Welcome to Our First Newsletter

Hey everyone,

This is actually our first newsletter ever—and honestly, it’s not something I’m planning to do regularly. But there are some important updates I need to share with all of you, so here we are!

Exciting Updates

We’re Moving to a New Host

LongBark is growing, and we’re migrating to a new hosting provider to keep up with the momentum. What does this mean for you? You’ll see faster load times, a snappier site experience, and more modern infrastructure powering your website behind the scenes. When’s this happening? Over the next 1-2 months. I’ll be setting up the new hosting environment, configuring migrations, running tests, and making the move. If everything goes smoothly (fingers crossed!), you might not hear from me at all during this process. I’ll reach out if I need anything from you or if there are changes on your end.

Why the move? I want to put even more focus on LongBark and really start growing what I’m doing here. Speaking of growth—I’m always looking for referrals! Going forward, I’ll be offering account credits for any referrals you send my way. It won’t be much right now, but as LongBark grows, so will the rewards.

Upgrading Our Premium Tools We’re also swapping out some of the premium tools that power your sites—moving from WP Rocket to FlyingPress, Imagify to ShortPixel, and a few others. These are paid services that I run behind the scenes, and your monthly fees help cover them. The new tools will give us better performance and efficiency.

New Support Ticketing System We now have a full support ticketing system at support.longbark.com. You can open a ticket anytime by emailing support@longbark.com. If you’re one of the customers with a unique support email, keep using that—it all goes to the same system now. Even if you contact me directly, I’ll be logging everything in this tool so nothing falls through the cracks.

And the Best Part?

We’re doing all of this without raising your costs. Your pricing stays exactly the same.

The Not-So-Great News

Site Development Pricing Changes

I’m taking down the development costs from my website. If you refer someone to me, just know that I won’t be able to offer the same rates I’ve offered in the past. I’ll still be a fraction of what the big firms charge, but to keep this sustainable, I need to adjust my pricing going forward. This doesn’t impact any of you—your sites are done—but for new projects, the rates need to go up. On a recent project, I tracked my hours and realized I was making about $7/hour. That’s just not viable long-term.

Email Services Are Going Away

This is probably the most important update. I will no longer offer or support email services. Most of my recent customers already know this, but some of you legacy folks may still have email through me.

Running an email server involves a lot of behind-the-scenes work—deliverability issues, spam management, compliance with laws and regulations—and I just can’t maintain it anymore. If you currently have email through LongBark, I’ll be reaching out separately to help you transition.

Here are some options to consider:

• Zoho Mail – They have a free plan for single users, or paid plans starting around $1/month if you need more features
• Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 – These are industry standards for small businesses and come with tons of features like video chat, cloud storage, and collaboration tools

I know this might cause some inconvenience, and I apologize for that. I’ll work with each of you individually to make the transition as smooth as possible—I just can’t continue providing email services myself.

Thanks for sticking with me through all these changes. If you have any questions or concerns about anything mentioned here, don’t hesitate to reach out.