How Flywheel and Managed Plugin Updates empower Pappalardo Digital to do their best work
Pappalardo DigitalPappalardo Digital is a small, inbound growth agency and HubSpot partner that focuses on workflows, email automation, and digital advertising. Pappalardo understands their client’s desire to grow and they believe that growth has more to do than just revenue.
Pappalardo needed a reliable solution to build secure, maintenance-free websites
For this agency, it all started with “how can we build websites—how do we build them fast, secure, where we don’t spend a bunch of time maintaining stuff.” The solution to that challenge was Flywheel. “Flywheel has completely changed how we think about web design, particularly for any type of marketing website” said Brian Pappalardo, Owner of Pappalardo Digital.
Pappalardo Digital didn’t want to build anything on WordPress until they had the technology stack to simplify and streamline the process. They also didn’t want to let anything get out of date, or the burden of constantly wondering if something needed updating. They craved a solution that would support not only hosting, but the ease of testing, and spinning up a site, while also managing site security and speed. This would allow them to focus more of their time on building their business and supporting their clients. “There’s a feeling that I get when I log into somebody’s site and I see a bunch of vulnerabilities—there’s a trust issue around ‘we’ll just keep this up-to-date,’ and towards the end of the month you might have 3 or 4 or 5 that need updates,” said Pappalardo.
This young, inbound growth agency was eager to grow, but there were a lot of tedious tasks slowing them down and taking time away from valuable work that could grow their business – one of those tasks was checking their sites for vulnerabilities and updates. Out-of-date plugins can greatly increase WordPress security issues.
“For me, the actual task of going in and updating plugins isn’t a big deal, but as an agency owner (same way I sell it to my clients) I don’t need to be focusing on that, and the clients don’t need to be focusing on that,” Pappalardo said.
Flywheel and the Managed Plugin Updates Add-on, a game-changer
Flywheel and the Managed Plugin Updates Add-on were the perfect solution for Pappalardo and his team. From ease of spinning up a beautiful site, to knowing that his sites are safe and secure, there was no question that this was the route to take his business to the next level and give the team the freedom they needed to get back to the work that matters. The add-on saves him a significant amount of time and is one less thing to have to focus on.
In addition to enjoying the freedom and peace of mind the add-on has provided, the Pappalardo team has been able to offer an additional maintenance service to clients, resulting in an additional recurring revenue stream for the agency.
“There’s an economy of scale that the more sites we have with you, the better the margins are so we’re working to get 30-40-50 in a year or so,” Pappalardo said
Getting back to the work that matters
Pappalardo Digital now has nearly 20 sites on Flywheel and 10 of those sites are leveraging the Managed Plugin Updates Add-on. Pappalardo has been using Managed Plugin Updates for nearly 6 months and it’s not only streamlined his workflows, but it ensures his sites are safe and secure.
“The sites that I manage that have the MPU Add-on, I think about ZERO throughout the month unless the client reaches out about something,” Pappalardo said.”There are sites that I haven’t logged into for 3-4 months and that is awesome.”
Discover how the Managed Plugin Updates Add-on can give you more freedom, and keep your sites up to date (and extra safe!)
“I would be absolutely devastated if I received an email from Flywheel that said “hey sorry we’re going out of business” - it’s a no brainer” --Brian Pappalardo
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