Phil Brown
We engaged Crafty Penguins as consultants five years ago following the unexpected loss of our IT Director. At the time, our organization faced significant challenges, including limited documentation of our systems and processes. Crafty Penguins stepped in as a key member of our consulting team, helping us stabilize, strengthen, and secure our infrastructure and website during a particularly critical period.
Since then, they have remained an integral extension of our IT team, supporting our ongoing efforts to modernize and enhance our technology environment. Crafty Penguins has played a vital role in our continued success, and I highly recommend their services.
J. Michael Roach
Crafty Penguins has been a huge help for us. Our hosting setup isn’t simple (load balancers, multiple web servers, NFS, and a managed database), and they jump in quickly and get things moving—often faster than we can internally.
They’ve helped us deal with real production problems like intermittent 503s, resource spikes, and database connection issues, and they’ve also improved our security posture along the way (SSL/TLS updates, vulnerability scan follow-ups, and locking down SSH access when needed). They’re proactive about patching and maintenance too, and they communicate clearly before making changes.
What I appreciate most is that they explain why they’re recommending something so we can make better decisions on our side. And they’re honest—they tell us what we need to hear, not just what we want to hear. Bottom line: we trust them to keep our systems stable and secure, and to help us keep improving
Graham Gobieski
As a semiconductor startup, our engineering team depends on always-available compute infrastructure — developer VMs, CI/CD pipelines, an HPC cluster for chip design workloads, and shared storage. As we grew, so did the strain on our systems. CI jobs were constantly queuing, storage was running out at the worst times, and we didn’t have the internal IT resources to keep up with the infrastructure demands of a scaling hardware team.
Before working with Crafty Penguins, we were managing a patchwork of cloud infrastructure that wasn’t purpose-built for our needs. We lacked proactive monitoring, had no after-hours support coverage, and every infrastructure issue — whether it was a downed runner, a full disk, or a broken login — pulled our engineers away from the work that actually matters.
Crafty Penguins changed that. They led us through a full infrastructure migration to bare metal, significantly increasing our compute and CI capacity. They managed a complex identity management transition that touched every engineer’s login and home directory — and when that rollout hit bumps, their team was in our Slack channel working through issues alongside our people in real time. They’ve handled everything from GitLab administration and security patching to HPC cluster tuning, new employee onboarding, and storage management.
What I value most is the responsiveness and the feeling that they’re genuinely part of our team. Our engineers raise issues directly in a shared Slack channel and get fast, hands-on support — often with tickets created and work underway within minutes. When we needed 24/7 monitoring coverage, they made it happen. When we needed to scale CI capacity ahead of a major release, they delivered.
For a company where engineering uptime directly translates to business outcomes, having a dedicated infrastructure partner that keeps pace with us has been a game-changer.
Patrick Laberge
“They’ve transformed our computing infrastructure from a constant source of stress to a pillar of reliability. As a SaaS business owner, I’ve come to realize that it’s not just about having an application, it’s about having a supported infrastructure that’s continually operational, secure, and efficient. That’s where Crafty Penguins comes in.
Before partnering with them, server downtimes and unexpected server hitches were a recurring nightmare. Every glitch, every momentary lapse, wasn’t just a technical hiccup—it was a disruption to our service, our reputation, and our peace of mind.
Enter the team at Crafty Penguins. With their round-the-clock monitoring and their team of dedicated engineers, they’ve transformed our computing infrastructure from a constant source of stress to a pillar of reliability. They aren’t just “there” when things go wrong—they’re always a step ahead, preemptively addressing potential issues and responding with lightning speed when intervention is needed.
Their dedication and expertise have given me something invaluable: confidence. Confidence to focus on expanding my business, confidence in the knowledge that our systems are in the best hands, and above all, the confidence to sleep soundly at night, ensuring our digital operations run seamlessly.”
William Petryk
We’ve been working with Crafty Penguins since 2018, and they’ve been a fantastic partner every step of the way. When our in-house IT team needed help setting up and testing “Access to Memory,” a Linux-based system for archival cataloging, the Crafty Penguins team jumped right in. They quickly built the environment, installed the software, and guided our staff through the learning curve with patience and expertise.
After deciding to move forward with a full implementation, Crafty Penguins won our competitive bid to develop a customized user interface — which they delivered on time and on budget. Since then, they’ve also created a reliable server backup system for us and later extended it to the cloud.
Throughout all our projects, their team has been knowledgeable, friendly, and proactive — often suggesting ways we could handle tasks in-house to save money. Their flexibility and collaborative spirit have made them a true extension of our team.
We couldn’t be happier with their support and look forward to many more years of partnership.
Andrew Yates
Crafty Penguins helped us set up a customized and small-scale HPC using existing resources in our research lab at Columbia University. The cluster has been running beautifully for several years now and throughout that time, Crafty Penguin’s support has been superb: responsive, reliable, creative, friendly, no-nonsense. They’ve been indispensable for keeping us productive. I can’t recommend them highly enough.
Paul Schloeder
“Where things stand today at 1WorldSync, from an infrastructure perspective, are night and day from where they were when I first started. One cannot measure the stability and peace of mind that CraftyPenguins has brought to 1WorldSync.
Perhaps the biggest compliment I can give is that when I state to either Engineering or DevOps that the CraftyPenguins team is looking into something and that this is their recommendation, there is no longer second guessing or pushback that there is a better solution; they know that what your team has explored every possible option and this is what is best for 1WorldSync.
The CraftyPenguins team are truly the unsung heroes of 1WorldSync.”
David Stokes
Just use Crafty Penguins…you won’t regret it.
We’re a small non-profit organization with limited resources, and we needed help due to our current work load. Crafty Penguins “Get me out of trouble service” was an excellent choice for us. Their pricing and customer service is fair and easily understood. Their technicians were knowledgeable, and great partners who helped us migrate an older Linux distro from AWS to a VMWare instance.
We then asked them to help us migrate the latest version of the Oracle database to the new server, they did so with minimal disruption and downtime. Our IT resources are limited due to the nature of a non-profit organization, however the Crafty Penguins team worked with us to provide excellent service in a timely manner at an affordable price.
Greg Hansen
We came to Crafty Penguins when our company was experiencing rapid growth. Our website traffic was increasing daily, and we needed someone capable of building a reliable, hardened production environment that could easily scale. The team of Crafty Penguins was fast and efficient in getting their infrastructure set up and monitoring our production servers. That alone eased a lot of fears of a catastrophic failure on our side. They listened to us to identify the job that needed to get done, and they did it reliably and professionally with great communication throughout the process. We’ve been working with Crafty Penguins ever since to resolve other issues and implement a series of further enhancements. It’s comforting to know that we’re working with experts that will be there for us when we need them.
Gil Montoya
We have relied on Crafty Penguin’s SaaS-based infrastructure and DevOps consulting services to consistently and reliably escalate our online presence to meet our customer’s demands nationwide. The Crafty Penguins’ team has been committed to our success since our first interaction and continues to provide excellent value to our organization. We highly recommend Crafty Penguins to any business looking for peace of mind and top-level solutions. In our case, it has liberated many of our resources to concentrate on generating value for our customers within our core competencies and fully exploiting our competitive advantages.
Jason Ziolo
The biggest benefit is that they truly felt like a member of our team. Other company’s have made this claim, but theirs is real. I could call on them at any time, and they were always available and felt like a team member. This helped build trust and gave me confidence in the software development that I was doing. They never said “no”, but instead, lent a helping hand to dive in and figure things out.
Do you want just a vendor or a real partner? If you’re looking for the former, go find the lowest bid. When you ultimately are let down, then hire Crafty Penguins like you should have in the first place!
Robert Burko
Working with Crafty Penguins has been an outstanding experience. As the CEO of a digital marketing agency, I needed a partner I could completely trust to handle our server management, security, and 24/7 monitoring—and Crafty Penguins delivered flawlessly. Their team of experts managed our cloud infrastructure, handled patching and malware removal, and ensured our systems stayed stable, secure, and online with 100% uptime. Every project was clearly scoped, communicated, and completed on time, with prompt and reliable support through calls, email, and Slack. What impressed me most was their trustworthiness and deep technical expertise—they truly are masters of their craft. Crafty Penguins isn’t just a vendor; they’re a dependable partner who continually seeks feedback and strengthens the relationship with every interaction.