Summary: When Cloudflare experienced a global outage this morning, millions of users lost access to ChatGPT, Canva, X, and thousands of other platforms. Our hosting servers were affected too – but by 7 AM, we had diagnosed the issue, confirmed our infrastructure was running perfectly, and prepared our response. Once Cloudflare was up, we were back online serving clients across Central Florida. This wasn’t luck. It was the result of a deliberate decision we made over a decade ago: to build and maintain our own hosting infrastructure instead of relying on commodity hosting providers. Here’s why we go the “hard way” – and why it matters for your business.
The Morning Everything Broke (Except Our Servers)
At 6:30 AM on a Tuesday morning, our monitoring systems started lighting up like a Christmas tree. Alarms. Notifications. The kind of alerts that make any IT professional’s heart skip a beat.
But here’s what we discovered within 30 minutes: Our servers in Tampa and Atlanta were purring like kittens. Every site was alive, healthy, and ready to serve traffic. The problem wasn’t our infrastructure – it was that Cloudflare, the front-end security and performance layer we use (along with half the internet), had gone down globally.
By 7 AM, we had briefed our client service team. By 7:15, we had prepared responses for support questions. By roughly 10 AM, when Cloudflare came back online, we remained ready for business as usual.
But in the client’s eyes, their site was down. And it sucked. The good news? Agencies that depend on managed hosting services still had a mess to deal with. They were dead in the water, waiting for someone else to fix the problem.
This is the difference between renting a room in someone else’s hotel and owning the building.
We Go the Hard Way (Because We Can)
Let’s be honest: maintaining your own hosting infrastructure in 2025 is the hard way. It requires IT expertise, constant vigilance, hardware investment, and the kind of technical depth that most marketing agencies simply don’t have.
But we’re not most marketing agencies.
I (Jim Mosier) founded MosierData, and I’ve been building software since 1989 – that’s 35+ years of hands-on development experience. We started hosting our own sites on a single dedicated server around 2010. By 2018, we had developed the multi-server, cloud-backed infrastructure we use today.
We maintain our own infrastructure because we can. We have the IT background. We understand server architecture, RAID configurations (that’s Redundant Array of Independent Disks – basically, your data is stored across multiple drives so if one fails, nothing breaks), network security, and disaster recovery protocols.
But technical capability alone isn’t why we do it. We do it because the benefits are impossible to replicate with commodity hosting.
The Unrestricted Access Advantage
Here’s a scenario that happens more often than you’d think: A client’s website starts behaving strangely at 3 AM. Forms aren’t submitting. Pages are loading slowly. Something is wrong, but it’s not immediately obvious what.
With shared hosting providers, you’re at the mercy of their support ticket queue. You submit a ticket. You wait. Maybe you get a response in 6 hours. Maybe 24. Maybe they can’t even diagnose the problem because their systems restrict your access to the server itself.
With our infrastructure, we have unrestricted shell access to every server. We can log in via terminal, diagnose the issue in real-time, and fix it immediately. No waiting. No ticket queues. No automated responses telling us to “clear your cache and try again.”
We’ve solved issues in 15 minutes that would have taken days through traditional hosting support channels. That’s not an exaggeration – it’s happened too many times to count.
Shell access means we can:
- Run diagnostic commands directly on the server
- Monitor resource usage in real-time
- Identify and resolve conflicts between plugins or applications
- Optimize database performance without waiting for permission
- Implement security patches immediately when vulnerabilities are discovered
For WordPress sites, this means we can accomplish in minutes what would take hours through the admin panel. Command-line tools like WP-CLI let us update plugins, manage users, run database searches, and perform bulk operations across multiple sites simultaneously.
For our Laravel custom applications – the sophisticated, mission-critical systems we build for national clients – shared hosting isn’t even an option. These systems require specific server configurations, custom PHP extensions, background job processing, and environment controls that simply don’t exist in shared environments.
Performance That Actually Performs
Walk into any coffee shop and ask business owners about their web hosting. You’ll hear the same story: “My site loads fast most of the time, but sometimes it’s just… slow.”
That “sometimes” is the problem.
Shared hosting providers pack hundreds – sometimes thousands – of websites onto a single server. When one site gets a traffic spike, everyone else on that server suffers. When someone’s WordPress site gets hacked and starts sending spam, the entire server’s reputation tanks. When a poorly optimized e-commerce site runs a sale, your business website crawls to a halt.
It’s like living in an apartment building where one neighbor’s party ruins everyone’s evening.
Our servers host dozens of sites each – not hundreds. We’re intentionally not giving you exact numbers here (we don’t want to hand potential bad actors a blueprint), but the principle is simple: more room per site means better performance for everyone.
But raw server resources are only half the equation. The other half is Cloudflare.
The Cloudflare Advantage (Yes, Even After the Outage)
After a global outage, you might wonder why we still use Cloudflare. Here’s why we’re not only keeping it – we’re doubling down on it.
Cloudflare sits in front of our servers as a security and performance layer. Think of it like this:
[Visitor] → [Cloudflare Layer] → [Our Dedicated Servers] → [Cloud Storage Backups]
Cloudflare provides:
1. Enterprise-Grade Security: Protection against DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service – when bad actors flood your site with traffic to take it down), SQL injection attempts, cross-site scripting, and other malicious traffic. They block threats before they ever touch our servers.
2. Bot Protection: Automated systems that identify and filter out malicious bots while allowing legitimate traffic (like Google’s crawlers) through.
3. Performance Caching: Cloudflare’s global network caches static content (images, CSS, JavaScript) at data centers around the world, so visitors get faster load times regardless of their location.
4. Traffic Optimization: Their proxy service compresses files, optimizes images on-the-fly, and uses smart routing to deliver content via the fastest path.
In fact, Cloudflare is legitimately half the reason sites on our servers are so fast. The other half is our server architecture and optimization.
So yes, when Cloudflare goes down, we go down with them. But here’s the thing: half of the internet had the same problem that morning. ChatGPT, Canva, Discord, even parts of Amazon and Microsoft’s services were affected.
The difference? When Cloudflare came back online, we were immediately ready. Our servers hadn’t crashed. Our data was intact. Our configurations were perfect. We didn’t need to restore from backups or troubleshoot mysterious failures.
Compare that to businesses running on shared hosting who discovered their sites had been compromised during the outage, or whose hosting provider’s own infrastructure had failed under the load.
The Disaster Recovery That Actually Works
Let’s talk about the thing that keeps business owners awake at night: What happens when everything goes wrong?
Server failures happen. Hard drives die. Natural disasters occur. Cyberattacks are real. The question isn’t if something will go wrong – it’s how fast can you recover when it does.
We maintain backups of every site, every single day. But here’s what makes our system different: our backups live in separate cloud storage in New York, completely independent of our Tampa and Atlanta server infrastructure.
This is called geographic redundancy, and it’s the same principle banks and hospitals use for critical systems.
If a hurricane takes out power to our Tampa data center, our Atlanta servers keep running. If both data centers somehow went offline simultaneously (incredibly unlikely, but we plan for it anyway), we could restore our entire infrastructure from cloud backups in less than one hour.
Less than one hour. That’s unheard of in this industry.
We can do this because of proprietary software we’ve developed over years of running this infrastructure. Our system makes it super easy to:
- Clone entire sites between servers with a couple of quick commands
- Restore individual sites from backups in minutes
- Migrate sites to different hardware if needed
- Monitor backup integrity automatically
Traditional hosting providers will tell you about their backup systems. What they won’t tell you is:
- How long it takes to restore from those backups (often 24-48 hours)
- Whether they test their backups regularly (many don’t)
- What happens if their backup system fails too (it happens more than they admit)
- Whether you can get your backup files yourself (often you can’t, or there’s a fee)
Once, one of our RAID drives started to fail. The server’s alarm system detected it immediately. A data center technician happened to walk by, heard the alarm, investigated, and hot-swapped the failing drive. The RAID array regenerated automatically. Total downtime: zero. The client never even knew it happened.
That’s the level of infrastructure reliability we’re operating at.
Why We Chose Local Data Centers (Sort Of)
Our servers are racked in data centers in Tampa and Atlanta. We chose facilities close to home for a simple reason: if we ever need to physically access the hardware, we can.
Full transparency: I have never actually had to visit either facility. In over a decade of operation, every issue has been resolved remotely or by the data center’s on-site technicians.
But that optionality matters. We’re not running servers in Iceland or Singapore or some distant location where a hardware issue means shipping delays and time zone coordination nightmares. We’re a few hours’ drive from our infrastructure if we ever need to be.
We rent the rack space, the dedicated circuits (direct network connections that aren’t shared with other customers), and the hardware. The data centers provide:
- Redundant power (if the power grid fails, backup generators kick in)
- Climate control (servers generate heat; too much heat means failure)
- Physical security (you can’t just walk in and unplug our servers)
- 24/7 monitoring (human eyes watching the infrastructure around the clock)
- On-site technical support (like the tech who heard the RAID alarm)
This is what we mean by “owning the building” – we control the servers, but we’re not naive enough to think we need to run our own electrical grid and HVAC systems.
The Uptime That Matters
We don’t publish our uptime statistics publicly, but here’s what we can tell you: excluding planned maintenance and server reboots, we’re at 100% uptime for our infrastructure.
Individual sites have had issues – that’s the nature of software, plugins, and user error. But server failures? Infrastructure collapses? Extended outages? Those don’t happen here.
The Cloudflare outage was the first time in recent memory that all of our clients experienced simultaneous downtime. And even then, it wasn’t our infrastructure that failed.
Compare that to hosting providers where:
- Server migrations cause 2-4 hours of downtime
- “Maintenance windows” happen during business hours
- Sites mysteriously go offline with no explanation
- Support tells you “it’s working for us” when it clearly isn’t
When your website is how customers find you, book appointments, and make purchases, uptime isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s essential.
The Load Management Strategy
Here’s something most people don’t think about: what happens when a site on your server suddenly explodes in popularity?
Maybe a local business gets featured on the news. Maybe a blog post goes viral. Maybe a seasonal promotion drives unexpected traffic.
On shared hosting, that traffic surge affects everyone on the server. Resources get maxed out. Other sites slow down. Sometimes the whole server crashes.
With our infrastructure, we can monitor resource usage in real-time and respond proactively. If a site is getting hammered with traffic, we can:
- Migrate it to a smaller “hotel” – a server with fewer other sites, giving it more dedicated resources
- Implement additional caching layers to handle the load more efficiently
- Temporarily deploy to to a cloud instance if needed
We’re currently developing systems to monitor this automatically and trigger migrations without manual intervention. The goal: sites that are growing or experiencing traffic spikes get more room to breathe, automatically.
This is the kind of proactive management that simply doesn’t exist with commodity hosting. Your site is one of thousands. If it slows down, you’re on your own.
Why This Isn’t the Cheapest Option (And Why That’s OK)
Let’s address the elephant in the room: our infrastructure costs more to operate without the scale of say GoDaddy or Bluehost.
You can get hosting for $5/month from a dozen different providers. So why would anyone pay premium pricing for what we offer?
Because cheap hosting is expensive in ways that don’t show up on the invoice:
- Lost sales when your site is slow or down
- Lost credibility when customers can’t reach you
- Lost time waiting for support to respond
- Lost opportunities when you can’t implement technical solutions quickly
- Lost sleep worrying about backups, security, and reliability
Our pricing reflects the premium service we offer. We’re not the fit for everyone, and that’s okay.
We’re the fit for business owners who:
- Understand that their website is a business asset, not an expense
- Want direct access to people who can actually fix problems
- Value speed, reliability, and expert support
- Need custom configurations or Laravel applications
- Don’t want to think about hosting ever again
If you’re looking for the cheapest option, we’re not it. If you’re looking for the best option – infrastructure that just works, backed by people who know what they’re doing – we should talk.
The Technical Partnership That Makes Sense
Here’s the thing we’ve learned after 20 years in business: the best technical solutions are the ones you don’t have to think about.
Your hosting should be invisible. It should just work. You should spend your time growing your business, not troubleshooting server issues or waiting for support tickets.
That’s what we’ve built here – infrastructure that works so well, you forget it exists.
But when something does go wrong (because in technology, eventually something always does), we’re ready:
✅ Direct access to experienced IT professionals, not offshore call centers
✅ Real-time monitoring that catches issues before you notice them
✅ Proactive maintenance that prevents problems instead of reacting to them
✅ Transparent communication about what’s happening and why
✅ Rapid response times measured in minutes, not days
We do things differently because we know a better way. It’s not the cheapest way, but it works – and it works very, very well.
The Bottom Line: Partnership Over Providers
At the end of the day, the hosting infrastructure conversation isn’t really about servers, RAID arrays, or backup protocols.
It’s about partnership.
Do you want a vendor who disappears when things break? Or a partner who takes 3 AM calls when you need help?
Do you want to be customer #47,382 in a support queue? Or work with a team that knows your business by name?
Do you want to rent a room in someone else’s building? Or work with people who own the infrastructure and can make decisions immediately?
That’s why we maintain our own hosting infrastructure. Not because it’s easy (it’s not). Not because it’s cheap (it’s not that either). But because it lets us deliver the level of service we’d want to receive ourselves.
Because when Cloudflare goes down and the rest of the internet panics, we can call our clients and say with confidence: “We’ve got this. Your business is safe. We’ll be back online as soon as they are.”
And when we say we’ll restore your entire site from backups in under an hour? We actually can.
Ready to Stop Worrying About Your Website?
If you’re tired of commodity hosting, disappearing support, and wondering if your backups actually work, let’s talk.
We’re not for everyone – but if you value reliability, expertise, and true partnership, we might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Book a Clarity Call: mosierdata.com/clarity
Or explore our programs online: mosierdata.com
Because when the internet breaks, you want to work with people who know how to fix it.
About MosierData: We’ve been building websites, software, and hosting infrastructure since 2005. Our team has over 35 years of combined software development experience, and we serve clients across Central Florida’s I-4 corridor. We maintain dedicated servers in Tampa and Atlanta with cloud backup redundancy, and we partner with Cloudflare for enterprise-grade security and performance. Real humans. Ridiculously useful tech.
