--- title: "MBS Communications case study: taking over an opaque stack and cutting hosting cost 30x | Novatorius" description: "How Novatorius took ownership of MBS Communications' inherited five-site WooCommerce stack, optimized it (homepage queries 2,532 to 326, RAM down about 84%), and moved it off WP Engine to hosting the client owns, from about $2,900 a month to about $80." url: "https://www.novatori.us/work/mbs/" source: "Markdown twin of https://www.novatori.us/work/mbs/ — generated for AI agents." --- MBS Communications · Multi-site e-commerce # We took over an opaque inherited stack and made it theirs, faster and far cheaper MBS Communications runs five WooCommerce storefronts selling custom-branded products to professional practices. They had inherited a vendor-built stack nobody could see into, on hosting that cost about $2,900 a month. We took ownership of the code, optimized it, and moved all five sites to hosting they own and we monitor. [Book a working session](https://www.novatori.us/audit) [More work](https://www.novatori.us/work) E-commerce engineering (WordPress / WooCommerce)Performance optimizationHosting migrationManaged care & support The challenge ## What stood in the way MBS had inherited a five-site WooCommerce stack from a previous agency, including a custom product-options plugin nobody could see into or safely change, tightly coupled to checkout, pricing, and fees. Years of accumulated code bloat made the sites slow and heavy, and because the unoptimized code ate server resources, the hosting bill had climbed to about $2,900 a month, roughly 30 to 60 times the going rate per visit. They were locked into a stack they did not control, overpaying for it, and afraid to touch the part that takes the money. The approach ## How we built it 1. 1 ### Took ownership of the code We decomposed the inherited theme and plugins into clear, maintainable code, with one core theme file going from 1,522 lines to 94, moving business logic out of the theme and into code we could actually see into and change safely, instead of a black box only the old vendor understood. 2. 2 ### Optimized what was there We cut the dead weight: homepage database queries dropped from 2,532 to 326, a variable product page from 4,515 to 1,745, RAM use fell about 84%, and peak bandwidth about 25%, with thousands of orphaned database records and gigabytes of stale dumps cleared out. 3. 3 ### Moved it to hosting they own We migrated all five sites off WP Engine to a self-managed DigitalOcean and SpinupWP stack the client owns and we monitor, with DNS on their own Cloudflare account. The hosting bill went from about $2,900 a month to about $80, and the infrastructure is theirs, not ours to hold over them. The results ## What changed $2,900 → $80/mo Hosting cost All five sites moved off WP Engine to infrastructure the client owns and we monitor. 2,532 → 326 Homepage queries An 87% cut from re-architecting the inherited code, with RAM use down about 84%. 5 sites Owned, not rented A vendor-locked black box turned into a stack the client controls, documented and theirs to keep. In their words > “As a multi-brand company running several online stores, we brought Novatorius in for custom software development and hosting, and Alex’s team is the rare partner that fixes the actual problem instead of just working a ticket queue. Our hosting had quietly become our single largest recurring software cost. They pulled our real traffic data, showed us we were paying for capacity we’d never use, and migrated all five of our stores onto a right-sized setup with zero downtime, which took a major expense off our books. They document everything, communicate clearly, and think like a systems partner who understands how our business actually runs. If you need custom software development for a business that runs multiple online stores, I recommend them without reservation.” D Dena MBS Communications Under the hood ## The stack we wired together WordPressWooCommerceDigitalOceanSpinupWPCloudflare Start here ## Want a system that accounts for itself like this? It starts with a free working session, a map of where your sales go uncredited. [Book a working session](https://www.novatori.us/audit) [Talk first](https://www.novatori.us/contact)