10 Years in Web Hosting Part 2

10 years ago, Stuart and I rented a dedicated server and sold a few pieces of web space on it. Little did we know what would lie ahead. It was the height of the dotcom boom and we’d tried a few ridiculous ideas that, with the benefit of hindsight, clearly weren’t going to work. Each time we had an idea we had to set up a website for it and so were exposed to the overpriced and poorly serviced web hosting market of the early noughties. I forget who suggested it first, but whoever it was the other agreed that we could easily do a better job than the suppliers we’d been dealing with, and 34SP.com was born.

We started out by offering a very basic hosting package, with what today would seem like ridiculously low storage and bandwidth limits. At the time it was the combination of including many features that other hosts considered extras – things like PHP scripting, MySQL databases and multiple full e-mail boxes – and a real effort to give high quality customer service that we felt stood us apart from the competition. That and the order of magnitude lower price than was common a decade ago.

As time went by, we allowed our services to be dictated by client demands so domain registration services, a natural compliment to web hosting, were the second product to feature on our site. We’ve since added different grades of hosting, right up to virtual servers and dedicated servers based around the same ethos – fair pricing and a real commitment to outstanding customer service.

We’re always looking at what to offer next to meet the needs that our clients have, and the needs they don’t know they have yet. We’ve taken a few wrong turns here and there but our portfolio of hosting services today reflects a number of products that tens of thousands of clients now find integral to their online presence and we are never forgetful of our position as a trusted supplier to them.

Of course throughout our time, we’ve used many suppliers of many products. We’ve used various credit card processing providers, hardware suppliers, transit providers and more. The one thing that sticks in my mind about almost all of them is the customer service experience. Sure, one server might use a slightly newer CPU than another, or the latency over one transit peer might be slightly less than their competitor, but the thing that I remember is what it was like to deal with them. Those that looked after us still have us as customers, those that don’t have been replaced.

We know that in the modern online marketplace, customers are free to choose. We know that you are free to choose a webhost just as we are free to choose a server supplier. We’re grateful for those of you that currently choose to trust us with your websites and will carry on improving and welcoming new customers with open arms.

I’m proud of the team and culture that we’ve nurtured here at 34SP.com. They’re all good at what they do, but it’s the overriding commitment to you, our customers, that really stands out. We’ll keep doing that, and you keep doing what you do best. Hopefully you’ll still be with us in another 10 years’ time!

As a way of saying ”Thank You!” to all our loyal clients – 34SP.com is giving away some great technology items for the anniversary