It’s been 2 months since we launched our domain and web hosting services, and 14 days since we launched VPS. We’ll do a little summary of what we’ve done and what we haven’t, what’s ahead of us and what we’re working on.
In 2 months of operation, we have processed 3200 orders (domain registrations, re-registrations and renewals, web hosting and VPS setup), which is quite a good number, and the growth rate is still increasing.
Web hosting
We have small and large customers. We have small sites and we also have sites with over 10,000 visitors a day. We are a cheap webhosting, but we want to be one of the best in the Czech Republic. We want to do cheap, fully automated and maximum quality and professional web hosting that can host both small and large projects.
We have solved the client demand for unlimited number of hosted domains by introducing a single additional service – unlimited number of aliases. Everything else and unlimited is included.
We often get questions or discussion posts that question whether we will host even demanding and visited sites at our mini price, or that if a customer has dozens of GB of data with us that we won’t want to host it. We have decided that we will and that we will stick to that and that we will not restrict or limit anyone in a complicated way.
Many people don’t believe our prices. According to them, we are subsidizing it or it’s all a scam. It’s not a scam, we’re not going to raise prices. From 1.12.2010 web hosting will cost 25 CZK per month (without VAT) permanently. We really have been able to reduce costs enough to afford such a low price and still not rip anything off. We are building a very high quality datacentre by Czech standards, we use professional hardware, we are building a solid and stable background. But significantly cheaper than the others.
If you are in doubt, you can try our web hosting. We offer a money back guarantee within 7 days. If you are not satisfied with our services or if your applications do not work on our web hosting, you can cancel it within 7 days from the establishment and we will refund your money.
Those who don’t believe us at all don’t mind. We will not force him to order our services. Time will tell whether our business plan succeeds or not and whether we can deliver what we promise.
Domains
Currently, the number of domains registered with us is almost 2000.
We currently offer CZ, EU, COM, NET, ORG and INFO domains. We are not working on any other endings at the moment. We consider these to be the most popular. Customers often ask about SK domains – we are not considering them at the moment, there is a lot of work and paperwork involved.
We recently launched a domain API to make it easier for customers with multiple domains who want to control them directly from their system. More functionality is in the pipeline for the API.
Due to high interest we have extended the promotion for .eu (for 100,-CZK without VAT) and .com (for 150,-CZK without VAT). This price is valid for all customers without the need to use any of our other services.
Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
Since launching the VPS 14 days ago, we have received so many orders that we are running out of hardware and were forced to quickly order 3 more blade servers and additional disk arrays. And the interest is not abating.
Administration
Some customers were initially a little confused by our customer administration. But we’ve worked on it a lot and things like this should be a thing of the past.
Our goal is that the customer does not need us for anything and can click everything online in the administration. That is also why 5 full-time programmers have been working on the administration, the website and the whole system.
Dedicated servers
The launch of dedicated servers was very late compared to the plans. The whole thing runs on electricity. The biggest problem was with the generator. Firstly, in the Czech Republic diesel generators are significantly more expensive than in neighbouring countries for some reason. Secondly, when we had already agreed with one Czech supplier on an interesting price and interesting conditions, after ordering some addendums and other conditions started to emerge, which had not been discussed before, and overall, with the vision of us as a certain customer, the effort fell through. So we ended it quickly.
Finally, we got a generator in Poland, which was delivered last week and will be plugged in this week or next. Only then can dedicated servers be launched. It is a smaller generator of 220 kVA, but according to our calculations it is enough for 1500 servers (including air conditioning and other things around).
Customer support
Support is officially only on weekdays from 7am to 8pm. However, even outside these times you can often find us at the cottage, even on weekends and holidays. And if we’re not online chatting at the moment, we respond to emails except during the night hours.
NONSTOP technical supervision is a matter of course. As soon as something breaks down or a server gets a bit out of breath, we are immediately informed via SMS and the situation is immediately resolved.
We are now training new colleagues for NONSTOP customer support and looking for more. It takes a lot of them to cover continuous traffic day and night, including weekends and holidays. We will gradually start to extend the support period until it is truly continuous.
We’re not a small company or a one-man show. There are 7 people working full-time on this project (and others are working part-time), and the company has a total of 19 employees.
Hardware
We are very excited about Fujitsu blade servers and we are very happy that we chose this solution and this supplier. They meet our requirements, we are very satisfied with the design and functionality, as well as the overall approach of the Czech branch of Fujitsu. For others, we were just one of many customers and they would stop caring about us after the purchase. This is not the case with Fujitsu, they have big plans for the future and we with them.
Datacentre construction
That being said, a lot of things run on electricity. And not just on the generator. The communication and negotiations with the unnamed monopoly energy company, which only promises deadlines and to this day nothing has happened, are absolutely catastrophic. So the electrical connection is not yet sufficiently reinforced. Which is fine with us at this point, because we are still surprised by the efficiency of the servers we use.
At the same time as the generator, other electrical switchboards and another UPS will be connected. Both backup and non-backup power will be supplied to each rack (as a backup in case of necessary shutdown or failure of the backup circuit). Our racks will have state-of-the-art surge protectors and each rack will be powered by 8 separate circuits that will not interfere with each other. So in case of a serious problem with one machine, not the whole rack or several racks will fail, but at most 1/8 of the rack. It’s an incredibly expensive solution because it’s about 4 times more expensive than without these protectors, but it will definitely help to meet our goals.
The air conditioners are in place, but they are also not plugged in yet, as there is no need for that either. We have relatively few servers and they hardly heat at all, so the heat is lost in the space.
We won’t be bothered by air conditioning at all until the end of winter. We are planning to make passages in the wall of the building for air conditioning, which will be used to draw cold air from the outside directly inside (direct freecooling, of course with some filters) and mix it into the indoor air. This will save us a lot of money and we may not even have to turn on the air conditioning in winter with fewer servers. Of course it will have some intelligent regulation to make it “just right” inside.
In time, we want to use the residual heat to heat our company’s offices, which are one floor up, which will bring us further significant cost savings.
These are all such cost-saving “little things”, but when you add it all up and add it all together, we really do have a significantly lower cost of everything than probably most of our competitors. And that’s why our prices are simply not a scam. Those who don’t believe, let them not believe. We’re clear and we’ve got it figured out.
Connectivity
So far we still have one 100 Mbps connection, the limit of which is fast approaching. Fortunately, this week Telefónica O2 should connect a second independent circuit, which will already have a speed of 1 Gbps .It should have been a long time ago, but again there is a very complicated administration and bureaucracy and the deadlines that were promised have never been met.
Looking at the increase in data traffic, we will probably order a 10 Gbps circuit soon as a precautionary measure given the delivery times. Since we have O2 backbone fibre optics terminated in the building, there are no limits.
You keep asking us why we are not yet connected in NIX and when we will be. But the question is whether it is really needed. After connecting another line, we will be connected via 3 different connectivity providers. Direct connection to NIX would only add costs, but there would be no perceptible improvement in the availability of our network. “Subscribing” to NIX via other providers is significantly cheaper than connecting directly to NIX. Unless NIX gets significantly cheaper 🙂 So we’ll see, we’re not too keen on NIX now.
Connectivity has been our only problem so far, as we experienced a network outage with one of our suppliers and had to secure another one immediately (during the night).