The Django Setup Behind
El Patio Studio’s Best Work

Before switching to Divio, El Patio Studio had to manage an unpredictable mix of shared hosting hacks, self-managed VPS setups, and improvised scripts. Their Django projects were forced into platforms that were never designed for Python. Deployments depended on manual server adjustments and unreliable custom tools. They spent hours maintaining backup scripts, replicating environments, and resolving inconsistent versions across projects.

Without containerization, running Django meant that every project felt like a new puzzle. Small deployments turned into multi-day efforts. They estimated that onboarding a project on a new host consumed an additional three days of infrastructure work for each environment. Budget overruns were common, not because of development, but because hosting itself demanded constant triage.

Why El Patio Studio chose Divio

Switching to Divio was not driven by an emergency. El Patio Studio reached a point where they realized they were investing too much time in hosting-related issues, and hiring an internal, dedicated DevOps engineer was not a viable option.

They wanted a platform that natively understood Python and Django, simplified their deployment pipeline, and provided real human support instead of a ticket queue. They found all of that in Divio, and a few things stood out immediately:

• Divio handled Django and Wagtail seamlessly.

• The support team engaged with them, answered technical questions, and helped validate their ideas.

• The command-line interface (CLI) became the core of their workflow, letting them pull production data locally, run the project as it behaves in production, tail logs, and deploy to test or live environments without additional effort.

From that point on, unless a client had an exceptional reason to host elsewhere, projects defaulted to Divio.

A more dependable workflow

Today, the company's workflow is intentionally simple. They code locally in their IDE, commit to GitLab, and push changes to a test environment on Divio. Then, they let the client validate the changes before merging and deploying them to the live environment. This linear, predictable process is easy to maintain.

Three things have made the biggest difference:

1. Fast and safe environment replication that no longer requires custom scripts.

2. Second, local production parity is achieved through the CLI pulling the database, media, and configuration in one step.

3. Zero-downtime deployments that allow them to roll out updates without triggering status alerts or risking client-facing outages.

What used to feel fragile now feels uneventful, which is exactly what they wanted.

Handling high-visibility projects without expanding the team

The real test of the Divio Platform came through several high-visibility projects, including the website of Spital Männedorf, a public hospital with strict reliability and availability requirements.

For projects of this scale, El Patio Studio relies on multiple environments to allow safe experimentation, content validation, and controlled releases without impacting the website.

When traffic spikes or platform-level challenges arise, Divio support works closely with the team to diagnose issues and stabilize environments. This collaboration has helped El Patio Studio handle demanding projects confidently while keeping infrastructure risk under control.

Business impact: what actually changed

The exact savings vary per project, but the patterns are consistent.

• Typically, they save around three days of work per environment by avoiding manual setup and troubleshooting.

• Budget overruns are far less frequent because infrastructure is no longer an unpredictable time sink.

• They also avoid hiring a dedicated operations engineer for their larger clients.

• They can take on complex, multi-environment projects with more confidence because deployment, backups, and replication are handled reliably.

Their day-to-day work is quieter and calmer, allowing them to focus more on building than firefighting.

Looking ahead

One of their multinational clients currently uses a custom VPS setup that requires ongoing maintenance. El Patio Studio is discussing moving the project to Divio since hiring another engineer just to manage the infrastructure is not feasible. Divio would offer zero-downtime deployments, predictable environments, and simpler maintenance at a lower cost.

For El Patio Studio, the future is not about increasing headcount. It's about staying small by design, working closely with clients, and taking on ambitious projects without sacrificing stability. Divio continues to be the backbone that enables this approach.