A Review on Hostway by Hosting.Review
Hostway claims to put its clients first. And they do manage to provide stable uptime and industry-specific features.
Here are the details.
1. Reliable 99.97% Uptime
Hostway claims to provide 100% uptime. After several months of testing, we finally found that it can provide a stable 99.97% uptime. This is obviously a great output - leaving only around 3 minutes weekly for maintenance or unexpected downtime.
The result is great. Especially knowing, that most of the providers guarantee only 99.9% uptime which can lead to 10 minutes of weekly downtime.
2. Industry-Specific Hosting and Compliances
Hostway is a leading PCI- and HIPAA-compliant service provider and it happens to have 20 years of experience for that. Moreover, it is fully equipped with the certifications and needed expertise in this sector. Hostway will also help you develop and run your solutions according to your compliance strategy.
Some of their Enterprise level solutions include:
Healthcare Solutions
These solutions are designed for healthcare providers or healthcare-related industries that collect and preserve the information of patients. For this, they provide HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant solutions that will provide the highest level of security to preserve this information.
Additionally, Hostway is HITRUST certified, so it is fully capable of handling this information.
PCI Compliance
Sometimes meeting with strict Payment Card Industry’s necessities might cause security loopholes without any trusted source. But not with Hostway. It provides PCI-compliant solutions to help you deal with credit/debit card information.
Moreover, these solutions are geared toward organizations that deal with these types of sensitive information and needs more security.
Mission-Critical Saas Apps
Want additional support in the development of SaaS Apps? Well, Hostway might have a powerful solution for you. Other than providing PCI and HIPPA compliance, they also provide solutions just for the development of SaaS Apps.
So when your project grows, you'll have strong backing and tech architecture to host your own SaaS App.
3. 24/7 Customer Support
Hostway has all the essential customer support options - 24/7 live chat, email, and phone.
We contacted the support via live chat to get all the details about the Website Starter plan and easily got our answers.
Later, we needed to solve a technical issue. In order to create a database, we needed approval from Hostway. So we went to the live chat again and were connected to the tech support agent quickly.
She was able to solve our problem quickly and we had our database functioning soon after.
Our interactions went pretty smoothly. Best of all, support is available 24/7.
Today's enterprises have numerous assets to organize and manage. From employees and furniture to technological endpoints and the buildings that house these items, business decision-makers have to know where all of their investments are, all the time. Unfortunately, keeping track of these holdings, as well as the space they occupy, is typically easier said than done.
Underpinning the high level of service delivered by RSC is the Hostway Virtual Private Cloud, powered by Windows Azure Pack. RSC leverages this platform not only for their client-facing application interface, but also for their own internal processes.
Previous to the Hostway Virtual Private Cloud, RSC had been running virtual machines on dedicated managed servers. Unfortunately, this approach did not deliver the flexibility and redundancy required, spurring the decision to upgrade the infrastructure and migrate workloads to the Virtual Private Cloud.
MAXIMIZING BENEFIT FROM VIRTUAL PRIVATE CLOUD:
A FOUR-PRONGED APPROACH
Previous to the Hostway Virtual Private Cloud, RSC had been running virtual machines on dedicated managed servers. Unfortunately, this approach did not deliver the flexibility and redundancy required, spurring the decision to upgrade the infrastructure and migrate workloads to the Virtual Private Cloud.
Download the Case Study to learn more.
Industry: Telco, Global Partner
Challenges: During the sales process, the Cable ONE Business field sales team realized there were issues with the channels available to prospective clients.
Solution: Web Presence
Cable ONE Business contacted Hostway to address the sales team’s worries. The company decided to create custom websites for each individual field sales representative so that prospective customers could directly contact their local team member instead of being routed through the call center.
Business Outcome: The personalized websites bolstered Cable ONE Business’ sales and marketing efforts, and field representatives felt more confident about their ability to engage with prospective clients. Without the Hostway solution, sales agents feared that they might lose to the call center should potential customers turn to the corporate contact for more information.
Hostway recently helped a popular telecommunications company enhance its sales and marketing efforts by hosting personalized websites geared toward prospective clients.
During the sales process, the Cable ONE Business field sales team realized there were issues with the channels available to prospective clients. Before contacting Hostway, the company’s website funneled visitors and potential clients to the corporate call center as opposed to local sales representatives.
The Cable ONE Business field sales staff felt that they were losing considerable opportunities to engage with potential clients, because the only online avenue for those seeking information online about Cable ONE Business was the corporate website, which directed visitors to the corporate contact center number. The field sales staff wanted to provide potential clients with an online resource for additional information, but did not want to risk losing the sale to the corporate call center.
Cable ONE Business contacted Hostway to address the sales team’s worries. The company decided to create custom websites for each individual field sales representative so that prospective customers could directly contact their local team member instead of being routed through the call center. With Hostway’s help, Cable ONE Business was able to establish tailored micro websites, each providing more information about the products and services available, as well as the contact information for the sales agent in the area. The company employed an advertising agency to design the website template, then provided those files to Hostway. Using this information, Hostway was able to develop the overall process for creating and managing each individual microsite.
The personalized websites bolstered Cable ONE Business’ sales and marketing efforts, and field representatives felt more confident about their ability to engage with prospective clients. Without the Hostway solution, sales agents feared that they might lose to the call center should potential customers turn to the corporate contact for more information. Now, with the micro-sites deployed, prospects have a place to go for more details about Cable ONE Business’ products and services and for the contact information of their local sales representative.
In addition to streamlining the process that potential customers use to contact a sales agent, the new websites also strengthened relationships between Cable ONE Business’ internal teams. Now, field sales representatives feel they have more support from the corporate marketing team, and sales channel conflicts have been reduced. At the same time, the call center still serves a valuable purpose for the company without taking away from the field sales team’s efforts.
Cable ONE Business also is considering adding even more content to these sites in the near future, including testimonials and special offers. This would provide potential clients with a more robust information source for their questions and pre-service needs.
Hostway’s micro-websites benefited Cable ONE Business in several ways, including unifying its sales and marketing efforts and ensuring prospective customers get the most specific information possible. The tailored sites prevented the sales team from losing opportunities to engage with prospects without disrupting the processes of the corporate contact center.
“Hostway’s website hosting made all the difference for Cable ONE Business sales team,” noted Jim Ciampaglio, Hostway Vice President of Channel Partners. “The individual, personalized websites allow the field representatives to better connect with prospective clients and help ensure they are getting the information they need when they need it. Hostway is happy to be a part of Cable ONE Business’ online presence.”
Industry: Technology, Consulting
Challenges: Cloudkey outgrew the constraints of its colocated servers and needed a solution that was accessible online and customizable at the customer level.
Solution: CRM Infrastructure
Cloudkey developed a customer relationship management solution (CRM) on colocated servers for a single client in 2008. As they gained more customers and the company grew, their infrastructure could not scale with the growth. Needing to make its hosted infrastructure customizable at the customer level and accessible online, Cloudkey looked to move to a cloud hosting provider that met a series of requirements, specific to their needs.
Business Outcome: With the help of Hostway’s public cloud service, Cloudkey’s client base has grown, with roughly 1,000 end-users now interacting with the CRM system every day.
Cloudkey built their CRM solution on colocated servers in 2008 at the behest of a single client. As use of the CRM system spread, Cloudkey’s infrastructure was stretched to meet the requirements of its clients, who increasingly needed customized versions of the product and required online access.
“To satisfy all of our customers, it was becoming evident we’d have to make big changes to the application’s functionality,” said Cloudkey founder Scott Montgomery. “And while we were making big changes, we decided we might as well revisit our hosting plan as well.”
With the cost of expanding his own system appearing prohibitive, Montgomery knew the direction he needed to move.
“From my perspective, there’s no reason a company of our size and with our needs would go with dedicated servers unless they were required to by law,” Montgomery said. “People worry about the risks of cloud vs. dedicated servers – in reality these risks are different but roughly equal. You can be the smartest IT architect around, and there are still going to be points of failure either way.”
With the significant cost benefits of cloud service, the choice was easy for Cloudkey.
Another point of emphasis for Cloudkey was downtime. A redundant solution had been beyond Cloudkey’s reach before, but Hostway’s public cloud guaranteed 100% uptime. Hostway provides a highly available environment on Hyper-V with failover clustering functionality inherent in its infrastructure.
“Hostway’s uptime is better than what I can offer with my own servers and my own engineers dedicated to that environment,” Montgomery said.
Cloud infrastructure offered Cloudkey benefits beyond the obvious scaling advantages. Cloudkey became able to create a dynamic business model that was capable of changing without significant infrastructure changes and expenses.
“We make adjustments on a client-by-client basis,” Montgomery said. “Now, we’re less boxed into our decisions.”
But one of the biggest selling points was turning over some responsibilities to a hosting provider. Cloudkey can focus on developing new features within its CRM tool to win more clients.
“We develop applications because we’re good at that,” Montgomery said. “We trust Hostway to ensure the infrastructure we need to grow is available and quickly accessible – that’s their core competency.”
With the help of Hostway’s public cloud service, Cloudkey’s client base has grown, with roughly 1,000 end-users now interacting with the CRM system every day. Cloudkey has added six servers in the last three months alone, and they are continuing to grow significantly on Hostway’s cloud platform.
Cloudkey also benefits from the around-the-clock availability and expertise of Hostway support, offered at no additional expense.
“Hostway’s entire support team is not only responsive, they’re knowledgeable on every topic I’ve thrown their way,” Montgomery said. “I don’t even know if there’s a second tier of support –whoever answers the phone has had every answer.”
Not only did Cloudkey’s security situation remain the same as in its prior colocation arrangement – the cost went down significantly. In addition to the increased physical security of a Hostway datacenter, Cloudkey benefits from three layers of power supply and failover protection.
“What we were paying just to rent floor space was almost double what we pay end-to-end with Hostway,” Montgomery explained. “When you add in what we were paying for servers and the salaries of the three system engineers we had to manage those servers, the cost difference is extremely significant to our bottom line.”
Hostway’s control panel offers Cloudkey an abundance of do-it-yourself options – and when they need something customized, Cloudkey’s account manager at Hostway works with support to have things ready within a day.
“We knew we were going to save money, and we have,” Montgomery said. “But we didn’t expect to find a team that made everything so easy every step of the way.”
For Cloudkey, moving mission-critical applications to the cloud wasn’t a risk. It was a simple decision, and they’ve never looked back.
“We’re not a big company – our ability to supervise a managed environment is limited,” Montgomery said. “We get more management out of Hostway’s cloud than out of our own managed servers. If it is about the bottom line, we pay less for cloud. If it’s about managing risk, Hostway’s cloud has definitely reduced security and scalability risks.”
Cloudkey’s savings from switching to the cloud – in addition to the growth they’ve experienced thanks to their new CRM capabilities – have created an efficient, profitable business model, scalable whenever needed. And the customer base is only growing.
“We have 10 times as many users as when we were on managed infrastructure, and three times as many groups of clients. We’ve been able to instantly scale, without downtime, to support our growth,” Montgomery said. “Hostway’s service makes that possible.”
Industry: Technology, Marketing
Challenges: When QWASI needed to meet increased volume, speed, and security requirements to launch its scalable marketing technology platform, the company knew its in-house hosting solution wouldn’t cut it. QWASI found its answer in Hostway's managed servers, complemented by the certifications, applications, and partner network QWASI needed to operate efficiently and securely.
Solution: Infrastructure Scalability, Security, Database, Partner
QWASI had an idea, a plan and an audience for its premium mobile and social marketing services – it just needed an infrastructure that could keep up with it. Find out how this fast-growth SMB selected the technology behind their technology and became a preferred provider for a few very large enterprise clients.
In 2006, QWASI decided to deliver their award-winning innovative solutions to a growing market via a tool called the Mobile Marketing Center. This solution would help its clients communicate with customers 24/7, detect customer trends, preferences, and optimize their marketing strategies. QWASI’s testing and development initially took place on servers that QWASI managed and hosted themselves.
When QWASI was ready to make its new tool publicly available, they knew their hosting solution would need to scale rapidly to handle the increased traffic they expected.
“We weighed the costs of building upon our own ‘data center’ against the benefits of partnering with a hosting provider,” QWASI Chief Technical Officer Jon Thies explained. “It was immediately clear that a hosting provider would not only be more cost-effective, they would simply be better equipped to manage our infrastructure. We’re application guys – they’re hosting guys. We can accomplish more with them focusing on the infrastructure for us.”
QWASI had an employee who had previously worked for Hostway, and suggested the company’s decision-makers see what the hosting provider could offer.
“Hostway came highly recommended, and provided several unique qualities,” Thies explained. “We have servers with an uptime of over 1,000 days. It’s nice not to have to reboot a server for three years.”
The executives at QWASI were also impressed with the expertise displayed by Hostway’s personnel, both in helping them migrate to Hostway’s servers, and in adapting as QWASI’s needs changed.
Hostway’s partnerships with other technology companies helped QWASI meet technical needs beyond those they expected a hosting provider to address. Companies like R1Soft provided a backup solution, while StillSecure provided QWASI with additional resources and expertise for security. Internally, QWASI has migrated to Hostway’s hosted applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint.
When Hostway became SAS 70 Type II certified in 2010, this certification became a major selling point for QWASI’s prospective key enterprise customers.
“A lot of our competitors don’t offer the certifications that Hostway does,” Thies said. “First SAS 70, and now SSAE 16. We’re able to offer our clients the added confidence that certification brings.”
As their security needs continue to evolve, QWASI has come to Hostway with new challenges and has been impressed with the hosting provider’s willingness to adapt to meet their specific needs.
“When we bring them a challenge, they don’t say, ‘No.’ They say, ‘I’ll see how we can make that happen.’” Thies said. “I wish I could get that kind of service everywhere.”
From the time QWASI chose Hostway as their hosting service provider in 2006, the growth of their business has accelerated rapidly. QWASI now runs 13 managed servers at Hostway, and is adding an average of one to two servers each quarter.
“Two years ago in October, we acquired four servers to reach eight total, and we grew into that,” Thies said. “Then we added a couple more, and quickly grew into those. In the last few years we’ve grown from a company that could be hosted out of a garage to an enterprise that runs sophisticated data analysis for some of the world’s largest companies, and Hostway has kept pace with us every step of the way.”
Today, QWASI offers its technology solutions as a blend of social, local and mobile solutions, with the scalability for the world’s biggest brands to manage communication with their end mobile and social users. The scalability of the platform or server environment is important, as large corporations track how their regional and local marketing teams interact with various clients around the world. Managing the Big Data and analysis that is collected with all these conversations is important for producing the predictive analytics that allow brands to harness their international and local reputations.
“Our enterprise customers receive dedicated hardware, so there can be no impact on SLAs,” Thies said. “That’s basically how we’ve grown. The customer size and throughput requirements dictate the deployment of dedicated servers.”
This flexibility, combined with Hostway’s partnerships, skills and resources, has made Hostway an intrinsic part of QWASI’s success.
“We have been very fortunate to have found Hostway,” Thies said. “Backup, security, certifications, flexibility – they have met each need we’ve come up with.”
Customer: clubZone
Industry: Ecommerce, Entertainment
Challenges: clubZone required a hosting provider that would offer a tailored hosting plan in order to address its unique situation – and a pricing structure that accommodated traffic fluctuation.
Solution: Web Presence
clubZone needed a tailored hosting plan and pricing structure that would accommodate their fluctuating traffic.
Business Outcome: clubZone’s site traffic dramatically increases throughout December, culminating in 20 fold traffic at the end of the month to accommodate New Years Eve ticket sales.
Hostway worked closely with clubZone to craft a solution that addressed the customization required to meet their hosting needs and guaranteed 100% network uptime during peak traffic periods.
clubZone relies on a combination of colocation and managed hosting solutions from Hostway. When the peak season begins for clubZone.com, Hostway’s solutions include the addition of temporary servers to meet the demands of the traffic influx. Rapid scalability, tailored specifically to its needs, affords clubZone peace of mind in knowing Hostway has them covered, regardless of the site’s traffic level.
Uptime is of the utmost importance to clubZone, as a single day down in December could cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. During most of the year clubZone.com will see roughly 4-5 Mb of traffic per second; however, during the month of December, the volume climbs to more than 100+ Mb of traffic per second. The company’s heaviest traffic volume occurs within a 12-hour window leading up to New Years Eve, resulting in approximately 15,000 ticket sales in a very short period of time. December’s sales of New Year’s Eve event ticket sales represent 60-70% of clubZone’s annual revenues. A crash during this critical time frame would be catastrophic for business. clubZone relies on the experts at Hostway to manage the sharp influx in traffic – equating to sales – and ensure optimal site performance.
“I can add or subtract servers according to my business needs – no other hosting company I considered gave me this kind of flexibility coupled with a 100% network uptime guarantee,” said Mike Schwarz, clubZone President
From January through November clubZone.com generates an average of 1.2 million visitors per month to the site with an average of 4 million visitors during the month of December. Site traffic dramatically increases throughout December, culminating in 20 fold traffic at the end of the month to accommodate New Years Eve ticket sales. clubZone required a hosting provider that would offer a tailored hosting plan in order to address its unique situation – and a pricing structure that accommodated traffic fluctuation.
Even in unique situations Hostway provides the customization and rapid scalability needed to meet the hosting needs of any company. Hostway has provided clubZone with the security of a 100% network uptime guaranteecoupled with the flexibility offered by adding temporary services during the busiest of times.
Customer: Other Images
Industry: Ecommerce, Photography
Challenges: Originally, Other Images simply required a small volume of image banks housed within a single server. But when they begin to grow rapidly, their needs quickly expanded.
Solution: Storage Management
Originally, Other Images simply required a small volume of image banks housed within a single server. But when they begin to grow rapidly, their needs quickly expanded.
Business Outcome: Currently, Other Images adds approximately 10,000-15,000 images per month to image banks now hosted on eight high performance managed servers.
Hostway, Other Images taps into a consultative approach to customer service and technical support. Not only has Hostway set up each new server individually, but Hostway’s support technicians have also recommended new software to transfer the large repository of image files from one managed server to another. Other Images is currently moving 1.2 million images in three different sizes for a total of 3.6 million files.
With Hostway’s assistance, the recommended software, and Hostway’s ongoing support, Other Images avoids the delays often associated with large file-transfer projects. As Other Images’ president Carlos Angel noted, “This file transfer project was one of significant scale and complexity. Hostway’s advice on software and their support throughout the process meant it went smoothly for us and was unnoticed by our customers.”
To best serve its customers, Other Images requires the fast upload of high-resolution photographs. With their Latin American presence, proximity to their wires in order to transfer images at rapid speed was essential. Hostway’s Tampa data center offers both the bandwidth and the relative proximity needed to fully serve Other Images’ requirements.
Another challenge unique to Other Images is the need to physically move hard drives from Latin America to the Tampa hosting facility on a monthly basis. Most hosting providers were not capable of assisting Other Images with this task. Hostway, however, offers support in shipping and receiving as well as handling issues that may arise with customs.
Originally, when founded in 2004, Other Images simply required a small volume of image banks housed within a single managed server. With rapid growth, their needs quickly expanded to three high performance managed servers to store their fast growing repository of high-resolution images. Currently, Other Images adds approximately 10,000-15,000 images per month to image banks now hosted on eight high performance managed servers.
As Other Images concentrates on growing its business, Hostway stays focused on smooth operations for Other Images’ hosting infrastructure. Using both Hostway and another hosting provider concurrently has proven to Other Images that Hostway is a premium hosting provider. As a result of this comparison, Other Images is now in the process of transferring all of their hosting to Hostway.
Customer: ACH Federal
Industry: Financial
Challenges: ACH Federal has started with three Managed servers with Hostway and expects to grow.
Solution: CRM Infrastructure
When ACH Federal needed a CRM solution, they decided hosting the software in the cloud would be the most cost-effective solution.
Business Outcome: Hostway provides top quality services that ACH Federal relies on to run its systems.
ACH Federal needed a CRM solution for its business and turned to FrontRange Solutions, the makers of the GoldMine CRM Software Solution. ACH Federal decided with its FrontRange Business Partner, Anton Systems, Inc. (www.antonsystems.com), that hosting the software in the cloud was the best option for the company. Anton Systems recommended that Hostway do the hosting, and they provided the customization and database work for the project.
ACH Federal decided to outsource the hosting to conserve its cash as well as its IT resources. Additionally, it was the fastest way to get up and running. ACH Federal was attracted to Hostway because it is an industry leader withdata centers in 14 countries worldwide. While ACH Federal did its due diligence on Hostway, ensuring that it provides high-level security, world-class uptime, and excellent customer support, it also relied on its strategic relationship with Anton Systems and the trust which had been built between them.
ACH Federal has started with three managed servers with Hostway and expects to grow. Hostway’s systems are scalable, so the firm can easily add servers, racks, etc. without a problem. The set-up with Hostway provides ACH Federal with complete control over its systems without incurring the high cost of managing and maintaining them independently. Relying on Hostway’s industry experience and expertise, ACH Federal knows that Hostway can perform at its best by concentrating on its core business just as ACH Federal can do with its electronic payment processing services.
Customer: ShopVisible
Industry: E-commerce, SaaS
Solution: E-commerce, Compliance
ShopVisible’s growing customer base necessitated a robust, scalable hosting solution. Hostway provided a reliable, customized, PCI-compliant infrastructure, while also offering a service relationship that far exceeded ShopVisible’s expectations.
ShopVisible powers the commerce platform that enables world-class online retailers to run all aspects of their business in one place, from order management to returns. From initial site design or re-design, to multi-channel strategies, search engine optimization implementation, content management, order management, CRM, shipping, back office systems and analytics, ShopVisible is a complete e-commerce software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution.
ShopVisible has experienced steady client growth since its incorporation in 2006, and related data requirements rose in turn. Foreseeing the expense and inefficiency of managing the infrastructure for these services in-house, ShopVisible sought a third-party hosting provider.
ShopVisible powers the entire online commerce businesses for major retailers and brands, so uptime and stability are mission-critical. ShopVisible needed a provider with backup procedures and redundancies that would reduce potential interruptions that may be caused by hardware failures or even scheduled maintenance.
Any potential hosting partner also needed to comply with rigorous Payment Card Industry (PCI) standardssafeguarding the user information and credit card data that would pass through ShopVisible's system each day.
ShopVisible selected Hostway, with whom they had an existing relationship from a different project. Hostway was not only able to provide the backup procedures and redundancies that ShopVisible needed, but was able to build a custom infrastructure that could be integrated with ShopVisible's proprietary system.
In addition, Hostway helped ShopVisible meet PCI-compliance requirements, many of which were satisfied by Hostway's own internal compliance to stringent SSAE 16 credentials. ShopVisible could rest assured they were working with a vendor that understood the complex regulations involved.
Hostway Customizes Infrastructure for ShopVisible's Proprietary Systems
Hostway offered multiple value-added services for ShopVisible: Load-balancing optimizes resources and introduces redundancies by spreading requests to multiple servers; Hostway's managed Cisco Firewall solution protects its e-commerce clients without any disruption of traffic, with security managed by an advanced intrusion-detection solution.
But these add-ons would not work with ShopVisible's solution straight out of the box.
"We have a proprietary system – it works in a specific way," explained Jignesh Patel, ShopVisible Director of IT. "So everything we use at Hostway – from firewall and switches to load balancing and backup – the entire solution is customized for us."
What amazed Patel was not just the service provider's ability to customize the infrastructure, but also the fact that he doesn't have to remind them about the specifications when making updates and changes.
"I don't have to give Hostway specific instructions on how we need it to work," Patel said. "When I say ‘I need a web server,' they automatically customize it to work with our proprietary system – they know exactly how much RAM we need, and they customize it all for us."
ShopVisible Grows, Hostway Keeps Pace
In recent years, ShopVisible clients have experienced explosive growth, many of them more than doubling in size. The company was pleased to see that Hostway not only kept in step with them, but went above and beyond to clear the path for continued growth.
"The clients we support are quite different than when we signed on with Hostway, in terms of scale and needs," Patel said. "Hostway has proven equally fit at servicing ShopVisible in each stage of its evolution."
When ShopVisible decided to expand its infrastructure in step with its growth, Hostway worked closely with ShopVisible's internal IT – who visited Hostway's Austin data center in person – to design a scalable solution that would fit ShopVisible's changing needs. In addition, Hostway advised on a deployment plan to minimize downtime to the current production environment.
Hostway Provides Personal, Proactive Attention
As ShopVisible's hosting needs continued to grow, Hostway provided ShopVisible with a dedicated account manager who possessed intimate knowledge of the data and storage requirements of the company as well as an understanding of its business model and unique needs. A dedicated team now provides ShopVisible with fast issue resolution and an experienced consultant to look to for advice.
This proactive staff management has helped ensure that any problems are resolved quickly by one or more of the staff members who are fully briefed on ShopVisible's custom setup.
"The Hostway team is excellent at communicating with each other," said Patel. "If I tell something to one team member, the others all know it immediately."
In addition, the Hostway team understood the importance of infrastructure reliability to ShopVisible and their customers.
Josh Lloyd, CTO and co-founder of ShopVisible, praised Hostway's dedication to managed services.
"Hostway's proactive managed service has worked to make a good service even better," Lloyd said. "They diagnose potential issues before they exist."
ShopVisible Becomes a Hostway Reseller
In 2012, Hostway launched a Reseller Program to offer discounts and commissions to companies that resold or referred Hostway's services. ShopVisible became one of the hosting provider’s first reseller of Hostway’s resources (in that Hostway's servers are used to host ShopVisible's software).
As a demonstration of the commitment to ShopVisbile, Hostway served as a sponsor of ShopVisible's 2012 Client Connect event, and had staff on hand to help answer questions about the infrastructure side of product offerings.
"Many of our customers want to know who we're hosting with, since this obviously affects the service they receive," Lloyd explained. "It was extremely helpful to have Hostway at the event to answer questions and build trust with the customers directly, which in turn builds our customers' loyalty to us."
Hostway worked collaboratively from the beginning, and has grown hand-in-hand with ShopVisible, offering industry-leading uptime and customized managed services. It serves as a model reseller relationship, built around each side clearing the path to enhanced profits for the other.
Customer: GoalShare
Industry: Social Networking
Solution: Web Presence, Infrastructure Flexibility
GoalShare provides a platform for individuals to share their goals, holding themselves and each other accountable for success. Hostway provides the hosting expertise to respond to accelerating usage and avoid downtime, strong service and account management, and a 100% uptime guarantee.
The GoalShare idea came into focus in early 2008 as a personal tool of CEO Scott Spann as he prepared to compete at the Beijing Olympics. In his fifteen years of competitive swimming, the dual foundation of his drive to improve was goal-setting and accountability. To help him achieve his goals, he shared them with family, friends and coaches.
Spann realized that such goal-sharing transcends athletic endeavors – success for all individuals and companies is achieved by being motivated to complete a series of goals. Spann created GoalShare as a place for both the titular activity as well as positive social media exchange. Chris Voigt, COO of GoalShare, came on board after he learned of the project and started applying it to his everyday life.
Knowing the decision ahead of them would play a large role in their continued growth, GoalShare turned to its trusted colleagues for hosting company referrals. They learned about Hostway through their web design team.
“Our network consists of two hard commodities: the website and the hosting,” Voigt explained. “If the hosting works flawlessly, it allows us to grow our network. If the network continues to grow, we need more hosting space.”
Once GoalShare was in touch with Hostway Business Development Consultant Andrew Bruno, it became apparent where Hostway could be of service.
"We saw that their configuration was not ideal, and began the process of showing them how to get their platform running as efficiently as possible," Bruno said. “We’ve laid out a growth plan for them that explains how prices would change if their needs continue to grow.”
Hostway’s expertise was quickly evident to the GoalShare team.
GoalShare is set up with a single robust managed server, with plenty room to thrive and expand.
“Since switching from smaller servers to Hostway, the functionality of the site has been much faster,” Voigt said. “It was immediately clear that Hostway’s servers were more suitable for our needs.”
Through this transition, Hostway's account team and support were ever-present in making sure GoalShare had what it needed to reach its milestones.
Since joining Hostway, new users have been streaming in as GoalShare experiences 100% uptime and prepares to release its mobile application.
“We are very happy about everything that Hostway has done for us as we continue to grow,” Voigt said. “We’re excited to be adding a mobile app that will complement the existing website. Hostway will absolutely be involved with providing the platform for that project as well.”