Five conversations ecomm merchants should have before migrating to Nexcess

With your developer or agency: “Who owns what on the application layer?”

Nexcess owns the server, OS, and network on a defined patching cycle. The application layer is shared: Nexcess provides application-layer expertise for Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopware and works with your team on application-level updates, but the codebase, theme customizations, and plugin stack sit with your team or your agency.

Get that scope confirmed in the migration plan before the move starts, not because it’s contentious, but because “who patches what” is the question that surfaces at 11pm when something breaks after go-live. Having the answer before that moment is considerably more useful than finding it during one.

With your ecomm director or founder: “What compliance documentation do we have after go-live?”

Nexcess provides dedicated hardware isolation, native encryption at rest and in transit, and documentation built around PCI DSS compliance, including a written responsibility model that defines what Nexcess owns versus what you own.

When a payment processor’s risk team or an enterprise partner’s procurement function asks for vendor documentation,it exists and can be produced. Ask Nexcess to walk you through the package before migration completes. Knowing what’s in it means the next vendor review is a filing exercise, not a project.

With procurement or legal: “What can Nexcess provide for our internal approval process?”

Nexcess can produce what a procurement or legal review typically asks for: responsibility model documentation, compliance architecture summary, SLA terms. These exist before anyone requests them, which is the point.

Get what you need before the internal approval process starts rather than during it. The review moves faster when the materials are already in the folder.

With your operations lead: “When does our team need to be involved?”

Nexcess manages the migration. Scope, timeline, and risk are defined before the move starts. Your team’s involvement is access coordination, staging environment review, and sign-off before DNS cutover, not server configuration or data migration logistics.

After go-live, the first 30 days include onboarding, support introduction, and environment verification. Get a written migration plan with your team’s required touchpoints before anyone commits to dates. Knowing when you need to show up is different from feeling like you need to be across everything the whole time.

With your CFO or controller: “What does the invoice look like when traffic spikes?”

The answer is fixed-cost, and it should be confirmed in writing before sign-off. A Black Friday surge, a flash sale, a product launch that outperforms the model: none of those change the monthly invoice. No surprise egress fees, no bandwidth overages, no scaling charges appearing as line items after the fact.

What’s worth confirming before the contract is signed is what sits inside the fixed-cost scope and what, if anything, sits outside it. “Predictable” should mean something concrete enough that nobody is running invoice scenarios in October to prepare for November.

None of this requires new decisions. The one that mattered is already made. These conversations just mean the scope gets confirmed with the right people aligned, the documentation is in the folder, and the first 90 days don’t start with a scramble to answer questions.

If you’re ready to confirm scope and get the migration plan in hand, talk to the Nexcess team.