Today marks exactly 3 years since the launch of our first hosting services. Let’s try to do a summary of our 3 years of (living) together.
The 3rd birthday of WEDOS deserves another summary of the current status, a reflection on our achievements and an outline of future plans.
We will be drawing a lot of text from last year. In places we will leave the original text from last year to show the development. It’ll be crossed out.
Current status
Building
We have successfully built and operate our own datacentre in our building (former air-raid shelter) with high quality facilities and infrastructure – double floor, air conditioning, free-cooling, stable fire extinguishing equipment with FM200 gas, backup power supply (3 x UPS, diesel generator). The capacity of our server room is about 6.000 1U positions. We are located in the beautiful South Bohemian town of Hluboká nad Vltavou. If you want to take a look under the hood, follow our Facebook and Google+ profiles or come visit us (by appointment anytime).
Servers
All our services and systems (still) run exclusively on reliable Fujitsu servers and disk arrays. We now have 242 servers in operation (169 a year ago) plus additional servers in stock and others as routers. FUJITSU as a hardware supplier is a great cooperation and we do not regret choosing Fujitsu. However, we are still in talks with other vendors and will now see if some services will run on other brands’ servers. We’ll see in the future. FUJITSU does not offer some model series.
Network
There have been many changes here over the past year. Our network has improved again. It’s connected 3 lines (10 Gbps each). One 10 Gbps route is to Prague – SITEL, the second to Prague – GTS and the third to České Budějovice. Each through a different technology. We are connected to the Internet via connectivity providers Kaora and CTD. At peak times, we achieve an average outgoing data traffic of 3200 Mbps (a year ago it was 1300). In times of DDoS attacks, we can withstand attacks of more than 6 or 7 Gbps. Our internal network is fully redundant and has 2x 10 Gbps (including backup switches, routers). More about our technical background and our connectivity graphs.
Staff
The project involves plus or minus 15 employees (last year we were plus or minus 17) – technicians, programmers, customer support staff, management, accountants. From Monday 16. 3 new recruits will join the customer support team in September.
Certification
We were the first in the industry to successfully pass ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification, which we successfully defended again this year. We have completed ISO 27001 – Information Security certification, which may be another attraction for all customers.
Domains
At the moment, we have a total of 131. 777 active domains – as of 13.9.2013 8:00 (exactly 3 years later):
At the moment there are 89.434 (today we will give you 90.000 🙂 )active domains – as of 13.9.2012 8:00 (exactly 2 years later):
- 96,508 62,111 (compared to 24,534 a year ago) .CZ domains
- 22,274 19,101 (compares to 4,149 a year ago) .EU domains
- 7,875 4,586 (compares to 1,521 a year ago) .COM domains
- 2,137 1,388 (compared to 574 a year ago) .NET domains
- 875,594 (compared to 196 a year ago) .ORG domains
- 340,315 (compared to 72 a year ago) .BIZ domains
- 1,558 1,100 (compared to 260 a year ago) .INFO domains
- 210 244 (compared to 46 a year ago) .NAME domains
Just for comparison’s sake, it was exactly a year ago: 89,434, 2 years ago 31,352. Here you can clearly see our growth dynamics.
Here is the development in the table:
| Domain | Status 2012 | Status 2013 | Retrieved from | Percentages | Note |
| .cz | 62 111 | 96 508 | 34 397 | 55% | |
| .eu | 19 101 | 22 274 | 3 173 | 17% | Fewer extensions for action domains |
| .com | 4 586 | 7 875 | 3 289 | 72% | |
| .net | 1 388 | 2 137 | 749 | 54% | |
| .org | 594 | 875 | 281 | 47% | |
| .biz | 315 | 340 | 25 | 8% | |
| .info | 1 100 | 1 558 | 458 | 42% | |
| .name | 244 | 210 | -34 | -14% | |
| Total | 89 434 | 131 777 | 42 343 | 47% |
For.CZ domains, we have long been the fastest growing registrar. We are currently 4th largest, but we would like to get to 3rd soon. instead of. We didn’t meet the goal of getting to the “box” by 3. birthday, but that’s okay. Currently, over 8.99% of Czech domains are in our country. We have improved by almost 2.7% of Czech domains in a year.
We are the 2nd largest Czech registrar for .EU domains. Globally, we are at 37. position.
Hosting services
- Webhosting – we currently have 38,594 (23, 716 a year ago and 9,099 2 years ago) active NoLimit web hosts (plus thousands more multiwebs and Extra and MiniWebs).
- VPS – we have 3,806 active virtual server users (2,506 a year ago and 1,160 two years ago), which is more than 10,000 active VPS modules
- Dedicated servers – there are currently 38 of them
- WEDOS Disk – 8,250 active users (2,850 a year ago)
Numbers in a clear table:
| Service | Status 2012 | Status 2013 | Retrieved from | Percentages |
| Web hosting | 23 716 | 38 594 | 14 878 | 63% |
| VPS | 2 506 | 3 806 | 1 300 | 52% |
| WEDOS disc | 2 850 | 8 250 | 5 400 | 189% |
We have already confirmed (according to CZ.NIC statistics) that we became the biggest hosting company in the Czech Republic this April.
We are still doing better than expected with virtual servers. We are not resting on our laurels and we are preparing a lot of news.
We have quite a few dedicated servers, but this is due to the fact that we are not currently dedicated to them and have put them on the back burner. Instead, we focus more on other services. That’s why we are short of server stock and we don’t promote this service. However, if a serious buyer inquires with us, we will provide the server.
WEDOS Disk is just getting off the ground and we are still learning how to sell it :-).
Take a look at some nice charts:
Statistics of .CZ domain growth at WEDOS for the last month:
.CZ domain growth statistics for the last month (comparison with competitors):
Statistics of the growth of .CZ WEDOS domains over the whole period of WEDOS existence:
Statistics of .CZ domain growth for 3 years overall market:
Statistics of growth of .CZ domain hosting hosted by WEDOS from December 5, 2011 to September 13, 2013 :
Statistics of growth in hosting (hosted .cz domains) since 1.1.2012:
Statistics of growth in DNS servers (.cz domains with our DNS servers) since 1.1.2012:
From the graphs you can clearly see who rules in the Czech Republic 🙂 and you can see that almost 80% of all domains are hosted here.
Some very interesting statistics
For example, in 3 years of existence we have:
- received more than 458.342 141.484 orders
- accepted more than 252,000 120,000 payments through the bank
- received1,667,542 513,397 emails
- 260,409 127,038 emails were handled (answered)
- replied to 119.813 66.290 chats
- dealt with over 3,000 1,533 telephone calls
- 6,200,000 GB of data (we hope we are counting correctly 🙂 ) We don’t even count that anymore, because it is many times…
Interesting figures in a clear table:
| Other statistics | Status 2012 | Status 2013 | Retrieved from | Percentages | Note |
| Physical servers | 169 | 242 | 73 | 43% | |
| Staff | 17 | 18 | 1 | 6% | |
| Orders | 141 484 | 458 342 | 316 858 | 224% | |
| Payments via bank | 120 000 | 252 000 | 132 000 | 110% | Renewals are also applicable |
| Emails received | 513 397 | 1 667 542 | 1 154 145 | 225% | There are more automated messages |
| Completed emails | 127 038 | 260 409 | 133 371 | 105% | In principle, the same thing is still being dealt with |
| Completed chats | 66 290 | 119 813 | 53 523 | 81% | |
| Telephone calls | 1 533 | 3 000 | 1 467 | 96% | |
| Satisfied customers | Lots of | Even more | Awesome | 100% |
Loyalty share programme
Last summer, we launched the Loyalty Share Program, which was (and is) an extremely interesting event. The interest in our shares has exceeded all our expectations. We sold 30,000 shares in 52 minutes and have about 300 new shareholders.
Some things were a little stuck, but otherwise we rate it great. Shares are sold between bidders for many multiples of the purchase price. However, we see the real value still higher.
Is it worth it? And when are we finally going to go bankrupt?
In connection with the launch of the Loyalty Share Programme, we have published all our economic figures. We’re doing well.
For the rest, we will partially use the year-old commentary: We constantly encounter mistrust towards us, caused by suspiciously low prices for our services. According to these views, it is impossible to make any money, let alone ever get a return on the investment. Or our service must be legitimately bad.
We can afford low prices for services because we have been able to significantly reduce many costs, not at the expense of quality. We have simply managed to “talk” many suppliers into extreme discounts, we have chosen cost-effective technologies, we do not use any expensive outsourcing (with a few exceptions for things that we really cannot handle ourselves), etc. Everything is explained in detail in the article How is it possible that we have such low prices? .
In many ways, we have learned from history, we know what worked well and what didn’t in the earlier days when we were engaged in the same activities for 13 years, what turned out to be a good way and what we should definitely not go into.
We founded the company on a green field, we did not have to drag any skeletons in the closet with us, we could do everything from the beginning (again, informed by history and experience) completely according to our own ideas.
Of course, we had to invest a lot of money in the beginning of the project to buy a property, rebuild it, build a server room and all the necessary infrastructure. But without this, it would be pointless, we would be just another one of many “garage” companies and we would not be able to operate our services at a high quality level.
Next, we need to understand the business model we have chosen. We are not targeting a small number of large customers from whom we would like to receive large sums of money. In contrast, we run a service for the “masses” of smaller customers. Our goal is not to have thousands or tens of thousands of customers, but hundreds of thousands and millions. To do that, of course, we will soon have to expand into other countries. Thus, our current numbers of customers and active services is only a small fraction of what you want to achieve.
In this context, it should be noted that several customers from Poland, Austria, Germany, Russia and Ukraine have already found their way to us. Although we don’t have the appropriate language version, we already have several different customers in each of these countries (especially on VPS).
Our current income already fully covers all operating costs (salaries, energy, connectivity, etc.). The only thing that still needs to be invested in is hardware. But that’s what we went with. We know that the return on investment will be many years. You can’t do big “business” without that today.”
We believe we have clearly demonstrated that we can do hosting and have a bright future ahead of us.
What else we are planning in 2013
- Launch of a new service 🙂 (we won’t reveal what it is yet)
- Add new domain extensions
- Modifying VPS parameters
- Web hosting improvements
- We are preparing news in administration and improvements to existing services and minor adjustments to the offer.
- We are working on offering our services in English so that we can start expanding outside the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Further language versions will follow.
- … and a few other things and news that we can’t (or don’t want to) disclose yet.
Quotes from the year before last: “Why do new things take us so long? It might seem that we take too long to develop new things or deploy new technologies, to the point where we seem completely incapable. But we approach all things very thoroughly – we don’t settle for the first solution that comes to mind. We plan everything thoroughly, think through the connections and relationships with current and future projects and technologies, implement, test thoroughly, sometimes let something sit for a few days (morning wise evening). And only when we are sure that the developed product is perfect, we release it to the people. This makes our services not only functional, but above all reliable and of high quality.
Another reason why some things take us longer is the full automation we keep emphasizing. We make things so that we don’t even know about them – so that they order themselves, set up, invoice themselves, so that there is a simple “clickable” interface for customers, so that there are detailed intuitive instructions for everything, etc. We have succeeded very well with domains – we do not deal with almost anything, in fact, we do not even have any employee dedicated to dealing with domain issues – there is no need at all, the customer can click everything online. Just to give you an idea, we’ve already processed over 140,000 orders (domain registration, re-registration and renewal, web hosting and VPS setup) and thus a similarly high number of invoices, which is quite a good number, and the growth rate is still increasing. Can you imagine how we would do it by hand? 🙂 “.
Just for interest, compare the above figures with what we are achieving now.
We do our services for you – for our customers. From that perspective, we appreciate any feedback. We need to know what you expect and what you want from us. If you have any requirements, don’t be afraid to write to us. Thank you in advance.
Problems? There is still room for improvement
There is still room for improvement. From time to time we are “troubled” by (almost regular) strong DDoS attacks, which are getting stronger and stronger. We manage to eliminate them successfully (and without failures) thanks to the powerful and high-quality equipment we have.
Evaluation of 3 years of operation
Our assessment? Same as a year ago or 2 years ago. Satisfied with the growth, but we must not rest on our laurels. We still have a lot of work to do.
Let us know how you rate us. Thank you in advance.
Want to know more about us? Come and see us!
The open days were this year in the spring and will be again next year. We will combine the event with a general meeting of our shareholders.
Now you can arrange a tour of our WEDOS Datacentre at any time. We are happy to accommodate.
Sweet birthday reward at the end of this article
For all honest readers of this article and those interested in web hosting, we bring a sweet reward at the end. Today, on the 13th. 9. 2013 you can buy web hosting with a discount of up to 55% using the annual discount coupon – 3COST. You can send the discount coupon to your friends and acquaintances and it’s valid all day long as we celebrate our third year of existence.
We also offer a 5-10% discount on the renewal of our services (except for domains). Take advantage of this unique offer.