How Pixeled Eggs stopped wrestling with AWS and started scaling

About Pixeled Eggs

Pixeled Eggs builds websites for organizations where downtime is both inconvenient and potentially devastating. This B-Corp certified London agency works with charities fighting poverty and disease, nonprofits delivering critical social services, and climate-focused organizations like Prince William’s Earthshot Prize.

When someone in crisis visits one of these websites looking for help, the site needs to load. Fast. Every time. But for years, the infrastructure behind these mission-critical sites created its own kind of crisis.

• Company: Pixeled Eggs
• Industry: WordPress Design & Development
• Team: 18 people
• Founded: 2011
• Sites Managed: 70+ WordPress sites
• Partnership: 6 years with Kinsta
• Website: pixeledeggs.com

The challenge: The AWS problem nobody talks about

AWS is powerful; everyone knows that. What few people mention is how much it can consume your resources. For Pixeled Eggs’ 18-person team, AWS and dedicated servers created the time suck of constant configuration, ongoing monitoring, and technical firefighting that pulled senior developers away from client work. The complexity costs too much money and attention.

The irony wasn’t lost on anyone. They specialized in WordPress — and were great at it — but instead of building WordPress sites, they spent their time managing servers.

What gets lost when developers manage servers

• Performance varied despite costly infrastructure. Sites that should have loaded instantly sometimes didn’t. For a charity website serving vulnerable people, say someone experiencing a mental health crisis, a family seeking emergency assistance, inconsistent performance meant inconsistent access to help.
• Security required manual vigilance across every client site. High-profile clients demanded comprehensive protection, but every layer had to be configured and monitored by hand. There was no room for error and no time to rest. Support quickly became DIY troubleshooting: When something broke, the team either waited for ticket responses or diagnosed it themselves. Neither option worked during client emergencies.
• The hosting infrastructure contradicted their environmental commitments. As a certified B-Corp increasingly focused on climate impact (especially after partnering with the Earthshot Prize) the carbon footprint of AWS and dedicated servers became impossible to ignore.

Sepas’ team needed WordPress-specific hosting with built-in performance, comprehensive security, expert support, and renewable energy commitment.

So they evaluated both WP Engine and Kinsta, and Kinsta won across every front, from technical capabilities to values alignment.

The solution: Switching to Kinsta

Pixeled Eggs migrated 30 client sites initially, coordinating carefully with each organization. The phased approach let them validate Kinsta’s capabilities before committing fully. The team expected improvements, but they didn’t expect how quickly those improvements would show up.

Soon, developers began developing again. 

Server configuration and maintenance work that previously consumed senior developer time simply disappeared. No more AWS troubleshooting. No more manual security patches. No more infrastructure firefighting. The team could finally focus on what generates revenue and serves clients: building high-performing WordPress sites.

A fast migration like this works only when you remove variables that slow teams down. Hosting can easily become one of those variables if the environment isn’t developer-friendly, easy to stage and test in, and instantly deployable.

The result: Performance, scaling, and peace of mind

Post-migration improvements showed up across the board. Sites got faster without additional optimization work. Kinsta’s caching and WordPress-specific infrastructure simply delivered.

Speed matters most to Pixeled Egg clients. When vulnerable people access charity websites in crisis moments, load time directly affects whether or not they get help.

“The performance aspect is hugely important to our clients,” Sepas emphasizes. “For some, their websites are used by vulnerable people, sometimes in a heightened emotional state, and the availability and load speed of a web page is crucial in meeting their needs.”

Growth from 30 to 70 sites over six years happened without proportional infrastructure overhead. Scaling that once required time-consuming technical work now happens quickly. Maintenance is simplified dramatically through the centralized MyKinsta dashboard.

“Scaling used to be time-consuming,” Sepas explains. “Now we’ve found maintenance much easier, giving us more time to focus on optimizing our clients’ websites to help increase their impact.”

Even with experienced WordPress developers in-house, Pixeled Eggs relies on Kinsta’s chat support. “They’re such a knowledgeable and friendly team. They’ve helped us with so many issues,” Sepas notes. “They feel like an extension of our in-house team.”

And switching to Kinsta’s 100% renewable energy infrastructure represented the single largest controllable carbon footprint reduction available to them. After working with the Earthshot Prize, the B-Corp agency intensified focus on reducing their product carbon footprint and identified hosting as the biggest impact they could directly control. The environmental commitment now strengthens client conversations, turning hosting from a liability into an asset.

The Earthshot Prize test

Six months after migration, Pixeled Eggs faced their highest-stakes moment: the first Earthshot Prize ceremony broadcast live on UK television with Prince William, Sir David Attenborough, and performances from Ed Sheeran and Coldplay. Millions would watch. Droves would visit the website simultaneously. Infrastructure failure during a live event could turn catastrophic.

Pixeled Eggs worked with Kinsta’s team to prepare for the traffic surge, upgrading capacity and optimizing for the anticipated load. The website handled enormous concurrent traffic smoothly. No slowdowns. No crashes. No emergency calls.

“The event was a huge success, and the website ran smoothly despite a huge number of visitors during the televised show,” Sepas says.

Six years in … and beyond

Pixeled Eggs now manages over 70 client sites on Kinsta without having touched their core infrastructure setup in six years. The team just doesn’t think about hosting anymore. Infrastructure that once demanded constant attention now runs reliably in the background.

“We now know from direct experience that Kinsta provides the best technical solution, a fast, secure environment, and best-in-class support,” Sepas says.

Because for charities serving vulnerable populations and organizations addressing environmental challenges, reliable infrastructure isn’t optional. Pixeled Eggs confidently delivers mission-critical websites because Kinsta provides infrastructure they trust.“I would absolutely recommend Kinsta,” says Seaps. “Switching to the platform has been one of the best decisions we’ve made.”