The guys at Vaprio programme everything themselves and vshosting~ helps them grow

We have been working with Vaprio for a number of years and together we’ve resolved all kinds of unexpected situations which can present themselves when dealing with an e-shop as popular as Vaprio. Vaprio is expanding considerably and not just online, but also through their 36 physical stores. Their e-shop alone has 7,000 items in stock. The leading retailer of e-cigarettes in the Czech Republic and Slovakia uses managed services and a CDN from vshosting~.

In the beginning, the e-shop Vaprio, then called Vaše Cigareta (Your Cigarette), ran on a regular VPS web hosting solution. However, as the company grew, so did its technical needs and requirements in order to maintain the smooth running of the e-shop. To a large extent this is due to the fact that from the beginning the client has built their own applications and systems. Besides the flexibility and options that in-house development affords them, they have an especially robust backend system that the end user doesn’t even see, but which helps to ensure the best possible customer experience.

Thanks to their perfect in-house technical solution they can offer thousands of products and are able to supply their 36 specialised Vaprio stores in the Czech Republic and Slovakia without issues. “Since everything was developed in-house from scratch, it was often linked to some not-so-perfect application designs and optimisation which we had worked on over time. As a result, we had slightly more demanding requirements in terms of load speed compensation from the server performance side,” explains Vaprio.cz owner, Jan Válek, on the beginnings of the e-shop.

Although Vaprio uses in-house development solutions, they are fully aware of the advantages of outsourcing hosting management. They have a good partner on whom they can rely. They came to vshosting~ several years ago and regard the cooperation positively. “Of course, problems can crop up anywhere (usually our fault), but what’s important is finding a rapid solution which works first time around. Over time, and alongside the growth of the company which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, we have gradually added new services to meet growing demands,” adds Vaprio.cz owner, Jan Válek, about the cooperation.

Now Vaprio are using managed services from vshosting~ along with a CDN. Vaprio decided to separate the database from the original single server and have a designated server for it. They also added a CDN for faster loading of static elements (images in particular) and a SMTP server for communication and their own application which sends newsletters to customers or the Git versioning system. During their time using vshosting~ hosting solutions they also carried out a smooth upgrade to a more modern PHP version.