4 years later, 1461 days of life Hosting WEDOS

[gtranslate]

Today marks exactly 4 years since the launch of our first hosting services. Let’s try to do a recap of our 4 years (together).

It’s here again. Time is running out and we are a year older…

Already 4. WEDOS birthday certainly deserves another annual summary of the current state of play, a reflection on our achievements and an outline of our future plans.

Again, we will draw a lot of text from last year and the year before. In places we will leave the original text from last year or the year before 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 and Twitter or come and visit us (as part of our Open Days or by appointment at any time).

We will have a second motor-generator later this year.

This year we started preparing the WEDOS 2 datacentre, which we would like to build for our clients next year. Thanks to this, we will be able to offer the most reliable services on the Czech market. We will have two completely independent buildings and we will offer our clients 100% guaranteed availability for selected services. By the end of the year we would like to have the authorities’ statements ready and start building in the spring.

Servers

Until last year, our services and systems were running on reliable Fujitsu servers and disk arrays. What we predicted last year has happened. We were selecting and testing new servers and FUJITSU did not have a matching model. Since this May we have also HEWLETT-PACKARD servers. Since the end of spring we have been deploying servers with SSD drives on all new services. Of course, we use only server SSDs.

We now have 337 servers in operation (a year ago it was 242) plus other servers in stock and others as routers.

Network

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 5,000 Mbps (a year ago it was 3,200). In times of DDoS attacks, we can withstand attacks of more than 20 to 30 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.

We are currently focusing on greater resilience to DDoS attacks and we should soon be making some major changes to our network and introducing one revolutionary new feature. Which is our current priority.

Staff

The project involves plus or minus 21 employees (last year we had about 18) – technicians, programmers, customer support staff, management, accountants. We will add another one from October and another one from January at the latest.

Certification

We have ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications, which we successfully defended again this year. We have also defended our ISO 27001 certification – information security, which may be an additional attraction for all customers.

Domains

At the moment, we have a total of 175. 767 active domains – as of 13.9.2014 8:00 (exactly 3 years later).

  • 134,339 (compared to 96,508 a year ago) .CZ domains
  • 23,472 (compared to 22,274 a year ago) .EU domains
  • 11,497 (compared to 7,875 a year ago) .COM domains
  • 2,810 (compared to 2,137 a year ago) .NET domains
  • 1,182 (compared to 875 a year ago) .ORG domains
  • 385 (compared to 340 a year ago) .BIZ domains
  • 1,809 (compared to 1,158 a year ago) .INFO domains
  • 273 (compared to 210 a year ago) .NAME domains

Just for comparison – exactly 2 years ago it was: 89,434, 3 years ago 31,352. Here you can clearly see our growth dynamics. This is very positive because the market is stagnating and so are most of the competitors.

Here is the development in the table:

DomainStatus 2014Status 2013Retrieved fromPercentagesNote
.cz134 33996 50837 83139% 
.eu23 47222 2741 1985%We don’t do actions
.com11 4977 8753 62246% 
.net2 8102 13767332% 
.org1 18287530735% 
.biz3853404513% 
.info1 8091 55825116% 
.name2732106330% 
Total175 767131 77743 99033% 

For.CZ domains, we have long been the fastest growing registrar. We are currently 3. the largest, but we would like to get to 2. instead of. Currently, over 11.64% (8.99% a year ago) of Czech domains are in our country. In one year we have improved by almost 2.65% of Czech domains.

We are the 2nd largest Czech registrar for .EU domains.

Hosting services

  • Webhosting – we currently have 54,406 (38,594 a year ago and 23,716 a year earlier and 9,099 3 years ago) active NoLimit web hosts (plus thousands more multiwebs and Extra and MiniWebs). In total, we host almost 85,000 domains on paid web hosting.
  • VPS – we have 5,291 active virtual server users (3,806 a year ago and 2,506 a year earlier and 1,160 3 years ago), which is more than 15, 000 active VPS modules
  • Dedicated servers – there are currently 58 of them (38 over a year ago)
  • WEDOS Disk – 8,838 active users (8,250 a year ago)

Numbers in a clear table:

ServiceStatus 2014Status 2013Retrieved fromPercentages
Web hosting54 40638 59415 81241%
VPS5 2913 8061 45839%
WEDOS disc8 8388 2505887%

Our autonomous system hosts the most domains in the whole Czech Republic and since everything is hosted in our building, our datacenter is one of the most important buildings in terms of hosting in the Czech Republic.

We have already confirmed (according to CZ.NIC statistics) that we became the biggest hosting company in the Czech Republic last 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. For example, our VPS SSD has been actively used by about 500 customers since June 2014.

We have quite a few dedicated servers, but this is because we don’t take them as a priority. Rather as an additional service for our customers who are no longer satisfied with the highest version of our VPS. That is why we do not promote them in any particular way. Of course, 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) for the last year:

hosting statistics

Statistics of growth in DNS servers (.cz domains with our DNS servers) over the last year:

DNS hosting statistics

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 4 years of existence we have:

  • received more than 713,766 orders
  • received more than 439,338 payments through the bank
  • received 2,745,777 emails
  • Handled (replied to) 421,607 emails
  • replied to 187,623 chats
  • dealt with over 4,000 phone calls

Interesting figures in a clear table:

Other statisticsStatus 2014Status 2013Retrieved fromPercentagesNote
Physical servers3372429539% 
Staff2118317% 
Orders713 766458 342255 42456% 
Payments via bank439 338252 000187 33874%Renewals are also applicable
Emails received2 745 7771 667 5421 078 23565%There are more automated messages
Completed emails421 607260 409161 19862%In principle, the same thing is still being dealt with
Completed chats187 623119 81367 81057% 
Telephone calls4 0003 0001 00033% 
Satisfied customersLots ofEven moreAwesome100% 

Loyalty share programme

The summer before last, we launched the Loyalty Share Programme, 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.

We still have some “gaps” in shareholder information and communication with shareholders, but we will improve.

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 2014

  • Launch of a new service 🙂 (we won’t reveal what it is yet)
  • Edit VPS 100% SSD parameters
  • Web hosting improvements
  • We are preparing news in administration and improvements to existing services and minor adjustments to the offer.
  • Official service offer 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 4 years of operation

Our assessment? Same as a year ago or 2 years ago (or 3 years ago). It’s flying by… 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!

This year’s Open Days will be in a few days – 19. and 20 September 2014 in Hluboká nad Vltavou. The event programme and registration are here.

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. 2014 you can buy web hosting with an interesting discount. The discount and the discount coupon will be announced at 15:00 on social media. The value will gradually decrease and so whoever comes first will get a better discount. Get ready, because today we celebrate our fourth year of existence.

We will also offer a small discount on the renewal of our services (except for domains). Take advantage of this unique offer, which will also be announced on social media this afternoon at 3pm.