Spotlight | Hosting-new.com

Every so often, a particular cause or movement grabs our attention and we want to spread the word. We previously participated in the industry-wide Hosting for Haiti campaign to assist those in Haiti after the devastating earthquake.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say most everyone has been affected by cancer one way or another. You yourself might have had a form of cancer, one of your parents might have had a form a cancer, your grandparents, your best friend’s dad..

With that in mind, today we’re featuring the Lance Armstrong Foundation and LIVESTRONG. LIVESTRONG is much more than a group raising money.. it’s a community built around awareness. The resources available on the LIVESTRONG websites are amazing — including the LIVESTRONG Blog which we are undeniably proud to host right here at Site5.

According to Brooke McMillan, Online Community Manager for LIVESTRONG, has this to say regarding LIVESTRONG:

The goal of the LIVESTRONG blog is to inform and inspire people in the LIVESTRONG Community. We feature stories from cancer survivors that have overcome amazing odds like Thomas Molina – a 14 year old kid facing his second battle with leukemia.

Or Jack Marshall Shimko – a Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor that decided to paddle 150 miles along the California coast right after his treatment ended.

The LIVESTRONG blog also holds information about our community program initiatives, resources and support services such as the Community Impact Project and post-treatment cancer support services.

Our hope is to create a place for the LIVESTRONG community to come and find out how to take part in the cancer community.

I asked the foundation’s web developer, Brian Howe, why they selected Site5 to host the LIVESTRONG Blog:

I have been using Site5 for years for all my personal web hosting needs. I have never had any issues with anything since I moved all of my things over there, so I figured why not mention it to Justin [Joyner, Senior Director of Information Technology] and see about getting more of our LIVESTRONG initiatives over there as well.

I also asked why they selected the plan they chose and their experiences with Site5 in general:

We went with the Cloud VPS because we were looking for something scalable. There are days when we get huge spikes in traffic and needed something that would be able to handle everything. One blog in particular comes mind that generated quite a buzz on the blog. In two days we had over 50k visits to our site, which at the time was huge for the blog. It also generated something like 780 comments on just that one post. So we knew there were going to be days that the blog was going to be used as a vehicle to make announcements.

Site5 has been nothing but great. No matter what time of the day, or day of the week, someone always responds in a very timely manner, with exactly the help I am seeking. Just this weekend I submitted a ticket to help determine the best course for something new we are working on, and even on Sunday I got the response I was looking for. The customer service at Site5 is far superior to any other vendor we use.

The purpose of the blog was a way for us to connect with people. We wanted a way for people to get news, updates and other information, without sending email, and provide a way for people to have an open conversation with us. The blog has grown over the years and the main goals are to inform constituents, highlight grassroots efforts and share inspiring stories.

For those affected by cancer, we strongly suggest visiting LIVESTRONG and utilizing their vast resources.

Site5 has donated $ 250 to the LIVESTRONG Foundation, and we hope everyone that is able to will donate as well.

Thanks to Site5 for this post! Site5 provides web hosting, reseller hosting, and managed dedicated servers for webmasters, coders, designers, businesses, and creative people!

Customer Spotlight: LIVESTRONG

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Here at Site5, we’re not very shy about craving feedback from our customers. We thrive on it because that’s how we know where we can improve as a company, where we’re excelling, and what our customers are thinking and needing.

David Carroll of softRealty.com recently submitted an awesome candid review, and we wanted to share it in its entirety.

This is a review about the amazing support and quality of service I’ve received from Site5 as a hosting company. I want to share my experience for others who were in the same boat as me getting started with a hosting reseller plan for the first time.

I own a real estate software company called softRealty.com and we recently had a need to provide hosting for many of our real estate clients. We traditionally host our own application servers across several managed data centers. However, we thought we’d experiment with utilizing a hosting company to help us manage client hosting.

We researched dozens of top rated hosting companies and narrowed our search down to Host Gator, Host Clear, and Site5. We picked these companies because they offered the best reseller pricing arrangements to allow us to provide the lowest costs to our own clients.

On paper, these 3 hosting companies looked almost identical. Host Gator had the most endorsements from other companies and good overall reputation. Host Clear had the best pricing options with more storage/bandwidth for less monthly costs. Site5 was an unknown for us, but had comparable pricing.

For all 3 hosts, I had questions about certain features, support quality, and other things that weren’t clear on their websites. Some hosts had their own custom control panel and it wasn’t clear if that was a good thing or bad thing. I had questions about shared IPs, effort to upgrade to dedicated servers, whether or not mod_rewrite on Apache servers were enabled, and several other questions.

I began researching reviews regarding these companies and found myself more confused. There were a mixture of reviews spanning from amazing to horrible for Host Gator and Host Clear. Site5 had the least number of good / bad reviews in general. However, they had some bad reviews that caused concern for me. Bad reviews for all hosts pointed to poor support, billing issues, and the fine print in terms of service limits.

I truly was at an impasse and decided to test the sales / support of all 3 services. I used the online chat for all three because my expectation of phone support was pretty low. My experience with Host Gator and Host Clear were disappointing. The reps I chatted with were not knowledgeable and answered questions based on scripted responses. They eventually got around to providing some answers. However, I can see where some people had bad support experiences.

I expected much less from Site5. However, to my surprise, I used the Chat link on http://www.site5.com/contact/livechat/ and spoke to very competent people about all the features. The chat was very informative. In fact, the sales person went so far to provide suggestions to specific scenarios I was exploring. I was so impressed with the sales chat, I was ready to purchase my first month. They explained I would also receive my first month free. I didn’t realize this, so the decision to try them out was a no brainer.

Throughout the process of setting up several test accounts and email accounts, I ran into problems with configurations. Every time I need help, the support chat has been phenomenal. Each support person has a picture, first and last name, and a bio. They show tremendous patience, knowledge, and go beyond the call of duty with providing support. For example, I was setting up a WordPress 3.0.1 multisite using subdomain settings. Several support techs were able to log into WordPress and review all settings even though, Site5 does not provide support for 3rd party apps. Over the course of a week, I’ve learned more about reseller hosting, DNS records, email configurations, and so much more from this great staff of support reps.

I cannot say enough good things about Site5. They are professional, knowledgeable, patient, and helpful. I hope this review helps others in their quest to review hosting options.

Best Regards,

David Carroll
www.softRealty.com

Thanks to Site5 for this post! Site5 provides web hosting, reseller hosting, and managed dedicated servers for webmasters, coders, designers, businesses, and creative people!

Customer Spotlight: David Carroll & softRealty.com

Site5 Webmaster Blog – Learn about all those internet tube things! » Search Results » hosting