Key results

• $3,000 to $4,000 in monthly hosting savings versus Google Cloud Platform
• Avoided the cost of backfilling a dedicated cloud operations hire
• Full migration of every property in under two months, with no meaningful downtime
• The one in-flight issue during cutover resolved the same day
• Continuous patching, hardening, and updates handled by Nexcess
• Internal team redirected from cloud operations to revenue and mission programs

About iHeartDogs

iHeartDogs is the flagship brand of HomeLife Brands LLC, a mission-driven eCommerce company where every product sale funds a worthy cause. For iHeartDogs.com and sister site iHeartCats.com, that cause is shelter animals. The company runs a portfolio of WooCommerce stores, a growing VIP membership program, and partner-funded care packs, transport flights, and feeding programs for rescues nationwide. A small in-house team runs the entire stack.

The challenge

iHeartDogs had been a Nexcess customer for more than three years when a new internal cloud champion made the case for moving to Google Cloud Platform. The bet was that variable cloud pricing would land lower than a managed alternative, and that the champion could run the new environment. Neither held up. About two years in, the champion departed, leaving a team with no path to operating the environment. A small mission-driven commerce business was now doubling as cloud operators.

Compute Engine charges tracked traffic and order volume, pushing the bill past $10,000 a month and erasing the savings story that had justified the move.

“We were north of $10,000 pretty consistently every month in our hosting costs.”

Ivan Rodriguez
VP of IT, HomeLife Brands

The solution

iHeartDogs returned to Nexcess in mid-2025 and moved onto a managed dedicated cloud environment sized for the company’s catalog, traffic, and subscription workloads. Nexcess absorbed patching, hardening, and day-to-day operations, freeing the in-house team to focus on WooCommerce work that differentiates the business: VIP memberships, recurring giving, partner reporting, and new tools that let customers manage subscriptions tied to shelter donations.

iHeartCats and smaller sites migrated in five to six weeks. iHeartDogs, the flagship, was fully on the platform by the end of the second month. No meaningful downtime; the one issue that surfaced resolved the same day.

iHeartDogs landed at $3,000 to $4,000 a month in hosting savings versus GCP, plus the avoided cost of the cloud operator role the company would otherwise backfill.

Looking ahead

The relationship is already expanding. HomeLife Brands is evaluating a longer-term contract and considering bringing its remaining properties back to the platform. Internally, the team is centralizing data across its WooCommerce stores so subscriptions, donations, and partner programs roll up into a single view. Nexcess is the cloud underneath that work, quiet enough that iHeartDogs can spend its attention on the mission instead of the environment.