Owning your own hosting infrastructure gives you control. You run the servers, manage security, and take responsibility for uptime. For Danielle Holmes, founder of Black Nova, that control was an advantage for years. Until the expertise behind it walked out the door.
Black Nova is a five-person WordPress agency based in the UK. The team builds custom sites designed in Figma, provides IT support, manages domain registration as a Nominet registrar, and develops e-commerce experiences. They’ve been doing it for a decade.
Their competitive edge comes from how they operate. Every decision runs through one filter: what’s best for the client?
That ethos served them well, until the infrastructure supporting more than 700 client sites required deeper expertise than the business had available. Holmes faced a decision many agency owners recognize. Do you keep building around a system that’s hitting its limits? Or do you find a better one?
She chose to find a better one.
The partnership with Automattic for Agencies changed more than her hosting stack. It changed how Black Nova competes.
The challenge: 700+ sites, no margin for downtime
For years, Black Nova ran its own stack: servers, firewalls, DDoS protection, load balancing, and name servers. Owning the infrastructure meant full control. It also meant someone had to maintain it properly.
When that expertise left the business, Holmes had to make a clear-eyed decision quickly. She had more than 700 client websites to protect and no appetite for letting standards slip.
“I could not let the business go down,” she says.
She needed a hosting partner that could match, and ideally exceed, what she had built internally. Around that time, the Automattic for Agencies team reached out on LinkedIn.
The solution: The right partner at the right time
Holmes was cautious. She knew the Automattic name but wasn’t convinced it was the right fit. The conversation changed that.
“It was just so easy and so welcoming,” says Holmes. “It wasn’t like a paid membership where you had to hit a million-pound turnover.” What stood out most was how the team engaged with her.
“They were actually interested in what I had to say, what knowledge I had, what projects we had going on. To me, that makes a world of difference.”
That engagement built trust. It gave her the confidence to seriously evaluate a move.
Migrating more than 700 sites from owned hardware to a managed platform is not a small financial decision. Holmes examined the numbers carefully. She compared the per-site cost of Pressable to what she was truly spending to maintain her own infrastructure.
At first glance, the per-site cost of Pressable looked higher.
In reality, the math changed once she factored in staff time, maintenance, and the cost of hiring qualified expertise to maintain equivalent infrastructure internally. When she calculated it honestly, Pressable came out ahead.
Uptime was the tipping point. Pressable’s 100% uptime SLA gave her something she could confidently stand behind.
“When you say to a client, ‘your site will not go down,’ how can they argue with that?” she says.
The results: operational relief and a clearer market position
The migrations moved quickly. Pressable’s migration plugin removed the usual friction: database exports, admin credentials, file transfers.
“All I need now is the WordPress login. I just press buttons and it does it for me,” Holmes says.
With hundreds of sites, that time savings adds up fast.
Launching sites became smoother. The manual search-and-replace work, broken links, and media library issues that once followed go-live largely disappeared.
The infrastructure equation changed, too. Load balancing and uptime were handled at a level she would have struggled to replicate internally.
“Put it all in one big bracket,” Holmes says, “and Automattic for Agencies is obviously cheaper and better.”
The partnership also strengthened Black Nova’s position in the market. The agency is one of very few in its region partnered with Automattic for Agencies. In a crowded WordPress space, that distinction carries weight.
“This brings us credibility,” she says. “We’re not just somebody who pretends to be another WordPress expert.”
As Holmes puts it, “It’s not enough to be the best at what you do, you must be perceived as the only one who does what you do.”
For Black Nova, the move to Automattic for Agencies wasn’t just about uptime. It was about positioning. It clarified their story in the market and reinforced the standard they already held internally.
How Black Nova operates
The infrastructure decision reflects something deeper about how Holmes runs the business.
“Collaboration happens at the top. Competition happens at the bottom,” she says.
Her team follows work through. They check back in. They hold themselves accountable to the outcome.
The long-term goal is simple: when someone in the region needs a WordPress agency, Black Nova is the first name that comes to mind.
The partnership with Automattic for Agencies is part of how she gets there.
What other agencies can learn
Cost per site is not the full picture. If you run your own infrastructure, include staff time and ongoing maintenance when calculating what it truly costs.
Uptime shapes client trust. Being able to confidently stand behind availability removes an entire category of concern for clients.
Take the decision seriously, then make it. Holmes’s advice: “You have to weigh up the pain point. What difference is it going to make to the clients?” When that answer is clear, so is the path forward.
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