Based in the mountains of Oregon, USA, Pinch and Swirl is a successful food blog created by self-taught cook, photographer and writer, Marissa Stevens and her husband Keith. They had been operating two successful online businesses when Pinch and Swirl began to gain traction. Having always had an interest in the skills needed to make a food blog tick, this powerhouse team got to work.
Together they were able to turn a platform used to journal Marissa’s favorite at-home recipes into an intentional career producing hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month.
BigScoots ticked off all of the boxes that what we were looking for with a fully managed WordPress host!
Keith Stevens, Pinch and Swirl
The Search For a New Hosting Company
Keith and Marissa had been a part of the online world for several years before their move to BigScoots. They had experienced their fair share of what the hosting market had to offer – the good and the bad.
“We started out with what you would call a DIY-host, and eventually moved onto WP Engine. We enjoyed our experience with them early on but as they grew as a corporation the personal level of support and attention faltered.”
Pinch and Swirl was growing and in order to continue as a successful food blog they needed a hosting company they could always rely on. The importance of finding an always-available and expert support team became critical, and they weren’t willing to make any sacrifices.
“The price associated with our service at WP Engine was another concern. We ended up doubling our plan every month with overages, which just killed the ability to predict our business costs.“
Web hosting shouldn’t be complicated, which is why with BigScoots, what you see is what you get! In the 14 years we’ve been in business we have never increased our prices, and we never charge any overages. Not to mention on average we’re ~4x cheaper than our managed WP competitors 😉
Check out our Fully Managed WordPress Hosting plans.
How Pinch and Swirl Found BigScoots
“Marissa was at a conference and she gave Andrew Wilder (NerdPress) a ride to the airport. He was raving about BigScoots, and she immediately sent me a message asking me to check you out. My first thought was: what is a Big Scoot?”
We love working with industry leaders, and it is an honor to be recommended by NerdPress.
Once looking at what BigScoots had to offer, we quickly realized that you ticked off all of the boxes of what we were looking for with a fully managed WordPress host.
Keith Stevens, Pinch and Swirl
Pinch and Swirl Gained Expert Level Support
“With WP Engine, we were at their top plan so our next option was to move up to an enterprise solution, which just wasn’t necessary, but we weren’t willing to sacrifice the functionality or support that we want out of a hosting company.”
At BigScoots we’ve been building efficiency into our business for a decade. Owning all of our infrastructure from top to bottom as well as working almost exclusively by word of mouth, we’re able to deliver truly enterprise hands-on managed web hosting with considerably more resources at a considerably lower price point.
“I always receive very thorough and well thought out answers with expertise behind them. I never feel like your support team is just trying to get the ticket closed without solving the problem. It’s obvious you have a well thought out support team!”
As an agile and efficient expert team, we’re able to dedicate a serious amount of one-on-one time to all of our Fully Managed WordPress Hosting clients, allowing us to achieve completely optimal page speed performance when our competitors just don’t have the time to.
“Out of a support inquiry, you not only want your problem to be solved, but you also want some explanation behind what the problem was because we don’t always fully understand what is happening on the server level. The responses I get from support always have an answer but also even more detail about the question I had.”
WordPress Optimized Portal
“We are happy to have your team manage things for us, but the WPO Portal has all the features for us to manage things ourselves if we want to.”
Our WordPress Optimized Portal (WPO) gives you access to everything you need to manage your WP site. This is where you’ll find all of your active services and domains listed, access to our always available support team, migration requests, backups, automated staging, redirects, email, collaboration, plugins, site traffic, DNS records, and much much more.
“It is very simple to implement redirects without having to do it through the back-end. Backups are easy and seamless, and its really easy to download the backups onto our own storage space for that extra peace-of-mind.”
You went from an unknown aspect of our technical stack, to a trusted partner – which you cannot expect out of most technical solutions, but we know we can with you! You look out for our business, and we feel completely supported as a partner.
Keith Stevens, Pinch and Swirl
Personal. Expert. Always There.
That’s Real Managed Hosting.
Completely managed web hosting that works for you, because experts built it just for you.
Advice For Future Clients
“We selected BigScoots because we wanted a team we could count on when we needed you. Our opinion of a good host is one that kind of disappears into the background until we need them and everything runs smoothly. That is exactly what we get with BigScoots!”
On a scale of 1 to 1000, Pinch and Swirl ranked us at 1000 when asked how likely they would be to recommend us to friends and family.
Need to hear more before you make the move? Check out how another successful food blog, Simple Nourished Living, grows their site with BigScoots.
Written by Katie
Marketing and Client Success Manager
