Client: AEP Foundation, the Albanian Encouragement Project (Tirana). What we did: rebuilt and relaunched the website on a managed server, moved the foundation’s email to Microsoft 365 at nonprofit pricing, and keep it all backed up and maintained. Stack: WordPress · WP Rocket · Redis · Microsoft 365 · managed xCloud hosting.
About AEP
The Albanian Encouragement Project was started in October 1991 by the first evangelical missionaries to arrive in Albania after the fall of communism. Today it is a registered non-profit foundation and an umbrella network: over 300 people serving with 65 mission organisations from 20 nations. AEP gives its members a united voice with the Albanian government and international agencies, and it takes care of the practical side of serving in Albania: residency permit help, a post and package service, a group mobile contract, insurance offers, member care and an annual conference.
The challenge
For a network like this, the website and the mailboxes are working tools, not a brochure. Members and new organisations look there for how to join, for documents and for contacts, and the office runs on a small set of shared addresses.
- An old site that no longer displayed properly. It had been built with Elementor on an older Plesk server, and its pages were showing images distorted.
- Email that needed a dependable home at a price a non-profit can carry.
- No room for downtime. Whatever we changed, members still needed the site and the addresses while the work went on.
Our approach
- Email first. We set up the foundation’s three shared mailboxes (the general, admin and finance addresses) on Microsoft 365 Business Standard at Microsoft’s nonprofit pricing, working with Microsoft’s team directly, and routed the domain’s mail through Microsoft 365.
- A clean move to a managed server. We took a full backup of the old site, moved it off the Plesk server and set up a new WordPress site on our managed xCloud infrastructure, with PHP 8.3, page caching (WP Rocket) and Redis object caching.
- A rebuild prepared away from the live site. We built the new site on a staging copy while members kept using the old one, then switched aepfoundation.org over to it in June 2025.
- Built around what members need. Clear pages on who AEP is and how an organisation joins, a Documents area for member resources such as the group mobile contract, the insurance offer and roaming instructions, a directory of member organisations with links to their own sites, events and contacts.
- Looked after afterwards. Automatic off-host backups, updates managed from our central dashboard, vulnerability scanning and broken-link checks.
The result
- A refreshed website, live since June 2025, on a managed server with page and object caching.
- Member resources in one place: documents, member organisations, events and contacts are each one click from the homepage.
- Email on Microsoft 365 at nonprofit pricing, with the domain’s mail filtered by Microsoft.
- Off-host backups and security scanning, so a server problem does not mean lost content.
The takeaway
For a membership network, the website and the mailboxes are part of how it serves its members, so they deserve the same care as any business system. Two things made the difference here: building the new site on a staging copy, so the switch happened without interrupting anyone, and using the nonprofit programmes that large vendors such as Microsoft offer, which are easy to miss. We bring the same approach to associations, foundations and NGOs across Albania.
Running an association or foundation whose website or email needs a refresh? Let’s talk →