Ari Wellner

Ari Wellner is Executive Vice President of Wellner Associates, a real estate management firm that relies on QuickBooks Enterprise as the main platform for its business. Like many firms, Wellner Associates started out hosting QuickBooks on its own in-house servers — a model that made complete sense for many years.

But as hardware costs, security threats, and maintenance demands grew, that self-hosted setup became harder to justify. Ari shares how that shift led his team to Sagenext, and why responsiveness more than price is what has kept them there.

For many years, running QuickBooks Enterprise on their own server was straightforward. Servers were inexpensive, upgrades were infrequent, and maintenance was minimal. That changed as operating systems and software grew more complex, and diagnosing problems became a continuous drain on time.

The real turning point, Ari explains, was security — specifically, the constant effort of protecting the server from being hacked.

On top of the security burden, hardware pricing eventually crossed a threshold: upgrading their own server became more expensive than simply hosting with a provider who handled the hardware and operating system entirely.

After researching multiple hosting companies, Wellner Associates decided to try Sagenext based on pricing and how responsive the team was to their questions before they'd even signed on.

Sagenext provided a trial period to make sure everything worked correctly before committing. As with any implementation, issues came up during that trial but Ari notes the team was quick to resolve them, setting the tone for the entire relationship that followed.

Years into the relationship, Ari says responsiveness — not just price — is what sets Sagenext apart from every other hosting company they researched.

Even when a challenge wasn't technically Sagenext's responsibility, Ari says the team persevered until it was resolved — staying communicative throughout. That level of follow-through, he notes, is the main reason Wellner Associates recommends Sagenext to others.

Hi, my name is Ari Wellner and I'm the executive vice president of Wellner Associates. We are a real estate management firm, and as such we are also users of QuickBooks Enterprise as our main platform for our business.

We hosted QuickBooks Enterprise on our own servers for many, many years, and up until about ten years ago, this was a fine model and it made perfect sense. Servers were relatively cheap and they didn't require a whole lot of maintenance — it was pretty much set it and forget it.

As time went on, the amount of maintenance required increased dramatically, especially as operating systems upgraded and the software became more complex. We spent more time diagnosing problems — it became a continuous problem. I'd say the main issue we had was really the server getting hacked and trying to constantly maintain its security. It almost became a full-time job, which really was not tenable for us.

Additionally, probably five years ago now, server pricing became so outrageous that upgrading to new hardware began to cost more than what a hosted server would cost — one we didn't need to maintain the hardware or operating system for ourselves. Between the security issues, the maintenance time, and the pricing of hardware, hosting our own server just didn't make sense anymore.

So we began looking for hosting companies for our QuickBooks Enterprise instance. We researched numerous companies and primarily decided to try Sagenext because of their pricing and their responsiveness to our questions. They got the instance of QuickBooks up on a server within a few hours for us to start testing, and they gave us a trial period to make sure everything was working correctly. Things came up, as with any implementation, but they were very quick to resolve them — and that's been maintained throughout the years of service we've used Sagenext.

I think responsiveness is probably what differentiates them from every other company. Anytime there's an issue, we email them and there's a response within minutes, and they continue with us until it's fully solved — even when there are challenges they weren't necessarily responsible for. Throughout the process they're communicative and responsive, and that's something you don't find in every company these days. That's the main reason we'd recommend them.

Yes, they are cost competitive, but their responsiveness whenever there's an issue is probably my number one reason for recommending them. Thank you.