Ever heard of HostHero? No? Well, in case you are looking for some affordable cloud-based hosting, it’s time to get to know them. Here’s a Q&A session I did with the company founder cum VP recently – it’s a great interview (thanks again Rahim!) and it’s a must read for shoppers who are looking for similar service.

Hello Rahim, thanks for being with us today. Let’s start with some introduction. What can you tell us about yourself and your company HostHero.

Hi Jerry, thanks for setting this up. My name is Rahim K, and I am a co-founder and the VP of Business Development for HostHero, thus responsible for our vast affiliate network, partner relations, and any marketing initiatives we pursue.

HostHero is a privately owned web hosting provider located in Toronto, Canada. From the beginning, our goal has always been to provide a fast, secure, reliable web hosting solution, with affordable rates. We take pride in offering 24/7 in-house support – no outsourcing – and have heard time and time again that this is a feature that sets us apart. Essentially, we’re confident that we can deliver the best all-round hosting solution, with a backbone built on cloud infrastructure that intersects with elements of IaaS (infrastructure as a service) at a fraction of what our competitors can offer. It’s true cloud hosting, at shared hosting rates.

Click here for more on HostHero hosting features.

Hmmm, cloud hosting at shared hosting rates, that sounds interesting. So, who should be using HostHero? Please briefly describe HostHero’s targeted audiences.

Anyone really – that’s the beauty of cPanel.

Whether you are starting your SMB, building a social networking site, or looking to host your own blog/photo/video sharing site, we have a solution that works for you. We have free site-builders with one-click installers (literally), thousands of templates, and a support system that will take you as far as you want to go. At the same time, more experienced users have the added functionality cPanel brings to the table, at their full disposal.

According to the company website, HostHero Hosting is based on clustered cloud computing. How this is done? Can you tell us more about the technology behind HostHero’s operations?

Sure! As I was saying earlier, our servers are built for performance, speed, reliability and efficiency. We have 5 data centers across North America, one in Dallas, one in Seattle, one in Washington D.C, and two in Toronto, Canada (one downtown, and one uptown). Through all of these facilities, we are able to deliver to our clients access to dual-hex core servers that are configured optimally for shared computing. Through closely monitored load-balancing initiatives, and the magic of CloudLinux technology, we have devised a hosting “ecosystem” that gives our users rock solid stability at very low costs.

We looked at the recent surge of cloud computing and how it blended into web hosting, and concluded that there was still a leap or bound to be made; and that’s what we’ve done! Taken existing technologies that are present in shared-resource computing (in this case storage and hosting), and exploited them to the advantage of our clients… for an exceptionally low cost.

Cool. Can you further elaborate on the advantages of cluster computing/cloud hosting – from a user’s view-point?

For starters, HostHero users are now able to obtain what’s considered to be the latest and greatest storage and server solutions, at very cost-effective rates. Cluster computing has rapidly grown into a commercially viable alternative for all companies, not just the ones willing to spend the big dollars. As we grow, we expect to continually educate the marketplace on exactly how feasible cloud hosting can be.

Scalability is probably the next most important benefit to clients; websites can expand at exponential rates and the resources will always remain available. Hard drives or processors for example can be added or swapped seamlessly, never affecting the existing work flow. Further to that point, clients can be sure that there is practically 100% efficiency with resource consumption – all free resources such as RAM, bandwidth, and HD space to name a few, are available when needed. On top of that, the Cloud is designed to compensate should one server experience any set backs, delivering to clients a much greater redundancy than they would ordinarily receive at such a low cost. Prior to Cloud Hosting, hosting clients would need to spend on probably a few dedicated servers to achieve this sort of redundancy.

The list of benefits is long, but I’m sure you get the idea. It’s inexpensive, extremely reliable, extremely scalable, and above all it gives ANY of our clients access to the fastest and most secure hardware available with complete peace of mind.

You mention cloud hosting is for anyone – does your ‘anyone’ include heavy CMS users? For example if I am a Drupal user, would it be very complicated to install (and manage) my Drupal websites on HostHero??

Absolutely Jerry, in fact a large bulk of our clients are CMS and blog users. We encouage them through our one-click installers for hundreds of templates including Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, PHPFox, to name a few. HostHero makes installation and management remarkably easy through tools such as the previously mentioned cPanel, and an array of other features. We also offer free site-migration and transfer, and coupled with our outstanding level of service this makes setup and management practically seamless for users.

Isolating Drupal for a moment, I can confidently say our end-to-end hosting solution is designed to host Drupal users optimally. Our servers are configured to exceed the minimum Drupal requirements, and we always maintain the latest features and security as per Drupal standards.

Till date, there are still some unsolved security issues with cloud/cluster computing. Should your customers be concerned with this?

HostHero has been designed not only for flexibility and scalability, but also for security and performance…the best of both worlds. Unlike a standard shared server, where everything is kept on one server, our cloud maintains each component – HTTP (website), MySQL (database), IMAP/SMTP (email) – on its own hardware. If you also consider the fact that we employ Cisco DDos protection hardware firewalls and custom CSF software firewalls, you’ll realize how important security is to us.

Oh, and did I mention that all of our clients data is secured and protected by RAID10 technology? If ever a drive failure occurs, we simply swap in a drive in real-time and no interruption is experienced by our clients – which further backs up my earlier point that our cloud offers FULL redundancy.

"I wish to try out HostHero but I am too lazy/ too dumb/ too busy/ I am no good in tech/ etc etc". What would you tell these potential clients? Does HostHero provide any help when it comes to website migration?

Great question Jerry! We try and go above and beyond here at HostHero, and that includes helping prospective clients join our cloud. As I’ve previously mentioned, we offer free site migration and transfer with real-time support. That’s how we go beyond the norm, by literally doing the work for you! Whether you are an SMB or a blog/CMS user, HostHero has a solution built for you. Regardless of your technical saavy, whether you’re an expert or a novice web admin, through cPanel’s control planel your website can be managed with the utmost ease. It’s no secret what cPanel brings to the table: a highly automated, simple yet reliable tool that works to its full potential on our servers. Whether you want to deploy fully functional video streaming using our built in FFmpeg modules, or explore some of the site-builders with HUNDREDS of templates, having cPanel at your finger tips gives our users simple point-and-click usability.

It takes only minutes now, literally, without and HTML or coding background to get a website up and running with HostHero.

Web hosting is a competitive (but far from being saturated I believe) industry and I know a few cloud hosting providers who offer similar services as HostHero have gone out of business. What are your immediate plans for HostHero to win the market? Where do you see HostHero in the next 2 years?

For the time being, we’re going to be focusing on maintaining the bolstering growth rate we’ve been witnessing. That means more promotions and more incentives for our clients and prospective clients – a happy client is a loyal client.

As we look a little further down the road, HostHero is poising itself to DOMINATE the hosting market as one of the first and only cost-efficient cloud shared hosting solutions availabe. Our goal has always been to educate our clients and prospective clients on how attainable cloud hosting can be, and with more giants (like Amazon and Cisco) emerging with cloud hosting solutions, we anticipate an opportunity for clients to take advantage of our low-cost shared cloud hosting plans. We are the first company that can offer cloud webhosting at shared hosting prices; where can you get cloud hosting at only 3.95 per month?

We wan to capture those customers who think they need to get shared hosting, and educate people on how attainable cloud hosting can be. Look at our Cloud VPS plan for example; nowhere can you find such a powerful hosting plan, with all the shared-computing benefits you expect in a cloud environment, for such affordable rates. Its a true one-of-a-kind solution.

That’s all for my questions, thanks again for being with us today. Before we end, is there anything you would like to add?

The pleasure was all mine Jerry, and thank you very much for taking the time for HostHero today. As a thank you, I would love to offer all of your users a special 25% discount off of ALL HostHero hosting plans. Just use the promo code “WHSR” at here.

Cheers!

Sound interesting? Well then you gotta check out this interview. Terry Myers, our guest from VPS Net today, has done a termendous job answering my questions and I am sure you guys will learn a lot from this interview.

So, without wasting anytime, here goes…

Q&A With Terry Myers, Chief Evangelist of VPS Net

Hello Terry. I am grateful to have you as my guest at WebHostingSecretRevealed. Without wasting any time, let’s get some introduction done for start! Please tell us more about yourself and your role at VPS Net.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk to your visitors. We’re very proud that you’ve chosen to speak to us, and have allowed us to be featured on your site, and we’re very glad to give your visitors a 30% off coupon code (WHSR). I’m the Chief Evangelist at VPS.NET; I’ve worked for VPS.NET since early 2010, in a few different roles.  My primary job function is to work with our customers to develop a customized solution unique to their needs that allows their site to be online and fast, no matter what the circumstances. You’ll also find me playing on Twitter, which is especially fun.

The company, VPS Net, has been around for quite some time, how did you guys first get started? And, what kind of hosting services does VPS Net provide?

VPS.NET has been around since 2009. The original idea was just be your everyday VPS host, and then we got creative and started working on what we call a ‘cloud vps’ now.

Basically what a cloud VPS is, is instead of your VPS being constricted to one server, it can be hosted on multiple servers. We often see that if a traditional VPS host has a hardware problem with the server, they’ll be down until the hardware is replaced. That’s not the case with a cloud VPS. Additionally, there’s no reboots required or anything like that if you need to add additional resources to your VPS. Just choose how many you want, and it’s done!

That’s cool! Besides cloud VPS, VPS Net also provides Content Delivery Network (CDN) service at a very attractive price. We all knew CDN reduces a site’s load time greatly but many have no idea on how it works. Please tell us more about CDN services at VPS Net.

The CDN is an awesome product – I like to say that it can turbocharge a website. It really expands upon our cloud VPS. So, instead of your website being hosted in just one location, it’s hosted in several; in our case, over 30, throughout the world.

And, would it be very troublesome for an existing site to transfer its statics file to CDN?

Every file is automatically downloaded to each CDN location, so there’s really no additional work needed on your end.

Can you explain, in detail, how VPS Net Reseller Program works?

Our reseller program is geared towards providing smaller webhosts that don’t have the desire or capital to invest in their own infrastructure, to start offering their own clients cloud servers. While as I said, it’s geared towards web hosts, anyone can actually signup for the reseller program. Essentially each reseller is given an upfront discount, which allows them to mark up the cost of the VPS product, and make a profit. There’s no fixed monthly costs or bulk purchase commitments required, so it’s a very quick and easy way to get started selling your own cloud VPS servers, without have any expenses added.

Kindly tell us more about the hardware behind VPS Net hosting operations?

I can share some information. Our servers that power the cloud are Dual Xeons, with lots of RAM. Exact figures and SAN information are proprietary information though. I can assure you we use nothing but the best – running enterprise hardware saves us a lot of headaches.

VPS Net has won the trust of some very popular websites, including WooThemes. How does this affect the company’s business?

We love Adii, and his company, WooThemes.

They’ve been a great client to work with, and we look forward to continuing to grow with them. Being a cloud provider, we see situations requiring instant scalability for many fortune 500 companies and other large websites. Just recently we had a client who hosts a popular fan site for a TV show, and at the season finale the visitor count went from 100 online users to close to 1,000. Our team was able to optimize the server and add the necessary amount of resources to keep their site online. It was very exciting, but just part of everyday business as a web host.

Great, this leads us to my next question. ‘Overselling ‘ is pretty much the norm nowadays in hosting industry – I see ultra-cheap unlimited hosting deals everywhere online.

However, this practice does not apply to VPS Net – especially when you are handling big clients who need to handly massive web traffics. Do you think this policy (of no-overselling) is hurting the company’s profit; and, what’s your opinion in this?

No, I don’t think it hurts out profitability.

Overselling isn’t a bad thing – it has helped pricing for hosting come down considerably, however there is a certain opportunity cost still associated to it on the hosts end. Our clients are much more demanding than a typical shared hosting client, and much more likely to use their resources assigned to them, especially without any defined intervals. Therefore, for the sake of customer satisfaction, and stability of our infrastructure, overselling is something we will not participate in.

"I wish to switch to VPS Net but it seems too complicated/ I am not good with tech/ I am unfamiliar with cloud hosting/ etc etc". What would you say to these not-so-geek but potential VPS Net customers?

There is definitely a higher level of technical skill required for our cloud server product, and we acknowledge that, which is why we have developed our newly launched cloud hosting product. It works just like a normal shared hosting account, however it’s based off our cloud infrastructure, so you still get the benefits like the added redundancy and scalability the cloud provides.

Terry, what’s the next big step you think the cloud hosting industry is going to take in near future? Where do you see VPS Net in the next 3 – 5 years?

As one of the original cloud hosts in the market, we’ve really seen the market come quite far; it’s been exciting to see! In order for the cloud hosting industry to continue to mature, we as hosts are going to continue to develop our product so that the everyday consumer is capable of taking advantage of what it offers, because it is beneficial for everyone. It can save money in multiple ways, help you grow and so on. That’s what we’re going to aim for.

One last question, please tell us more about VPS Net after-sales service. What kind of support can we expect from VPS Net?

Our cloud servers are an unmanaged product but we do have the option to add managed services for an additional fee though. With that said, we’re not cruel people, and leave you out in the cold when you need help. Our management team participates on the @VPSNET Twitter account on a daily basis, while also being contactable at mgmt@vps.net at all times, and we encourage clients to interact. It makes the day go by faster. Our support staff is also available 24/7, and willing to provide any help they can.

That’s all for our interview Terry. Thank you very much for your time and I wish all the best to you and VPS Net.

For those who are trying to learn more about BrainHost, well…  you have come to the right place. We’ve got Ryan Niddle, Brain Host’s Director of Business Development, onboard and he will be answering some questions about his company in this interview.

Q&A with Ryan Niddel of BrainHost

Hi Ryan, I am glad to have you here with us at WHSR today. Without wasting more time, let’s start with some introduction. Please tell us more about yourself and your role at Brain Host.

My name is Ryan Niddel, and I’m Brain Host’s Director of Business Development.  In that capacity, I’m responsible for developing relationships with new clients and partners, while maintaining and ensuring our current clients and partners needs have been met and exceeded.

Please tell us more about your company – Brain Host. How Brain Host got started; what is the size of your company at this time; and, what kind hosting service can we get from your company?

Brain Host is a little more than a year old now, and we have about 70 employees.  We were started by two business men that saw a distinct need in the market for a customer service oriented hosting provider.  We’ve grown incredibly quickly, and just surpassed 61,000 customers.  Right now we offer shared and dedicated hosting, and we have plans to move into VPS hosting down the road.

Let’s talk about hardware. What can we know about the servers as well as the networking system working behind Brain Host? 

We only use the highest quality server equipment, featuring Intel Xeon processors.  All of our customer information is stored on an enterprise-grade SAS RAID disk configured for maximum speed and reliability.  We keep cold spares to ensure quick recovery in the event of hardware failure, and our data center is SAS 70 Type II certified and staffed 24/7.  All our servers are connected with full gigabit uplinks to the Internet with multiple redundant paths.

From your website, I see that BrainHost promises 99.9% server uptime. Can you tell us what have been done in BrainHost in order to achieve this goal?

We guarantee 99.9% uptime, and we monitor our servers 24/7 to ensure the best quality of service.  Our load balancing technology also ensures that customers’ sites are available from multiple servers.  This helps to eliminate downtime, because if one server goes down for some reason our customers’ websites are still live on other servers.

Your experience in hosting industry is like gold for some of my readers. Can you provide some shopping guidance? In your opinion, what are the important factors to look for when searching for a shared web host?

I think the two most important things to consider when shopping for a web host are what kind of uptime they promise and what kind of customer support they provide.  Beyond that, I would also look for a web host that won’t limit your web space or data transfer, and that will let you host unlimited domains on your account.  You don’t want to start expanding your website or your business only to find out you’re limited by your web host.  I also feel it is important for a hosting provider to give you feedback and help once you sign up for a package. 

Customers need help designing sites and making them more efficient.  We do all of that and more.

For the past few years, there were lots of hypes on hosting powered by green energy. Is "going green" in any part of Brain Host future plan?

At Brain Host our policies are already in line with EPA suggestions for improving energy usage in hosting companies.  We only use power-efficient hardware, and all of our servers are low-voltage and power efficient, in addition to being free from lead, mercury, and halogen (which helps to reduce water contamination and harmful emissions). 

Our data center is engineered to require less cooling, and since we use less energy it helps us to prevent power overloads and service interruption. 

For newbies, what kind of support they should expect from Brain Host Customer Support? Please tell us more about the Customer Support Department at Brain Host.

Customer Support is our top priority here.  We provide 24/7 in-house support via phone, email, and live chat.  Every new customer receives a welcome call from a live person the same day they purchase.  During the welcome call we’ll walk the customer through their billing questions, our services, our schedule of free training webinars, etc.  We also provide our customers with access to our free online training materials, including tutorial videos, instructional guides, and our extensive Knowledge Base of articles and frequently asked questions.

Shared web hosting plans are like dedicated hosting plans back in the year 1998. In fact, there are more and more companies offering unlimited hosting services. This includes Brain Host. What is your comment about hosting overselling; and, should your customers be concerned with overselling?

Our customers don’t have to worry about overselling.  We actively monitor our servers to ensure that our customers get the best service, and we’re constantly expanding our Customer Support department to keep up with our growing customer base.

Well that’s all for my questions, is there anything you would like to add?

No, thanks. For more information, please visit BrainHost online.

I would have saved my time for all these problems and worries and readings and works if WP Engine (http://wpengine.com/) existed earlier.

A little intro on WP Engine Hosting

Founded by Aaron Brazell and Jason Cohen, WP Engine offers premium WordPress hosting with tons of valuable WordPress optimization (security, load speed, updates, as well as plugin recommendations).

In case you are unaware, Aaron Brazell has been an (very) active member in the WordPress developer community. He is one of the frequent speaker in WordCamps United States and is the author of WordPress Bible (published early 2010). Jason Cohen, on the other hand, is a serial-entrepreneur who has founded quite a few successful startups including Smart Bear Software and IT Watch Dogs. Jason is also the author of Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review as well as this awesome blog about startups/marketing.

In this interview, we are going to learn about WP Engine firsthand from the co-founder Jason Cohen. This great Q&A session is a must-read for those who are looking for a reliable WordPress web hosting. So, here goes.

Q&A With Jason Cohen, WP Engine Co-Founder

Hello Jason, it’s an honor to have you here with us today. For start, let’s talk about yourself and your company WP Engine. How would you describe your role as a leader at WP Engine; and, what can we know more about WP Engine?

“I must leave, for there go my followers and I am their leader.”

To me, a leader leads by example, meaning actually doing work and playing backstop for everyone else, like the pitcher in baseball. Also I’m a terrible manager, which means I’m forced to hire talented, self-directed people whom I implicitly trust and who don’t need “management.” A better title for me might be “tie-breaker,” or perhaps “flogger-slash-visionary” if you’re feeling generous.

They say the culture of a company comes from the top. So if you want to know what WP Engine is like, follow the above philosophy to its logical conclusion. WP Engine is a culture of people who are thoughtful, respectful, and good at their jobs. And hopefully nice.

Wow that’s some great insights. Now, I’m a WordPress fan and I LOVE the idea of having a web host specially built for WordPress. But this (limiting your service to just one specified niche) is not what we see often in the hosting industry. How has the strategy of solely focusing on WordPress users affected the business?

Focusing only on WordPress means we can do a fantastic job. For example we hire WordPress experts only, so everyone at the company is helpful and knowledgeable when you call into tech support.

Lots of hosting companies answer the phone on the first ring and call that “good service.” Of course if the person on the other end can’t debug the WordPress problem, at the end of the day it’s not helpful.

We know what we’re good at — and what we’re NOT good at! — and we do only the former.

That’s how it affects you — the customer. How it affects the back-end business is that we can be more profitable because we don’t have to diversify technology or talent. American Airlines can’t make money because they service 20 kinds of planes; Southwest and JetBlue are profitable and run only a few models. We’re like the latter; most hosting companies are the former.

WordPress security is one of WP Engine’s main selling points. Can you elaborate in detail what kind of protections are available with WP Engine?

First, we have security appliances in front of our servers — DoS-protection and IDS (Intrusion Detection System). This alone prevents thousands of a attacks per day.

Next, we have a forward caching-and-load-balancing layer which further protects the sensitive stuff (like the database and filesystem), while also serving content really fast.

Next, on the back-end systems there’s a slew of stuff you have to do for security from file owners, file permissions, chroot-ing (“jail” for the filesystem), separate database credentials, and so on.

Finally, we keep you up-to-date on the latest WordPress security patches as well as black-listing plugins known to be insecure.

Security isn’t a game you can win, it’s an arms race that you need to constantly and incrementally improve.

That sounds superb. What’s more? On top of site security, what other unique features does WP Engine offer?

We’re super fast.  This is not only important for your end users (many hit the “back” button if your site takes more than 2 seconds to load), but also for your Google ranking now that they’re taking page-load-speed into account for search rankings.

We also protect you against traffic surges. We already serve 50 million hits per day, so even if you get on TechCrunch we’ve got you covered.

We’re also the only host to offer a CDN (Content Delivery Network) included in the base price.  That means your static content (images, CSS, Javascript) gets delivered from servers all around the world, served closest to the requestor, reducing latency in the browser (faster) and spreading out the effort of delivery (scalable).

We also added some features to WordPress itself. For example, we have a push-button staging area where you have a full copy of your blog to mess around with. Test a new plugin, play with CSS, etc., all without touching your main, live blog.

Jason, WP Engine is a pretty new host. How can customers trust you guys with their blogs? Please tell us more about the company cancellation policy.

The first thing is: It’s easy to leave us. That’s important for two reasons: So it’s easy to try, and so we have to earn your business every month. What does “easy” mean?

You get full filesystem and database exports, on demand. (Besides our nightly backups of the same.) Our contract is month-to-month, so you can just cancel any time. (Besides the 15-day free trial.) Finally, there’s tools on the market like http://23press.com which make it even easier to move a blog — either to us or away from us!

Then of course there’s the fact that we have hundreds of happy customers and we’re growing fast. We got profitable after just seven months of operation so we also have a sensible business model (unlike a lot of hosting companies who “suddenly” close up shop after losing money for dozens of quarters). All this adds up to: We have a sustainable business, so we’re not going anywhere.
Finally, though, in the end trust is earned over time, not bestowed immediately, and that means that yes, it will take time for us to earn trust. Nothing wrong with that.

"I wish to switch to WP Engine out but it seems too complicated/it’s too much hassles/ I am no good in tech/ etc etc". What would you tell these non-geek but potential customers?

First, we offer migration services for $150, completely hands-free. Second, see http://23press.com for a $10 system where you can move it yourself.

It’s not complicated — you just sign up with a credit card and a new WordPress site is available in 60 seconds.  You can migrate in another 15 minutes if you use a tool.  And if you don’t like it, switch away just as easily!

We also have a partnership with another consulting shop specifically designed for newbies who don’t know anything but want a white-glove experience. Let us know how much help you want!

Web hosting, without doubt, is a competitive industry. What are your long term plans for WP Engine to win the market? Where do you see the company in next 3 years?

WordPress is a massive market — I don’t feel the need to “win” it or “defeat” everyone else.

Rather, we’ve created an awesome option for WordPress hosting, and our goal is to thrill all our customers and continuously improve the service. There’s room for other awesome hosting companies too! But if your host isn’t “awesome,” then maybe we’re a good option.

Thanks again for your time. Do you have anything to add for this interview?

Thanks for having me!

Site Note

Well, that’s all for our interview. For your reference, here are the hosting packages offered by WP Engine at this time of writing. You can visit http://wpengine.com/ to learn more; alternatively, you can check out the helpful FAQ here, check it out.

Click here to visit and order WP Engine now!

To dig deeper, you can also check out my latest CoolHandle Review or contact the company directly at 866.200.2828.

Q&A with Ryan Morris, CoolHandle Marketing Director

1. Hello Ryan, thanks a lot for being with us today. Let’s do some introduction for start. How would you describe your role in the company and what can we know about CoolHandle?

Thanks for having me! My name is Ryan Morris, CoolHandle’s Director of Marketing. Formerly known as Pronet Hosting, CoolHandle has provided users with reliable, professional hosting solutions since 2001. We are also one of the fastest-growing companies within the web hosting industry – just last year, in fact, we doubled the size of our data center for higher capacity!

2. What is the size of CoolHandle’s business? Can we have some rough numbers on the domain names and customers the company is holding at this time of writing?

We are rapidly growing, so the exact numbers are always changing, but currently we host over 30,000 domains.

3. Who should consider signing up with CoolHandle? Please briefly describe the company’s target audience.

Our commitment to customer service is an important and distinguishing characteristic of our company. Our first and foremost objective as a company is to sustain long-lasting relationships with our partners and customers. We service a very broad audience, ranging from internet marketers to WordPress and Joomla enthusiasts, from casual users to business professionals.

4. What can we know more about CoolHandle’s data center at Los Angeles?

Located in the heart of Los Angeles, our data center is in the same building as 12 of the nation’s largest Internet providers’. Our data center boasts on-demand connectivity with all major upstream providers. Our redundant network infrastructure is connected to separate circuits, and the entire building is heavily monitored to ensure maximum security and uptime.

5. Let’s talk about customer support, what kind of after-sales services does CoolHandle provide? How many staffs do you have in the customer support department? 

Our dedicated team of employees provides prompt and reliable services. Our hosting customer support department offers 24/7/365 customer service assistance via phone, live chat, and support tickets. We also feature an industry-leading fully interactive help site on our site’s Troubleshooting area.

6. CoolHandle offers different VPS hosting plans. Can you tell us more about these offers?

We offer several tiers of customizable VPS hosting packages at an affordable rate. For customers, it’s a great way to start small with the ability to still scale up very quickly. With full root access, users are able to install advanced software and completely customize virtually anything. For easy administration, cPanel is available as well. Our basic package starts at $29.95/month with free domain privacy forever. For more information, visit http://www.coolhandle.com/vps/linux-vps/

7. There are more and more hosting providers going ‘cloud’ nowadays. Is cloud hosting part of CoolHandle’s plan in near future?

We don’t like to jump into new technology without testing it thoroughly, so while we are exploring the option of cloud hosting, we need to make sure that it’s something we can support and execute properly. We don’t have any specific roll-out dates for now, but we are definitely looking into it.

8. One last question, how does the merger with ProNetHosting.net impact CoolHandle’s business in overall? Where do you see CoolHandle in next 5 years?

The merger benefited both parties in several ways: 1) it improved the overall efficiency of our infrastructure, 2) it improved the quality of our customer service, and 3) the merger reduced overall costs, boosting efficiency. As for where I see CoolHandle in 5 years, what with the changing landscape of the hosting business and the rate we are growing, the opportunities for growth are simply boundless.   
9. That’s all for my questions. Thanks again for your time, is there anything you would like to add in this interview?

Thank you for your time as well. I’m glad you gave us the opportunity to give a bit more insight to users about CoolHandle.

Learn more, visit CoolHandle online.

Hello there, thanks for being with us today. For start, can you please briefly introduce yourself and your company HostColor?

I’m Martin and I’m a VP of Operations of  Host Color. The company has been created in 2000 in Europe, where we still operate a brand called HC Europe. In 2003 we moved to U.S. and Host Color LLC has entered into the hosting industry as provider of Shared Hosting, Reseller Accounts and Dedicated Servers.

In 2007 we have decided to enter the VPS Hosting market. Since then Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Hosting accounts are very important part of our business portfolio.

The competition in the web hosting industry is extremely steep. We see new hosting companies setup and go out of business every now and then; but yet Host Color stays as a strong player for a decade. What sets you guys apart from the rest?

It is really hard to speak about yourself! Because you might say something which is not true. So I will say that the real answer comes from customers of HostColor.com. Most of those who signed up with Host Color within 10 years ago are still with us. Some left because web hosting is a very competitive industry and there are many other very good hosting providers. We know that web hosting business is changing rapidly and do whatever it takes to implement the best possible standards, to invest in equipment, to improve our network, to adopt new software technologies.

When we were small company the only thing we could do better than larger providers was to the customer support. Now when we are a middle-sized hosting provider, we still bet on strong customer care. Most of Host Color’s customers say they are very satisfied of our customer support. Of course we take a critique and negative comments from time to time, but we always work to resolve any issue and to make the customer to feel good with our services.

The way any web host does customer support is the probably the second most important thing. The first one is the high, 99.9% uptime. Any web hosting provider must treat its customers with a great respect and not to impose any hidden terms on their contracts. Unfortunately most web hosting providers always try to impose any rules and fees, which make hard for the customers to leave, when they are unhappy with the service. Host Color offers fair treatment. When we have done anything wrong, we apologize and do our best to help the customer. All the cases are usually resolved in favor of our customers. All we ask them is to read and follow our TOS and SLA. 

What can we know more about HostColor data center? 

We operate from 3 different data centers. The HostColor.com newest IT Hosting center is located on 111 8th Avenue in Manhattan, New York. This is a major telecommunication facility, a key hub for Internet traffic and one of the world’s most wired buildings. It was bought by Google in December 2010. We offer 100% network uptime (SLA) there and the best possible connectivity thanks to Internap and a few other providers of high-quality IP bandwidth.

We also have facilities in 2 other data centers – in South Bend, Indiana and in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Our model is to invest in every aspect of the business, excluding the property, which means that we do not own data centers and at this time do not plan to build one. Data center management is a different business than web hosting and there are other companies that are good in this. 

Overselling seems like a norm nowadays –  I see cheap unlimited hosting offers everywhere online. Host Color, however, is not one of these unlimited hosting providers. What is the company’s policy when it comes to overselling – does HostColor provide any sort of guarantee when it comes to server CPU power? 

It is true! I think that Yahoo were the first to go "unlimited". Most Shared Hosting providers followed them. For some web hosts "Unlimited" is a way to compete by offering "quantity", instead of trying to create an unique IT hosting service which covers a certain niche market. Unfortunately it is not like that most Shared Hosting provider have a choice. If they do not spend a lot on hardware and if they do not claim "everything unlimited", they do not get customers. it is sad, but true!

Host Color has been resisting to "Unlimited" for a long time. When everyone went there, we began offering "Unlimited bandwidth" with two Shared plans called Multi Domain Hosting and ECommerce Hosting. We can afford to provide "virtually unlimited" bandwidth to our Shared customers, but the truth is that they can not use it. If they have a very high traffic websites they will need a lot of CPU and will realize that it is much better for them to get a VPS Hosting, a Dedicated server or a Cloud Hosting account. 

For readers who wish to start up their own web hosting business – how can HostColor Reseller Hosting Plans help? Why choose HostColor over others?

We offer stable, standardized cPanel/WHM based Reseller Hosting Accounts. We host Resellers on powerful, redundant hardware systems and provide them with 24/7 non-outsourced support! That’s it. We do not sell cheap Reseller Hosting and do not claim we are the best in this business! Host Color just works good for Resellers!

Many hosting service provides, including HostColor, have stepped in to the "Cloud world". Can you tell us, in general, what are the benefits of cloud hosting from the user’s point of view? And, who should go with HostColor’s cloud hosting services?

It is important for any web hosting provider to build its own Cloud computing based infrastructure, because an IT Cloud saves financial resources on hardware, data center space and on human resources. Plus it offer more scalability and high performance to site owners.

Our Cloud solution is based on a Blade hardware technology which allows host to use 10 to 14 servers in 7U space. But what is really important is the software technology HostColor is using for the Cloud. We are one of the very few web hosts which offer Shared Cloud Hosting. Host Color operates a High availability system, which runs cPanel/WHM on top of a cluster of servers. This allows us to host IP-based and name-based virtual hosting accounts in a high availability, load-balanced multi server environment.

HostColor Cloud Hosting Price List

Last question, let’s talk about customer support. Can you tell us what kind of after-sales support we can get from Host Color? What exactly is pZone Account Management?

We have always offered non-outsourced customer support. It is much easier and more cost-effective to outsource customer support, but this is not a good practice. We know our customers, we speak to them every day, and they know they can trust us. This does not work with outsourced customer support.

pZone is our proprietary CRM which we used between 2005 and 2009. Alongside with it we used to use our own proprietary web hosting control panel. We have invest a lot during the years in creating web hosting technologies and our proprietary software is good. However we have software solutions like cPanel/WHM control panel, WHMCS CRM and other applications, which have become a true standard in the web hosting industry. So Host Color has implemented them and now we moved account management to WHMCS.

* Editor’s sidenote: HostColor is one of the few hosting companies I know that provides so many different contact channels. You can call HostColor anytime on their U.S. toll-free line 1-888-222-1495; UK phone line: +44 871 731 1002 or directly to their Bulgarian call center at +359 2 489 10 70 without conforming with business hours or time zones. Moreover if you prefer to talk on Skype simply dial "HostColor"; and If you like ICQ, the number to ring is 295-989-860.

Well Martin, that’s all for my questions, thank you very much for your time. Do you have anything to add before we end this Q&A session?

Let me finish by saying that Host Color has become a traditional web hosting provider. We are not in web hosting business just to make money and to sell the company when we get a good offer. We do web hosting because we like this business! that’s why I’m quite optimistic about Host Color’s future. The whole web hosting industry will grow a lot within the next few years. Cloud computing is an exciting trend which is focused on high performance computing and on quality of the IT Hosting services. Those who used to say that "web hosting is becoming a commodity business" were wrong. Web hosting is going into a mainstream business!

Ever heard of SiteCloud? No? Well, in case you are looking for some affordable cloud-based hosting, it’s time to get to know them. Founded by Trey Gardner, SiteCloud is growing in lighting speed and making its name rapidly in hosting industry. As there are still little review done on SiteCloud, I thought it’d be a good idea to have a Q&A session with Trey to know more about this company.

So… here it goes (Thanks for the time again, Trey – it’s a great interview!).

*Updates Jan 2011: Also, check out my latest SiteCloud Review.

Q&A with SiteCloud Founder and CEO

Hello Trey, it is great to have you here with us today. For start, please briefly introduce yourself (again ) and your new company SiteCloud.

My name is Trey Gardner and I am the CEO of SiteCloud (http://www.sitecloud.com). I have been in the web hosting business for over 12 years and I have had the opportunity to work with some of the finest minds in the web hosting industry and for some great companies.

SiteCloud is the first of it’s kind and is the testament to some of the best minds. I have met in the field. SiteCloud is a cPanel web hosting provider with all of the bells and whistles of cPanel but sitting on top of a cloud hosting infrastructure, which is the most advanced hosting infrastructure available today.

Many online service provides, including SiteCloud, have "gone Cloud" to enhance their services. Can you tell us, in general, what are the benefits of cluster computing/cloud hosting from the view-point of a hosting user?

Well, as you say many hosting providers have gone cloud but the reality is that not many of them, we really could not find any, offer anything but cloud based infrastructure with bare bones access and no additional options, like cPanel, unless they were to install and manage themselves or for an exorbitant fee from the service providers.

What cloud hosting does allow for is it allows web site users the ability to grow their sites where they either have large spikes of usage and/or traffic which could not be handled by a shared service provider, essentially for larger sites which need more power.

It also allows for users to have different, individual system upgrades, for instance if they needed more CPU and only more cpu they could upgrade only that part of their needs without having also to upgrade the amount of disk space or memory if they did not need to.

It’s important to realize that at SiteCloud we’ve bundled the benefits that cloud hosting has provided and have built our own load balanced cPanel platform on top. We’re able to deliver load balanced cPanel-based hosting as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) versus Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), where customers have to set it up all themselves.

This sounds great… but, is cloud hosting a good choice for CMS users? For example if I am a Joomla user, would it be very complicated to install (and manage) my Joomla websites on SiteCloud?

Absolutely, SiteCloud is a terrific choice for CMS sites like Joomla & Drupal as well as blogs like WordPress and B2Evolution, the reason being is that these open source software programs have tons of plug-in options available to them and when those sites are hit with a lot of visitors who start to use many of the features that those sites will consume too many resources within a shared hosting environment.

In these cases the clients usually are suspended and told to find a VPS or dedicated server solution which can be far more expensive and more work for the hosting customer. Because SiteCloud uses a cloud based hosting environment when our clients experience spikes and need more system resources we are available to get those to them on the fly, thanks to our load balanced infrastructure. Also because we are a cPanel hosting provider that always has the latest installs & features on our servers our clients are able to easily install Joomla or any other CMS onto their account & will always have the latest features and security, just like they have been with any traditional cPanel-based hosting provider.

Till date, there are still some unsolved security issues with cloud/cluster computing. Should your customers be concerned with this?

Our security for our own information, billing, systems, what not as well as our clients sites security is a top priority for us. We have information we don’t want exposed and take very seriously our clients’ security which is within the same apparatus. There are no unsolved security areas that we have seen after extensive testing of our systems but we are ever vigilant to make sure that we stay on top of anything new which may pose a risk. It’s also this reason that we have built our own cloud to run our platform on top of. This gives us greater control and flexibility, both for the advancement of our system and also from a security point of view.

Some readers might have not heard about Softaculous – a great feature offered at SiteCloud. Can you tell us more about this Auto Installer?

Many of cPanel hosting users are familiar with Fantastico, a script auto-installer. Softaculous is a new script installer that is very exciting because it offers installation of over 150 open-source scripts, such as blogs, CMS, photo galleries, forums, etc. It also provides very quick version updates. This is crucial because of the simple fact that outdated versions can result in exploited web sites. These updates often come within 15 minutes of the new version release. Users will be able to install, update and delete installations of scripts within a few clicks… making it easier to get your favorite script on the cloud faster.

SiteCloud used to be using Amazon EC2 Technology but not now anymore. What happened? Can we know whose cloud/cluster technology are you guys implementing now?

Initially after extensive testing of different companies we could partner with for our cloud infrastructure we decided that the Amazon EC2 looked like it was going to be exactly what we had wanted. Over time we saw some areas of concern for our clients within this infrastructure.

We started to look around again at other providers and we circled back to our friends at SingleHop*, whom we have worked with for several years with GreenGeeks. We decided to give them an opportunity and we explained what we were looking to accomplish and they were able to facilitate what we needed. There were some upgrades which we worked together on and overall the relationship has proven to be both better for us and our customers’ needs. It’s worth mentioning that we did not use their cloud infrastructure, but rather used their traditional servers/network to build our own cloud, specifically for the use of our platform. Our cloud/platform is 100% for our customers; our resources are not shared with other companies.

*Site note: More about SingleHop in this interview with SingleHop Founder, Zak Boca.

SiteCloud promised "Never get suspended for CPU usage". This sounds GREAT; but, what comes next? For example, what will happen next when a ‘Little Cloud’ user’s website hit 1,001 compute cycles (fyi, the given quota is 1,000)?

Let me explain a bit about our compute cycles. One thousand (1000) compute cycles is the equivalent to running 10% of a modern Xeon CPU core continuously for 1 month. Traditional hosting providers often have in their terms of service that you’re NOT allowed to use 10% of the CPU for more than 60 to 90 seconds, and if you do you’re suspended. With SiteCloud, let’s say for example you purchase our Little Cloud for $5.95 per month, which gives you 1000 compute cycles for a month. You’ve gone over the cycles by 200, you will be charged overage of $0.10 cents per compute cycle. This means you will be billed for $20 overage, one-time. As a customer, you’re given the option to either pay the overage one time or decide to upgrade to our Big Cloud for $7.95 per month, which gives you 2000 compute cycles, saving you tremendous money on potential overages based on your usage.

Giving our customers the option to pick how they wish to be billed for their usage is something that is unheard of in this industry. From the above example, a customer who’s site is the busiest during the holiday season and slow the rest of the year, it would be worthwhile for them to pay the overage that much versus the whole year. A customer who uses consistently over 1000 compute cycles will be better off on the Big Cloud plan.

We’re also working on features that will enable customers to pause their sites or set a cap for those who fear of going over and do not wish to. For example, a personal site can pause their site after reaching 1000 compute cycles or cap it at 200 over their included compute cycles to control their spend. In a normal case, a personal site however would never go over 1000 compute cycles.

Customers will be able to track usage through their compute cycles chart found within their account. With us, everything is out in the open and there are no secrets.

SiteCloud Shared Hosting Plans

"I wish to try SiteCloud out but I am too lazy/ it’s too complicated/it’s too much hassles/ I am no good in tech/ etc etc". What would you tell these potential customers?

Essentially we are no more complicated a web hosting company than any cPanel shared hosting provider in terms of what the client needs to know. We also offer several web site building programs that the client can use and we have instructions and video tutorials available to assist them with learning the systems and getting a web site up easily and fast.

As I have mentioned before here, we’ve taken the hard work of getting a load balanced cloud hosting system setup and are delivering it to the customer as they have been used to for over a decade; as an easy to use “shared hosting” like service.

Web hosting is a competitive (but far from being saturated I believe) industry. What are your long term plans for SiteCloud to win the market? Where do you see SiteCloud in next 3 years?

In 3 years I see SiteCloud as the best choice for web site hosting customers who want a stable platform so that they can grow their web sites as quickly as they would like. Right now we are the only cPanel hosting company with affordable costs. We do anticipate other hosting companies trying to catch up to our technology but at the same time our team is continuously working on enhancing our services so, knock on wood, I believe we should be at the forefront of cloud hosting for some time into the future.

That would be all from my side. Do you have anything to add for this interview?

Thank you the only thing that I would like to add is for anyone who is reading this & who wants to know more about how SiteCloud can suit your needs please contact one of our sales or support reps.

Alright, I am sure our readers have learn a lot from you today. Thanks again for the great interview and good luck to you and SiteCloud.

SoundBite: SiteCloud Interview

Although SiteCloud has not get into the major hosting review sites at this time of writing, I believe SiteCloud is destined to hit great success. For those who are interested to try out cloud-based hosting, I suggest you grab an account at SiteCloud asap since the price is cheap ($5.95/mo) now. Users can also check out my latest SiteCloud Review for more details.

Before I end this, here are the flash backs of some important points in this interview.

• Cloud hosting like SiteCloud, provides hosting reliability that other traditional web hosts cannot compete.
• SiteCloud is very user-friendly as the web host uses the cPanel (a very popular hosting software) as its primary control panel.
• SiteCloud users will never get suspended for extensive CPU usage, however a $0.10/compute cycle will be charged.
• SiteCloud built its own load balanced cPanel platform on top – the web host is able to deliver load balanced cPanel-based hosting as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) versus Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

To learn more about SiteCloud, visit SiteCloud website at: http://www.sitecloud.com.

VMware Hosting StratoGen

Based in United Kingdom, StratoGen (http://www.stratogen.net/) is a managed hosting company providing enterprise cloud hosting, managed server hosting, colocation and connectivity products. StratoGen, a Service Provider Partner of VMware, and along with our other partnerships with HP, Dell and Cisco; have built an enterprise class infrastructure that enables companies to go beyond the cloud computing hype to gain real business benefits.

Today, we are honoured to have StartoGen’s Managing Director, Karl Robinson, as our guest to share his experience and vision with us. Karl held senior management roles for the past 9 years and has been involved in IT and Telecoms sales for more than 13 years. He was the Sales Director for Kingston Communications (07-08) and In-Tuition Networks Limited (08-10); and was the founding director of Cloud Data Limited before joining StratoGen.

Without wasting anytime, let’s move on to the interview.

Q & A with Karl Robinson, Managing Director of StratoGen

Hello Karl! First of all, thank you very much for being with us today. For start, let’s talk about yourself and your company StratoGen. How would you describe your role as a leader at StratoGen; and, what can we know more about StratoGen?

As Managing Director of StratoGen I love to get involved with every aspect of the business, from Sales & Marketing, through product development and technical innovation.  I love dealing first hand with customers and choose not to hide behind my team – it’s great to hear how happy our customers are with my own ears.

StratoGen is a managed hosting company providing enterprise VMware hosting, managed server hosting, colocation and connectivity products all backed by a 100% uptime SLA.

We are a Service Provider Partner of VMware, and along with our other partnerships with HP, Dell and Cisco have built an enterprise class infrastructure that enables companies to go beyond the cloud computing hype to gain real business benefits. We help to drive down your costs, react quickly to changing business conditions and provide simplified management of your resources.

Who should consider signing up with StratoGen? Please briefly describe the company’s target audience.

StratoGen’s main route to market is via IT consultants and resellers who are consulting on projects such as website development, application development, server consolidation etc.  End users vary wildly, from a garden centre, to technical companies, charities and even a utility company, but generally they are introduced to us via a consultancy channel.  We also do a lot of hosting with SaaS providers, or ISVs looking to convert their applications from a traditional software model to a SaaS model.

What are the benefits of hosting with VSphere 4.1 (and VMware)?

Hosting with VMware enables our clients to benefit from enterprise grade IT infrastructure for a modest monthly fee.  VMware has many inbuilt features to optimise performance and uptime of IT environments, such as HA (High Availability), which automatically reboots customer Virtual Machines onto another physical host in the event of hardware failure, DRS (distributed resource scheduling) which moves live VMs around the platform to ensure each VM gets the resources it needs, and vMotion enabling zero downtime maintenance windows by migrating live VMs off hardware which requires maintenance.  All of these features give StratoGen the confidence to offer a 100% uptime guarantee, which is not just a money back guarantee; it is underpinned by a solid technical architecture.

The company’s idea of having all skilled engineers in the customer support department is brilliant. Please, enlighten us about StratoGen’s TECHIE Support Program?

At StratoGen we are committed to ensuring that our customers get the best possible technical support.  All of our engineers are highly skilled and have many years’ experience within the industry.  Customers often compliment us on the quality and efficiency of our support – most issues are resolved with a single call and our engineers will often go above and beyond the call of duty to assist customers with issues which are outside the scope of our service offering.

What can we know more about StratoGen’s data centers?

StratoGen have selected the best quality tier 3 UK datacenters in which to host our equipment.  These facilities offer the ultimate in power availability, cooling and network interconnect, ensuring our customers servers are always available and have great quality internet bandwidth available to them.

There are more and more hosting providers leveraging the power of cloud technology – SiteCloud (http://sitecloud.com/) for example leverage Amazon EC2 Elastic Cloud in their hosting offer. Do you think this is a good business idea? How would you advice other smaller players who wish to sign up as StratoGen’s resellers?

All business should focus on what they do best – at StratoGen we excel in the management of Internet infrastructure.   If you are in are currently offering Internet infrastructure as an add on, and do not consider it a core strength, then you should look to outsource it.  If it is not one of your core strengths, chances are there is someone who can do it better, and probably cheaper than you can.  So you should look to partner – this will enable you to focus on your core strengths, while enhancing the infrastructure element of your offering for your clients.  We regularly talk to businesses who are in this situation, and they are relieved to find a partner like StratoGen that can relieve them of their infrastructure burden.

Reading your article VPS or VMware Hosting, I agreed that VPS hosting is incomparable with cloud hosting in term of scalability and reliability. Do you think the cloud technology will replace traditional hosting solutions (eg. shared/VPS/dedicated) completely in near future? Where do you see cloud hosting and StratoGen in 3 to 5 years?

I see IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) as an evolution of traditional hosting so naturally all hosting solutions will evolve in this direction.  There will always be businesses out there that are reluctant to embrace new technology and who will cling on to what they know for as long as possible, but progress is inevitable and the industry is clearly moving quickly in this direction. 

I see StratoGen as a key player in the UK market in the next 3-5 years, continuing to offer innovative, cost effective managed hosting solutions based on the leading technology platforms, enabling our clients to leverage our infrastructure investment to help their businesses consume IT as efficiently as possible.

That will be all for my questions, thanks again for your time!

I had the opportunity to get in touch with Meredith Livesay of VPSNext recently and I’m honored to have her as our interview guest today. As there are little forum discussion or user reviews on VPSNext, this interview is a must read for those who are interested with the hosting company. Meredith has done an excellent job answering the questions and her insights on the hosting industry are as precious as gold.

Q&A with Meredith Livesay of VPSNext

Hi Meredith, thank you for being with us today. To get things started, let’s go with some basic introduction. What can we know more about you and your company, VPSNext?

You’re welcome! Thank you for giving me the change to have this interview. Currently, I am the Marketing Manager for VPSNext. Through the time that I have been with them I have seen this company grow tremendously even in a short amount of time.

VPSNext began about five years ago as a web hosting company that focuses solely on the virtual private server market. One of the aspects I love most about this company is that it is locally owned and operated; this allows us to really focus on our customers and what they want. Feedback is crucial to our business. VPSNext as a company is very focused on offering quality products, while still keeping our prices competitive.

Who should use VPSNext? Please briefly describe VPSNext ‘s target market.

Our typical customer is one who has outgrown their shared environment but is not ready to move to a dedicated server. A VPS is also the perfect fit for large scale communities such as, developer forums, design boards, and many other types of resource consuming activities.

Additionally, e-commerce users prefer to be on a virtual private server because it is like having their own box.

Let’s talk about VPSNext’s hosting packages – cPanel, Plesk, and No Control Panel VPS Hosting Packages (see table below). Which is the most popular package; and what are the major differences among these three?

Currently, the most popular hosting package is the VPS-Fusion because of cPanel/WHM that comes with the account. It is a highly customizable account that is ready out of the box.

In terms of the different packages, it appears that the cPanel/WHM combination tends to be more popular in the N. America market, while the Plesk control panel tends to be more popular in the Asian and European market segments.
In terms of the NoCP VPS, this is more appealing for avid Linux users that have more experience and know their way around the virtual server environment.

From the website, I learned that VPSNext does not run on its own data centers. Should your customers be concerned by it? What can we know more about the hardware behind your hosting services?

That’s a great question. We are currently running our data center out of Equinix; one of the largest and most secure data centers on the east coast.

However, we are currently in the process of migrations over to our own facility, which is about to come online within the next 30 – 45 days (in middle or late August this year). Our customers will see a vast improvement in speed and reliability. We are very excited about this!

Moving from a web host to another could be very tiring. What can VPSNext do for its customers in the process?

We realize that moving to another host provider is a hassle. A large percentage of our customers have transferred to us from another host, so our support technicians are very familiar with this process. Our technicians make this process as smooth as possible and will work with the customer for as long as needed.

How about day-to-day customer support – what kind of after-sales service we can get from VPSNext?

One aspect that we offer for all of our customers is 24×7 support. Offering this kind of support is imperative. Our customers are able to get in contact with us at their convenience, this is why we have engineers available 24x7x365 and ready to answer the phone in 20 seconds or less.

We offer many ways for our customers to get in contact with us: phone, live chat, email, and ticket support. The most popular support method is our ticket support. While we always strive to answer tickets in the fastest possible time, some cases require escalation. However, on average our response time is less than 15 minutes!

In your opinion, what makes a good VPS host? It would be great if you can tell us some key points when it comes to picking up the right VPS hosting.

Since we belong to a niche market of avid users, one of the hardest parts for a good host is to ensure that customers are constantly satisfied with the level of service and the resources that they are receiving for their money. The other obvious one is; marketing to a niche market since it’s a smaller market segment.

The global economy seems bouncing back a little recently. Does that affect sales and growth rate a lot at VPSNext?

Yes, we have felt some of the effects of the global economy, but overall our growth rate has continued to increase. We have found that many people that have been effected by the economy have turned to the online sector to build a virtual presence.

Where do you see the company in 3 years time?

We see ourselves continuing to grow and further ourselves within the VPS market and offering other flavours of the VPS series such as; OSX (Apple OS), and Windows.

Well that’s all for my questions. Is there anything you wish to add?

I think that covers it! Thank you again for giving me the chance to share a little more about our company!

Sound Bites

VPSNext has been in business for about 5 years. The company offers VPS hosting services in various control panel and provide 24/7/365 customer services. VPSNext is in the mid of migrating their facilities to its own data centers and the staffs are expecting a vast improvement in hosting speed and reliability.

In case you wish to learn more about VPSNext, visit: http://www.vpsnext.com

If you are looking for a dedicated hosting deal, SingleHop Inc. is a name that you must not miss. Founded by Zak Boca and Dan Ushman in 2006, the company grew exponentially (see Google Insights), surged to a high revenue record recently, and is now a major player in the industry.

To help you learn more about SingleHop, I’m honored to have Zak Boca, founder and CEO of the company, in this interview. Without any further delay, here goes our Q & A session.

Q&A with SingleHop CEO, Zak Boca

Hi there, thanks a lot for being with us today. Please introduce yourself and your company SingleHop.

Zak Boca, CEO of SingleHop. My responsibilities include general oversight and direction of the company.

SingleHop is a fun & energetic provider of web hosting services; specifically, we (presently) provide unmanaged and managed hosting services as well as complex hosting such as large web and database cluster configurations. SingleHop has been providing services since 2006, and today we host over 4,000 dedicated servers.

Thanks for the intro! SingleHop marked over 100% y-o-y revenue increase* in year 2009 and the company now claims itself as the ‘Fastest Growing Dedicated Server Company’. Can you pinpoint what exactly led to SingleHop’s success?

I think a variety of things happened, and continue to happen. I like to say that we’re always firing on all cylinders, which means essentially that we’re a very active company. We are constantly working to improve our LEAP platform. So much so, we launched LEAP iPad the day the iPad was released, but really to pinpoint exactly what it is that is contributing to our growth is impossible. We have quite a neat company culture going on, where every client is placed in to a portfolio, which is managed by an Account Executive. Each portfolio is given resources, such as Account Managers, subpages along with specials to offer clients, and the control over what happens within the portfolio.

*Ref: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS132751+30-Oct-2009+PRN20091030

Speaking about LEAP, I don’t see many other hosting providers offer something similar. What can we know more about the Ajax based webtop?

LEAP is our client facing system. To power LEAP requires a great deal of backend tasks, and systems. The vast majority of what we develop is done on the backend, then what’s valuable to the client is extended to the client via LEAP. While that’s evident, it’s just very impressive the amount of automation our business has on the backend.

For example, spammers are a huge problem in the industry for providers like us. A spammer signs up, and if we don’t catch it as fraud, they’ll get a server (within minutes mind you ), and send out a lot of email. When we cancel that server, the IP’s are put back in our provisionable IP’s. When a new client signs up, we automatically scan the IP’s against RBL’s to ensure we don’t give the client dirty IP’s. It’s simple, yet incredibly important, though not so evident to the client via LEAP.

LEAP to me is impressive; though it shows only a very small portion of the automation it takes to run a company like SingleHop operationally. We focus an incredible amount on automation, which keeps us lean and mean. To the best of my knowledge, if you divided our revenue and employees, to get our revenue per employee, we’ll have the highest revenue per employee. This is an important number to manage closely for a growing business, and is indicative of exactly how automated our company is. A small percentage of those tools are extended to LEAP, the vast majority are used on the backend to manage the business.

I am just a guy with little IT knowledge and wish to start a hosting-reselling business. How can I do this with SingleHop?

Tandem is the SingleHop reseller program, which simply put is the best in the industry. As a Tandem Reseller, you get unlimited free SSL’s (wildcard SSL’s as well), free R1Soft backups, and Tandem Panel (tandem mobile, tandem widget etc.). Basically, it allows you be able to sell servers, and leverage the buying power that SingleHop has, and the investments we’ve made in to the automation.

The idea is that you login to Tandem, upload your logo, are given a private-labeled URL where you clients can manage their servers, marketing material with your logo, and a number of great selling tools, all put together to allow you to sell more servers.

I owned a large shared hosting company prior to SingleHop. I don’t recall the exact number, but we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a year buying SSL’s. Leveraging another companies investment to get those for free would have been incredible, and leveraging the millions that have gone in to the automation of services to get something like Tandem Panel would have been a big hit as well.

Your expertise in hosting industry is extremely valuable to some of our readers. Please advise how we should choose between dedicated and cloud hosting. What kind of websites needs cloud; and when should we just stick with the old dedicated hosting solutions?

Go with cloud if you don’t need a dedicated server, but you have to keep in mind that the way clouds are sold now the MOST that you can scale to is a dedicated server. In other words, these cloud providers are NOT putting CPU & RAM on the cloud- you are still limited to the CPU & RAM on the server you are on. You can only scale from a VPS to a dedicated server, so I don’t see much overlap with cloud and dedicated. I know we aren’t slowing down, as a result of cloud computing, but here’s what I recommend.

Wait for Cascade , the SingleHop cloud to come out (sorry, I needed a plug here!), or select a VPS cloud if you’re looking to save money and have limited growth projections. Otherwise, stick to a dedicated server.

What are the changes you expect in web hosting industry as well as SingleHop in the next 5 years?

From a business point of view, I see the industry continuing to consolidate. Try this- name 10 dedicated server providers with any scale. The number of providers has reduced over the past couple of years, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get in to the business. Shared hosting is equally difficult to get in to, as a result of high customer acquisition costs. We personally feel that companies with strong reseller channels will emerge the strong players, hence the Tandem push.
Cloud we see developing, and while we’re late to the game with an offering, we feel strongly that we’ll positively change the way cloud computing is currently offered. I couldn’t be more excited, and I’m not sure I have been this excited about a product in my career.

Well thanks a lot for your time and that’s all for my questions. Is there anything you wish to add for this Q&A session?

Thanks a lot for your time as well.

To learn more about SingleHop, visit http://www.singlehop.com.

Q&A with David Packard of Hostpapa

Hello David, thanks for making this interview possible. Let’s talk about your history. How did you get into HostPapa?

I’ve been with HostPapa since the beginning. And from the beginning I was impressed with the service and the support, but mostly the people. HostPapa personnel go the extra mile for their clients and this personal touch has helped HostPapa grow, while maintaining high quality.

What can we know about the company – HostPapa?

Combined, HostPapa’s top executives have over 70 years of experience in web hosting services. From this experience they have built HostPapa into an established and award-winning web hosting leader, known for high-value, low-cost hosting.

We provide a fully-featured hosting package, backed by world-class customer service and powered by 100% green renewable energy.

Although HostPapa has experienced considerable growth, one thing has never changed: we treat each HostPapa customer as part of the family. And with HostPapa you truly feel like you are getting the family discount.

There are a lot of similar hosting services out there. What do you think distinguishes HostPapa from the competition?

That’s an easy one! Our world-class customer service puts us ahead of the others. We provide professional support through phone, chat and email service. We also offer a wide range of video tutorials and online help documents. Our features include a choice of shopping carts, a website builder, unlimited add-on domains and, of course, MySQL databases and everyone’s favorite cPanel control panel.

To make it easy for HostPapa clients to find solutions, we have built an extensive knowledgebase of FAQs, with hundreds of answers. We update and add to this knowledgebase regularly.

We want our clients to succeed in their online endeavors. We provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee, $150 FREE marketing credits and all the tools needed to develop an exciting, accessible and quality website.

Let’s talk about the servers and data centers. What can we know more about the technology behind Hostpapa hosting?

The heart of HostPapa is the web hosting infrastructure, powered by Intel server products and a fully featured Cisco-powered network. Our data centers have all the security features you could want or imagine: climate and temperature control, raised floors, fault protection, security, fire-suppression systems, water detection systems, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), standby and redundant power generation and diesel backup generators. HostPapa still believes in adding a human touch, and ensures 24×7 manned security.

HostPapa is one of the earliest hosting companies to start with green hosting. What can we know more about the company’s green policy?

Actually, HostPapa was, and still is, a pioneer in green web hosting. For years we have purchased green energy certificates to offset power used not only in our data centers, but in our offices as well. So far we have removed roughly 100,000 kg (over 200,000 lbs) of CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases from the environment. That’s the equivalent of taking 20 cars off the highway each year! There are a number of accredited green energy providers and if you contact us we would be happy to point you to a few.

Based on your experience in the hosting industry, what are the key factors when shopping for a web host? Can you offer some shopping guidelines for those who are planning to start a website?

I recommend consumers review the reliability and customer support of each hosting service they are considering. Cost should always be a factor, but reliability and support will help you gain a competitive advantage online. At HostPapa we have the perfect mix of price value, reliability and customer support.

Well that’s all for my questions. Is there anything you would like to add?

We’d like to invite your visitors to take a look at our site (www.hostpapa.com). If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our friendly customer service representatives.

Thanks again for your precious time. Good luck and I wish you and HostPapa all the best.

*Side Note: If you wish to learn more about Hostpapa, remember to check out my recent updated Hostpapa Review.

PacificHost is a new player in hosting industry. While the company is still relative small, I’ve read quite some good things about them. For instances here’s one of the customer reviews I read on a third party platform (http://www.ratepoint.com/profile/16559):

These guys (PacificHost) are the BEST! I had been through MANY MANY MANY hosting companies including Cirtex, Anhosting, Hostgator and a few other local hosting services etc but these guys were always causing me some problem of the other.

When i signed up with Pacifichost my life became a pathway to heaven, i’ve had almost no problems with my hosting since, i used to have a few issued with the email service but since i put up complaints they worked hard on making sure the problem would get corrected.
When i needed help of advice i could go to their online chat and just ask the support person directly and get a lightening fast response. But if the problem required more assistance then the person would get me a support ticket and with a few hours my problem would be solved. At most i have had to wait for 24 Hours.

They really take care of their customers. Pricing wise they may not be the best but they do certainly have great service, worth the extra i pay.

– Feedbacks by James Prado, Nov 27th, 2009.

In this article, we are going to have some Q&A with the man behind PacificHost – Thomas Perry.

Q & A with Thomas Perry, Owner of PacificHost

Hello Thomas, thanks for being with us here today. Let’s get things started with some introduction. What can you tell us about yourself and your company – PacificHost?

As a kid, I was always interested in hosting and I built my first hosting company when I was only a teenager. Since then I’ve graduated from the University of San Diego with a degree in Arts and Sciences. I continued to follow my passion in the hosting industry and since then I’ve created 2 more hosting companies. I recently sold off my last company and plan to focus all my efforts on building PacificHost.

Last year I bought PacificHost from it’s previous owner and have turned it around with an international focus on providing high quality hosting services. I plan to grow Pacifichost rapidly into the next year while keeping a close eye on the quality of PacificHost from the techs we hire to the servers we run.

What can we know about the web servers? Where does your data center located at?

PacificHost co-locates several servers with the Gigenet datacenter in downtown Chicago, IL. Gigenet has a reputation as a high quality provider catering towards business’s. We use SuperMicro hardware and have somebody on site in case of any issues.

PacificHost’s shared hosting services come in two different packages – the Web Hosting and the Premium Hosting Plans. What are the main differences between them?

The Premium Hosting are more less Semi-Dedicated hosting plans. This means that they are essentially just shared hosting plans, however with much fewer accounts. We’ll only put a handful of accounts on the Premium Hosting servers. Physically the servers have very similar specs to the Shared servers, however with less restructions, fewer accounts and overall more processing power allocated towards each account. Therefore the Premium Hosting caters to websites using more than what Shared Hosting can offer, while maintaining a price that is affordable.

I like the idea of Website Migration Assistance. Can you tell me how things work when I wish to transfer my web host to PacificHost?

The Website Migration Assistance is something we offer to all new clients at no additional cost. When a client signs up, he or she can fill out an Inbound Transfer Request Form which gets sent to our Support Department. Normally within an hour or two we’ll start the transfer process and we will transfer over all aspects of any Plesk, Ensim or cPanel account. From the files, Database, Emails and even the cPanel settings and arrangement will be copied over. This transfer process doesn’t require any further action from the client.

Even if the client isn’t using one of the supported control panels we can still help the client manually transfer over files, databases and emails to his or her account as a courtesy.

Based on your industry experience, what is the most important element in a good web host? Please give some shopping advice to those who are new to the web hosting world.

One thing that almost all visitors tend to overlook is the actual quality, support and uptime of the host itself. Most visitors may simply shop for a host based on how cheap they can get a good hosting plan for, which is far from the best way to shop. If you get unlimited disk space and bandwidth for $5 a month, but your website is down for sporadic periods in the month, the deal isn’t that great. This is where buyers remorse comes into play and some hosting providers make it quite tricky to leave. You should always do your research when looking for providers, not only checking reviews from multiple websites, but searching for company comments on sites like webhostingtalk.com for example.

You should also test a host’s support before signing up, send an email to the support department or give them a call to see if anybody picks up. Having a good support team can make all the difference with having a successful website. So, to get to the point, one shouldn’t base a host simply on price, but should look at the overall appearance of the host.

At PacificHost, we not only offer a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee but offer a 7 Day Free Trial that requires no up-front payment information, so a visitor can test our services virtually risk-free.

Where do you see PacificHost in 3 to 5 years time? Is dedicated hosting part of the plan?

In my experience, PacificHost will grow rapidly in the next few years as we’re tackling a variety of niche markets. In addition the standard we set for quality will be rippled across the hosting industry. I have another hosting company that will be launched later this year. HostGalaxy.com will be offering unmanaged/managed Dedicated Servers and VPS Hosting services. This will be a subsidary of Pacifichost and will be heavily advertised as an affordable and reliable vps and dedicated server provider.

That will be all for my questions, thanks again for your time! Is there anything you would like to add?

You’re very welcome! Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns. We’re more than happy to help.

Interviewer’s sidenote: What I think about PacificHost?

Overselling seems like a norm nowadays and we are seeing unlimited hosting offers everywhere online. PacificHost, however, is not one of them. In fact, PacificHost’s hosting plan is sort of expensive when you compare to others (see table below).

But hey, we all know what unlimited hosting is more like a marketing gimmick nowadays and how an unmanaged-overselling can jeopardize a website’s performance. It’s just nice to know there are still hosting company like PacificHost that is not practicing overselling.

Long story short, PacificHost’s honest way of doing business is what I like (and respect) them the most. If you’d like to know more about them, visit PacificHost.com online at: www.PacificHost.com.