale their resources up and down, as and when they require them.
Secura’s UK-based service desk team is available to help Giggio around the clock.
