Host Interview - midPhase
midPhase is a web hosting provider based out of Chicago. We started midPhase with less than $2000 and a single server. That was almost three and a half years ago. midPhase, today has roughly 30 employees, two offices and manages nearly 40,000 customers in over 140 countries. We sell many different services, including shared, budget, reseller, dedicated and virtual private servers through four distinct brands.
What are your target markets?
This question is a bit tricky to answer. midPhase's primary market is in shared web hosting. Most of our customers are on our shared platform. We also put strong focus on our VPS, Dedicated and Windows businesses.
Like most hosting providers a large percentage of our clientele are small and medium sized businesses. However, we do work with several fortune 500 companies and municipalities (local governments.)
What makes you different from other web hosting companies?
Well -- this is a tricky one to answer without sounding cliche so I'll just spit it out: We focus on customer service.
We are firm believers in the "little things." We do a lot of tiny, small things that may be overlooked by other providers. For one, we call every customer a twice after they sign up. The first call is placed right when the order is received to confirm everything, and the second is placed a few days later to make sure their service has been setup and that they are not having any problems.
Another small thing we do is we give our customers full access to our reboot logs and maintenance schedule through our midPhaseNOC.com website. midPhaseNOC pulls data from our internal work scheduling system and posts it online for everyone to see. Customers can check here before calling us to see if we have any scheduled maintenance, any unscheduled emergency reboots or anything along these lines. We update the site in real time.
What would you say is your company's main strength?
In a nutshell: Our greatest strength is our people. Without our devoted, talented employees and their passion for their work our company would never have been able to grow the way it has.
In your opinion, what make great hosting services?
One word: transparency.
A great hosting service is transparent. It is open and honest. It tells the truth even if the truth hurts.
Describe the support services that you provide:
We provide a full line of support services to our clients. Here is how it works: On the front line is our E-mail and ticketing systems. Here we maintain a remarkable 20 minute response time to incoming tickets. We also provide a toll free phone number which we staff at all times too. Both our E-mail and phone routes offer our clients quick and easy access to our support team.
We take it a step further, though. We also maintain midPhaseTALK.com which is a discussion board where our employees and customers can talk and help each other with problems.
We maintain midPhaseNOC.com which (building on the transparency argument) is a tool that offers our customers an inside-out view of what is going on at midPhase. The midPhaseNOC database is updated in real time with extremely detailed service information. Example: What is going wrong? What server is this happening on? When did it happen? Which midPhase senior level system administrator is working on it? When it will be done? Etc.
Where do you see the hosting industry 4-5 years from now?
Tough question. Without a doubt the industry will grow significantly. I think that the budget market is going to be the hottest segment for a long time however I see some very significant growth in the Virtual Private Server arena. Why? Because it simply makes sense. The power of a server for the cost of a reseller account and full root access. Win, win.
Aside from that, and without speculating to much more, I think that a lot of capital will be invested into hosting. Be it through IPO's or private investment.
The industry is very dynamic and adaptive but it is also very young. This is demonstrated by the simple fact that the largest player in web hosting holds just a few percentage points of the marketplace.
Things are heating up in the once-forgotten land of Web Hosting. I am very excited to be able to not only sit back and watch what happens, but to participate in the industries evolution.
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