About GoatCloud Communications, LLC
Helping businesses, non-profits and individuals to thrive at the intersection of communications and technology since 2013A small company that's been at it since 2013
GoatCloud Communications is a digital marketing, online communicatinos, web design, hosting and maintenance company based in Schenectady, NY, led by Cliff Rohde since he founded it in 2013. GoatCloud builds and looks after websites for small businesses, non-profits and solo professionals — most of them in New York's Capital Region, some of them nowhere near it. For bigger projects, Cliff brings in freelancers he trusts to help — but there's one person running the show and answering for the result.
How this started
Cliff's career runs through non-profits, PR firms, law firms and private companies — most of it centered on public-facing communications — and he's always been an early adopter of whatever new tool or platform made that work faster and better. He earned his J.D. from George Washington and practiced law for years afterward.
By the mid-2010s he'd hit a fork in the road: keep practicing law, or do the thing he actually loved. It started small — promoting his own legal practice, and discovering he liked the marketing and the technical work behind it far more than the law itself. Over the next couple of years, that grew into doing the same work for friends and family, then for paying clients. GoatCloud, founded in 2013, is what it turned into.
He still puts it simply: he helps people thrive at the intersection of communications and technology.
Who we work with
Small businesses, non-profits, solo professionals, and a fair number of mid-size companies — mostly in Schenectady, Albany, Troy and the rest of the Capital Region, though plenty of clients are nowhere near here. If you want a website that works and would rather not become a web developer to keep it that way, that's who this is for.
We're probably not your people if you need a forty-person agency, a full rebrand, or custom software. We'll say so, and point you toward someone who is.
How it works
No sales team. No account manager. No four-week discovery process.
You talk to Cliff, start to finish. He scopes the work, and he's the one accountable for it landing right. On bigger projects, he brings in freelancers he's worked with before to get it done — but the buck stops with him, not with whoever's logged in that week. You still get one point of contact, and it's the same one at the end of the project as at the start.
A great percentage of the websites GoatCloud has built, GoatCloud still takes care of — some clients for more than ten years now. That's not an accident, it's the whole model. A build gets you online. Managed hosting and maintenance are what keep you there without having to think about it.
That's not just a promise — it's written down. In July 2013, weeks before GoatCloud had its name, Cliff put together a code of conduct and ethics for this work: not promising what he can't deliver, telling a client honestly when what they're asking for won't help them, no pricing games. It's still what GoatCloud runs on.
The Capital Region
GoatCloud has called the Capital Region home since its inception. Its office is currently based at Urban Co-Works in Schenectady, at 430 Franklin Street. Being local means showing up for local clients: non-profits, downtown businesses, solo practitioners who'd rather call someone in the same time zone than open a ticket with a company that doesn't know where the Mohawk River is.
That said, plenty of the websites GoatCloud runs belong to people who've never set foot in the Capital District. The work travels fine.
Let's talk about your project
Tell us what you've got, or what you need built. No sales pitch, no obligation.