You know that moment when your side project stops being just a side project? When the thing you started for fun—sharing what you know, building something you care about—suddenly has an audience that depends on you?

For Luis Rodríguez and his wife who run their professional travel blog Japonismo, that realization came with a phone call he’ll never forget. His hosting provider was shutting down his site—not temporarily, just off—right when his traffic was finally taking off. Everything he’d built since 2006, all those readers planning their Japan trips based on his advice, suddenly couldn’t reach him.

And his hosting provider couldn’t tell him why or how to fix it. 

The breaking point: months without access

Here’s a scenario most site owners dread: You’re building something that matters. Your audience is growing. People are starting to trust you. And then your hosting provider calls to tell you they’re shutting down access to your site.

Not temporarily. Not for maintenance. Just… off. That’s exactly what happened to Luis with his previous hosting provider.

“They called me while I was in New York and said they were removing access to index.php—basically making Japonismo unavailable to everyone who wanted to visit. And they couldn’t tell me why or how to fix it.”

But that phone call was just the breaking point. The real problem had been building for months.

“We had hosting that left us without access to the website for several months—right when the site was starting to grow and gain audience trust. Just imagine what that meant for us at that critical time.”

If you’ve ever built something while working another job, you know that sinking feeling. You’re already stretched thin. Now you’re troubleshooting server issues at midnight because your hosting provider has no answers.

The problems Luis faced aren’t unusual—they’re the same frustrations many site owners hit when their hosting can’t keep up:

• Constant crashes that knock your site offline
• Slow loading times that send visitors straight to your competitors
• Images that won’t optimize, killing page speed—especially painful if your content is visual
• Support that can’t actually help when things break

“I didn’t want to spend my time on hosting technicalities that weren’t adding value to the project. I just wanted to write about Japan, share photos, and help people plan their trips. Instead, I was constantly dealing with hosting problems I didn’t understand and couldn’t solve.”

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

Finding a partner, not just a provider

When a friend told Luis about SiteGround in 2016, his expectations were modest. He needed a hosting company that actually understood WordPress. One that wouldn’t leave him stranded.

“My friend told me, ‘SiteGround will save you. They’re serious people who know WordPress inside and out. Migration will be easy and everything will just work. At that point, I had nothing to lose.”

The migration was straightforward—none of the drama he’d come to expect. But more importantly, once Japonismo was on SiteGround, Luis could finally stop firefighting and start building.

Finally, room to build the site you’re envisioning

Everything that had been a daily struggle suddenly just… worked. The site was stable. Images loaded quickly. And Luis could access tools he’d never had before:

• Staging environments to test new page designs and layouts without breaking the live site
• Built-in image optimization that handled compression automatically—no technical expertise required
• Early access to new technology like HTTP/2 for faster loading
• HTTPS security certificates when they were still relatively new, making Japonismo one of the first Spanish-language travel sites with that level of security

“I remember being among the first sites with HTTPS. SiteGround was always ahead technically, allowing your site to be faster, more accessible, and reducing your technical worries—which I sincerely appreciate.”

For a site built around visual storytelling—articles with 8,000 to 10,000 words, 20 to 25 high-resolution images showing temples, food, landscapes—that technical foundation made all the difference.

Handling peak season: the real test of hosting

But having reliable hosting doesn’t just matter during normal traffic days. For a travel site focused on Japan, the real test came during peak season.

Japan tourism has intense peaks and valleys. Summer months bring massive traffic. Winter slows down. August alone can hit 1.2 million pageviews for Japonismo.

“When traffic is low, any hosting can seem fine. But when August arrives and everyone’s planning their Japan trips, you need infrastructure that doesn’t buckle. Your site can’t slow down when it matters most.”

With his old hosting, those peak months meant crashes and lost visitors. With SiteGround, they became his strongest months.

With all those high-resolution images and long-form content, Japonismo could easily be a slow site. Instead, visitors stay an average of four minutes—far above the typical 30-60 seconds for most pages—reading, scrolling through photos, absorbing the depth of information Luis provides.

That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when your hosting can handle the load and optimize the delivery.

Support that actually responds

“I’ve never waited more than two minutes to reach someone on chat. And it’s not just fast—it’s actually helpful. They look at logs, identify the issue, and fix it. Sometimes problems that could take hours are resolved in five or ten minutes.”

For someone running a business largely solo, that responsiveness matters. Luis doesn’t need to become a server expert. He needs answers when something breaks—and ideally, he needs things to rarely break in the first place.

“Even when issues aren’t technically SiteGround’s responsibility, they investigate and help anyway. That’s what partnership looks like.”

And that partnership has lasted.

Nine years on SiteGround and counting

Japonismo has been with SiteGround since 2016. Luis has moved from shared hosting to cloud hosting as traffic grew. The site has evolved from a hobby project to a full-time business—and eventually into a specialized media outlet focused on Japan, with the website remaining the core of everything they do. And through all those changes, the hosting hasn’t been something he’s had to think about.

“The biggest impact SiteGround has had is that you don’t notice it. It’s always there. Always working. Always fast. Even at peak traffic, visitors get the same experience—which means I can focus on what I actually do: helping people connect with Japan.”

That’s the real lesson here.

What actually matters when you’re building something

When you’re starting a digital project—whether it’s about travel, food, business advice, or anything else—there’s a temptation to cut costs where you can. Hosting seems like an easy place to save money.

Luis learned otherwise.

“Cheap becomes expensive when your site goes down during your peak season. Or when loading times drive visitors away. Or when you spend hours dealing with technical problems instead of creating content. Finding a hosting partner who knows what they’re doing—that’s not an expense. That’s what makes growth possible.”

For anyone building something online, the lesson is straightforward: Your hosting provider should remove obstacles, not create them.

That’s what partnership actually means.

Ready to stop wrestling with server issues and get back to what you actually do? Thousands of creators and business owners made the switch to SiteGround for the same reason Luis did—they wanted hosting that works so they could focus on building something that matters.

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