Web Hosting Challenges with HostArmada

There are a lot of web hosting companies providing services and competing for new customers. HostArmada knew that when they got in the business in 2019. What is their differential? What do they have to offer? We talked with Bogdan Toshev, Sales Manager, to find out the answers.

Please tell us a bit about HostArmada services and the history of the company

We started HostArmada in the last quarter of 2019. The company is a product of experienced people in the hosting industry. We saw some opportunities that could be capitalized in our former companies but unfortunately were not. So, we’ve found an investor and started our new company.

We are providing a very fast service in terms of support, each member on the team has at least 5 years of experience in the industry and we are pretty confident that we can handle most of the issues that come up with web hosting – and even go the extra mile for the customer, without extra costs. This is our biggest edge.

The types of services we offer are shared hosting and VPS servers. We have a specific category of VPS servers, which are the ones with dedicated CPUs. So far, we don’t have dedicated servers and we don’t see this as relevant for customers in the present context of cloud technology – VPS is a faster, more reliable and more scalable solution.

Our mission is to deliver a fast, reliable and secure service. So far, I am very happy to share with you that we did not have any downtime since we’ve started – maybe 1 or 2 minutes, but that’s it.

HostArmada is a pretty recent company in a sector that has a lot of competitors. What need or differentiation has the company detected and wants to fill?

We have decided not to be the greedy company on the market, even though we provide a reliable service: we offer services at a lower starting price. Both the signup and the renewal price are lower than our competitors’. This is one thing that we offer.

Most of the hosting companies do not offer LiteSpeed web server solutions. If they do, they charge additionally for that. We offer that option at no extra cost. If someone wants to host a website using our LiteSpeed webserver, we have that for free on shared hosting as well.

Also, most other competitors don’t have secure shell access to the server on shared hosting – we have it, and Node.js as well. Hosting Backup Service for free is saved separately, not on the same server where the website is hosted. So, in case of an emergency situation, the customer can restore the site in a healthy state.

In case of website migration, we are not only configuring the website to work on our servers, we optimize it additionally for free. Additionally, on top of transferring and configuring it, we optimize it to increase its loading speed, which also comes without extra costs.

Finally, there’s the speed of our support: you don’t have to wait on queues on the live chat, which is common. The maximum wait is 10 to 15 seconds before someone takes care of your chat and the average response time over a ticket, once it is opened, is 10 to 15 minutes. In comparison, there are companies doing it within 24 to 48 hours’ time.

Web hosting companies have to constantly adapt and change over the years. HostArmada puts innovation in its mission. Where do you think this sector is heading to?

The web hosting industry is reactive. It is driven by developers and by applications content management systems. I’m referring to Magento, WordPress, Joomla, Prestashop…

It really depends on how they change. We try and strive to be the first to react to those changes, implement the latest technologies available to the market very fast. For example, the PHP latest versions available, and MySQL databases.

We also plan to close the full circle at some point, meaning that we want to put an in-house development team to take care of developing websites for the customers as well. Very few companies do that.

We see that, with that many companies moving to the hosting market, our only option is to always try and be on top of them: be the first to make the changes, test everything and deliver it to the customer in a polished and reliable manner. This is what we are after.

Right now, we are totally open to accumulate customers and satisfy every need for every single type of website – be it a blog, forum, news-related website, e-store or whatever. We deliver a solution that can host each of these types of website.

With the COVID-19 pandemic and the necessity of quarantine and social isolation, companies in all areas had to go online or simply close their doors and being irrelevant. Did your results in 2020 show that irreversible trend?  

I have to admit that after the first few weeks of the pandemic announcement we started receiving more and more orders. I am keen to associate that growth to the pandemic and the virus. It is pretty unfortunate for the world in terms of health but I consider it an opportunity for business, upon which we have capitalized.

The biggest challenge we’ve faced was to start working from home. We had to improve our communications without being physically together. We have a whiteboard in the office to brainstorm ideas, discuss things and we make decisions collectively. It was a challenge, but not something we were not able to overcome.

In terms of the services we provide, the quality did not move down by any means. But things we were discussing to work through this year have gotten a little pushed back. It will take us more time to reach the goals this year compared to what it would have taken in the office.

To wrap things up: why should someone choose HostArmada to host a site?

Because they are going to receive a better service, attention to detail and care for the customer and their project. We will provide comparisons for the performance of the website – before and after the migration and about how we treat our customers, you will hear from them as time goes.

For people that have not used any hosting providers so far, they are going to receive all the help their need in order to build their excellent websites. We will not only supply technical support but also help to materialize their idea. On our blog, we discuss niches that are profitable, good practices to build websites and more.

We provide a totally human service, caring for the customers and not only the website as a technical unit but also their idea and what they are looking to achieve with having that website in the first place.