Hall is a WooCommerce development and marketing agency based in Maine, recognized as a Google Premier Partner (one of just 300 in the US) and one of the Original 8 WooExperts. They help online retailers increase sales, simplify operations, and comply with sales tax, privacy, and ADA requirements — all while improving every part of the user journey.
They began creating e-commerce sites in 2002, adopted WordPress in 2004, and started working with WooCommerce in 2011. Hall has been involved in SEO since its founding in 1999 and have adopted other internet marketing disciplines as they have emerged: analytics, paid search, display advertising, email marketing, and more recently, AI-powered tools for campaign optimization and personalization.
We look at the entire user journey as an optimization opportunity — getting it right delivers significant growth and operational efficiency.
To support their work with high-volume WooCommerce sites, Hall needed hosting infrastructure that was just as dedicated, agile, and innovative as they are.
When they moved to Kinsta nearly ten years ago, they found a reliable hosting partner with developer tools, performance, and reliability needed to support their clients’ complex WooCommerce builds at scale.
Check out our interview with Hall President Thomas Hall, where he shares how the agency reduced support overhead, improved performance, and helped a client scale from $3 million to over $50 million in revenue thanks to Kinsta.
The challenge: the need for an optimized hosting solution
With over 26 years in the industry, Hall has worked with many hosting providers. Before switching to Kinsta, they were using WP Engine but faced critical challenges:
1. Recurring site downtime during traffic spikes: One of the biggest challenges was unstable performance during peak seasons. This directly impacted the revenue of their WooCommerce clients.
A major pain point involved a client whose WooCommerce store repeatedly crashed during high-traffic periods. At the time, the company was generating just $3M in annual revenue but struggled to stay online during peak sales.
2. Lack of an optimized environment: Hall was looking for better performance, but also needed an environment that aligned with their development workflows — something more efficient and flexible than what they were using at the time. Their hosting setup on WP Engine wasn’t optimized for the kind of high-performance, developer-led work they were doing.
We needed a more optimized environment with better support and gave Kinsta a try — that was nearly a decade ago.
3. Inconsistent support: Hall needed a hosting partner that offered “great performance so there are no surprises, and great support in case something does happen.”
The solution: Why Hall chose Kinsta
Hall discovered Kinsta through their VP, Matt Harrison, who was looking for a hosting provider with “SSH access and WP-CLI support on a managed platform” — key features for a technically proficient development team. After testing Kinsta, they found it to be the ideal match for their needs.
When we first switched, we looked at features and cost on a managed platform, and Kinsta beat out WP Engine then. In the decade since, Kinsta has stayed ahead of the competition in terms of performance and features. We have stayed happy with Kinsta and the constant improvements that improve our sites without our involvement.
The top benefits included:
1. SSH access and WP-CLI support: SSH (Secure Shell Access) gives Hall’s developers a secure way to access their servers directly from the command line. This is essential for tasks such as secure file transfers, database management, and server configuration changes.
With this level of access, developers can write custom scripts and automate routine processes, making deployments and ongoing maintenance faster and more efficient.
Together, SSH and WP-CLI give Hall’s team the tools to streamline workflows, boost productivity, and maintain full control over their environment.
2. Server performance and reliability: Kinsta runs on the Google Cloud Platform’s Premium Tier Network, which routes traffic through Google’s high-performance infrastructure rather than the public internet. This means significantly lower latency, faster data transfer, and more reliable global delivery — key advantages for any e-commerce site with a distributed customer base.
For Hall, this infrastructure ensures that performance doesn’t suffer during high-traffic periods like flash sales or holiday promotions.
With features like edge caching, Cloudflare-powered global CDN, and our move to next-gen C3D virtual machines (alongside existing C2 VMs), Kinsta delivers consistently fast server response times. This cuts down on slowdowns and downtime, reduces cart abandonment, and ensures a smooth, responsive experience for shoppers no matter where they’re browsing from.
3. Caching support: Kinsta uses multiple caching layers (Redis caching, edge caching, and full-page caching) to keep high-traffic e-commerce sites running fast and efficiently. Caching dynamically generated pages reduces the server’s load and speeds up page rendering times.
Kinsta’s caching mechanism is tailored specifically for WordPress and WooCommerce. It ensures that updates to products and prices reflect immediately while still delivering cached content where feasible.
MyKinsta, you can clear the server, CDN, edge cache for one or multiple sites, including staging sites, simultaneously from the WordPress Sites page. This also clears the Redis object cache if you’ve enabled the Redis addon for your site.
4. Proactive maintenance: Kinsta automatically handles WordPress updates and security patches, so Hall’s sites always run on the latest, most secure version. This proactive approach prevents bugs and security vulnerabilities before they become a problem, which is crucial for protecting customer data and keeping everything running smoothly.
We check the uptime of all WordPress sites on our platform every three minutes. If your site goes down, our team is alerted and works quickly to get it back online.
If you turn on monitoring notifications in MyKinsta (under User Settings > Notifications), we’ll also send you an email if we detect one of the following issues three times in a row: site errors, DNS errors, SSL errors, and domain expiration.
5. 24/7 support: With 24/7 access to expert support, Hall can quickly resolve technical issues before they escalate. For an e-commerce business, even a few minutes of downtime can mean lost revenue. Quick problem resolution helps protect the customer experience and keeps sales on track.
Support is delivered exclusively through a chat system integrated into MyKinsta and is available in ten languages.
6. Managed hosting: Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting includes Google’s Premium Tier network, automatic OS-level security updates, daily backups (both files and database with a minimum 14-day retention), and our Security Pledge. This takes the burden of server management, security, backups, and scaling off the Hall team. Instead of spending time on routine maintenance, they can focus on building innovative, customer-focused features and improvements.
Plus, automatic server scaling during high-traffic periods ensures that a growing e-commerce business like yours always performs at its best without manual effort.
The results: Long-term benefits of Kinsta
When Hall moved to Kinsta nearly a decade ago, they weren’t just looking for another hosting provider. They needed a partner who could keep up with the pace of their work — fast-moving, high-stakes, and focused on helping WooCommerce clients grow.
They found that in Kinsta. And the results speak for themselves.
1. Real-world results: stability that drives growth
One of the most telling examples of Kinsta’s impact came when Hall took over a WooCommerce site that was regularly crashing under high demand. At the time, the company was generating $3 million in annual revenue. After migrating to Kinsta and rebuilding the site for performance and scalability, that same client now generates over $50 million a year.
“We moved the site to Kinsta and optimized the existing setup while building a new one. Three years later, they were over $50 million in revenue on the fully optimized WooCommerce site. This gifting company went from barely surviving holiday demand to celebrating it—thanks to major improvements in site performance.”
2. Improved efficiency with fewer support tickets and a leaner team
From the start, Kinsta’s developer-first features, like SSH access and WP-CLI, made it a natural fit for Hall.
“It was SSH access and WP-CLI support on a managed platform that originally drew our eye.”
But it’s the full experience that’s kept them here. With fast, reliable performance and proactive support, hosting-related issues are rare. That’s allowed Hall to keep their support team lean — crucial for a team where support and development roles often overlap.
“Kinsta works like we work. We need great performance so there are no surprises, and great support in case something does happen. We host many sites, and Kinsta allows us to operate with a smaller support staff… We’re able to reduce the distractions of support and increase productivity.”
Behind-the-scenes platform improvements mean Hall’s team can focus on building.
3. Better performance, better business results
Kinsta’s infrastructure delivers speed, and that speed delivers real results. After migrating client sites, Hall has seen noticeable improvements in conversion rates, search rankings, and user engagement. Faster checkouts also reduced friction for customers and lowered the number of support calls.
“Better site performance leads to higher conversion rates, better search visibility, and longer user engagement. Plus, checkout was fast and easy, which meant fewer phone orders and support calls. This translated into higher customer satisfaction, reduced support overhead, and increased profitability.”
4. Confidence during peak traffic periods
High-traffic seasons used to be a risk. Now, Hall and their clients face them with confidence.
During peak demand, we’re confident in our ability to deliver — and that’s a great feeling.
With performance and uptime handled by Kinsta’s infrastructure, Hall can scale without fear of downtime or lost revenue.
5. A long-term hosting partner that grows with Hall
Kinsta wasn’t just a better value at the time of the switch; it’s continued to evolve in ways that matter to Hall’s business. Ongoing upgrades, security improvements, and performance boosts happen automatically without adding to Hall’s workload.
“When we first switched, we were looking at features and cost on a managed platform, and Kinsta beat out WP Engine at the time. We’ve stayed happy with Kinsta and the ongoing improvements that make our sites better without us having to lift a finger.”
Why Hall continues to choose Kinsta
Ten years in, Hall still considers Kinsta a core part of its hosting strategy. The ongoing improvements, reliable infrastructure, and unmatched support have helped the agency scale without scaling support overhead.
After nearly a decade with Kinsta, Hall remains a satisfied customer. They value Kinsta’s continuous innovation, exceptional performance, and responsive support.
When asked what they’d tell others considering Kinsta, their answer is simple:
Kinsta works like we work - we need great performance so there are no surprises and great support in case something does happen - we get both. The combination of performance, features and support are a great reason to consider Kinsta.
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