SquareOps

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Partner of UnFoldMart

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

UnFoldMart is a full-service branding, web development and app development, SEO, AEO, and GEO agency that helps businesses build memorable brands, create high-performing digital experiences, and generate sustainable growth through strategic marketing and AI-powered search optimization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SquareOps to accomplish?

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• Replace manual FTP deployments and in-dashboard plugin updates with Git-based CI/CD, a production-like staging environment, and version-controlled theme, plugin, and WordPress core updates with one-click rollback capabilities.
• Migrate Unfoldmart's WooCommerce store off a single shared host onto a highly available AWS architecture, including ALB, EC2 Auto Scaling, Aurora MySQL Multi-AZ, and EFS-backed shared media, ensuring the storefront and checkout remain online during flash sales and seasonal traffic peaks.

SOLUTION

How did you find SquareOps?

Online Search

Why did you select SquareOps over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Technical Depth

How many teammates from SquareOps were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

An end-to-end AWS modernization for a WooCommerce store, including a zero-downtime migration to Application Load Balancer (ALB), EC2 Auto Scaling, Aurora MySQL Multi-AZ, Redis, and Amazon EFS. Implemented Terraform Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CloudFront with advanced caching for improved Core Web Vitals, Git-based CI/CD with a dedicated staging environment, AWS WAF and IAM security hardening, infrastructure cost optimization, disaster recovery planning, and 24/7 managed support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

1. Reduced median TTFB from 1.9s to 340ms and improved mobile LCP from 4.3s to 1.5s, bringing storefront and category pages into passing Core Web Vitals.
2. Reduced deployment time from approximately 2 hours of manual FTP work to 9 minutes through full automation, increasing release frequency from roughly 2 to 18 deployments per month with zero failed releases.
3. Improved uptime from 99.2% to 99.96% and reduced MTTR from approximately 3 hours to under 25 minutes using CloudWatch alarms and Grafana dashboards integrated with on-call routing.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project management was one of the stronger parts of the engagement, and it held up across both phases of the work. During the initial build we had a shared Slack channel with their delivery team, a weekly review call, and a sprint board we could check ourselves rather than waiting on a status email. Scope and timelines were agreed upfront and risks were flagged early rather than at the deadline at one point a dependency on our side pushed a milestone by about a week, and they re-sequenced the plan instead of letting it stall.

Once we moved into the ongoing managed services phase, that discipline stayed in place. We have a defined SLA with 24x7 coverage on production, a named engineer who knows our environment rather than a rotating helpdesk, and a monthly review where they walk us through incidents, cost trends, patching, and what they're recommending next quarter. Routine maintenance — cluster upgrades, security patching, backup and DR testing is scheduled and communicated in advance rather than sprung on us, and change requests outside the retainer are scoped and priced before any work starts.

Response times have been consistent, usually within 15 minutes for anything urgent, and during production incidents they took ownership without us having to chase anyone for updates. Two years in, the relationship still feels actively managed rather than something running on autopilot. 

What was your primary form of communication with SquareOps?

Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Two things stood out. First, the depth of hands-on Kubernetes and AWS expertise relative to the size of the teamm, we spoke to larger firms who couldn't answer the same architecture questions in as much detail. Second, they gave us real opinions instead of just doing what they were told. More than once they pushed back on something we'd asked for and explained why a different approach would cost less or break less often, and they were right.

They also kept the documentation side tight throughout, maintaining runbooks as things changed, and the Terraform and application code properly commented and pushed to our own GitHub repos in a clean, well-structured layout. Even with them still supporting us day to day, we always had full visibility into how our platform was built and could work with it ourselves if we needed to.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SquareOps could have done differently?

Nothing that made us reconsider the partnership, but two honest points. The first is ramp-up: understanding our existing setup took longer than we'd expected, partly because a lot of our legacy configuration was undocumented on our side. The discovery phase was slower than the plan assumed, and in hindsight a more structured audit in week one with a clear list of what they needed from us, would have saved both sides a couple of weeks.

The second is that they're a lean, senior team, which is mostly a strength but does mean capacity has to be planned. When we came to them mid-engagement with an additional workstream on short notice, staffing it took a few days longer than we'd have liked. They were upfront about it rather than overcommitting, which we'd rather have, but if you're expecting scope to expand quickly it's worth flagging early instead of assuming a team can be spun up overnight.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CTO of EyeControl, a medical device company. We provide a wearable platform that enables communication and engagement for patients with limited speech and movement. Our product supports interaction with family and clinical teams across various care settings.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SquareOps?

We needed a full-time DevOps engineer.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SquareOps has helped us with HIPAA compliance, NGLZ, and IAC. The team has set up our infrastructure, provided documentation, and handled ongoing support.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with one teammate from SquareOps.

How did you come to work with SquareOps?

We found them through an online search. We chose them over other options because they had high ratings, their pricing fit our budget, they were a great culture fit, they offered good value for the cost, and their company values aligned with ours.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2022, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The measurable outcomes have been the delivery times of the releases.

How did SquareOps perform from a project management standpoint?

SquareOps has delivered on time. Our primary forms of communication have been virtual meetings and emails or messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their communication has been impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing they need to improve.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Founder of an information technology company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Cloud web hosting

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SquareOps to accomplish?
Build an MVP for WordPress hosting platform

SOLUTION

How did you find SquareOps?

Online Search

Why did you select SquareOps over others?

High ratings

How many teammates from SquareOps were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Development of a WordPress hosting platform using Kubernetes on AWS. We required architectural and integration design, including AWS services like EKS, EventBridge, lambda, etc.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Clearly defined weekly goals and ongoing updates on progress.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The team is very flexible in changing needs and requests. Deliverables were on time and to a high quality.

What was your primary form of communication with SquareOps?

Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Highly rated and very responsive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SquareOps could have done differently?

no improvements needed.