Hearst Networks EMEA increases web development productivity with Platform.sh

Hearst Networks EMEA is a global broadcaster that has been sharing stories that matter with audiences since 1995. The company operates across Europe including in the UK, Nordics, Benelux, Central and Eastern Europe, Spain, Italy, Germany, Africa, and the Middle East. Hearst Networks EMEA's portfolio of premium brands include The HISTORY^® Channel, Crime+Investigation^®, and BLAZE^®. With many international operations to manage, the organization has an equally wide array of websites and web services.

Prior to 2021, Hearst Networks EMEA engaged a managed agency for its websites, handling development, maintenance, and hosting/uptime for every domain. But by 2022, Hearst wanted to separate web development from hosting. This meant investigating the volume of options available for these services.

We sat down with Hearst Networks EMEA's Head of Web, James Hall, to understand the network’s challenges at the time, explore their decision-making process for migration, and examine what led them to choose—and stick with—Platform.sh.

With more than a decade of web design and development experience, James has tested many web tools throughout his career. His unique perspective sheds light on the process of finding the ideal hosting provider.

Q: How many sites are you managing currently?

A: We currently run 14 sites across six different environments: one environment is set up with multiple domains. And with Platform.sh, even that’s super simple.

Q: Back in 2022, what type of managed hosting solution were you looking for? And what did you hope to achieve by migrating?

A: At the start of a project, it quickly becomes apparent that there are different hosting routes that you could go down. You can go down the fully managed hosting route. You can go down the fully self-hosted route. However, we wanted something in between, where we still get the hand-holding when needed around certain aspects of hosting. Let's face it; hosting can be quite a complex thing at times.

We also wanted the flexibility to scale environments up and down as needed and to work asynchronously with development teams around the globe. To be able to work with different teams in different countries and continents was massively important. Platform.sh seemed to fit the bill.

Q: What led you to consider Platform.sh?

A: We scoured the internet and had meetings with many different hosting companies and options, performing sandbox testing on many solutions to find the best tool for our needs. Platform.sh struck us as being a good fit for our business for multiple reasons.

First, the fact that it's easy to try out new ideas quickly using a branch-based workflow, meaning you can make and break things in siloed environments. We can spin them up and close them down in seconds, whenever we need, without impacting production.

We can also work in different continents without any issues. Developers working on different branches, which sync with our repositories, allowing us to test new features, while also running real-world testing.

Finally, it also allows us to easily track incidents and issues. If we ever have any problems, Platform.sh has a built-in ticketing system to allow us to get support. We're on an Enterprise plan, which allows us to be able to chat to a member of Platform.sh staff within an SLA agreed-to time.

Q: How did you ultimately select the right plan and services for your needs?

A: One of the benefits of Platform.sh is the predictable pricing. It allows the customer to be able to plan business costs clearly and scale if required, along the way.

Early on, we had a representative from Platform.sh sit down with us, review our analytics, review our site performance, calculate averages from the data, and help us to gauge which plan suited us best. There was no upsell; it was whatever plan fit that site.

This means we're never paying for things we aren't using. At the same time, the sites that do need the extra traffic and resources—they’re always online, too.

Q: How was the experience of migrating to Platform.sh?

A: As with any change of hosting to a new provider, it can be a challenging experience. But the eureka moment for us, where we realized we really had made the right decision, was the onboarding process with the technical team from Platform.sh—with our account managers and support from across the business.

You've got an immensely powerful and complex tool, with a really simple interface, enabling you to make changes to your hosting configuration, at any time. For us, even colleagues who aren't devs within the company, now have an understanding that Platform.sh is at the heart of our digital products, the heart of our ecosystem, which is coupled with rock-solid support. It made us realize that Platform.sh was the right choice for us.

Q: How has your workflow improved since migrating?

A: At Hearst Networks EMEA, prior to Platform.sh, we used a traditional development workflow consisting of dev, stage, QA, and production, and work from one, to the next, to the next.

While you can still follow that strict methodology if you want, that workflow rigidity isn't necessarily required when using Platform.sh. This grants companies the opportunity to refine the development workflow for their own needs, while still ensuring industry best practices are followed. You can be more fluid, knowing should you ever face any issues, you can roll back production in the worst case scenario.

There's also no ambiguity over what timelines are at play for new product builds or feature requests, with Platform.sh, it's transparent between all teams who have access to the service.

With Composer managing dependencies within Drupal, it's easy to keep tabs on any updates on both Drupal core and contributed modules. And Platform.sh makes it super easy to update your sites. You can run updates in a separate environment and then, when you're happy, release them to production.

By having a mirrored environment to test in, you can conduct thorough testing —ultimately finding and fixing any faults prior to release. That helps to minimize any potential downtime in production.

In summary, Platform.sh allows you to try new approaches to working. The service gives you the ability to be brave with your environments—more so than you may otherwise be if you were hosting it yourself. And you know it's all backed by a brilliant, supportive team that can help you out, should anything go wrong.

Q: We offer two interfaces for users of all levels: the CLI and GUI. Which do you prefer to use?

A: Initially, you can achieve amazing results through the GUI, through the web interface, with easy-to-use navigation and features.

However, once you have experience with the GUI, there can be huge time savings made by learning and using the Platform.sh CLI.

The command line interface in Platform.sh is an incredibly intuitive way to manage web environments hosted on its platform.

Q: What’s been the biggest benefit of partnering with Platform.sh?

A: When we joined Platform.sh, we were intrigued by the marketing messaging around Deploy Friday. Before joining as a customer, we didn't really believe it; we thought it was merely a good marketing slogan!

However, it's true—you really can deploy on Fridays. To get an extra day in the week to manage and undertake releases, using all five days of the week for production releases makes a big difference.

It's something that, as a company, has a saving clearly associated with it. We’re able to deploy security updates, patches, and new features on a Friday, and be safe in the knowledge that if we run into any problems along the way, we can roll back.

Put simply, it's allowed us to increase our web development productivity, opening up this extra weekday for releases.

Q: What would you say to someone considering a migration to Platform.sh?

A: In my time at Hearst Networks EMEA, one of the best decisions that I’ve made to date was choosing Platform.sh as our hosting provider. I think that it's an immensely powerful tool.

When migrating to a new hosting provider, it’s not always easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. Whether you need customizable plans, mirrored environments, extra deployment days, or responsive customer support. The key things I'd suggest are thorough research and testing, in order to find your ideal hosting solution.

James Hall has been a web designer and developer for more than a decade. With experience in Drupal, Github, and Composer-based projects, his technical prowess and leadership skills have carried him far, enabling him to work on web related projects for major tech and media brands.