How This Agency Left
DevOps Stress Behind

Rather than trying to do everything, Pixel Actions focuses on the areas where it brings the most value by solving real problems with tailored digital solutions.

They’ve carved out their niche by saying no to generic services and yes to being genuinely excellent at what matters. But here’s the thing about focus. It only works if your team isn’t constantly buried in infrastructure headaches.

And that's where Kyriakos Toumbas, their CTO, ran into a problem that will sound familiar to anyone running a technical agency.

The Infrastructure Nightmare Every CTO Knows

Picture this: You're driving away from a successful client meeting when your phone rings. One of your major client sites is down. You pull over on the freeway, open your laptop behind the steering wheel, and start debugging server issues while traffic rushes past you.

This wasn't a one-time crisis for Kyriakos Toumbas. It was Tuesday morning reality.

Managing their own virtual machines meant constant vigilance. Deployment scripts, migration procedures, backup management, and the ever-present fear of 5 AM calls about international client sites going offline. For a team focused on delivering high-quality development, infrastructure was consuming too much time and energy.

As the agency grew to manage dozens of active projects, the infrastructure demands became unsustainable. Kyriakos Toumbas was essentially a one-person DevOps team, trying to train backend engineers on Linux and command-line tools that had nothing to do with their core development skills.

The Scaling Dilemma

Growing agencies face a brutal choice. To take on larger, more complex projects like a full digital overhaul of a national public broadcaster, you need to either build a dedicated DevOps team, accept limitations on project scope, or find a platform that eliminates infrastructure management entirely.

For Pixel Actions, the first option meant significant overhead costs and diverted focus. The second meant missing out on their biggest opportunities.

The third option led them to Divio.

More Than Migration: A Complete Transformation

The impact of switching to Divio went far beyond moving to managed hosting. It fundamentally changed how the entire team worked.

Now, designers can handle full production deployments from fixing issues to pushing live, without needing a backend engineer. Debugging is easy. Any team member can spin up a local production replica using the CLI. And with multiple environments, large client teams can work in parallel without stepping on each other’s toes. Backups, uptime monitoring, and optimization all run quietly in the background.

This transformation showed up in concrete ways across every aspect of Pixel Actions's operations. Emergency server debugging became a thing of the past. The CTO could sleep through the night without worrying about international client sites. Team members who once feared touching production systems now confidently manage deployments.

Most surprisingly, Divio's support team began proactively identifying performance issues and suggesting optimizations before Pixel Actions even knew problems existed. Database calls taking too long? Optimization suggestions arrived via email. Unusual storage growth patterns? Friendly heads-up notifications with troubleshooting guidance.

The Ultimate Test: A National-Level Project

That transformation was put to the test with The Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation, Cyprus’s public broadcasting service. This was a major, government-backed digital transformation, and it had to work perfectly from day one.

The scope was massive: news portals, TV sites, digital archives, and more. On top of the technical demands, there were complex stakeholder dynamics, approval processes, and a tight 12-month delivery window.

When major events like Eurovision brought traffic spikes that could reach 3 times the normal loads, the infrastructure performed without a hitch. The solution for handling these surges? Adjust a few settings and monitor the results.

The project exceeded expectations. Archives that had been ignored for years suddenly saw thousands of visits. Monthly traffic reports were requested simply because no one believed the numbers. The platform won European Union awards for digital excellence and saw long-term traffic growth across every section.

Enterprise Capabilities Without Enterprise Overhead

The Divio Platform gave Pixel Actions access to features they’d never afford to build in-house. High-availability setups, SLA-backed reliability, and 24/7 support were all included.

It wasn’t just about cost savings. It was about unlocking enterprise-level possibilities without the bloat or complexity that usually comes with them.

Results That Matter

Today, Pixel Actions runs 90+ projects with ease. The firefighting is gone and developers can stay focused. Complex workflows that used to be intimidating are now handled smoothly by the team.

The agency is expanding internationally, taking on larger projects with complex content requirements, and integrating AI capabilities for clients. All while maintaining their specialized focus on exceptional web development.

Kyriakos Toumbas no longer spends time on server management or urgent debugging. Instead, he focuses on technically challenging projects and finding optimal solutions for complex client requirements.

The Strategic Advantage

Today, Pixel Actions operates with the infrastructure confidence of a much larger organization while maintaining the agility and specialized focus of a boutique agency. They can pursue enterprise clients, handle massive traffic events, and scale internationally because their platform scales with them.

The ability to focus entirely on client value while maintaining enterprise-level reliability and performance has transformed not just how Pixel Actions works, but what kind of work they can confidently pursue.

Ready to eliminate infrastructure stress and focus on what your agency does best?
Try Divio for free and see how it can transform your workflow.