12 Questions With HostPapa Web Hosting

This is an exclusive interview with Maricel from HostPapa.

HostPapa is one of the leader in the green web hosting business, providing affordable and reliable website hosting. They have offices in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

If you’d like to have more information on HostPapa, click here.

Q. How long has HostPapa been in the industry and how did it start?

A. The individuals involved in starting HostPapa have been involved in the web hosting industry for many years; however, HostPapa, as its own entity, officially came into being in 2006.

Q. HostPapa is a well known leader in Green Energy Web Hosting but some say that this is only a marketing technique and that it barely does any good for the environment. What do you respond to those people?

A. We’re not sure how this is “only” a marketing technique, since we actually do pay a high premium on our energy costs in order to purchase carbon offsets for all energy that our operation consumes. This includes all power for our servers, everything to run our offices, the computers – all of it. The energy that we consume is replaced in the grid with 100% green, renewable energy sources, including wind and solar energy. We believe that we are leading the charge, and that many companies, not just in the web hosting space, will follow.

Q. HostPapa has now entered the UK web hosting market. What makes UK web hosting different than America?

A. With any type of business, entering into a new market means that you have to be conscious of localized needs, and web hosting in the United Kingdom is certainly no different. We believe that we understand the needs of that marketplace and plan to serve our customers in the United Kingdom in a way that exceeds all expectations.

Q. HostPapa is now offering unlimited hosting and bandwidth. Will this have an impact on performance?

A. No. The one thing to always keep in mind about shared web hosting is its community element. After all, when you purchase shared hosting, it literally means that you are sharing resources with other users within that shared hosting environment. At HostPapa, we always have to keep the community’s best interests in mind. We have sophisticated monitoring in place to help keep the processor and system resource abusers in check, as that’s the only way to keep the shared community functioning at its best.

Q. Tell us about customer support. How many people are working in HostPapa’s call center(s) and what training or certification do they have? And where are those call centers located?

A. Right now we have approx. 15 dedicated staff in our call centers, and since we offer various levels of customer support (from simple inquiries to more complex technical questions), the staff, in turn, has various levels of training and certification. Our main call center is in Canada, but we have a distributed call center system. This means that – in keeping with our green commitments – a number of our call center staff telecommute.

Q. How many data centers do you have where are they located?

A. Our main data centers are in Toronto, Canada, but we also have data centers in the United States and United Kingdom. We utilize a redundant datacenter environment.

Q. Why do you think HostPapa is special compared to other web hosting companies?

A. Several things come to mind based on our customer feedback: People really do care about the environment and tell us all the time that they are drawn to HostPapa because of our commitment to being a green web hosting company. We are 100% green certified and will continue to reinvest in that commitment. Our customer support is excellent and one of the reasons for this, we feel, is because all customer support staff members are HostPapa employees. Speaking of support, we offer it in English and French right now, with other languages to follow. Unlike many other web hosting companies, we do not outsource any of our support. We also complete customer surveys regularly in order to benchmark our performance.

Q. HostPapa has a one-size-fits-all hosting plan. Who do you think it appeals more to? Personal or business websites?

A. Both. We have a mix of both business and personal websites. The single plan approach works very well for us because it makes the hosting purchase easy. Because we have such a broad variety and sheer number of features available through our plan, it really is one-size-fits-all. Many other web hosting companies offer a very limited basic plan to get customers “hooked”, then customers are almost forced to migrate to more expensive plans. With HostPapa, new customers can get started right away with their web hosting, and our support resources don’t have to spend time trying to “shoehorn” customers into different types of plans, which frees them up to focus on helping customers get their sites up and running.

Q. Transferring a website can be quite difficult sometimes. Can you help new customers to move over to HostPapa?

A. Yes, of course! At HostPapa, we get this question every single day, without exception. Our support resources are very knowledgeable, and are happy to help walk customers through the process. Our knowledgebase also contains lots of useful tips and information, and our video tutorials are a great way for customers to learn about various web hosting topics – including transferring their website – at their own pace.

Q. Do you have any plans to add additional products such as reseller hosting, vps and dedicated servers?

A. Yes, these are in our future plans, but right now we are focusing on providing exceptional service in shared hosting.

Q. Many “unlimited hosting companies” suspend hosting accounts due to high load.
What is HostPapa’s take on this practice?

A. It all depends on your definition of “high load”. This question goes back again to the whole concept of a shared community. We certainly have to do what is right for the shared customer community. This means we have to limit the exposure of certain individual customers who consume vast amounts of system resources to the detriment of the community on that same server.

This normally does not apply to bandwidth and disk space, but rather the system resources and processing load that an individual account consumes on the shared server. Some customers simply outgrow shared hosting with their needs and should move to a VPS or dedicated server. It really is something we have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis.

Spammers, of course, are simply not tolerated. Beyond that, we won’t simply suspend accounts for using disk space and bandwidth if the system resources are being utilized for their legitimate website hosting needs. For example, we are not a data storage facility for customers’ hard drives or for copyrighted MP3s. That is the only challenge we have with the large hosting packages. We will inform our customers of this fact, and ask them to remove the material before we ever suspend an account. This information is clearly spelled out in our Terms & Conditions.

Q. Thank you for your time Maricel, is there something you would like add?

A. HostPapa rocks!!

External Links:

• HostPapa.com
• HostPapa.ca
• HostPapa.co.uk

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