Chunky Duck

agency Success Story

Switching to Staq eliminated 5+ management & performance plugins

About Chunky Duck

Chunky Duck is a creative web development agency that builds and manages high-performance WordPress websites for a diverse set of clients. Their team handles everything from design to deployment, with a strong focus on reliability, speed, and efficient workflows.

chunky-duck

The Challenges Before Staq

Chunky Duck was struggling with their previous hosting provider, WPEngine — from performance bottlenecks to lack of visibility in mission-critical workflows. Here’s what wasn’t working:

1. Stressful and Opaque Go-Live Process

  • Launching a site meant manually syncing files, databases, and hoping for the best.

  • Go-live steps (SSL issuance, DB migration, etc.) happened in the background without visibility.

  • If anything failed, they were left in the dark — waiting for email notifications or opening support tickets.

2. Performance Limitations

  • eCommerce client sites (e.g. eCommerce) consistently underperformed.

  • Even uncached pages were sluggish, frustrating both clients and developers.

  • Performance plugins were needed but often finicky and unstable.

3. Unscalable Pricing Model

  • Their previous provider offered flat-rate “unlimited” site pricing which wasn’t realistic when balancing performance.

  • Resource-heavy sites consumed far more than lighter ones, creating imbalances.

  • Chunky Duck couldn’t segment resources per client — limiting scalability.

4. Painful Plugin Management & Security

  • Frequent updates introduced risk and broke things.

  • Reliance on third-party plugins for security, updates, and performance cluttered their stack.

  • No regression testing — so every plugin update was a potential site outage.

5. Poor Visibility into Security Issues

  • If someone was blocked by the firewall, the team had no insight into who or why.

  • Resolution required opening tickets and waiting — not ideal for agencies with clients relying on uptime.

6. Slow Admin Dashboard Navigation

  • Switching between client sites or stats took too long.

  • The admin interface was slow and draining during multi-site management.

The Solution: Moving to Staq

Staq’s platform transformed how Chunky Duck manages WordPress hosting — providing clarity, performance, and confidence.

🔍 Transparent Go-Live Workflow

  • Every step of the go-live process is visible and trackable (e.g. DB updates, SSL issuance, DNS readiness).

  • Developers can see which steps are pending or completed — no more guesswork.

  • Taking a website to production now takes minutes, with less stress and fewer errors.

⚡ Instant Performance Gains

  • Sites saw immediate speed boosts — even uncached dynamic content loaded faster.

  • Added benefits from built-in page caching, optimizers, and CDN further improved scores.

💸 Flexible Per-Site Pricing

  • They can now allocate resources per client — no more overpaying for servers due to a few high-traffic sites.

  • Pricing scales with actual usage, allowing better margin control.

  • They now pay per website based on the Staq model of charging per website rather than per servers.

🔁 Automated Updates with Built-In Regression Testing

  • Plugin updates run daily, minimizing vulnerability windows.

  • If an update breaks something, regression testing catches it — and the plugin auto-roll backs without affecting the website.

  • For premium plugins, they use the Global Plugin System to push new versions to all sites effortlessly.

🔐 Built-In Security That Just Works

  • No more bloated third-party security plugins.

  • Staq’s firewall offers visibility: see who’s blocked and why — and act immediately.

  • No daily email noise or plugin alerts — just clean, actionable data.

🧪 Powerful Staging & Dev Environments

  • Create multiple staging sites instantly.

  • Staging sites match production resources so staging sites are realstic.

  • Troubleshoot issues, test optimization settings, or debug safely before deploying to live.

  • Dev environments mirror production, reducing risk during deployments.

⚙️ Blazing-Fast Admin Experience

  • Navigating between clients, sites, and tools is lightning fast.

  • This saves time daily and improves developer happiness during multi-site work.

🎯 Results

Since switching to Staq, Chunky Duck reports:

  • Faster launches, with fewer go-live issues

  • Great Core Web Vital scores with no extra performance tweaking

  • Elimination of 5+ third-party plugins/tools

  • Less support noise, more time for actual development

  • Confident plugin updates via automatic regression testing

  • Simplified pricing, aligning better with their agency model

  • Improved client satisfaction through faster, more reliable sites

“The platform speed is fantastic. We didn’t have to dig through performance plugins or deal with noisy alerts. Everything we need is in one place — it’s fast, reliable, and built for agencies like ours.”

— Luke James, Chunky Duck, Australia

🚀 Takeaway for Agencies

If you’re a web developer or digital agency juggling dozens of WordPress sites, Staq removes the friction from hosting, updates, security, and go-lives. For Chunky Duck, it replaced uncertainty with clarity, and tools with streamlined workflows — all while improving performance and reducing cost.

📣 Want Results Like This?

Start a free trial by signing up or book in a call with one of our sales engineers.