We are thrilled to announce that we have acquired the website hosting services from Taylors Falls-based company, The Bitworks, Inc. This marks another step in PageCrafter’s ongoing strategy of acquiring WordPress hosting and website management portfolios from IT firms and independent agencies.
Contact and Reasons for Sale
The Bitworks founder, Matt Sonnentag, originally reached out to us in early 2025 asking if we’d be interested in taking over their website hosting and management services. After getting to know Matt and learning more about his business, I determined that it would be an excellent fit. And I wasn’t wrong!
Matt had been working with website clients for many years but was looking to focus his efforts on the IT services his company provides. Working with and managing WordPress sites requires a lot of effort and expertise which is why combination IT/Website companies often look to eventually offload that side of their business. As a WordPress-focused agency, we’re structured specifically to manage hosting, maintenance, security, and performance at scale.
Acquisition Process and Time Periods
We agreed to terms in late Spring/early Summer, and migrations began as soon as we finished signing.
The Bitworks maintained a couple of physical servers to host all of the websites, most of which were built on WordPress. Matt had always planned to eventually power down these servers, and we try to keep things as consistent as possible internally so it was agreed that we would migrate all of the websites off of those servers and on to our own servers located in a datacenter in Michigan.
It was our responsibility to actually move the websites, with Matt available just to help with explaining his own set up and providing access to everything. I worked with my team to copy all files and databases over, test functionality, and then point the DNS to our servers to finalize the transition.
We managed to keep things fairly seamless for the clients and made sure to communicate with them throughout the process to ensure they knew exactly what was happening and answer any questions. Matt provided a great deal of support and help to me to make sure we got everything moved over without a hitch.
With this acquisition, it was agreed that I’d be permitted to begin billing immediately. Most clients had monthly payment terms which simplified things. Some had prepaid yearly contracts, so The Bitworks agreed to provide prorated refunds to those clients so I could then send updated invoices right away.
Ultimately, we got everyone moved over within about three months and were able to conclude our dealings together with six months. Client retention remained high among active clients. Most were happy to know they would be taken care of, and quite a few have already had us make changes to their websites in the brief time we’ve been working together.
Outcome
Since concluding our agreement late last year, things have gone incredibly smoothly. All of the finalized list of clients have been retained and service has been consistent. The sites are all running great, and we’ve had almost no issues at all.
We’ve even been given referrals from some of the clients and have added additional sites as a result.
A total of about 55 different websites were migrated and successfully switched over to our systems, the majority of which were WordPress sites.
Matt and The Bitworks enjoyed a nice payout for their efforts and as a reward for putting together a solid book of business, at an ARR multiple of 1.3x. They continue providing quality IT services and tech support to small business throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. Matt now has more time to focus on the things he does best, and we continue working together with our shared clients.
Looking Forward
We are thrilled that this acquisition went so well and have greatly enjoyed working with all the new clients. They seem to be very happy to be working with a WordPress-focused website agency that can help with anything they need.
It’s sort of a funny aspect of the website hosting business that if you do a good job, you don’t have much work to do. We’ve got a great tech stack and our hosting is very reliable, so as long as we maintain it, we don’t hear much from our clients about it. It just works.
It’s been quiet enough that I’m now looking forward to making another similar acquisition. Whether you’re the owner of an IT company that’s looking to get out of the WordPress space or you have your own website hosting agency specializing in WordPress sites and you’re looking to retire or exit the industry to focus on something else, I’d love to speak with you about your business and see if we might be able to offer you a nice exit package. We continue to actively acquire WordPress hosting portfolios from IT providers and agency owners throughout the Midwest and beyond.
For more information about selling your WordPress hosting business, click here.
