TH: What challenges did you face entering the market in 2006 and how successful has FastNext been in overcoming them?
SR: Back in 2006, the Web hosting market was very competitive and competitors came to market almost daily it seemed. But providing quality services is not enough when no one knows your company as yet. So our challenge was to distinguish our services from the hosting giants and other well-known hosts.
We entered the marked as a “true multidomain” hosting provider. We designed MultiManager™ control panel to create full-featured domains. We developed customer-oriented reseller offerings. We implemented new technologies and served clients 25 hours a day. And it works! We’ve got pretty good customer feedback and were recommended as a reliable provider in various forum and chat reviews. Not bad results since 2006.
TH: Tell us about major victories or milestones the company has achieved so far and what accomplishments/goals you have in mind for 2008.
SR: We are about to extend the product portfolio and offer our clients Web design services. Our existing customers often ask for help with design and “Webmastering”. By the way, we started providing dedicated server hosting also by customers’ requests.
As for the goals for 2008, we’ll keep infrastructure development in mind. We’d like to scale up customer services and provide multi-language customer support. We’ll keep on improving business development and services…for this the sky’s the limit!
TH: You’ve spoken about the benefits of clustered hosting. How successful has FastNext been in making customers aware of the value in these services and how is customer adoption so far? Is this a growth area for the company?
SR: You know, Cliff, we always do our best to provide most progressive solutions to our customers. Money and investments dictate our plans at times. But online projects are treated more seriously now than it was in the ’90s. We just offered clustered hosting as an option and it’s getting traction. Our Web pages describe what clustered hosting is and what it’s needed for. If someone needs extra information, our support administrators, customer service and community forums are available round-the-clock.
TH: FastNext’s EasyStart Reseller program was recently introduced. How pleased are you with the market reaction so far? What other programs are in development?
SR: This program was developed to help those people, who would like to start hosting, but don’t know what to begin with. Our EasyStart plan allows one to create and host unlimited domains for only $3.95 a month. It has cPanel and WHM access with Fantastico and RVSkin plus dozens of other awesome features. This package set resellers’ minds free, because they don’t need to stew how to get high-end servers and suitable software. We just make the start easy!
Besides reseller hosting we provide dedicated server hosting as well, as I mentioned previously. So our new programs will address this product group. For instance, our gaming server offerings are coming soon.
TH: FastNext has an excellent backup system in place for its client base. Are customers scrutinizing this service more these days in light of certain natural disasters and security breaches? Would you be considering an online backup service offering in the future based on strong customer response to backups in general?
