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.

Where are they located?
Our datacenter campus is located in Columbus, OH.

What kind of backup power do you have?
We have two separate UPS systems that are backed up by two (N+1) Megawatt generators.

Do you have multiple backbone connections?
Yes.

What connections do you have?
XLHost connects to Level3, NTT/Verio, and Cogent. We also directly peer with hundreds of networks. Our connections are both provider and geographically diverse.

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
24/7

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
Year to date in 2013 our average response time has been 0.5 minutes (spanning 20,377 replies), we also offer live chat based support.

Do you charge your clients for support?  If so, please explain.
Not for general support. We offer managed services and custom engagements which carry additional fees.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
XLHost offers a 7 day money back guarantee.

Thank you for your time and insight into XLHost.com.

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.

Where do you see Media Temple and the web hosting industry in three years?
In the next three years, we really see web hosting becoming more and more streamlined, so that there is more emphasis on site builders and full-service CMS’s over traditional shared hosting, and that’s something we’re exploring as well.

How many customers do you currently have?
There are currently over 125,000 customers in 100 different countries using our services.

Who are some of your famous clients?
Media Temple is proud to be trusted by clients such as AIGA, Adobe, CBS, Diesel, Dribbble, jQuery, Mobile Roadie, NBC, Obey, PSFK, Red Bull, Samsung, Sony, and Volkswagen.

Where are your data centers located?
Ashburn, VA and El Segundo, CA.

What kind of backup power do you have?
We have six HiTecs rotary UPS systems generating conditioned power for N+1 redundancy, three 2-megawatt standby generators, and one 2-megawatt stationary load bank connected to the power backbone. We also have two 25,000 gallon fuel tanks on site.

Do you have multiple backbone connections?
Yes, we have multiple backbone connections.

What connections do you have?
We have multiple 10Gbit connections.

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
24/7!

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
Wait time for phone support is 4 minutes, and for chat, we’re at 8 minutes.

As for support tickets, it depends on volume, but typically, a 30 minutes is the average turn-around time on a support ticket.  Twitter is also an official means of support here at (mt) with the response there being about 1 minute.

Do you charge your clients for support?  If so, please explain.
Nope. Customer support comes with our hosting, although for premium levels of support that fall outside our scope of service, we do offer a managed care solution, Otto. Otto encompasses a broad range of services, including migrations, tune-ups, and dedicated support.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
We offer a money-back guarantee of 30 days for our (gs), (dv), and (ve) products. For the Nitro, we offer a 7-day money-back guarantee.

Thank you for your time and insight into Media Temple.
Thank you!

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.

What would you say is DiscountASP.NET #1 asset to its customer base?
Experience and expertise. That’s two things, I know, but they’re intertwined.

Where do you see DiscountASP.NET and the web hosting industry in three years?
I can’t say where DiscountASP.NET will be in three years without spilling the beans about a project that we’ve been working on behind the scenes for some time now. Suffice it to say we are preparing to expand to new territory with something that application developers are going to be very happy to see.

As for the web hosting in general, it seems to be shrinking as the giant host-gobblers continue to do everything they can to acquire every host on earth. There was a time when there were a dozen sizable hosts in Los Angeles, but now there are only a small handful. That sort of consolidation never benefits the consumer, but it does give independent hosts such as ourselves an advantage in the marketplace. We can offer a leaner, meaner service than any of the mega-hosting (or should I say investment) companies can. It””s just scale. It isn’t possible to adequately support 3 or 5 or 10 million hosting customers without making most of them feel like they’ve been had. And they have been had.

How many customers do you currently have?
Around 35,000 at DiscountASP.NET.

Who are some of your famous clients?
Our policy is not to talk about who our users are unless we get their approval first, so I can’t really name names. We host sites for some high-profile individuals and companies, but our largest and busiest sites are mainly e-commerce sites that you probably wouldn’t recognize even if we told you who they were. There’s a ton of business being done out there by what appear on the surface to be low-profile sites. It’s astounding really, the amount of traffic some of these sites see.

Do you own your own datacenter?
We do not. We run out of two data centers; one in Irvine California and one in London.

Do you have multiple backbone connections?
We have two separate backbone connections in Irvine, through Savvis and Internap. In London we use Equinix.

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
We have level 2 support and system administrators present 24/7.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
We have brought it down to less than an hour. Off-peak it can take a bit longer, but the average overall is less than an hour.

Do you charge your clients for support? If so, please explain.
We do not.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
Yes, for 30 days from account sign-up.

Thank you for your time and insight into DiscountASP.NET.

What is your name and position with Sepia Host?

Khalid Saleem, Co-Founder

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.

How many customers do you currently have?
We have hundreds of customers in multiple countries; Sepiahost continues to demonstrate an extraordinary level of value and choice to its customers.

Who are some of your famous clients?
We cannot disclose client names. We operate under NDA with most of our clients and maintain customer confidentiality; only under special agreement we can advertise our relationship.

Do you own your own datacenter?
Though we do not own the real estate of data center but we have proper arrangement for data center services.

Where are they located?
Our parent company has locations in Chicago and Phoenix, USA

What kind of backup power do you have?
UPS and Diesel Power Backup Generators

Do you have multiple backbone connections?
Yes

What connections do you have?
We have multiple carriers available including: AboveNet, AT&T, CenturyLink, Cogent,Cox, Integra, Level(3), Paetec, SRP Telecom, TeliaSonera, TW telecom, Verizon, Western Wi-Max, XO Communications and Zayo.

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes, and we do it using on-site trained staff who answer questions quickly and are trained to fix problems. We don’t just have a 24 hour support; we have on-site experts available at all times.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
We are staffed 24/7, 365 days of the year.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
Our standard turn-around time is 60 minutes or less.

Do you charge your clients for support? If so, please explain.
No

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
No. We have no contract commitments, so a customer can cancel service at any time. The details can be obtained from the following page http://sepiahost.com/about/policy/

Thank you for your time and insight into Sepia Host.

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.   

Where do you see ThreadHost and the web hosting industry in three years?
Our core services will only get better as time goes by.  They are the key to our success.  As new technology is developed and available we test and deploy it to our customers. We are making large strides in providing a enhanced group of service to the customer such as site management and Google products as we become certified.

How many customers do you currently have?
That’s a bit of a secret but let say its well into the thousands.

Who are some of your famous clients?
Although this is public record we only mention those that have provided us expressed consent to use their name.  That list includes:

• Sask Lotteries
• Sask Sports
• Harvard Developments
• City of Kitimat B.C.
• Canadian Cowboys Association
• Saskatchewan Snowmobile Association
• Harvard Western
• Netnotic Marketing
• Innisfal Gold Club
• Beltline Community Association Calgary
• Lewis Financial
• Green Peace

Do you own your own datacenter?
Yes and No. We both own and lease data center space. Over the last few years it became apparent that the best service to our customers was available by leasing space in a commercial data center for all key services such as site application and email. By doing this we insure all required features such as security, power, available data carriers and environment are available to the extent we need.   In addition we maintain a Saskatoon Data center for less critical services that do not affect the client’s experience. This allows us to insure uninterrupted service with full available redundancy.

Where are they located?
Our critical data center is located in Montreal in central Canada and all our date is stored in Canadian only. This insurer’s we comply with all federally mandated privacy laws.

What kind of backup power do you have?
Our Data center has 1750 KW diesel generators and as well 1500 KW of UPS that insures an seamless transition from power to back up should it occur.

Do you have multiple backbone connections?
Yes we feature multiple data providers (6 currently) that provide 50 Gbps capacity. This also insures a 100% up time guarantee on a congestion free network and no single point of failure.

What connections do you have?
The list of Data providers include:

• Peer1
• Cogent
• Level 3
• TATA communications
• VideoTron
• Deutsche TelKom

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes. Although we do maintain administration hours our support staff is always available and best contacted by email. The response is always quicker by email vs phone at night.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
Yes. Support is always on site and available for critical issues.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
The first response average time is less than 10 minutes

Do you charge your clients for support?  If so, please explain.
Absolutely NOT !  Our support teams are always available to assist.

Issues covered range from password resets to site delivery. Core issues such as hosting email and database are always no cost. Of course we are available to do additional work in the area of development that do have additional charges.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
Absolutely in the first 30 days we offer a no questions asked refund. If you are not happy we refund the cost of service less the cost of any items you will take with you, such as your domain name or secure certificate. We always request a chance to correct any issue and do want a happy customer.

Thank you for your time and insight into ThreadHost.

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).

What would you say is Skyview #1 asset to its customer base?
Our technology and Our team provides award winning customer service and support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Where do you see Skyview and the web hosting industry in three years?
Simple, “skyview Office in a Box”.

How many customers do you currently have?
Over 200

Do you own your own datacenter?
No

Where are they located?
NJ, NYC

What kind of backup power do you have?
UPS/Generator – 100% SLA on Power

Do you have multiple backbone connections?
Yes

What connections do you have?
Multi-Gigabit Connectivity - skyview IP transit consists of a mix of multiple providers including Globalcrossing, Sprint, and Level3 (through WBS), Abovenet, XO, Cogent, Highwinds and public and private peering. All transit connections are routed over single or double 1Gbps ethernet links which gives multi-gigabit data capacity for high scalability and future growth.

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes, via Phone and Email

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
24/7

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
As of 12/03/2012 – 12 Minutes

Do you charge your clients for support?  If so, please explain.
No

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
Yes

Thank you for your time and insight into Skyview.

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.

What new features have Lithium Hosting added for its customers in the past year?
We’ve made hosting more secure and we’ve made it easier for our customers to install software and configure Google Apps.

What would you say is Lithium Hosting #1 asset to its customer base?
Communication is our #1 asset.  We’re always available to chat via numerous means.  We also communicate service status via Twitter and Facebook to keep our customers in the know.

Where do you see Lithium Hosting and the web hosting industry in three years?
That is a tough question, the hosting industry is constantly evolving and adapting to new industry requirements and customer needs.  Lithium Hosting will be here in 3 years ready to provide our customers with the best experience in Web Hosting!

How many customers do you currently have?
4,000+

Who are some of your famous clients?
Sorry, we respect our client’s privacy and don’t share that information

Do you own your own datacenter?
No, we use Softlayer

Where are they located?
Dallas, Seattle, Washington DC and Amsterdam

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Not currently.  In the 6+ years we’ve been in business, it hasn’t been truly necessary.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
6am – 11pm CST.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
During support hours, 30 minutes or less (better than your local pizza guy)

Do you charge your clients for support?  If so, please explain.
Support is free, if a customer needs something special that isn’t server related, we may require a one-time support incident fee.  We’ve sold less than a dozen over the last couple of years, so most things we just take care of.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
Yes of course, 30-days from sign-up for new customers.  We also offer a 30-day free trial, so you pretty much get 60 days if you need it.

Thank you for your time and insight into Lithium Hosting.

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.

In addition, Codero has instituted a series of internal controls and automated processes to ensure the highest level of reliability, performance, and customer support. This includes adherence to the Statements on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) 16, formerly SAS 70, and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

We are also proud to say that we offer the only Customer Loyalty Program in the industry. Customers can earn Codero Reward Points for every dollar spent with Codero; points can be used for dedicated server upgrades, adding a firewall or online backup solution, increasing bandwidth, adding managed services, or upgrading to a new hosting or network solution. Customers love our loyalty program and say it’s one of the many perks of being a Codero customer for life!

What do your customers want from you?
Our customers tell us first and foremost they want reliable hosting solutions. They want what they buy from us to work as expected, as advertised and without exception. Second, they want responsive, knowledgeable technical support that knows technology and their business. If problems do arise, they want them resolved quickly.  They also want domain expertise. They want us to be experts and advisors in helping them solve their issues or to consult with them on how to grow their IT infrastructure to support their growing business.

What do you offer your customers that are unique to your company?
We offer customers an Exceptional IT Hosting Service with industry leading reliability, performance, and value. This is all backed by our 100% uptime guarantee and our live 24/7/365 support, delivered by our team of friendly, industry certified, U.S. based professionals. As we mentioned, we are also the only provider to offer a Customer Loyalty Program in the industry. Furthermore, not only are our products extremely price competitive, we also offer the only Price Match Guarantee in the industry.

At Codero, it’s our Number #1 priority to deliver to customers an Exceptional Service, with a no-compromise experience.  Whether a customer needs one hosted server or an entire array and clusters; we live to make it happen, and happen fast.

What is the most challenging aspect to providing hosting solutions?
Today, we hear of so many hosting solutions.  Cloud, Dedicated, SaaS, Hybrid, PaaS, etc…Helping customers sort through the confusion is the key to success.   By listening to customers, we work hard to anticipate customer requirements before they even know what they need. We want to be there at the right time, with the right solution.

It’s a challenge to balance delivering our customers cutting-edge technology while also prioritizing customer experience and value.  We at Codero want to do both.  Deliver a great service experience, as well as high performing technology.   For us, there’s no time to take a break or even blink; Technology is evolving every day.   We must be diligent and continue to innovate and deliver valuable services to our customers at all times at the best absolute prices. And, that’s exactly what we do all the while delivering a top notch exceptional service experience.

What is it that makes Codero a competitive company in the Dedicated, Managed, and Cloud Hosting market?
The best part about Codero is that customers do not have to compromise when they choose to host with us.  They get the best price AND the best performance.  They get access to Expert Support AND state of the art automation.  All our services come with the best reliability, and with 24/7/365 access to technical and friendly experts that can solve any problem. We are committed to developing reliable solutions that allow customers to focus on their core business, not IT issues. What new features have Codero added for its customers in the past year?
We have experienced incredible growth over the past year. This can no doubt be attributed to our ability to quickly respond to customers’ evolving needs. One latest innovation is Codero Smart Servers which can be deployed in minutes. Smart Servers deliver the performance and security of a dedicated server plus the flexibility and scalability of cloud hosting. We see Smart Servers as the ultimate hosting platform, merging the best capabilities of dedicated server and cloud computing technologies. Smart Servers still give customers complete control over their dedicated server environment, including CPU cycles, memory, and storage capacity.

However with Smart Servers, dedicated server resources can be deployed automatically in minutes as opposed to hours or days. Access to on-demand, dedicated server resources gives customers ultimate flexibility while automated, rapid deployment eliminates cumbersome migration efforts that can slow down business growth in a traditional dedicated hosting environment.

Codero’s on-demand Cloud hosting options, which we launched in spring of 2011, have been an exciting development as well. Customers can take advantage of our powerful cloud platform to boost the performance of their IT infrastructure. They can get a powerful instance with 1GB of RAM and 50GB of storage for $54/mo or $0.10/hr with additional options available as well. They have the flexibility to customize instances based upon their specific needs. Customers can rely on the cloud to quickly scale and deploy IT assets when they need them, only paying for the resources they actually use.

At Codero, we also believe in building strong partnerships. We offer two innovative programs including our Reseller and Referral Partner Programs. As a Reseller Partner, customers can increase sales by leveraging Codero resources. Without spending time on server maintenance, updates/upgrades, technology partners can expand offerings to customers. We offer four, flexible plans that give customers volume discounts off regular pricing on dedicated servers and setup fees. Codero’s new Referral Partner Program is one-of-a-kind and enables channel partners, VARs, and technology consulting firms to create a revenue stream where they receive reoccurring monthly commission on all Codero services and products referred. There’s no risk and virtually no investment.

We also opened a new data center in Ashburn, Virginia which we are extremely excited about. Just like our other data centers it is SSAE 16 (SAS 70) Certified. This gives our customers an option to have their services hosted on the East coast in addition to our other U.S. data center locations in Phoenix, Arizona and Chicago, Illinois.

Earlier this year we launched our family of 1 Hour Quick Deploy Servers.  Our Quick Deploy Dedicated Servers are pre-set with the types of standard configurations we know most Codero customers generally need and can be delivered in less than an hour.  Our record is one of the best in the industry also, on complex and custom configurations at a delivery time of less than 4hours per customized server.

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

An Exceptional Hosting Service, without any compromise. Customers get the best performance and reliability, with 24/7/365 access to technical and friendly experts that can solve any problem at uneatable values.

Where do you see Codero and the web hosting industry in three years?
It’s my belief that we can surprise the world with what a hosting company can be. In the next three years, I see Codero becoming even more of a leader than it is today.  We will push the industry even further in innovation.  Codero will be one of the top providers of hybrid hosted infrastructure solutions for businesses of all kinds. We will do this by delivering simple, automated and scalable hosted services to businesses of all sizes, with focus on tech savvy SMBs. We’ll get there by continuing to provide an exceptional service, with great customer support and a great user experience. We will be the trusted advisor to businesses.

There’s no doubt that we at Codero love what we do, and we’re grateful to our customers for allowing us do it. And, that is hosting companies’ data reliably, securely, and affordably, to improve their businesses and their lives. By automating our processes and delighting our customers in every interaction, we will be able to get to where we want to be. In doing this, we will simultaneously become one of the best places to work and have the brightest employees who want to exceed expectations every day, and grow their careers for life.

Where are your DCs located?
Phoenix, Arizona; Chicago, Illinois; and Ashburn, Virginia.  All of our data centers are SSAE 16 (formerly SAS 70) certified. And staffed 24×7 by the industry’s top talent.

What connections do you have into your DC?
We have multiple and redundant carrier connections available including: XO, Highwinds and Zayo (formerly AboveNet)

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes, we have an amazing team of US-based, live 24/7/365 support experts available via phone, chat and ticket. Also our knowledge-base is state of the art, and is updated regularly providing answers to frequently-asked questions.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
Yes. We have experts at all levels available 24/7/365 in our Austin, Kansas City, and Phoenix offices― it is a must in our opinion to provide top notch experts, and consultants that can help customers when they need it.  Our senior account managers and technical support experts are available 24/7/365 to deliver exceptional service and advice should you need it.

Do you charge your clients for support? If so, please explain.
Codero offers free, basic support via phone, chat and our ticketing system. If there ever is a problem, our skilled technicians are available 24/7/365 to address your support needs.

In addition, custom advanced technical support for complex operations is also available. Such work may include:

• Customer Software installation
• Advanced configuration of servers
• Custom backup scripts
• Mail server configuration
• Scripting

What guarantees do you offer? We have some of the boldest guarantees in the industry. We offer a 100% uptime guarantee and the only Price Match Guarantee . Also, I offer a personal guarantee and commitment, and every Codero employee, that you will have an amazing hosting experience at Codero.

Thank you!
Richard Guzzo @ FindMyHost.com

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.

Where do you see CoreXchange and the web hosting industry in three years?
We plan to continue leading the industry in making colocation services easier and more cost-effective to purchase, expand and manage.  We are fully prepared to meet the growing demand for power and connectivity that the web hosting industry will require in years to come.

How many customers do you currently have?
We are a private company so we don’t disclose that type of information but we have multiple data centers with a total of over 28,000 square feet of dedicated data center space. We serve customers in a wide range of industries including healthcare, oil & gas, legal, real estate, media, managed services and hosting.  We provide businesses of all sizes with an enterprise-level platform for high performance applications such as ecommerce, hosting, video streaming, VoIP, VPN, cloud computing and disaster recovery. We focus on meeting the needs of our customers as many have thousands of customers that depend on them.

Who are some of your famous clients?
We provide colocation services to business of all sizes from a single server to your favorite E-tailer to cloud services.  Even the cloud has to colocate somewhere.

Do you own your own datacenter?
Our data centers are designed and managed by CoreXchange.  Without the middleman, we can effectively offer a powerful combination of services at an incredible rate.

Where are they located?
CoreXchange operates two SSAE 16 SOC-1 Type II Compliant Data Centers located at the following addresses:

CoreXchange Infomart – 1950 N. Stemmons Freeway, Suite 4006, Dallas, TX 75207
CoreXchange Connection – 8600 Harry Hines Blvd, Suite 200, Dallas, TX 75235

What kind of backup power do you have?

Our redundant power systems include:

• Three 1.5 MW Cummins generators with load bank for testing
• Dual utility feeds to building
• Redundant transformers
• Multiple redundant electrical distribution panels
• 14,400 volt main electrical service
• Redundant A, B, C and D power backup via four 750 KVA UPS systems
• Dual battery rooms

We also employ master electricians as part of our full time staff.

Do you have multiple backbone connections?
CoreXchange provides access to multiple, BGP-routed Tier-1 Internet backbones through one fully managed connection. With our multi-homed network of Tier-1 carriers, CoreXchange customers benefit from superior network performance at a lower cost. We also offer high-speed cross-connections to all major carriers, including direct connections to Equinix.

What connections do you have?
We are a carrier neutral facility offering Tier-1 to value network options.  On our bandwidth mesh today, CoreXchange offers BGP access to AboveNet, AT&T, Global Crossing, Level3 plus peering.  CoreXchange provides 100 Mbps, 1 Gig, 10 Gig capacity and beyond.

Additionally, we can reach any carrier directly via our direct connection to Equinix.

Do you offer 24/7 support?
Yes. Our Network Operations Center is onsite, at all data center locations, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Our support staff provides free remote hands and eyes services including reboots.

Do you have technicians present 24/7 or 9-5 M-F?
CoreXchange technicians are available 24/7/365.  Our technicians are on-site and available to assist customers in person, on the phone, through tickets, and emails.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?With on-site technicians 24/7 at each of our data centers, our average ticket response time is less than 15 minutes.  Tickets are managed through CoreControl^SM, our free and secure customer support portal,.  Our phone calls are typically answered within two rings.

Do you charge your clients for support?  If so, please explain.
Our colocation solutions include the following support services which are provided around the clock, free of charge.

• Free remote hands and eye services; include, but are not limited to:
  • Reboots
  • Insertion of media
  • Entering basic commands
  • Moving your IP KVM to another server
  • Adding or removing hot-swap components
  • Moving cables
• Free and secure access to online customer portal, CoreControl^SM
• Free bandwidth reporting

In addition to our free included support services, we offer extremely affordable technical assistance including hardware replacement at $25 per incident, $75 rack and stack services, and $75 per 30 minute increment for admin time.  We also provide advanced support services such as OS installs, reloads, firewall management and network consulting.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
Yes.  We provide a 30-Day Money Back Satisfaction Guarantee with all online orders for colocation services as referenced in our Service Order Form. We will refund the setup fee and first month for cancellations made within 30 days of commencement due to unsatisfactory service. We believe in putting our money where our mouth is and are confident that you will be a long-term satisfied customer.

Thank you for your time and insight into CoreXchange.

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.

What would you say is GlowHost’s #1 asset to its customer base?
Our customers are our number one asset. We understand that quality of service usually means happy customers, and happy customers can mean long-term customers who will stay with, and recommend GlowHost to their friends and family. Making those customers happy is a never-ending task that our staff is always trying to improve. We have systems admins online 24/7/365 including holidays with a full team of network engineers behind the scenes to ensure business continuity to our customers. Reliable servers and a great team here at GlowHost is the main factor in keeping our number one asset happy.

Where do you see GlowHost and the web hosting industry in three years?
Unless some underlying software or hardware technology revolutionizes the market in this time, I see GlowHost as doing the same thing we are doing today, only better. After 10 years of web hosting, I can see with each passing year how we have been able to make things more efficient, fun and usable for both our customers and our team. With each year our team grows stronger and better, and that means better systems and support for our customers.

Do you own your own datacenter?
Like many larger hosts we elect to lease our servers in existing, high performance datacenters. Currently we work with AtlantaNap / GNAX in Atlanta and CoreXchange in Dallas.

Do you offer 24/7 support?
GlowHost is always open, and we have people here 24/7/365 ready and able to answer any type of question from simple sales questions to complicated server or web site optimization issues.

What is your average turn-around time on a support ticket?
We have a 20 minute first response target. It is fairly unusual for the first response to take longer than 20 minutes, in fact, it is usually around 2 to 10 minutes unless it is a particularly busy day. It seems like when people get back from the weekend, they really are eager to talk to us. I guess they spend all that time brainstorming ideas and want to get started on implementing them right away when their work week begins. After the first response, the issue may be solved, or if it is a complicated issue, the “turn-around” might take several hours. It really depends on how fast the customer responds to us, and not the other way around because our follow-up responses also have a 20 minute target.

Do you charge your clients for support? If so, please explain.
Our technical support services are free in almost all cases. Like most hosts, we have what is called “Admin Time” or “Paid Support.” The vast majority of our customers never need this type of service. Its usually reserved for complicated dedicated or cloud setups, clustered setups, or something that requires some extremely unusual configuration or highly specialized application or specialized server to run on their hardware.

Do you offer a money back guarantee?
We offer several money back guarantees, right now we have 3 total money back guarantees which cover things like uptime, and hardware, and we also have our industry leading 91-Day “for any reason you want to cancel” guarantee. However we have another industry leading guarantee coming out before the end of this year. Stay tuned for details!

Thank you for your time and insight into GlowHost.