Case study · Bluehost DevCloud · Internet & Hosting · 2017

Frictionless cloud servers, for developers

Hosting wasn’t built for small and medium businesses. DevCloud set out to be the simple, affordable cloud that lets their developers deploy without the pain.

Role: Product Design Lead
Year: 2017
Industry: Internet & Hosting
Platform: Responsive web app

01 · Business case

Everyone needs to be online

Realisation

An IT agency, a restaurant, a garage sale — every business needs faster ways to reach customers and grow online.

Market insight

Businesses rely on expensive one-size-fits-all enterprise products that serve no industry well.

Hypothesis

Hosting isn’t made for SMBs: complicated, costly, and full of features they’ll never use.

02 · Audience

Who it’s for, and the opportunity

Target audience

SMBs across IT, entertainment, e-commerce and services
Small dev shops and IT agencies
Full-stack developers at startups
Freelance IT consultants

Problem areas

Enterprise products need DevOps-level training
Simpler options like DigitalOcean are card-based
AWS-class infrastructure is expensive
Too many tools nobody needs

The opportunity: a simple, affordable platform with just the right features, so SMB developers deploy without complex methodologies.

03 · Competitors

The landscape

IaaS

PaaS

04 · Personas

Who deploys on DevCloud

Venu Gopal

Back-end developer at a startup.

Uses AWS for features and docs — finds it too expensive
Pays ₹15,000 a month
Wants to scale as the startup grows

Rahul Garg

Owns an IT servicing agency.

Recommends AWS to clients who need scale
Comfortable with AWS, aware of Google Cloud
Open to a product for small businesses

Sanya Malik

Founder of a fitness startup.

On DigitalOcean, per her tech lead
Serves 1,000–2,000 customers, growing 10%
Needs fast, stable, secure and scalable

05 · Problem areas

What held DevCloud back

Objective: grow acquisition and retention by fixing abuse, a weak product experience and the overall customer experience.

Abusers

Post-paid billing with no payment instrument let users consume and never pay.

Acquisition

Forcing a prepaid top-up before spinning a server cut sign-ups drastically.

Lack of trust

Bills varied month to month, so users doubted the charges.

No market presence

Little awareness against AWS, Google Cloud and DigitalOcean.

No brand strategy

The brand needed to evolve to acquire and keep loyal customers.

No product parity

Easy to use, but not yet powerful enough to switch to.

06 · Strategy

Experience strategy

Lever	Plan
Platform	A responsive web app for the MVP; native Android, then iOS, later
Freemium	A 15-day trial with limited access before subscribing
Referrals	Reward users for inviting friends — the startup community helps each other
Value adds	Prototyped from interviews, differentiation and competitor features
Billing	Prepaid and post-paid, for short-term and recurring needs
Brand	Guide, identity, email campaigns, banners and posters for SMBs and startups