We currently use servers at theplanet, burst, dedicatednow, and caro.net. I was under the impression that all provided 24×7 support. I realize that staffing is probably lighter on the night shifts because there are usually less issues raised.

We recently had an incident happen at Burst that was eye opening. A server went down in the evening after busines hours. It turns out that the server had a hardware issue and needed a new drive and an os reinstall.

The ticket was referred their build team because it needed a new drive. The build team only works 9-5. I called them to see why the delay and found out that the techs on night shift do not have access to drives if one needs replaced. This was very eye opening.

I was able to pull some strings and have the tech call one of the owners and get access to the drives. Alright I thought. Then I was updated again by the tech that it turns out to be a motherboard hardware problem. And, you guessed it, the ticket was again forwarded to the build team and I was told nothing could be done until they came in at 9am, which was 9 hours away.

The lesson here is that not all datacenters provide full 24×7 coverage. Just because there are techs on shift 24×7 doesn’t mean they provide full 24×7 support. In this case the techs do not have access to new hardware if it is needed and there is no senior tech on the night shift to handle second ro third level issues.

When purchasing a dedicated server make sure to scrutinze the off hours support structure. Most dedicated servers are critical and cannot be down for over 9 hours just waiting on the day shift. It is helpful to compare dedicated server providers to make sure you get a datacenter that can provide the support you need.

Best Regards,
Rodney

Everyday as I talk to website customer’s the pool is smaller and smaller. We used to build websites for Real Estate Agents, but now most agents use a Real Estate portal system, like Agent Image. The same is true for Churchs, Restuarants, etc. These specialize portals based on an industry combined with the hundreds of Website Builder tools like RVSiteBuilder. All of these portals and website builder tools reduce the number of shared hosting plans that are being purchased. Five years ago they would all have gotten shared hosting plans and had a website deisgner build them a website or build it themselves.

Shared hosting companies that offer hosting plans will find it increasingly harder to get new signups as customers flock to these solutions. These solutions are really just web based hosted applications.

There seems to be large growth for companies developing hosted applications to offset this loss in shared hosting. The other advantge to a company developing hosted application versus a web host is that they can charge a highly monthly fee because they are providing an application with the hosting instead of just the hosting. This gives them a competitive advantage and takes them out of fighting the thousands of shared host on cost, storage, and bandwidth.

If you operate a shared hosting company I would recommend investing the development dollars to build a portal system for an industry and make the industry your niche. You can charge higher monthly fees and have less competition.

If you are staying in the hosting business and not shifting to developing hosted applications then I would recommend going to Virtual Private Servers and Managed Dedicated Servers. These 2 areas seem to be growing exponentially. More and more mid sized companies are eliminating their IT staffs and outsourcing their datacenters and back room servers.

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Check out our new Web Hosting News and Hosting Press Releases. Come back daily to catch the very latest in web hosting news.

The Datamine search engine is offering a free $10 to every new signup.

Resellerconnection.com our sister website for reseller web hosting is looking for some good reseller hosting articles. Please submit them to rodney@resellerconnection.com.

Also, check out our reseller web hosting company page at www.hostchart.com.

Finally, we are looking for a sales and marketing manager for our charlotte website design business, Advantage1Web.com.

And check out the latest $139/month dedicated server special at the affordable web hosting company, Roundberry.com.

Hostchart just recently launched some new search tools that incorporate Google Maps functionality. Here is a sample of a search for the web hosting comapny, HostedToday.com, http://www.hostchart.com/hccomap.asp?ID=4242.

Wehave also added a new Web Hosting Press Release system. Please send all of your press releases to press@hostchart.com and we will get them published.

Hostchart is getting ready to announce a whole set of discounts on hosting products and services for web hosts in our directory. Stay tuned it should be exciting.

We are offering some great web hosting advertising specials across our network this fall. Send us an email at sales@hostchart.com for all of the details.

Check out the latest web hosts news and press releases on our website, HostChart.

We are putting together a featured article on the state of the Reseller Web Hosting industry. Please send us your comments and feedback, and we will include them in this web hosting article.

Best Regards,
Rodney

It looks like HostingCon 2007 was a big success. I spoke with Hartland Ross of Ebridge Marketing and Rob Moore of DemoWolf and both were very excited about the turn out and leads the convention generated.

It looks like HostingCon will be with us for the years to come.

For some reason we seem to be in a resurgence of reseller web hosting companies running large promotions. Please check out some of them on our resller web hosting showcase page.

Best egards,

We had a rash of press releases from web hosting companies today. C I Host announced that Chris Falkner was up for an Entreprenuer award,

123together.com announced a solution for small web hosting companies to offer Microsoft Exchange Hosting. HostSearch announced a new article system.

We are also developing a plan to add a better news and article system to HostChart. Currently, it is still mostly manual.

We are also pleased to announce some of our seo work for BigHostCompany.com is paying off. They have increased rankings quite nicely for quality web hosting.

Their are some very interesting new web hosting plans from quality web hosting company, BigHostCompany.

HostingCon is coming up soon. We hope to see you there. HostChart is offering a 15% discount on all advertising campaigns starting in June to help celebrate the summer.

Check out reseller hosting forums, ResellerForums.com, we are revamping this forum and taking it back over from the spammers. We look forward to many lively discussion about the current and future direction of the reseller web hosting market. This reseller forum has topics for both reseller hosting companies and people looking t obuy reseller plans.

Look at our new article for web hosting marketing in 2007.

in some of the foruma that I post in there have been a lot of questions about which web hosting comapny is the best. We have customer reviews on most web hosting companies that can be viewed at web hosting reviews.

Check it out for reviews of your web hosts. Submit a review of your hosting company also.

We are building a set of google map pages that will allow users to search for hosting companies using a map and zooming in on a town or area. This new feature should be ready in the next month. Stay tuned.