AYKsolutions specializes in locating top quality data center locations across the US.  Providing superior Managed Dedicated Hosting is a large focus with AYKsolutions, altough it has everything from shared hosting to VPS.

We go behind the scene to provide you with insight as to why AYKsolutions can benefit your business.

Please tell us the year established and brief history of AYKsolutions?
AYKsolutions was established in the winter of 2004. Our first goal was to provide affordable, non-oversold, shared hosting services. After a year we naturally progressed to provide dedicated servers.

What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?
I would like to think that we are one of the most understanding and flexible companies out there. We do not mind going out of the way to provide a service to a client that is usually not covered under our regular support plan.

What is the most challenging aspect to offering Web Hosting?
Honesty and professionalism. In the years I have been a part of the Web Hosting industry, I have witnessed many companies come and go. For the most part, their downfall was due to their inability to clearly and honestly communicate with their clients. I would like to think that AYKsolutions is the complete opposite of that. We never keep our clients in the dark and always treat them with respect. The response has been phenominal and many of the clients who signed up with us back in 2004 are still using our services.

What is it that makes AYKsolutions a competitive company in the Web Hosting market?
This goes hand in hand with the previous questions. We pride ourselves on the way we treat our customers. We are always making sure our support is up to par and that client’’s requests/issues are handled quickly and efficiently. Because of this, our client retention rate is very high and we pride ourselves on that. If a client stays with you for a long period of time, then we must be doing something right.

What new features have AYKsolutions added for its customers in the past year?
We are always working on adding new features and are constantly working to improve the client’’s experience. Some of the things we have done are upgrading our look for easier navigation and faster loading. We have added our remote Vault backup solution with unlimited bandwidth. We have switched over to a new backend system that combines support and billing in one, easy to use interface. The most recent addition are the VPS plans.

What would you say is AYKsolutions #1 asset to its customer base?
Our dedication to providing a high-end hosting experience for an affordable price.

Where do you see AYKsolutions and the web hosting industry in three years?
I believe in three years, the technology will improve so much that it will be commonplace to setup VMWare clusters using high-end hardware. AYKsolutions will be at the forefront of this movement.

How many customers do you currently have?
We currently have over 600 clients.

Who are some of your famous clients?
Crazefm.com is a popular Bollywood radio station out of Norway. They have been with us from the beginning and we are honored to still provide them with quality services.

Which datacenters do you utilize?
We currently host our servers in AtlantaNAP, Colo4Jax, FDCservers and Peer1 facilities.

What kind of back up power do they provide?
Each one has on-site diesel backup generators.

Do they have multiple backbone connections?
Each location has multiple backbones

What connections do they have?
The upstreams vary, but some of them are Qwest, Sprint, Internap, AT&T, PCCW, Telia.

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
We provide 24/7 technical support.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
Currently, all tickets are answered in 15 to 20 minutes on average and depending on the issue are resolved within 30 to 45 minutes.

Do you charge your clients for support? If so, please explain.
The only time we charge for support is if the client is not fully-managed and if the client’’s request is a complicated one. A good example of this would be an installation of a 3rd party script.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
We do offer a 30 day money back guarantee on our shared hosting accounts.

This week FindMyHost.com is excited to interview Brad Litwin at A2 Hosting.

At A2 Hosting, its not hard to see they are customer oriented, so we wanted to get a closer look into the company and see what sets them apart from the rest.

Please tell us the year established and brief history of A2 Hosting?
A2 Hosting evolved from Iniquinet in 2003. We found our niche offering cutting edge technology including being one of the first hosting companies to offer PHP5.

What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?
We like to call the unique features that we offer the A2 Hosting Difference. This includes 5 star-3rd party testimonials, Guru Crew support, developer friendly hosting, host-guard server monitoring, Server Rewind and more. A complete list can be found here.

What is the most challenging aspect to offering Web Hosting?
As with any technical field, it takes a perpetual effort by us to stay current and to offer the latest in web hosting technology. Our customers have come to expect the best web development tools, and we don’t plan on disappointing them.

What is it that makes A2 Hosting a competitive company in the Web Hosting market?
We are able to offer high quality hosting, but without needlessly forcing our customers to break the bank. We are not a budget provider and webmasters will pay a bit more when selecting us, but it is definitely worth it in the end. They get top-notch Guru Crew support, the best open-source technology, a 99.9% guarantee which ensures their site will be available when needed and much, much more.

What new features have A2 Hosting added for its customers in the past year?
One of our most well received features that we have rolled out over the past year is our server rewind bacup technology (http://www.a2hosting.com/services/server-rewind-data-protection). We have also added VPS hosting including the choice of Xen or OpenVZ as virtualization platforms.

What would you say is A2 Hosting #1 asset to its customer base?
We invite readers to see what our customers have to say about our #1 asset here http://www.a2hosting.com/about/testimonials. I think you””ll found our superb tech support team to be a common choice among our customers.

Where do you see A2 Hosting and the web hosting industry in three years?
With our steady growth, we would like to see A2 Hosting as a household brand in the hosting industry. We have a great staff, network and reputation. And we”re working hard to get the word out.

How many customers do you currently have?
Over 7,000 customers

Who are some of your famous clients?
Our most famous client is 43folders.com

Do you own your own datacenter?
No.

Where are they located?
Southeast Michigan

What kind of back up power do you have?
750kVA Cummings Diesel Generator with 2,000 gallon tank

Do you have multiple backbone connections?
Yes we do.

What connections do you have?
Multihomed network connectivity via internet providers 1Gbps to Level(3), Savvis OC-48, & Global Crossing / XO (Shared 1Gbps)

Do you offer 24/7 support?
We have a 24/7 ticketing system.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
We offer 24/7 server monitoring.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
4 hours

Do you charge your clients for support? If so, please explain.
Support is free. We can provide support outside of normal circumstances for a fee.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
Yes, a 30-day money back guarantee. We like like to think of A2 Hosting no risk hosting.

Thanks Brand for taking the time to talk with us.

If you are interested in learning more about A2 Hosting please visit www.a2hosting.com

This year, FindMyHost had the pleasure of meeting with the team at PinnacleCart at LT Pact and HostingCon.

While most online entrepreneurs have dabbled in online shopping carts, and our staff have all worked with other variations in the past.  it’s finally nice to see a well polished and if needed hosting solution available.

This week we sat down and chatted with Craig Fox, VP of Product Development & Marketing at PinnacleCart.  We wanted to get the ins and outs of the company, its product and what’s on the horizon.

Craig, thanks for joining us.  Can you tell us the brief history of Pinnacle Cart?

Pinnacle Cart was established in 2002 with the purpose of fulfilling a void in the ecommerce marketplace for a marketing driven shopping cart application.

What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?

Unlike most e-Commerce applications Pinnacle Cart was designed from the ground up with three goals in mind for our feature set.

- Increase organic traffic to the user website.
- Increase the order percentage of site visitors
- Increase the average transaction amount.
. Most products on the market simply take an order; our application assists clients in driving more traffic and revenue.

What is the most challenging aspect to offering E-Commerce solutions?

Working with third-party payment and shipping vendors. This market is very dynamic and as these companies respond to both compliance issues (PCI) and the needs of their customers, we working with these organizations to make sure we are providing our customers all the tools these organizations empower their customer with.

What is it that makes Pinnacle Cart a competitive company in the shopping cart market?

First we have a stable, easy-to-use, feature rich ecommerce application that we are constantly improving to meet the needs of our customers and the changing environment. Second, we are one of the only companies to offer 100% US-based support. The quality of our product combined with its ease of use generates a very low volume of support allowing us to keep our support team in the US.

As a follow up to that question, do you feel support based outside the US is inferior?

We aren’t saying that, but many of our converted customers dealt with support overseas and the complaint was the delay in response times and communication issues. You are dealing with a very technical product and therefore the semantics of a conversation are extremely important. Our industry has been plagued with bad support for years. You have many companies that offer a “free” download and then charge for support. That statement in itself is a contradictory business model because where is the motivation to make a superior product when your business makes money on support? We don’t want support tickets and therefore strive to put the out the best product. We have a very different business philosophy and the market is telling us it is the right direction.

What new features have Pinnacle Cart added for its customers in the last few months?

Below are just a couple of the improvements we’ve added

Free Live Chat
Product image Zoom, Magnify and Expand
Gift Certificate
USPS Printing Labels
Inventory by Attributes
Layered Navigation
Encrypted Credit Card Storage
Wish List / Stored Carts
Google Checkout

What would you say is Pinnacle Cart #1 asset to its customer base?

Well of course the fact that the software is so easy to use, but also our dedicated customer support team. If any of our clients have an issue, the can contact us 24/7 to resolve the issue. Sometimes businesses starting out don’t understand just how important it is to get a live person on the phone to help you resolve your issues. Our support team knows our product and will do everything possible to make sure you don’t lose a sale.

Where do you see Pinnacle Cart and the E-Commerce industry in three years?

It’s really tough to say where the industry is going but I know we’re starting to move away from the desktop. Imagine a potential customer shopping at their local store, seeing a product on the shelf they want to purchase, scanning the bar code on their phone and seeing a list of all the local and online stores that carry the product with prices, location and the ability to purchase. For business to succeed we need to start creating tools that help our clients get in front of customers no matter where they are, not just when they are in front of their computer or on their store. And we are working to do that.

Who are some of your famous clients?

National Public Radio
Old Guys Rule
American Body Building

Many of the nationally known brands using Pinnacle Cart have asked us to not to use them in our advertising, so I can’t tell you all of them out of respect for our clients.

Can you explain the difference between the hosted and licensed versions and what would you recommend for a new business?

Sure. Our hosted version allows clients to use all the features of the cart without having to worry about any of the technical aspects of running software on the server. We set it up and make sure your store is available 24/7. For our more technically inclined clients I recommend our licensed product which allows you to license the software and install it on their own server. While I’d recommend the hosted version of the cart for new businesses, most clients prefer the licensed version. Of course you can move between the two offerings at any time.

Do you offer 24/7 or 9-5 M-F support?

24/7 support is included with any new license. It is also important to note that our support is unlimited in terms of questions. Again, this goes to our philosophy and we aren’t afraid of unlimited tickets because the product doesn’t generate support. Be wary of the per incident support plans as many of our newer customers thought we were more expensive until they started paying for support.

Do you charge your clients for support?  If so, please explain.

We offer all new clients 30 days of unlimited phone support and a year of unlimited email support with a license purchase. Our hosted clients enjoy 30 days of unlimited phone and unlimited email support for as long as they are a customer. You can purchase additional phone support for a year for $199. If you want to continue support after a year there is a small subscription fee depending if you’re interested in phone, email or both.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?

Of course. Our goal is to make sure every customer is satisfied with our application so we give everyone a 30 day money back guarantee.

Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today Craig.  For anyone who is interested in testing out PinnacleCart visit www.pinnaclecart.com today.

“If you’re looking for rock solid uptime, reliable support, and affordable prices - look no further than The Planet.”

- FMH Editor

Company: The Planet
Founded: 1998
Employees: 200
Customers: 17,000
Data Centers: 2 (more being added soon)
Target Market: SME’s
More Information:  ThePlanet.com, Dedicated Marketplace, VPS Marketplace

The Planet began in 1998 with former management and technical professionals from giant NTT/Verio. Since 1998 The Planet has become one of the fastest growing Managed Hosting provider on the web, even rivaling competitor EV1.

Deloitte & Touche recently released a list of the fastest growing technology companies in Texas. The Planet placed third on the list with a growth rate of 6,611 percent over five years. In addition, The Planet claims to have been profitable since 2002, a real plus to Web Hosting consumers who are tired of finding a good home only to see it sold out to a bigger fish.

Peter Pathos, The Planet’s CEO and Founder, attributes the company’s success to a number of factors, including:

– Many of the failed hosting companies relied too heavily on the Internet Economy, whereas The Planet has catered more to mainstream business since its inception as NT Access in 1998.

– Pathos also says that today’s Internet is a much less “friendly” environment, susceptible to hackers, viruses and denial of service attacks and many organizations do not have the internal human and financial capital to ward off all the threats that a strong Web hosting company — with a much lower cost basis — can guard against.

– Successful Web hosting companies today are bundling services that can create real value for enterprises and providing expertise and economies of scale that can only be found in a single-source location such as The Planet.

Sparking the incredible growth in 2003 and now late in to 2004 have been affordable web server solutions under spin-off brands “Server Matrix” and “Insomnia 365”.

Web Host Report Card
7-point Testing System

1. Pre-Sales
There are a variety of contact methods you can use to contact The Planet.

- Live Chat took on average 30 seconds to receive a reply to our questions. Although, it was a bit hard to find a Sales Rep online after hours.

- Responses to our email queries were very quick indeed, averaging 10 minutes.

- Phone calls received instant responses, but like the Live Chat, speaking to someone after hours was a bit difficult at times.

Overall the experience was very positive. All sales agents were knowledgeable, polite, and quick to answer our questions.

GRADE: A-
What We Like: Fast response!
Needs Improvement: After hour’s sales rep availability.

2. Ordering Process
The Planet offers a very simple order process which allows the customer to build out a server and see the total price before ordering. This kind of flexibility allows the customer to pick all of the options they will require.

The scope of products and services offered is one of the best in the dedicated server marketplace. Customers can choose from a basic setup, or a setup that includes all the bells and whistles like backup, firewall, and load balancing.

In addition, if consumers have a question about the types of services offered on the order form, they can click on links for each service. The links provide detailed information about each service offered. Live chat is also available during the order process, ensuring no customer leaves without the info they require.

GRADE: A+
What We Like: Easy customization, Live chat to answer questions if needed.
Needs Improvement: N/A

3. Service Setup
How long did it take to be fully operational?
We ordered a basic Red Hat Enterprise server with Plesk Reloaded. We received our setup email within 4 hours after we placed our order. Our order was also confirmed by phone a few minutes after placing our order. The sales rep who called went over the specs and verified we were a legitimate order.

The setup email we received contained the basic information for accessing our server. Once we logged in to the ORBIT control portal to retrieve our password, we were on our way.

GRADE: A+
What We Like: Easy to understand setup email, Quick turnaround time.
Needs Improvement: N/A

Hosting quality
4. Website Uptime
FindMyHost has been hosted at The Planets main data center for a little less than a year and has never experienced any network or power outages.

In comparison, our last hosting provider had network outages on a monthly basis and at some points (during thunderstorms for example), completely lost power for several hours at a time.

GRADE: A+
What We Like: Redundant backbone connections, redundant power, security.
Needs Improvement: N/A

5. Data Center Overview
Two Class-A data center facilities. Full y-meshed data network consisting of backbone connections with leading communications providers such as AT&T, AboveNet, Broadwing, Global Crossing, Level3, nLayer, Sprint, Time Warner, UUNET, Verio, and Cogent.

Editors’ Note (notes taken during data center tour provided by The Planet):
With the addition of their second Dallas data center, The Planet now possesses two state-of-the-art enterprise level data centers.  The facilities have a combined 55,000 square feet of raised flooring, 38 redundant HVAC units for cooling, 8 500KVA UPS battery backup units for power interruptions, and 3 permanent diesel generators for long-term power outages.

GRADE: A+
What We Like: Security, Redundancy, Top-notch network administrators.
Needs Improvement: N/A

6. Network Infrastructure
The Planet’s network is driven by Juniper and Cisco components over a redundant architecture.  The Planet claims to deliver a 100% uptime guarantee with 17* multi-homed GigE (1000Mbps) backbone connections to the Internet through all the leading communications providers. The Planet also claims that their network costs and increased bandwidth commitments are extremely low due to existing network infrastructure and contract commitments.

*At the time of this article being published. The Planet is adding more on a monthly basis.

GRADE: A+
What We Like: No downtime.
Needs Improvement: N/A

7. Support
Overall, our experience with The Planets technical support staff has been excellent. Nearly all of our problems have been solved in an efficient manner. We opened a number of tickets for varying issues we had to test turnaround time. In most cases, issues were solved within 12 hours. Most tickets were answered within 3 hours.

In the event that our request required charged administration time, we were informed of the price beforehand.

Our only complaint is 1 instance where our ticket was closed before resolution.

GRADE: B+
What We Like: Expertise in a wide variety of subjects.
Needs Improvement: 1 ticket closed before issue was resolved.

Brief Interview
Julia Estes
Vice President, Business Development

What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?
Our leading edge network and state-of-the-art facilities are certainly unique.

However, we don’t only provide space, power, access, support and hardware. We also provide an extensive offering of Managed Services. Many of our customers have complex business requirements. To address their concerns, we’ve built a team of technology consultants trained to assist in defining and addressing a variety of hosting considerations. We’ve tackled just about every possible technology challenge. Our team is available on an hourly basis, or our customers may sign up for our Managed Service packages on a per server basis. Our complete packages include server monitoring, management, security tools, formal reports, dedicated technicians and much more for a minimal price. The Planet has the most robust turnkey server management options in the industry. In addition to our Managed Service packages, we offer more in depth offerings such as Security Services, Database Administration and Data Storage & Management options as well. Dedicated technicians are available for UNIX, Linux, BSD, Windows, Oracle, and application development.

What new features has The Planet added for its customers in the past year?
ORBIT™, our customer portal developed by our internal development team based around the needs of our customers.

The Orbit Support Portal leads the marketplace for its ease of use and functionality.  Built for scalability and reliability, Orbit offers extensive technical resources to the customer and reduces overall support costs by dramatically reducing the amount of personnel needed to support our growing customer base.  Services available to our customers via Orbit include server monitoring, statistics, IP address management, administrative information, MRTG graphs for bandwidth utilization and a comprehensive knowledge base . With Orbit, our customers have unprecedented flexibility and ease of use with a powerful online server management tool. ORBIT™ is the most comprehensive customer portal in the industry with over 60 current features. We add new features each month. For a demo of ORBIT™, please go to https://orbit.theplanet.com/ and use “test” as the username and password.