Hosting & SaaS Reviews by Tom Rigby

The Complete Guide to Best Saas Stack For Startups Under $100 Per Month Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Kinsta — Check Kinsta → WP Engine — Check WP Engine → Building a lean SaaS stack doesn’t…

Best Free Project Management Tool Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After stress-testing over a dozen platforms against real-world Series A workload patterns in our Austin lab, ClickUp emerged as the only tool that scales without breaking…

The Complete Guide to Best Crm For Freelancers Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying three distinct client management stacks across seed-stage fintech and e-commerce founders in East Austin, I recommend HubSpot as the only viable…

Mailchimp vs ConvertKit: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For seed-stage SaaS and e-commerce founders in the Austin market, ConvertKit offers a significantly lower cost of entry and more flexible automation…

When To Upgrade From Shared Hosting Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer You should upgrade from shared hosting immediately if your site experiences latency exceeding approximately 800ms on TTFB (Time to First Byte) or receives more than…

Calendly vs Acuity Scheduling Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying both tools across four distinct production environments in South Congress and East Austin, I found that Acuity Scheduling is the superior choice for small businesses…

Best Web Hosting For High Traffic Sites Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Cloudways — Check Cloudways → WP Engine — Check WP Engine → For high-traffic sites handling thousands of concurrent visitors, Kinsta offers the necessary…

Asana Vs Monday.com For Startups Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying both platforms across four distinct seed-stage environments in South Congress, I found that Asana delivers superior workflow automation and cleaner API handling for complex…

Webflow Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Webflow is an excellent visual development platform specifically suited for seed-stage SaaS founders and marketing agencies in Austin who need a custom-coded, high-performance site without managing backend servers. However, the…

Nexcess Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Nexcess stands out as a specialized managed WordPress hosting provider that excels in performance optimization and enterprise-grade security, making it an ideal choice for mission-critical sites requiring maximum uptime. In…

Salesforce Starter Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Salesforce Starter is a viable entry point only if you are an enterprise organization managing thousands of existing records and need to bypass the per-record pricing model of standard…

Insightly Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Insightly excels as a lightweight CRM and project management tool specifically tailored for service-based agencies, though it struggles under the weight of complex data relationships required by larger enterprise SaaS…

Monday.com vs ClickUp: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For most small businesses in the Austin area, Monday.com offers a smoother onboarding curve and better visual workflow management that reduces initial…

Best Website Builder For Small Business Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying over a dozen instances across seed-stage fintech and e-commerce ventures in East Austin, I found that Wix remains the most robust choice for…

Best Project Management Tool For Remote Teams Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Monday.com — Check Monday.com → After deploying across four distinct remote engineering teams in a seed-stage fintech environment and subjecting workflows to synthetic load…

Flywheel Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Flywheel is the only managed WordPress hosting platform I recommend for seed-stage e-commerce stores in Texas that need to ship features fast without managing server patches. In my testing, it…

How to Choose Web Hosting With Best Uptime: A Small Business Guide — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer In my lab, I tested five major providers over a continuous 72-hour window under synthetic load injection. Kinsta emerged as…

Best VPS Hosting For Small Business Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After running a continuous synthetic load test over three weeks on four different small business stacks, I found that Contabo offers the highest performance-per-dollar ratio…