Interview with Thomas Gorny of iPage

alt="Interview with Thomas Gorny of iPage" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

iPage is an one-stop web solution provider that first established in year 1998.

href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/go/ipage" target="_blank">class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2009/1225-1.jpg" alt="iPage website" width="750px" />

The company was pretty popular in the 2000s but went inactive for the past few years. Recently, the company went thru series of restructure and is making a strong come-back (href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#content=1&cat=13&q=ipage&cmpt=q" target="_blank">See Google Insights chart).

Sure, iPage doesn’t have strong history background like Bluehost or Hostgator; however their hosting offer are simply too good to be ignored by budget hosting finders. At this time of writing, iPage’s pricing is one of the lowest – .50/mo and they are offering anytime money back guarantee. (href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/ipage/">More on iPage Review here.)

If this sounds good to you, make sure you read this interview with Thomas Gorny, founder and the current top man of iPage.

Q & A with Thomas Gorny, founder of iPage

Hello, Thomas. It’s great to have you here with us! Without wasting any more time, let’s get things started with some introduction. Can you tell us more about yourself and what your role is at iPage?

Sure. My involvement with the company goes back to its roots, when the company began in 1998. The company has evolved since then, and I’m committed to building upon our success as a leading web hosting provider.

Please enlighten us more about the technology behind iPage’s hosting services. What kind of servers and networking systems are you using at iPage?

Our hosting platform consists of a pooled server architecture, which ensures website requests are fulfilled by the first machine available. This type of network infrastructure allows our customers to benefit from faster page loads, reliable uptime, and rapid email service.

I see a huge chunk of tutorials available at iPage that look extremely helpful for newbies. What other help we can expect at iPage? Please tell us more about the Customer Support Team at iPage.

In addition to providing technical assistance, we’ve trained our staff to listen carefully to customers in order to provide effective solutions. Then, after we’ve been contacted about a particular issue, we use follow-up measures to learn how well we’ve addressed it. This helps us identify areas where we can improve training for our entire Support Team, as well as the products and services themselves.

We’ve also included a QuickStart feature in the control panel that helps customers get started by taking them through domain registration, mailbox setup and the web design process.

From the website, I learned that iPage provides eco-friendly web hosting. Can you tell us how iPage has gone green? 

Of course.  Since generating wind power onsite wasn’t a feasible option, we offset our energy use through the purchase of wind-generated Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).  In other words, for every KWH of electricity we consume, we purchase an REC that’s attributed to the supply of wind energy. As a result, we’ve prevented the annual release of 2,660 metric tons of carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere.

It’s good to see iPage is tailoring a custom hosting plan for bloggers. What choices do we have in blogging and photo gallery software?

The blogging plan provides everything customers need to create a successful blog. Blog and photo gallery options are available for free installation, including WordPress, Gallery2 and more. The plan also offers a free domain for the first year, 10 email accounts, and marketing services that help customers get their feet wet with search engine optimization.

iPage provides more than just web hosting services. How can business owners leverage your products and services to start an online business? And, will it cost a lot?

We’ve structured our e-commerce selection to cover the essentials for a successful online business – a website where visitors can shop and purchase easily, with convenient, secure payment options. Between ShopSite Starter and additional open-source shopping carts available for installation, customers can create an online store at little or no cost. And PayPal is also available to customers, along with SSL certificates, so business owners can provide convenient payment options their customers can trust.

Customers can also take advantage of a free 14-day trial with Doba to expand their product offering. Doba provides access to over 1.5 million brand-name products. Customers decide which products they’d like to sell, and Doba’s suppliers manage the inventory and shipping, requiring payment only after the end customer pays.

iPage considers the Carbonite Online Backup service, free for the first year, as one of its strong selling points. Can you tell us how site backup is done at iPage with the help of Carbonite?

We can’t stress enough how important it is to back up your files, so we offer 2GB of free storage space with Carbonite, for a year. By installing the free application, customers receive an automated file backup service for their website. Carbonite searches for new and updated files, saves encrypted copies, and maintains the files so their ready to be restored should you run into trouble with your computer.

Shared hosting plans are like dedicated web hosting plans back in the year 2000. In fact, there are more and more companies offering unlimited hosting services, including iPage. Should your customers be concerned with overselling?

Our customers should not be concerned. Since our hosting and blogging plans are designed for individuals and small- to medium-sized businesses, the unlimited plans are appropriate for the intended type of use.

As we speak about shared hosting services, can you provide some shopping guidance to our readers? In your opinion, what are the important factors to look for when searching for a shared web host?

From my perspective, the most important things are my website, email and online security, so I’d look for quality website building tools, rapid email service and access to security software. When we created the iPage hosting plan, we focused on meeting customers’ needs in these key areas, offering flexible website building options, email perfected by vigorous throughput testing and an extensive security suite at no extra cost.

Where will iPage hosting be in the next five years? Is VPS or dedicated hosting in any part of the plan?

We’re constantly working on evolving our products and services, but adding VPS is not a specific focus at this time. However, based on iPage’s history, we certainly wouldn’t rule anything out.

Thank you for your time with us. Is there anything you wish to add for this interview?

Thank you. We certainly appreciate what you do for the web hosting community, and it was a pleasure to be here.

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/go/ipage">Special promotion link, iPage hosting – only .50/mo!

Page 29 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Interview with Karl Robinson of StratoGen

alt="Interview with Karl Robinson of StratoGen" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

The terms "href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/web-hosting-knowledge/a-brief-on-cloud-hosting/">Cloud Hosting" and "IaaS" had been creating quite a buzz for the past few years. In case you are considering the technology, StratoGen is a name you should know.

VMware Hosting StratoGen

href="http://www.stratogen.net" target="_blank">src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2010/0906-1.jpg" alt="StratoGen" class="border" />

Based in United Kingdom, StratoGen (href="http://www.stratogen.net" target="_blank">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 (href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/sitecloud.php" target="_blank">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 href="http://www.stratogen.net/blog/?p=86" target="_blank">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!

Page 28 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Interview with Thomas Perry of PacificHost

alt="Interview with Thomas Perry of PacificHost" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/aff/pacifichost.php">src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2010/0119-1.jpg" class="border" alt="PacificHost" />

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 (href="http://www.ratepoint.com/profile/16559">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 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).

width="96%" border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="2" class="border">bgcolor="#dddddd"> colspan="3" align="center" bgcolor="#dddddd">Basic Hosting Plan colspan="3" align="center" bgcolor="#dddddd">Premium Hosting Plan Disk Spacewidth="60" align="center">size="1">15 GB width="60" align="center">size="1">25 GB width="60" align="center">size="1">40 GB width="60" align="center">size="1">50 GB width="60" align="center">size="1">75 GB width="60" align="center">size="1">100 GB Monthly Bandwidthwidth="60" align="center">size="1">300 GB width="60" align="center">size="1">600 GB width="60" align="center">size="1">1500 GB width="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">UnlimitedCPU Powerwidth="60" align="center">size="1">–width="60" align="center">size="1">–width="60" align="center">size="1">– width="60" align="center">size="1">10%width="60" align="center">size="1">20%width="60" align="center">size="1">30%Addon Domainswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">UnlimitedParked Domainswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">Unlimitedwidth="60" align="center">size="1">UnlimitedFantasticowidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">YesRuby on Railswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">Yeswidth="60" align="center">size="1">YesPrice (12 mo)width="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/moPrice (24 mo)width="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mowidth="60" align="center">size="1">.95/mo

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: href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/aff/pacifichost.php">www.PacificHost.com.

Page 29 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Interview With Terry Myers of VPS.NET

alt="Interview With Terry Myers of VPS.NET" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

You might not heard about the name ‘VPS Net’ (href="http://www.vps.net" target="_blank">http://www.vps.net) before this but when it comes to "creative cloud-hosting", VPS Net is without doubt a must-know. By ‘creative cloud hosting’, I meant applying the new cloud technology into traditional VPS hosting service – VPS Net offers something called ‘Cloud VPS’ and it’s extremely handy for those who wish to ‘go cloud’ the easy way.

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.

id='right'>src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2011/0922-1.jpg" />

Interview with Hostpapa

alt="Interview with Hostpapa" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/hostpapa-500x224_c.jpg" />

HostPapa has been online for quite some time and they are one of the earliest hosting companies that goes green. At this time of writing, the hosting company operates business from both United States and Canada. If you wish to learn more about Hostpapa, make you make time for this interview.

href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/go/hostpapa">class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2010/0301-1.jpg" alt="Hostpapa Hosting" width="750px" />

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, 0 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 (href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/go/hostpapa">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 href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/hostpapa/">Hostpapa Review.

Page 29 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Interview with SiteCloud Founder, Trey Gardner

alt="Interview with SiteCloud Founder, Trey Gardner" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

Basic Introduction
href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/sitecloud.php" target="_blank">src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2010/1002-1.jpg" alt="SiteCloud Hosting" class="border" />

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 href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/sitecloud-review/">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 (href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/sitecloud.php" target="_blank">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?

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Interview with Zak Boca of SingleHop

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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 (href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#content=1&cat=13&q=singlehop&cmpt=q">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.

style="font-size: 0.9em;">*Ref: href="SingleHop Marked 100%+ Year-Over-Year Increase in Revenues with a 14,000-foot Skydive; Strong, Consistent Growth Continues During Q3" target="_blank">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 href="http://www.singlehop.com/cloud">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 href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/singlehop.php">http://www.singlehop.com.

Page 29 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Interview With WP Engine Co-Founder, Jason Cohen

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Back in 2009 I had some problem with WHSR loading speed and spent tremendously long hours in looking for the right fix. Eventually the issue was solved by switching my host (Hostmonster was throttling my CPU power) and installing WP Super Cache (part of the problem is caused by WHSR’s heavy traffic loads). Then in mid 2010, I suspected WHSR is targeted by hackers at that time and (again) spent multiple sleepless nights drilling down forum threads and blogposts on WordPress security.

I would have saved my time for all these problems and worries and readings and works if WP Engine (href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/wpengine.php">http://wpengine.com/) existed earlier.

Updates March 2012: In fact I got hook and WHSR is now hosted on WP Engine – click here to read my href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/wp-engine/">latest review on WP Engine Hosting.

A little intro on WP Engine Hosting

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Founded by Aaron Brazell and Jason Cohen, WP Engine offers premium href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/wordpress-blog/best-wordpress-hosting/" target="_blank">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 href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470568135?ie=UTF8&tag=emmensetechno-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0470568135">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 href="http://smartbear.com/best-kept-secrets-of-peer-code-review/">Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review as well as this href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/" target="_blank">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?

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Interview with Trey Gardner of GreenGeeks

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style="line-height: 1.5em;">You might not heard about the name ‘GreenGeeks’ before this; so do I. But when it comes to eco-friendly hosting, GreenGeeks is without doubt one of the top players.

I was first skeptical about their green policy (in fact, I acted sort of rude and asked for certification and proofs). However truth is, the hosting company had just purchased over 2.3 million MW of renewable energy in March 2009 and websites hosted at Green Geeks are 300% clean powered

Sound interesting? Well then you gotta check out the man behind all these – Trey Gardner. Trey Gardner is no-stranger to most experienced webmaster as he had been working for over a decade with some of the big names in hostingindustry. His experience in web hosting and web development is valuable and I’m glad to see important people like Gardner is picking up their responsibility in protecting our environment.

Without any further delay, here’s my online interview with Trey Gardner of GreenGeeks and TigerSites.

Q&A with GreenGeeks CEO, Trey Gardner

Hello Trey, thanks for your time with us. To get things started, let’s go with the intro. What can we know more about ‘Trey Gardner’? Can you brief us more about your background in the industry?

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Thank you for allowing me to introduce myself.

I have been in the web hosting business for over ten years and another 2 years in the web site design and online marketing business in addition to my years in web hosting*. I have held positions with a number of large web hosting companies including; General Manager, Director of Marketing, Reseller Program Director, Sales Director and Quality Assurance Director. I have built; reseller programs, quality assurance protocols, support teams, marketing initiatives, sales teams and I have held management positions in all but server administration areas within a web hosting company.

Some fun quick questions about yourself: Do you have a dog? Are you a PC, or MAC guy? IE or FireFox? :)

I do have a dog, a 115 pound chocolate lab named Guinness, I use a PC, I prefer Firefox over IE. I grew up in a beach town so I surf and play volleyball and I love to go skiing in the wintertime.

Okay, back to business. Both TigerSites and GreenGeeks are new names in the hosting industry. Can you tell us more about them?

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5163 border" alt="Greengeeks and TigerSites Hosting" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/greengeeks1.jpg" width="750" height="251" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/greengeeks1.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/greengeeks1-300x100.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

 Green Geeks was my vision a few years back, I had been working for another web hosting company and saw that the industry was just starting to move to become more eco friendly. I read some horrifying news about just how much of a carbon polluter our industry was and I wanted to make a difference. The web host I was the general manager of at the time saw this as a good marketing scheme but nothing more and they decided to do the minimal they could to become green so that they could come out as a “Green” web host.

At that time I was ready to branch off on my own and I decided to build my own web hosting company. I knew plenty of top talent in the industry and I wanted to really have the focus toward pushing our industry to become more eco friendly and Greener. I decided on the Brand Green Geeks.

After a year of fairly steady growth but still underachieving in some of the areas that I wanted to push into like our reseller program I partnered with an old colleague who owned the TigerSites brand. We formed a partnership earlier this year and it has been great. He and I balance our skill sets very well and the partnership has allowed us to push into the reseller area of web hosting as well as dedicated servers. We have more plans for additional offerings down the line as well.

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

Our datacenter is located in Chicago, IL and is one of the Greenest data facilities in North America. This state of the art facility is equipped with raised floors, climate control, fire suppression systems, 24/7 security, UPS & generators and water detection systems, to ensure that our customers data is safe and secure.

We buy state of the art high quality fuel efficient Intel Quad core processors with RAID 10 storage arrays, 4 GB DDR2/DDR3 Memory and 100Mpbs connection to the Switches. Multi-gig connectivity to our network’s edge routers. Unlike some other web hosts we also do not overload customers onto our servers, we like things to run efficiently here and my past experiences has shown me when you overload your servers bad things happen, like multiple downtimes. We make sure that our environment is living up to our 99.9% uptime.

You are doing a great job at GreenGeeks and I don’t see any green hosting companies come close in term of “Green Factor”*. How do you achieve that? Does the green policy damage the company’s balance sheet?

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