Web Host Blog

HostGator, the famous web hosting company offering dedicated servers, reseller hosting, and shared web hosting, has earned rank 239 on the Inc. 5000 list. This is actually a drop from rank 21 last year, but still an amazing feat for the web hosting service. Brent Oxley started the service out of his Florida Atlantic University dormitory room with a mere $1000 investment back in October of 2002. And now that company is consistently making the Inc. 5000 list; truly amazing.

The Chief Marketing Officer of HostGator, Chad Bean, made a comment

”A big portion of our growth has definitely come from small to medium-sized businesses understanding the value in having their own web site to be competitive in today’s marketplace. Individuals are also able to utilize our services to generate extra income from online advertising and promotion.”

Hostgator goes on to mention how they have boomed in a recession, with an attitude that encourages others to do the same. Brent Oxley has in the past made his somewhat political views known.

Taking note of the times, CMO Chad Bean remarked upon their amazing success story:

Although 2009’s rank was lower than the previous year’s, we’ve nearly doubled our revenue between the two periods. Despite the job market shrinking across the U.S., HostGator has also created 100 positions for highly qualified technicians and systems’ administrators in the Houston area over the last year.

Hostgator is also well on track this year to continue to make the Inc. 500 list as well. However, as their revenue continues to expand rapidly, it becomes harder to achieve such amazing revenue growth on a percentage basis (compared to the previous year), even if the amount Hostgator’s revenue increased by is still greater than the previous fiscal year.

iPower, the web hosting company which had recently become one of the many “green web hosting” companies out there, has come up with a fresh design for their website. This new design focuses on the fact that it is “green”, and is definitely more sleek and clean than the previous design.

Jen Merry, IPOWER Marketing Manager stated:

“We wanted to improve the customer experience and provide our Web hosting customers and site visitors with the most efficient site possible, so, we’ve removed the clutter and simplified the navigation.”

Though perhaps the main reason for the redesign is that iPower wishes to subtly use the “green” nature of the business as a strong marketing point to get the customer to buy the web hosting service.  The entire web hosting industry has been rushing to claim to be the “greenest” web host. In reality, the amount the web hosting services have to pay to become “carbon neutral” by purchasing Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) is so insignificant that the increased marketing advantage makes it quite profitable. Morals out of convenience, one could say.

After many talks of a simple merger, Yahoo! and Microsoft have now reached out and begun a partnership, or perhaps more practically, an alliance against Google. Yahoo sent out a press release simplifying the new effort’s results: “Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers”.

The wording tries to be tricky, but the key points lay out the truth: Microsoft’s search model is taking over Yahoo. Basically users can expect at some point that Yahoo will show basically the same results as Bing!

The key part to read in the press release is this:

Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology;

Basically, Yahoo will be using the Bing search engine! Perhaps the press releases going around should read differently, saying “Yahoo will now use Bing!”, but that might cause an exodus of users to just go straight to the source (Bing itself).

However, on the other hand, MSN is giving up it’s sales job tasks over to Yahoo, who had done a far better job of it, so it can focus on defeating the Google search algorithms.

Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process;

Basically, since the merger never happened, it seems the two companies have finally found a way to partner up and use each other’s strengths to try and take on the Google behemoth. Both companies will be using their strengths and giving over control of the areas they are weak in to the other company which was better at it.

Yahoo really seems to be thinking this is a win for them (despite no longer powering their own search engine and using Bing), stating that “Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network” and expecting that it will have capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million, and an annual cash flow bonus of $275 million. Quite the large claims.

Maybe it’s just me, but wasn’t Yahoo a search engine? Yahoo better hope it’s customers who will now be using Bing powered search don’t just go for the real deal: Bing itself. So while Yahoo can claim all these savings and cash flow bonuses (supposing the traffic doesn’t simply leave), the deal was definitely a win-win for Microsoft, and giving tens of millions of Yahoo users a taste of their new Bing search engine could be the big win they need to give Google a run for their money.

Equinix has announced the opening of a second International Business Exchange (IBX) data center based in Singapore. Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) is a provider of global data center services, and the move’s cost has run up a cost of forty five million dollars. Equinix has been rapidly growing and their first singapore server (SG1) is running near full capacity, necessitating the move.

Equinix attributes the increased demand to “increasing traction from companies throughout South Asia and financial trading companies”. Basically the growth of South Asia at this current time is one of the prime factors, as the data center is the most reliable and convenient choice for businesses in the region.

Steve Smith, president and CEO of Equinix gave an explanation:

“Singapore is a strategic market to Equinix and the company’s SG1 center is the most network-dense data center in the country. We’ve seen continued strong demand in the region and even with the recent completion of the phase 4 expansion of the SG1 center in Q2 2009, SG1 is reaching maximum capacity. Today’s opening of the SG2 center will enable Equinix to continue to meet customer demand while planning for SG2’s second phase, with construction expected to start in Q2 2010.”

This news comes on the heels of their quite impressive second quarter report which stated that they had increased quarterly revenues to 213 million dollars which was a 24% increase from the same quarter in 2008, and a seven percent increase from the previous quarterly report. The company may soon be nearing the one billion dollars annually milestone soon, so $45 million dollars is now a far less significant number in their costs and will be far easier for Equinix to absorb.

The move is also significant for Singapore as a country, with some bureacrats even taking positive notice. Leo Yip, Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board, gave a statement:

“Equinix’s investment reinforces Singapore’s position as a global IT hub and home for businesses seeking to expand in Asia. There is a rapidly growing market for connectivity and data hosting in Asia. The opening of Equinix’s second data center is therefore timely as more companies choose Singapore as their data hub to leverage on new growth opportunities in the region.”

Considering Singapore GDP is roughly $180 billion, it is considerably important for them to woo the nearly billion dollars annually in revenue company to do more business with them to solidify the former naval hub as a new global Information Technology (IT) hub.

LiquidWeb hosting services has partnered with GlobalSign to offer SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), which will allow their customers to purchase the SLL certificates to use along with their traditional web hosting offerings.

Travis Stoliker, Marketing Director of Liquid Web, had this to say regarding the new partnership:

“We chose GlobalSign based on reliability, cost and overall ROI. Our customers have increasing security concerns which prompted us to find a provider who could offer the most reliable and cost effective SSL security solution.”

Naturally, Liquid Web must have looked at their well-known competitor Verisign, so it would be interesting to get a more specific reason. This news comes on the heel of Verisign’s announcement of exceeding their 4 millionth SSL certificate issued. Literally within hours. The timing may be coincidental, or perhaps GlobalSign is trying to nudge aside Verisign’s news aside with some news of it’s own.

Nonetheless, if these two press releases were to be a conversation, Verisign’s bragging about their “milestones”, and GlobalSign’s response is that it is focused on getting new customers, rather than patting itself on the back.

Verisign one of the leading SSL certificate providers, has surpassed 4 million of their Verisign SSL certificates issued. It’s quite a big milestone for the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) company which has been offering them since 1995.

Tim Callan, vice president of product marketing at VeriSign announced:

“As the world’s leading SSL Certificate Authority, VeriSign understands that when customer trust is paramount, second best is never nearly good enough. Now more than ever, in a marketplace that is truly global and increasingly competitive, protecting a Web site, application or service with VeriSign is an investment that pays dividends every day.”

This is certainly a good opportunity for Verisign to try and make another marketing push to seize up more of the market. Currently Verisign and the other SLL certificate providers are under assault by web hosting service Godaddy’s entry into the SSL market, though Verisign seems poised to grab up much of the initial turnover from Godaddy web hosting’s clientele depending on how that service offering pans out.

The popular website 4chan.org had been under DDOS attack for the past week. Initially most of the 4chan members and internet “public” had decided that AT&T must have been censoring 4chan, known for it’s controversial content and strong advocacy for net neutrality and against internet censorhip. The truth was that AT&T was doing nothing of the sort.

AT&T released this statement on the issue:

Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers.

This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic. Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.

This is obviously quite embarrassing for those who claimed it was censorship, though 4chan immediately came out with a reply claiming that while AT&T was not involved in a “sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part”. It looks as though 4chan still sees the whole event as an opportunity to attack AT&T who is still suffering from the fallout in allowing government agents to monitor internet traffic during the Bush years.

Yet another web hosting company has jumped on the green web hosting bandwagon today. FatCow’s green web hosting service will be yet one of many in a recent trend of web hosts to join the “green” community.

Paul Bukhovko, the Marketing Manager at FatCow said, “We’re offsetting all of our electricity use by purchasing wind-generated Renewable Energy Certificates, providing our customers with an environmentally preferable web hosting solution.”

Basically FatCow will be using the REC method, renewable energy credits, where they basically pay out whatever it would cost to generate their electricity into wind, so that some company may convert that amount down the line. It’s NOT really powering themselves with wind, but NONE of the current web hosting offerings that I’m aware of are literally using wind generators.

At this point it’s so cheap to buy these RECs that the added marketing benefit outweighs the cost. A “environmental” consulting firm has been going around convincing board executives of this (the ones behind DreamHost and Hostgator’s green switch). This time it’s a different company, Community Energy, Inc. (CEI) which seems to be the mastermind behind convincing FatCow as well.

Really it’s all just good marketing. I say customers should just pick the best web hosting service possible, whether it is green web hosting or not. If you are one of the global warming crazies, then just calculate the “carbon footprint” of your services and pay for the offsets yourself, and keep the superior web host’s customer service.

After a four month hiatus, we’re back to cover the latest news in the shared, reseller, and dedicated web hosting industries. The Web Host Blog will also compare web hosting services on the basis of features, customer service, complaints, and other important factors to help customers make informed decisions.

As for putting our money where our mouth is, this blog is currently hosted by Hostgator, but that can change as we are currently purchasing and using multiple web hosting services at any one given time. The web host blog looks for the best customer service especially, as this is something that can quickly change (with bad leadership) but which is of the utmost importance in the internet world of web hosting.

Both of these web hosting companies, Just Host and Hostgator are both among the highest rated in the industry. This is why it becomes especially difficult, but also especially important, to compare the two web hosting services to help potential customers make their choices.

Hostgator offers their cheapest unlimited domain package at $7.95 per month. It offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space, though as with most web hosts who offer anything “unlimited” it is subject to reasonable restrictions for anyone who is using more than 25% of the expensive server’s resources at a given time. Hostgator has quite possibly the highest rated customer service in the industry, with support reps being both knowledgeable and courteous as they are paid based on how well customers rate their responses.

The Hostgator CEO is also extremely visible, via the Hostgator blog, as well as on the popular web hosting forums. In that 1 in a 1,000 rare chance that an issue is not solved by his reputable staff, CEO Brent Oxley is known to resolve the issue himself, pulling out all the stops and usually giving extremely generous responses that often make any problems experienced turned into benefits, like being accidentally billed for $10 and he refunds double, just to name a fictitious example, but Brent is known to go above and beyond for customer satisfaction.

Hostgator also has many features that are extremely rare on other web hosting services, such as unlimited MYSQL databases and the size of those databases! Unlimited MYSQL database size is a feature only one out of a hundred hosts seem to offer, yet it is extremely important. For advanced webmasters running large forums or blogs, the size of the databases will quickly exceed the tiny 50 or 100 megabytes offered by most web hosting services.

As for JustHost, they offer the usual web hosting services with unlimited domains, bandwidth, and disk space offered with their $4.95 a month package.. It also includes a free domain “forever”, meaning as long as their hosting is bought they will pay for the domain, which is a good $5 to $10 per year value, depending on where customers usually buy their domains. Their customer support is also highly praised, though the upper management is not quite so visible, and some customers do leave with their problems going unsolved.

Overall, Hostgator wins on the customer service front by a wide margin. However, JustHost wins on the price front by quite a few dollars per month and with a free domain. If simply running a basic one domain website, JustHost is probably the right choice. If trying to run a small business, or multiple domains, Hostgator is the clear leader in customer service, which in the online world, is the most important part of any web hosting service.