Exclusive Interview with Brent Oxley, CEO and founder of Hostgator .

What is your name and your position with HostGator.com?

My name is Brent Oxley and I am the founder and CEO of HostGator . I started this company when I was a freshman at university, and I never left direction.

In a few words could you tell us the story of HostGator. Com?

HostGator I founded in 2002 from my dorm room at university. These last 8 years we have gone from a small web hosting company with a handful of clients and a few servers to a leading global accommodation with nearly 10,000 servers and more than 200,000 customers.

What services do you offer your customers apart from the competition?

We provide services that you will not find anywhere else – like a freephone number for our clients, an SSL certificate offered with one of our plans (business). We also offer more traditional services like free Enom reseller accounts, thousands of “web templates” free software, website creation, and more. In addition, our customer service is what makes us unique. Our support is available 24hours/24 7days / 7, 365 days a year. Our office is located in Texas and can be contacted via three media (email, live chat and phone).

What to HostGator. Com a competitive company in the hospitality industry?

I think the level of service and support we provide distinguishes us from our competitors more than anything else. Customers enjoy free SSL certificates, but what really matters to them was to have people who are available to answer questions and address concerns. A web host can claim to be the coolest in the world, but if these customers do not have access to technical support and customer service quality, it will never succeed.

What new features added HostGator.com for its customers in 2010?

We’re still busy adding the latest technologies available on the market. We changed and improved our methods of spam prevention, reorganized one of our shared hosting plans to include a free SSL certificate, set up toll-free, we also began offering coupons Google Adwords boosted our support center with a new content and new design, launched VPS hosting solution and given a new design to our cPanel. Finally, we have significantly strengthened our presence on Twitter and Facebook, and we have launched a variety of addons and enhancements for our customers.

Is your customer ultimately your best asset?

We will obviously depend on our customers who choose to stay month after month and year after year with us, just by referring their friends and family. We are extremely grateful. And as a corollary to that, I think that is our support and customer service that brings customers to continue using HostGator .

Where do you HostGator.com and lodging industry in three years?

We see a slight shift of customers to virtualization (VPS hosting, grid / cloud hosting, etc..) And we saw a big change to the idea of ​​software as a service with sites like Flickr, YouTube, etc.. These services do not compete directly but if you set HostGator hosting is the chance to put your content on the Internet, they have a market share.

I think in the future, the quality of support will be a deciding factor in choosing technologies and platforms by consumers. It’s really hard to improve shared hosting today. All hosts of competition have an availability rate of 99.9% or more, stand 24/24, and high bandwidth. And because the product offerings are very similar, the deciding factor for most consumers is the reputation and support. Webmasters do not care if their site is on a grid, a cloud or a single server, provided they get the support they need and that their site remains online.

Regarding how I see the evolution HostGator over the next three years, the only thing I am certain that we will continue to grow. We hope to launch a new brand that will focus on the general public. The idea is to keep things simple and allow beginners to create and manage their website easily. We will of course continue to improve and develop HostGator as well.

How many clients do you currently have?

HostGator now has over 300,000 customers and has about 3 million domain names.

Do you own your own data center?

We rent over 8,000 servers ThePlanet. We’re their largest customer both in terms of income and in terms of number of servers.

Your provider does it appeal to other retailers?

All companies in the industry are dealers and suppliers. We rent our servers) ThePlanet, ThePlanet leases its network connections to a variety of Internet service providers, who in turn lease their connections to other ISPs and vendors.

Data centers are protected against potential failures?

Data centers of all ThePlanet have redundant power systems, as well as on-site generators with contracts to ensure delivery of fuel in case of trouble.

-What is it they connect to the network?

ThePlanet has one of the fastest networks in the industry: 250 + gigabits / s of capacity on 6 networks of Tier 1 backbone.

What kind of support do you offer your customers?

Our technical support is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We never close.

Do you have technicians present and constantly available?

We have staff ready and willing to answer questions and concerns of clients days and nights.

What is the average response time to a support ticket?

We respond to most support tickets within minutes – usually 15 to 20 minutes. Sometimes we need more time to respond, sometimes, anoint. I saw the tickets which we responded within 20-30 seconds and I saw some people who have taken one or two hours. This usually depends on the complexity of the issue and occupancy of staff. Our average, however, is about 15 to 20 minutes.

Do you charge for technical support to your customers? If yes, could you explain why?

E-mail, live chat and phone support are free. For customers who need advanced techniques beyond the scope of our support, we offer a service that we call “time admin”, where we charge per hour for advanced services. However, the vast majority of our customers never need these services.

Enjoy a satisfaction guarantee?

Yes. We offer a money back guarantee within 45 days on our shared hosting package (shared). If a customer is not satisfied with our offer of accommodation (for any reason) within 45 days, all they have to do is send a cancellation request and we’ll refund your money.