This week we take a look at Approved Host XLHost.com.
Please tell us the year established and brief history of XLHost.com? XLHost was established in 2000 as the dedicated hosting division of eNET, Inc. eNET, Inc has been providing hosting and ISP services since 1995 and was one of the first commercial hosting companies in the United States.
eNET, Inc is a privately held corporation headquartered in Columbus, OH.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company? Every solution XLHost offers is created to maximize the value, performance, and reliability delivered to the customer. We allow customization of virtually every component of our service from networking options, to server specifications, to custom support/SLA options.
The customization aspect really sets XLHost apart.
What new features have XLHost.com added for its customers in the past year?
Rolled out version 3 of our customer management portal
Began offering datacenter grade Intel SSDs
Extended our technical support from 9×5 to 24×7
Launched cloud computing and CDN services
Extended our network footprint into new areas
What would you say is XLHost.com #1 asset to its customer base? The number one asset in any organization is the people who work for it. We feel that this is especially true of XLHost.
How many customers do you currently have? XLHost has more than 1000 customers in 130 countries.
Do you own your own datacenter? Yes.
Please tell us the year established and brief history of Media Temple?
Media Temple was established in 1998 with the mission of helping people and businesses succeed online. For over 15 years, we’ve been offering our customers premium, 24/7 support at a competitive price. We are now one of the fastest growing companies in North America, servicing high-profile clients and professionals while still upholding an award-winning culture.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?
Where to begin? We’re very gung-ho about innovation here, and you can see it in our products. For instance, our (gs) Grid-Service hosting is quintessentially unique from most shared hosting environments. Rather than storing your data on a single shared server, the (gs) harnesses the power of a cluster of multiple servers, guaranteeing redundancy, and all for the price of one server. Our home-grown control panel, the AccountCenter, infuses both beauty and efficiency into one user-friendly interface. It’s definitely something you can’t find anywhere else.
What is the most challenging aspect to offering Web Hosting?
One of the most challenging aspects of web hosting is competing in a highly saturated market, especially when there are hosting companies out there offering budget hosting at $1.99/mo! That said, we firmly believe that when you are looking for a web host, the last thing you want to compromise on is quality, which leads us to the next question…
What is it that makes Media Temple a competitive company in the Web Hosting market?
As I’ve stated in the previous question, the last thing you want to scrimp on with web hosting is quality, and that’s something you are getting above and beyond the rest with Media Temple. We strive to maintain a level of professionalism and transparency with our customers which you’ll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.
What new features have Media Temple added for its customers in the past year?
So many! Our Otto Premium Managed Care Services was launched this past year. This managed care service goes beyond the scope of traditional hosting support. A few of the managed care services offered are migration services, site optimization tune up services by our engineers and 24/7 access to your own priority helpdesk with active monitoring and guaranteed response times.
Just recently, we’ve also doubled the RAM on our VPS hosting, we’ve implemented new optimization technology to our CDN service, we’ve fine-tuned our Twitter support channel, and we’ve increased affiliate payouts for all (mt) Affiliate Program participants. You can read more about our product updates here, and for a glimpse at what’s next for Media Temple, you can also check out our Product Roadmap.
What would you say is Media Temple’s #1 asset to its customer base?
I’d say our #1 asset to our customers is, well, devotion. We stay in tune with who our customers are and what they want through various community channels. If you check out our Facebook page and Twitter, you’ll see that we don’t just use social media for self-promotion– we actively engage with our customer base. We value our relationships, which means we’re also interacting with our customers outside of the realm of social with customer feedback surveys, and at events, where we give out (mt) swag and meet our customers face-to-face. Continue reading “FindMyHost.com Interviews Sophie He, Affiliate Manager (mt) Media Temple” »
Please tell us the year established and brief history of DiscountASP.NET? DiscountASP.NET was established in 2002 and opened for business in early 2003. It was founded by two people who got started in the hosting business in the early 90s, when it was in its infancy; Frank Cheung and Takeshi Eto. The focus was on ASP.NET technology from day one.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company? Our focus on the Microsoft hosting and development stack, a close relationship with people who matter at Microsoft, our own independent research and development, and a custom Control Panel that allows us to offer new technology and features to our users long before hosts who use commercial control panels can.
What is the most challenging aspect to offering windows web hosting? “Creating knowledge” around the products.
What I mean by that is you could wake up tomorrow and start a new *nix hosting company and copy a 5 or 10 year old Knowledge Base from someone and be good to go.
But every time Microsoft introduces a new technology or updates an existing technology there is research and testing to be done, blog and knowledge base articles to write, front-line staff to train.
Things change far, far more frequently than they do on the other side of the hosting tracks. But we love digging in to this stuff, so it’s easy for us.
What is it that makes DiscountASP.NET a competitive company in the Web Hosting market?
Our reputation as a leader. We don’t try to compete on price, we compete by offering greater value. There will always be users who shop for hosting based on price. We’re here for people who choose based on quality.
What new features have DiscountASP.NET added for its customers in the past year?
That’s quite a list, but I think the most important thing we did this year was to become charter members of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2coalition.com). The Internet Infrastructure Coalition provides a public policy voice for those of us who make up the Internet’s infrastructure. They lobby and educate our representatives in Washington so we can prevent/avoid future potential catastrophes like SOPA/PIPA.
More specifically to Windows hosting, we joined the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner Program and renewed our Microsoft Gold Hosting Competency Status. Where specific technology is concerned, we launched TFS 2012, Managed TFS Hosting, TFS Proxy (free), Windows Server 2012, node.js, Silverlight 5, Web Deploy 2.0, user.ini (Windows version of php.ini), along with free beta hosting for Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, ASP.NET 4.5 and Web Matrix v2 though our DiscountASP.NET Labs program (labs.discountasp.net).
We also introduced a new blog series, The Art of Hosting, wherein we strive to give away all of our secrets. If that sounds odd, it is. The hosting industry is traditionally very tight-lipped about the specific ways we do things. It’s a competitive thing. But our philosophy is to tell everyone exactly how and why we do things.
We believe that kind of information will help hosts that are just getting started, and challenge our direct competitors to be more open. We’re confident in our abilities, so we don’t see exposing our inner workings as detrimental. It’s more like, “Here’s how we do it – you can try it yourself, but you still won’t do it as well as we do.” That sounds cocky! But we’re not cocky, we’re simply confident in our abilities. Continue reading “FindMyHost Interviews Michael Phillips, Director of Communications at DiscountASP.NET” »
Please tell us the year established and brief history of Sepia Host?
Founded in 2004, Sepia Host is a subsidiary of Sepia Solutions. Whereas Sepia Solutions is a complete IT Solutions company, Sepia Host deals with the Web hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, domain registration and other such services related to hosting.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?
We provide enterprise level IT services to businesses of all sizes with customized and tailored made solutions considering their requirements. Our tools provide unmatched flexibility to our customers and make the purchase experience as simple as possible. Our cloud hosting allows them to modify individual components as needed. They can individually upgrade RAM, CPU, disk space and backups to their exact needs!
In one sentence, ‘Right solution with competitive prices’ is what we offer.
What is the most challenging aspect to offering Web Hosting?
Providing the highest level of support possible; custom made solutions with competitive prices.
What is it that makes Sepia Host a competitive company in the Web Hosting market?
Our services and round the clock support along with competitive prices. Further to that, the following elements differentiate us from our competitors:
- Providing flexibility and choice of services
- Deploy leading technology that benefits our customers
- Competitive prices with no contract commitment
- Customer is always in control
- Experienced team for providing support and assistance to customer
- Make purchase and cancellation process as simple as possible
What new features have Sepia Host added for its customers in the past year?
We started offering cloud hosting and VPS services last year. We have added support for Microsoft WebMatrix and Plesk 11. The infrastructure is upgraded with latest and powerful hardware to accommodate the growth of customer base.
What would you say is Sepia Host’s #1 asset to its customer base?
We provide complete flexibility in the purchase and use of enterprise IT technology at a price that is affordable by all. We are constantly improving, updating and offering the latest features and services to our customers.
Where do you see Sepia Host and the web hosting industry in three years?
Now the customer demands more flexibility and personalized solution and the cloud has the answer of the ever-growing needs of the industry. Public cloud and private cloud starts gaining more and more attention.
What is your name and position with ThreadHost? I am Greg Makuch the General Manager of ThreadHosting Inc.
Please tell us the year established and brief history of ThreadHost? ThreadHosting Inc was established in June 20, 2012. After the closing of a long time hosting provider, customers and staff of that company choose to start their own Hosting company to continue the great work the staff were doing and provide continued service to the customers that choose to follow them to ThreadHosting Inc.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company? The thing that our customers tell us is unique is that we are accessible. We are available to help them with moving their website or correct problem they may have. The ThreadHosting Team understands that many customers have little or no knowledge of the technical needs of hosting a website. Our team is always here to provide the customer the one point of contact to help with any of their online needs. Threadhosting provides its customers all the resources needed to not just host a website and all hosting entails, but design, SEO, and management as well.
What is the most challenging aspect to offering Web Hosting? We Love our jobs that makes every day exciting and rewarding. We find few challenges we do not soon master. If we do have one challenge it’s that their never seems to be enough time in the day to do everything we want to do for our customers.
What is it that makes ThreadHost a competitive company in the Web Hosting market? We answer the phone. We help the customer and always go that extra mile to help our customers succeed. We only succeed when our customers do.
What new features have ThreadHost added for its customers in the past year? a) Most notable is the addition of R1Soft backup to all accounts. We have chosen to also do this at no cost to all customers. That allows the customers to restore backups any time they need. Most importantly the customer now has the peace of mind that there is a backup and its visible to them. They always have 10 days of backups that include their databases as well.
b) We have added additional data providers to insure redundancy and capacity is available to all clients. This has resulted in many clients remarking now much faster their sites are operating and how much more enjoyable it is to use with the increased speeds.
c) We have added Google Adwords management to our list of available services with a Certified Adwords Professional on staff. We are in the rollout of Managed Google Apps provisioning to our services with several customers already onboard. In 2013 we have a list of additional services we will rollout which continue to extend our service over and above offering hosting space to helping our customers succeed with their website marketing objectives.
What would you say is ThreadHost #1 asset to its customer base? The team at ThreadHosting has been involved in the industry for as long as 18 years. They are trained and experienced in developing and deploying successful internet properties. That experience enhances the tools the customer has to insure their online presence is successful. Continue reading “FindMyHost Interviews Greg Makuch, GM of ThreadHosting.com” »
What is your name and position with Skyview? Filipe Henriques, CTO
Please tell us the year established and brief history of Skyview? skyview Cloud is a brand of skyview Technology Group, LLC. skyview was founded with a simple philosphy in mind: provide the best quality service and suport at an affordable cost. Since then, we have refined our mission to provide service and not just servers. We realize that our customers have many choices when it comes to hosting and we want our service to set us apart from the competition.
Since skyview was founded in 2005, we have grown to a point where we now manage and host thousands of servers around the world. Our team provides award winning customer service and support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company? Complete Cloud Ecosystem with exceptional customer support.
What is it that makes Skyview a competitive company in the Cloud Computing market? We feel that the best customer experience is found through focus on the customer’s perspective. We design all our products and services with customer satisfaction in mind. Ease of use and clarity in presentation are some of the key factors to our success, and we enjoy providing our customers with this rewarding experience every day.
What new features have Skyview added for its customers in the past year?
1) Apple iPhone and iPad mobile cloud management application.
2) Windows 2012 support.
3) skyview Cloud Drive, remote storage with local performance.
4) Disaster Recovery as a Service.
5) Desktop as a Service (VDI). Continue reading “Skyview Web Host Interview” »
What is your name and position with Lithium Hosting? T.J. Siedsma, I am the owner and Sys Admin
Please tell us the year established and brief history of Lithium Hosting? Lithium Hosting was established in 2006. It all started with a side project, hosting accounts for friends and the rest is history.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company? Lithium Hosting has always offered a more personal touch to the support we give our customers. Instead of having
What is the most challenging aspect to offering Web Hosting? The competition… There’s always someone offering similar services for a better price, so you have to compete on different levels.
What is it that makes Lithium Hosting a competitive company in the Web Hosting market? Customer service and our $1.00 / month plan. People love the personal touch, we can be reached via AIM / Skype / MSN and GTalk. Also, the $1.00 / month plan is our #1 seller. It’s so cheap, people can’t resist. Continue reading “Lithium Hosting Web Host Interview” »
Please tell us a brief history of yourself, and why you joined Codero Hosting I am Emil Sayegh, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Codero Hosting. I joined Codero in January 2012, after launching and pioneering successful Cloud Computing and hosting businesses for Hewlett-Packard, and Rackspace.
Joining Codero Hosting was an easy decision for me. The team’s talent, enthusiasm, and commitment to delivering a quality service intrigued me from the start. I saw a solid company with respectable, established roots, and a loyal customer base. I saw a good customer-focused culture at Codero, with a strong penchant for developing great products, and automation. These are all qualities that I really admire in a company, and are hard to instill. Most importantly, I saw the potential in Codero and where it can go in becoming an amazing company, with amazing service offerings.
Please tell us the year established and brief history of Codero Hosting? The brand has a rich history that draws from 20 years of experience, knowledge, and support in the hosting industry. Codero Hosting was established in 1992. Our company has now evolved into a strong global company with a seasoned, experienced world class team.
Since Codero’s inception, many new products and services have been added including: three data centers including our most recent addition in Ashburn, Virginia; 1 Hour Quick Deploy Servers; Cloud hosting; and Smart Servers just to name a few. Smart Servers, our latest offering is quite innovative. Codero Smart Servers deliver the performance and security of a dedicated server plus the flexibility and scalability of the cloud. Continue reading “Exclusive Interview with Codero CEO Emil Sayegh” »
Please tell us the year established and brief history of CoreXchange? CoreXchange was founded in 2006 by Peter Pathos and other top industry professionals from the networking and hosting industries. The CoreXchange management team and staff have decades of Internet connectivity and colocation services knowledge and use that knowledge to tailor the network and data center features to meet the needs of the customer at the most affordable rates in the market. CoreXchange is also known for their expertise and excellence in client support.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company? Contracting for colocation services has typically been a time consuming and complicated negotiation process. CoreXchange has simplified the purchase process with the launch of transparent pricing and an online shopping cart. You can customize and price your solution online and choose flexible terms including month-to-month terms. We also recently implemented lower support prices and made them available in 30 minute increments. Many support tasks take less than 30 minutes and we don’t feel right about charging our customers an hourly rate for something our techs can handle quickly and easily. Our extremely affordable colocation solutions are housed in our SSAE 16 SOC-1 Type II compliant data centers and include redundant power and cooling, premium bandwidth, 24/7 Onsite NOC support and free remote hands and eyes including reboots.
What is the most challenging aspect to offering colocation services? Getting customers to move from other data centers. They know the price and service is better with us but can be overwhelmed with the actual migration process. We offer professional rack and stack services, migration consulting, as well as special rates for anyone moving from another data center.
What is it that makes CoreXchange a competitive company in the colocation market? The pricing for our exact offering is hard to beat. Our colocation packages include the most popular configurations in a SSAE 16 compliant data center with redundant power and cooling, premium bandwidth and free remote hands and eyes.
What new features has CoreXchange added for its customers in the past year? CoreXchange has increased our network capacity, lowered bandwidth costs, and eliminated overages on certain bandwidth plans across all data centers. We have increased our power density at our Infomart location as well.
What would you say is CoreXchange’s #1 asset to its customer base? Our network. Anybody can buy a network connection; however, managing it in a fault-tolerant scenario requires the expertise of industry veterans. The CoreXchange network is more robust than the single or dual Internet connection to your office, and more reliable than the two to three backbones offered by other colocation or hosting providers. Our network engineering team built the tier-1 networks that allow much of the backbone infrastructure in play today. Our network services are also a cost effective alternative to building a routing and peering infrastructure in a carrier-neutral colocation facility. Continue reading “Web Host Interview: CoreXchange.com Chief Sales Officer and Founding Partner Julia Morgan” »
What is your name and position with GlowHost?
My name is Matt Lundstrom and I am the President and Founder of GlowHost.com, Inc
Please tell us the year established and brief history of GlowHost?
GlowHost was founded in 2002 in my living room which was shared with 2 other roommates in the ski town of Crested Butte, Colorado. Since that time we have grown considerably from a small reseller that was barely known, to one of the top hosting brands in the industry. Today we have a call center in Ohio, offices in South Florida and our servers are primarily located in Atlanta and Dallas. Our plans moving forward include expansion into European markets.
What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?
I”d like to say everything is unique to our company. However, top quality support is one of our primary focuses at GlowHost, in fact, it is why I started the company. I was tired of dealing with web hosts who could not be bothered to return emails, or when they did, it took days and the answers were irrelevant to my questions. We train our team members every day and much of the training never stops. We are one of the oldest web hosts around, and one of the first to adopt true cloud and virtualization technology which has filled a service gap between shared and dedicated hosting services. Another unique point is we offer a 91 day money back guarantee which is one of the longest if not the longest in the industry today.
What is the most challenging aspect to offering Web Hosting?
The most challenging thing is trying to make sure every single customer is satisfied with the services that GlowHost provides. It is a constant process between developing systems to make their jobs easier, our service more usable and efficient, and of course the human element which entails working with our customers on a personal basis for each of their individual needs. Every customer and web site has unique needs and accommodating everyone is something that is not only challenging, but rewarding for us at the same time.
What is it that makes GlowHost a competitive company in the Web Hosting market?
The main thing is price versus support services. In other words, we offer an extremely competitive price point inline with some of the budget hosting providers, at the same time we deliver much higher service levels in regards to both uptime and quality of technical support which is provided. 80% of our staff are highly trained systems administrators and our customers deal directly with them, instead of low level customer service representatives which is typically how most hosting companies are set up. The remaining 20% are working in specialized tasks such as billing, sales and customer service.
What new features have GlowHost added for its customers in the past year?
In the past year we have had a lot of cool new things. For example we are now offering free SEO tools by Attracta to help our customers get guaranteed inclusion into the search engines and better rankings. We have an entirely new cloud hosting platform which allows us to provision virtual machines in less than 5 minutes. We rolled out a completely new web site which makes it easier for our customers to find the information and services that they need. We now offer TRUSTe privacy policies, PCI scanning from McAfee and free SSL certificates on certain packages. We”ve ramped up our reseller offering and now provide our resellers with video tutorials which they can brand with their company logo to display on their web site, and we also have created a functional web site template and billing system which means they can have a fully operational hosting company in a matter of days or hours depending on how quickly they work. We have added a lot more goodies over the year, like improved control panels and better social networking. We also started a Youtube channel which has lots of funny and creative videos which are simply for entertainment value for both the staff and customers alike.
