About Extra Chill
Extra Chill is an independent music platform dedicated to uplifting the DIY scene across the United States. Founded in 2011 by Chris Huber as a college freshman’s blog, it has grown into a respected national publication and community. It serves a wide audience with original journalism, an interactive artist platform, and real-time event coverage.
The platform’s evolution, from local interviews in Charleston, SC, to national recognition, includes press access to major festivals like Bonnaroo and SXSW and collaborations with top music PR firms. This growth is powered by Cloudways, which reliably hosts over ten applications across five domains, providing a rock-solid technical foundation.
Chris Huber, the writer, developer, and visionary behind Extra Chill, has built a bridge between grassroots culture and professional media. Discover how Cloudways enabled this journey, handling 30,000 visits in an afternoon, generating revenue, and supporting automation, in the full case study below.
Cloudways: Can you tell us about your project or business in terms of team size, background, and roles, and what unique space do you serve within the entertainment industry? Please share your story, your audience, and the special value that makes you stand out.
Chris Huber: Extra Chill is primarily a one-person operation, supported by a network of freelancers and interns I bring in for special projects. The platform began as my personal blog while I studied Creative Writing at the College of Charleston. My path has always been self-taught and DIY, and that ethos drives everything we do.
I am the primary content creator and developer of the platform, and we stand out because we never compromise on our independent values.
Our reputation has allowed us to cover marquee events and connect directly with national press networks, yet we remain fiercely independent, building a platform where underground voices stand shoulder-to-shoulder with household names.
– Chris Huber speaks at an event, sharing his insights on the DIY music scene and the importance of amplifying independent artists.
Cloudways: What challenges did you face with your previous hosting setup that made you start searching for an alternative, and how did those struggles impact the way you served your audience, whether through live events, forums, or content delivery?
Chris Huber: When I started learning about SEO, traffic spiked rather quickly, and it soon became apparent that my basic shared hosting setup with Bluehost was not going to cut it. The site was slow, the backend setup was limited, and there were upsells from the provider at every corner.
Both performance limitations and the constant upsells made it clear I needed a reliable, scalable platform I could trust. Cloudways provided that foundation.
Cloudways: When you first discovered Cloudways, what was happening in your business that pushed you to make a hosting change, and what made that moment the right time to reconsider your technical foundation?
Chris Huber: I was in the process of scaling traffic and learning how to monetize the business. Stability and flexibility were very important to me. The blog was originally powered by Google’s Blogger platform, and I was migrating it to WordPress. Since I was already doing a migration, I figured it was a good time to find a better hosting provider.
Cloudways: Where did performance gaps, downtime issues, or slow loading speeds hurt your operations the most—was it ticket sales, streaming media, community engagement, or publishing—and how did those bottlenecks affect your growth and reputation?
Chris Huber: I switched to Cloudways proactively after doing some research on the most reliable options. The old host would slow down when traffic spiked, but it hadn’t yet reached a point where it became detrimental. The change to Cloudways was part of a larger restructuring to take the business more seriously as I became more knowledgeable.
– Following the move to Cloudways, Extra Chill’s Google PageSpeed Insights score highlights improved traffic spike handling and a stronger business foundation.
Cloudways: Why did you choose Cloudways over other hosting providers available to you, and which specific features or services helped you decide that Cloudways was the right fit for your entertainment-focused needs?
Chris Huber: For me, it was between a managed hosting provider and something more hands-off. I knew that shared hosting was not the right way to go, but I also wanted to make sure that I was supported if I needed help with something.
After researching managed hosting providers, Cloudways stood out for flexibility and support. Years later, I can confirm the platform has exceeded expectations.
Cloudways: How has the move to Cloudways changed your daily workflow and technical management—do you find your team spending less time troubleshooting hosting problems and more time building the creative or community aspects of your project?
Chris Huber: The move to Cloudways has opened many doors for me. As my skills have become more advanced, I have found myself looking under the hood more often. This includes things like having multiple domains pointing at the same WordPress installation, monitoring server logs, writing SQL commands and modifying the database, automating content production, and more.
Like any developer, I’ve broken plenty of things while experimenting, but every time, the Cloudways Support Team has consistently been responsive, friendly, and solution-oriented. This is definitely the biggest plus to using the platform aside from the reliability and speed.
– The intuitive Cloudways Platform allows entrepreneurs like Chris Huber to manage multiple applications and spin up new test environments in just a few clicks.
Cloudways: Which aspects of Cloudways’ performance—such as server speed, reliability during traffic spikes, or the ability to scale for events like festivals or online community growth—have delivered the most noticeable improvements in your work?
Chris Huber: All of the above have been very helpful. In peak moments, Extra Chill has seen up to 30,000 visits in a single afternoon via Google Discover, generating over $1,500 in ad revenue in a single day. This growth would not have been possible on shared hosting.
In another example, I was recently having a problem with bot traffic slowing down my website, and I reached out to support to help me find out what was wrong. The representative helped me troubleshoot and find the source of the server load, and from there, I was able to stop it at the root (it was the Ahrefs crawler)!
– Cloudways monitoring tools and accessible server logs empower users and support teams to quickly pinpoint and resolve performance bottlenecks.
Cloudways: What has been your experience with Cloudways Copilot, and how do you see AI-powered assistance changing the way entertainment platforms like yours manage hosting, solve issues faster, and free up time for content and community building?
Chris Huber: I have not yet tried Cloudways Copilot, but my workflow is fully ready to support AI-powered hosting. I am a power user of AI tools like Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and various APIs. For me, AI tools have been an absolute game-changer. They have allowed me to transform the platform from a simple blog into a fully interactive platform, and will continue to do so.
One example is the Festival Wire, a fully automated music festival news feed powered by my Data Machine plugin, publishing up to 30 articles in a single day (and pushing to Facebook, X, Bluesky, and more) without human input. The system relies upon the Cloudways server-level cron to manage content production running asynchronously 24 hours per day, including various API requests and publishing across two separate domains. It works flawlessly.
Cloudways: How has Cloudways impacted the broader direction of your business or creative vision—for example, has reliable hosting enabled you to expand to new regions, experiment with forums, or host more traffic-heavy campaigns without fear of disruption?
Chris Huber: Cloudways has given me a stable foundation to experiment with. One of my favorite things about it is the ability to quickly spin up a new WordPress installation for experimental purposes. It is as simple as adding an application to your server, and within minutes, you have a fresh install to work with.
Aside from WordPress, Cloudways also powers my Node.js Discord bot for automating content production with Midjourney and posting to Pinterest via their API.
What I value most is never having to worry if my server can handle the load. And if there are ever concerns, I can always scale vertically to support it. My goal is to send as much traffic as possible to the website, and with Cloudways, I have full confidence in my infrastructure.
– With Cloudways’ vertical scaling, Extra Chill can confidently handle any traffic surge, from a viral post to a major festival announcement, without a moment of downtime.
Cloudways: Would you recommend Cloudways to other entertainment entrepreneurs, music bloggers, or event organizers in your network, and what key advice would you give them about making the switch based on your own experience?
Chris Huber: I would recommend Cloudways to anybody who wants to take their web business seriously. Key advice would be to get away from shared hosting as soon as possible. Whether it is a simple blog or a content production powerhouse, Cloudways provides a flexible option for a business of any size. The difference is truly night and day between Cloudways and shared hosting.
If you want your project to be more than just a hobby, Cloudways is the way forward.
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