We must be able to scale up quickly as we never know what the needs will be.

Everleap Shared Cloud customer story
Q&A with Pam Nelligan of Statdash

Statdash is a task management progress tracker that allows you to see where your project stands in one dashboard. The solution eliminates the legwork usually needed to track down team members and find out the status of tasks and activities. Statdash does this by doing the work for you; it tracks down team members, finds out their status, and then graphically reports the results back to you on the dashboard. And thanks to the automated status request scheduler and activity notifications, executives and project leaders can easily get the information they need to manage their teams and projects more effectively. With Statdash, you always know the status of your team and your project.

We recently chatted with Pam Nelligan, Chief Software Architect and one of the co-founders of Statdash to learn more about her startup and how Everleap has fit into her growing business.

Everleap: Thanks for talking with us Pam. Tell us about yourself and your professional background.

Pam Nelligan: I'm a software developer and also a certified project manager. Software development has changed a lot since I started in 1991. It was a whole different world back then - no Internet per se and no development on the Internet. I worked for a software development company for 16 years and in 2007 went out on my own to be an independent contractor. When I left the company I was at, I decided to get into development on the Internet.

How did you tackle hosting initially?

I started with GoDaddy – that's what everyone used then. They shifted to a more distributed environment with load balancing, which is good for static websites. I was using session variables and it broke my site. At GoDaddy, they don't know anything about programming. They don't understand the first thing about it.

"We knew our idea would eventually wind up being very data intensive and that there would be a need to scale up."
- Pam Nelligan, Statdash

 

And that's how you first came to work with DiscountASP.NET, right?

Yes, in 2009 I moved to DiscountASP.NET, hosting for programmers developed by programmers. They immediately knew how to fix my site. It was just amazing. 'No problem, we got it,' they said. They showed me how best to handle session state. I also loved having a portal where I could make changes myself and didn't have to ask them. I signed up a lot of my clients with DiscountASP.NET.

Tell us about Statdash and how it got started.

I decided to create a SaaS application with a colleague and just shy of one year ago we started Statdash. Statdash allows you to see the status of an entire team for a group of activities. Automated emails go out to each member of a team in regards to a particular activity with a quick link to go to and quickly update the status. For the admin, they see everyone's status in a visual dashboard and can see quickly and easily where everything is at. You can show the whole team or the client the status of activities and tasks of the project.

So what prompted the shift to cloud hosting and to our platform?

We knew our idea would eventually wind up being very data intensive and that there would be a need to scale up. I went to DiscountASP.NET and asked them 'How can you help me? I need more control.' We must be able to scale up quickly as we never know what the needs will be. They said I sounded like a good customer for their sister company Everleap. My reply was 'sounds terrific.'

"From a programmer's perspective, you guys are light years ahead. In 15 minutes, everything was published on the servers. That's how easy it was to set up."
- Pam Nelligan, Statdash

 

How has the experience with Everleap been for you so far?

I can't even explain how wonderful. I was impressed with the DiscountASP.NET platform that they built because it was so developer-friendly. But the Everleap platform has taken it to a new level. We were starting lean, bootstrapping, and money was an issue. I was using a server in my dining room to host but knew we just couldn't continue this way. It's fine for development but this can't be the real solution.

Everleap is for people who are programmers, as you are developing too. As programmers, we use specific tools. I use Visual Studio. When I signed up you sent the exact settings to deploy applications using Visual Studio. I didn't have to do anything or figure it out, which can be hard. From a programmer's perspective, you guys are light years ahead. In 15 minutes, everything was published on the servers. That's how easy it was to set up.

How has the customer service and support been?

I never feel like I am alone. I am the only developer and it's just me and my business partner. Everleap was there every step of the way. I know development but when it comes to servers, there are things I don't know how to do. Like setting up an SSL security certificate. You showed me how. If something happens with the site, within minutes I get a reply. And not standard answers. You actually jump in and help me. If I have a server issue, you log on and tell me 'Here's what you need to do.' It's like I have my own IT department working for me.

Honestly, the cost is so inexpensive it's hardly fathomable you would give that kind of support. I have so much confidence in my product, the infrastructure and the whole team behind me.

We're so glad to hear that!

I'm about developing partnerships. I trust you implicitly and I'm loyal to the death of me. I will never drop Everleap and go somewhere else. You work for me and I work for you. There is value in having that relationship. That's how I like to do things. I can't begin to express how proud and impressed I am of your development team. I have no idea how I could have launched my company without you. And I would be happy to tell anyone and everyone about my experience.

We're thrilled to get that feedback Pam and we're really happy to be partnered up with you!

Most places you're treated like a nobody. GoDaddy does not care about me at all. I really hope that Everleap has tremendous success. Anyone as a developer would be really well served. You have tremendous people over there and I hope the best for you. I would love to meet you. You seem like a terrific group.

We'd love to meet you too. Hopefully we get the chance to connect in person one day. To wrap things up, could you share what the future holds for Statdash?

We're just now starting to launch and have some good companies doing beta testing. We're trying to shore up the product and make sure it does everything we need it to.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with us Pam. We wish you all the best with Statdash and look forward to following your progress.

My pleasure!

To learn more about Statdash visit them at statdash.com.