99designs.com was started by the founders of SitePoint as a way to connect designers around the world with design-deficient clients. To date, 99designs is enjoying their success with a massive marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design and have received over 3.1 Million unique design submissions from over 53,000 designers around the world.
With serial entrepreneurs in charge, the team at 99designs knew that the keys to success were in being capital conscious and delivering an exceptional user experience. Lachlan Donald, CTO of 99designs, explains, “Early on, we faced a number of infrastructure issues in our existing hosting facility that was not going to be solved without a large cash outlay and long term lock-in contract. Even if we could justify the cost of a dedicated server solution we had little confidence that the hardware provisioned for us would meet our requirements in the near future.”
The team at 99designs looked at options and was attracted to the flexibility, cost savings, and low barrier to entry of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Donald recalls, “The initial cost of launching our business on AWS was reduced by a factor of 5 when compared to conventional hosting with Rackspace or Mediatemple.”