1. Jan from HosTest sent me some very interesting data from his latest research. During November 2006, Jan submitted a variety of tech support requests to 50 hosting providers. He rated responses on a 5-point scale based on accuracy and completeness. MochaHost, Intermedia.NET and NetRegistry got perfect scores. Jan was particularly pleased with MochaHost's 24-minute response time.
In contrast, the wait time at Verio was 62 hours and 59 minutes. This is particularly disappointing considering the "select the right hosting provider" report that Verio recently commissioned from Tier 1 Research. It advised customers to monitor their hosting providers closely. "The company's response to issues early in the relationship will be an indicator of things to come".
2. Declan McCullagh from CNet surveyed 12 domain registrars on their policies for handling abuse complaints. DirectNIC and French registrar Gandi.net, he said, offer the most extensive guarantees against unnecessary domain name suspension. DirectNIC requires a court order unless a clear case of child porn or phishing is involved, and Gandi.net takes extensive steps to contact domain owners.
I was surprised to read that Demand Media subsidiary eNom chose not to respond to Declan's survey. CEO Richard Rosenblatt told Business 2.0 some months ago that he's planning to bring a sprinkling of Web 2.0 stardust into the domains market. One would hope there's some transparency in the mix?
3. Barry Abrahamson from WordPress writes that he's in the market for 37 servers. It looks like ServerBeach will get the business because of their "super-simple and painless sales process", their "everything we asked for at a very fair price" proposal and the fact that Peer 1 VP Marketing Rajan Sodhi blogs on WordPress. Rajan was also first to respond to Barry's blog post. Very cool!
SoftLayer, on the other hand, misses out on a possible opportunity. James Byers from WikiSpaces comments that SoftLayer is fantastic, but no follow up from SL so far. Considering that 4 out of the company's last 5 press releases mentions Web 2.0, maybe SL should start a WordPress blog?
PS - BTW, Matt Mullenweg pointed out earlier this week that you can blog on WordPress using MS Word 2007. You might want to pass along these instructions and these screen shots to your customers.
Barry's requirements noted that their third datacenter could not be in Dallas (Wordpress already has one there), so I think this puts SoftLayer out of the running right from the get-go.
Best,
James
I visited the facilities on Poydras street in New Orleans in late 2000 and was very impressed. During hurricane Katrina, Sigmund made sure operations stayed online. I'm sure it wasn't easy.
All of my domains are with his company and that's where they'll stay.
http://blog.dogster.com/2007/02/03/must-read-for-a...
Matt - I agree! BTW, a SoftLayer blog might be a good way to disseminate press releases 2.0?
Jan - Thanks for the survey. It definitely helps keep everyone on their toes!
Jason - I'm looking for a domain registrar and will definitely check out DirectNic.
A cursory search on the internet will also show you how poorly Mochahost performs, based on actual customers (the only people who can really say for sure). Are you sure you reviewed the right company?