Eyerim, a popular online eyewear store, has undergone numerous technological and business changes over the years. In 2019, the company entrusted its infrastructure to vshosting~, and two years later, in collaboration with vshosting~, successfully transformed it from the Magento e-commerce platform to Shopsys with cutting-edge Kubernetes solutions. (Shopsys also operates its infrastructure with vshosting~.)

Thanks to this transformation, Eyerim expanded its operations to 14 countries and became the fastest-growing eyewear e-shop in Central and Eastern Europe.”

“When Eyerim was founded, the website was built on the Magento platform. Although this system served its purpose, over time, Eyerim faced increasing challenges associated with it. The main issues were the complexity of the system and the difficulty in customising it, making quick and flexible changes problematic. All of this began to change in 2021 with the arrival of a new IT director.”

“Under the new IT leadership, Eyerim decided to transition to the Shopsys Framework. One of the reasons was the easier availability of developers, but the main driving force for the change was the desire for greater flexibility and quick adaptation to market needs. This is where vshosting~ proved to be a key partner. Thanks to their deep understanding of the Shopsys architecture and their own infrastructure being hosted with vshosting~, the entire migration proceeded smoothly and swiftly.”

vshosting~ quickly adapted to Eyerim’s specific needs and, without detailed specifications, proposed and implemented a top-notch architecture for Eyerim, including a Kubernetes cluster, PostgreSQL pool, and KeyDB.

This new technical solution upgrade resulted in a significant speed boost for the website and increased development efficiency. Eyerim is now able to roll out dozens of improvements every two weeks and swiftly implement new features. This led to a marked increase in customer satisfaction, consequently boosting sales. Despite challenges posed by COVID and the macroeconomic situation, Eyerim continues to grow by 30-50% annually.

Founded in 2014, INVITAL Aqua quickly established itself as the largest online retailer in Europe specialising in aquariums, terrariums, and garden ponds. Their unique approach combines in-house production with goods importation, allowing them to offer a wide range of high-quality products to hundreds of thousands of customers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and now Slovenia.

A standout feature of INVITAL Aqua is their rapid dispatch, which is vital for perishable items such as plants. They can prepare a parcel for the courier within 10 minutes of receiving an order. This is partly due to their bespoke warehouse software, run on a managed Windows server by vshosting~.

INVITAL Aqua has been putting trust into vshosting~ for years. Their collaboration began with a managed Linux server. Therefore, when they transitioned to the new warehouse software, Altus Vario, which required Windows, they wanted to the new Windows server from vshosting~ as well. The server was initially managed by external administrators, while vshosting~ handled the hardware.

As soon as vshosting~ introduced their managed Windows service, INVITAL Aqua decided to transition to this professional, 24/7 supported version. A crucial factor was the need for reliability and constant server supervision, especially given the nature of their business. They dispatch to 5 European countries, mostly plants that must be delivered swiftly to prevent them from perishing. Everything fits perfectly, from planning the number of staff in the warehouse to processing an order – they can prepare a parcel for the courier within 10 minutes of receiving a customer’s order.

If something goes wrong behind the scenes of an e-shop, unlike a physical store, you can’t just shut the doors. Orders keep coming in, problems escalate rapidly, and it’s impossible to catch up. That’s why it was vital for INVITAL Aqua to have everything operating at 100% and to always have a team of experts on hand. The only one who could offer this was vshosting~.

INVITAL Aqua relies heavily on automation, so they have high demands for their server and its reliability. As part of their hosting solution’s optimisation, they also switched from Intel Gold CPU to the more modern AMD EPYC. This change led to increased performance and efficiency, enabling INVITAL Aqua’s server to handle demanding operations linked to rapid order processing and dispatch more effectively.

INVITAL Aqua considers their partnership with vshosting~ to be extremely valuable. Since transitioning to the managed Windows solution, they’ve noticed a significant increase in professionalism and reliability compared to when external administrators were in charge of their Windows server management.

vshosting~ always addresses all requests and queries within minutes and informs the client in advance about any impending server activities. INVITAL Aqua greatly appreciates all of this, as well as the overall service operation:

“Since transferring server management to vshosting~, we’ve never had to deal with any server-related issues, meaning we can focus on increasing sales and expanding to other countries,” adds Vít Hellebrand, Co-owner of INVITAL Aqua