We hear from the big names and the ultra-cool companies all the time, but when was the last time you heard from one of the little guys?
I had the honor to do little interview from Jonathan at Plzhost.com recently. He is yet another young guy that comes from the tech arena into the Web hosting world.
Jonathan, how did you come into the wild and wacky world of Web hosting?
I came into the hosting business because I was looking at the web host I was on with the time with a retail site and how much they provided me with support and help. I looked around at other hosting companies and they wouldn’t even touch what this hosting company did for me. So I started learning the ins and outs of the hosting business.
I came across what got me started by accident really I was working for an auction site named Buyselltrades.com and I was looking around for fraudulent and saw a post that said “start your own web hosting company and work from home” that caught my attention as I was looking into starting a web hosting company. I contacted them to see how much there reseller accounts where.
They told me the way they do things is I have preset plans that I get charged a preset price for which was $1 – $5 per month. I stayed with them for a while and totally forgot that I even owned the domain. I got a notice that it was time to renew the domain and then I started looking into it some more and at that time my friend had a reseller account with Forgehosting.com I started to piggy back off of him and started to really promote that site.
I started looking at other hosting companies to see what was working for them with prices and what kind of awards I could apply for. I new Zen Cart very well and was looking around there site and saw they had Zen Cart Certified hosting. I applied for it and received the certification around the same time I applied for a geek certification. And thats when the business started to take off as I called it within 3 months of getting the certified i went from 0 clients to 40 client and I now have 47 clients and probably close to 100 account hosted on the server.
I recently outgrow the reseller plan so I contacted the my reseller hosting provider and let them know the situation. So they set me up on my own server and gave me root access and also helps with support. And become as what I guess you can call a real hosting company.
Do you have any tips for breaking into the Web hosting buisness?
Breaking into the hosting business is hard. I struggled with many of late nights trying to build my name and keep the name good. There where many nights where I did not get any sleep cause I was looking for ways to promote the site, awards to apply for, hosting directories to list my self in.
It has started to pay off but is has just started I know that I have many more late nights ahead of me to keep my name out there and find new ways to get it out there. It was no easy task to get my name out there and get clients and I still have allot more to do. It was also hard to get my page ranked as well as I do and a PR4.
What is your best tip for success in the Web hosting industry. What has worked best for you thus far?
What has worked for me was that Zen Cart and geek certification. Also supporting and transfering Zen Cart customer. No other web host would seem to help them with there Zen Cart or Oscommerce site. I have heard everything from my host makes me leave a message and then calls me back when its convenient to my host hasn’t responded to emails or phone calls in a week.
Thats where we differed in that most emails are responded to within 1 hour and for example when the Geek Certification company did the support test the response time was 10 minutes. Most issues are resolved within 1-2 hours for minimal down time.
What is the best thing about providing Web hosting for people in your opinion?
What I have learned I have learned more helping people with there issues. Every time something happens I learn something new. For example when I first started it took me about 7-8 hours to do a transfer of a Zen Cart know I can transfer and have up in running in about 2 hours. I love making people happy and to hear the joy and excitement and sense of relief that they get knowing they are supported now and there problem becomes our problem they first time they email us or call us.
What is the most important aspect of your buisness that you want people to walk away from this interview and know about you?
What I want people to know walking away. We believe it four things, great uptime, great support, listen to your customers and keep prices reasonable. We have all the above. We work hard to resolve any issue that comes are way in a fast and timely manner, we listen to our customers and work on getting feedback from them on ways to improve our service.
We have 2 employees that all they do is call clients and see what they think of service and how we can improve service. We give back to the community that supports us. We donate to Zen Cart to help Zen Cart better there shopping cart for everyone and we donate to PACA (peoples anti cruelty association) this is a no kill animal shelter, we have installed web cams and we host it for free. We offer free web hosting to non profit charities.
We have the proper understanding that the customer makes or breaks the business, we also understand that we have to earn your trust its not just given, we have no contracts what so ever we do not believe in them. If you register a domain through us it is your property it does not become property of us.
