We’re excited to announce two new ways to work more closely with you: freistilbox Connect, our new customer communication platform, and Office Hours, regular video sessions where you can chat directly with our team.

Why We’re Doing This

Running web applications at scale for 15 years has reinforced something we’ve believed from day one: the best hosting solutions don’t happen in isolation. They emerge from real conversations between people who understand both the technical challenges and the business goals behind every website.

Since we launched freistilbox in 2010, we’ve built our reputation on collaboration. We function as your external SRE team, handling the complex infrastructure work so you can focus on building great websites for your clients. This collaborative approach has always been central to how we work, but we’ve realized we can make it even more effective.

The best solutions come from understanding your specific challenges. When a client’s traffic spikes unexpectedly, when you’re troubleshooting a performance issue at 2 AM, or when you’re planning a major site launch – these are the moments when having direct access to our expertise makes all the difference.

We want to know what keeps you up at night, to understand the pressure you face when a client’s campaign goes viral, or when a WordPress update breaks something critical. And we intend to share what we’ve learned from managing thousands of Drupal and WordPress sites over the past decade and a half.

Introducing freistilbox Connect

freistilbox Connect is our new customer communication platform, built on Discourse – the same forum software that powers communities for organizations like Mozilla, Let’s Encrypt, and other leading technology companies. Think of it as your direct line to our team, but with the added benefit of learning from other experienced developers facing similar challenges.

Here’s how it works: each customer gets their own private forum space and dedicated chat channel. This isn’t a generic support ticket system where your question disappears into a queue. It’s a persistent space where you can discuss technical issues, request features, share insights, and build relationships with both our team and fellow customers.

What Makes Connect Different

Private but Connected: Your forum is private to your team and ours, but you can also participate in broader community discussions. You get the security of private communications with the knowledge-sharing benefits of a community.

Persistent Conversations: Unlike email threads that get buried or chat messages that scroll away, Connect maintains a searchable history of every discussion. When you’re facing a similar issue six months from now, the solution is already documented and waiting for you.

Real Expertise: Our responses come from the same team that built and maintains our hosting platform. When we answer a question about MySQL optimization or Varnish configuration, we’re drawing from years of hands-on experience managing these systems at scale.

Feature Requests That Actually Matter: Have an idea for improving our platform? Connect gives you a direct channel to share suggestions and see how they fit into our roadmap. We’ve always valued customer feedback, but now we have a better way to capture and act on it.

Beyond Technical Support

Connect isn’t just for troubleshooting. Use it to discuss upcoming projects, get advice on architecture decisions, or share lessons learned from recent deployments. Our goal is to be your trusted advisor for all things related to web operations and DevOps.

Planning a high-traffic product launch? Start the conversation early and we can help you prepare. Evaluating new tools or techniques? Tap into our experience with similar implementations. Dealing with a tricky client requirement? Let’s brainstorm solutions together.

Office Hours: Face-to-Face Problem-Solving

Sometimes the best conversations happen when you can see each other’s faces. That’s why we’re also launching Office Hours – regular video sessions where you can join Markus for casual discussions about whatever’s on your mind.

These aren’t formal presentations or sales pitches. They’re open conversations where you can ask questions, share challenges, discuss industry trends, or simply introduce yourself to other members of the freistilbox community. Markus brings over a decade of customer success experience and has seen just about every hosting challenge you can imagine.

What to Expect

Office Hours are open to all customers and happen via video call. We’ll announce sessions in advance through Connect, and you’ll be able to join whether you have a specific question or just want to listen and learn from others.

Maybe you’re curious about our approach to security monitoring. Perhaps you want to understand how we handle traffic scaling during peak events. Or perhaps you just want to meet the people behind the platform that keeps your sites running. All of these are perfect reasons to join.

The format is intentionally flexible. Some sessions might focus on specific technical topics if there’s common interest. Others might be open Q&A where we tackle whatever questions arise. The agenda is driven by what you need most.

Why This Is Relevant for Your Business

As a web developer or agency owner, you’re constantly balancing technical excellence with business demands. Your clients expect their websites to be fast, secure, and always available. Your team needs to deliver projects on time and within budget. And you need to stay ahead of evolving technologies and best practices.

Having direct access to hosting experts who understand these pressures gives you a significant advantage. When you can quickly resolve performance issues, when you can confidently recommend solutions for complex requirements, when you can prevent problems before they impact your clients – that’s when you become the trusted advisor your clients rely on.

Connect and Office Hours are designed to make you more effective at what you do best. Instead of spending time wrestling with server configurations or troubleshooting infrastructure issues, you can focus on building great user experiences and growing your business.

The Technology Behind Connect

We chose Discourse because it represents the best of modern community platforms. It’s open source, actively maintained, and designed specifically for meaningful discussions rather than quick exchanges. The platform includes features like email integration, real-time notifications, mobile apps, and powerful search capabilities.

The chat functionality provides a space for quick questions and informal discussions, while the forum format is perfect for more detailed technical conversations that benefit from structured responses and documentation.

Getting Started

Connect is available to all freistilbox customers at no additional cost. We believe that great customer relationships are fundamental to great hosting, not an optional extra.

By now, you should already have received an email invitation that provides you with access to your private forum space and instructions for joining community discussions. Our team is already active on the platform and ready to help with any questions about getting set up.

Office Hours sessions will be announced through Connect, so joining the platform is the best way to stay informed about upcoming opportunities to connect face-to-face with our team.

Looking Forward

This is just the beginning. We have plans to expand Connect with additional features based on your feedback and needs – platform status updates, expanded documentation resources, and new ways to share our development plans across our customer community.

The success of these initiatives depends on your participation. The more you engage, share your experiences, and ask questions, the more valuable these platforms become for everyone.

We’ve spent 15 years perfecting the technical side of managed hosting. Now we’re investing in perfecting the human side – the relationships, communication, and collaboration that turn good hosting into great partnerships.

Ready to Connect?

Your expertise combined with our infrastructure experience creates something powerful. When you understand our platform deeply, and we understand your challenges clearly, we can solve problems faster and build better solutions together.

Join freistilbox Connect today and become part of a community where technical excellence meets genuine collaboration. Whether you’re a longtime customer or considering freistilbox for your next project, we’re excited to work more closely with you.

The web development landscape continues to evolve, but one thing remains constant: the best outcomes happen when smart people work together. Let’s build something great.

Questions about Connect or Office Hours? Our team is standing by to help you get started.