I saw that a lot of hosters recommended here (unitedhosting, voxtreme=httpme) seem to be served mainly by one person who is a CEO as well.

These people (Matt, for example) seem to be very professional and quick in replying to any kind of requests, but I wonder: what will happen if they go on a vacation, or (hope that won't happen, but..) get ill, or just disappear? Does the hosting quality depend on them really much, or you guys have other people to back you up just in case?

I myself run a company where I do most things, but it doesn't require minute to minute monitoring and customer support, and I was just wondering how you manage to lower your risks when you mainly run your companies by yourself.

Thanks.

Hey, whatever it takes to get the job done...

If they offer the service you desire then there shouldn't be anything wrong with it.

If you watch the httpme site it's really kind of neat to watch a support question get answered by 5 or 6 people before a support person actually gets to it. I guess it's part of their COMmunity thing they have going on.

Voxtreme and Unitedhosting is more than one people for support...but Forum browsing is either by habit or for improving/correcting the Marketing side...and for a small to medium operation, the CEO does the marketing best.

What I'm trying to say is that only the Marketing guy is browsing the forum, not the support staff. So, that';s why you see only 1 person from that company.

HTTPme has always had around 4 support people to deal with. Voxtreme is also the same. With the buyout, there is probably 10+ support people working combined.

I think you will find unitedhosting have at least 3 if memory serves, Matt and Simon run the company and they have just taken on another member of staff, my cousin is hosted there with them and never had any trouble.

We have a strong technical and management team behind Voxtreme / HTTPme. Just because I'm the CEO doesn't mean the operation wouldn't be able to run in my absence, it has in the past and has in the future.
It was more of an issue 2 years ago when we first were starting out.

I browse WHT because I enjoy doing so and not particularly on a marketing basis. I have a signature that says a little about who I'm associated with, but that's about it.

I think its mainly because the CEO's live for what they do. I browse WHT and post a lot because I enjoy the industry my company is in. That doesnt mean there isnt a team of people behind the company.

It would be kinda wierd if a company asked all their staff to browse WHT.

Most host of any size and rep have more than one person behind them. There may be only one front man that spends time in forums but the support structure is in place behind the scenes.

If in doubt ask the host how many people there are in hte org.

In the long run, it's probably not a good thing to be a one man operation unless you know something that I do not. Obviously that person has to sleep at some point or another, so what happens when things go wrong? While I don't look down on companies like this (everyone has to start somewhere I suppose) one also must remember that you can't run a strong business with only one person. I believe in the early phases it might can be done if you're comfortable with sitting back, but sooner or later you're going to need someone.

Quite often, you may only see one team member from a company here, and there's nothing wrong with that and that in no way indicates that a company is being run by some - especially since some of the larger company owners post here. After all, you've gotta remember WHT is but a small slice of the industry pie. ;)

Lots of companies like mine have over eager owners. Before anyone can answer support emails or the pagers for tickets I am on it no matter what time of day. Even in St. Thomas this summer for vacation I had a laptop and was connected several times a day to make sure things were getting done properly. There are also lots of outsourced support teams hosts utilize now instead of hiring on lots of staff in the first few years. This is an excellent model as you still have full control and you know that the employees are fully dedicated to answering phones and tickets in a timely manner.

I have several people that answer tickets for us around the clock, but usually I am up and on it before anyone can. I am an OVER eager owner when it comes to making sure customers are happy.

I guess a distinction must be drawn between the owners that do everything and the owners that control pretty much everything.

Speaking for myself, I control the majority of things here but I don't do everything myself (and wouldn't stand a chance if I tried). I'm probably the most visible 'front' to the company in the form of forum activity and by the fact I deal with all sales issues myself but there's a full team in place who handle 95% of support and sys admin duties meaning if I were to go on vacation things would still tick along nicely.

I'm guessing it's a similar story for those you mention in the opening post too.

But for most "one man show" companies the quality of services decrease in the same proportion they get more customers.

Maybe the difference are the persons behind it. Knowlegeble, professional and honest people that take business serious and never let his customers go down, no matter how mucht they pay.

I think many companies accept more customers they can support. For example I can see here many happy customers at WHT, but how many never change once, twice or moore?

One of the principals of marketing is "customer fidelization".
Why this is so hard to do and accomplish for web hosting companies?

I think the answer is because there are so many unhappy customers about hosting services and a lack of a true marketing orientation about most of these companies... and many many people with no ethics or expertise at all, trying to get rich in no time getting how much money they can.

Unfortunattly most of them are just one person trying to fool everyone that he is a true company with a staff (employees).

Most of them we can see who they are just looking their sites, others we discover the hard way, paying a high price and losing the cofidence from who have trust us once.

(sorry my english)

I believe it's much better for our staff to spend time answering support tickets / pre-sales enquiries / server admin duties rather than browse hosting forums all day. Best leave that to just one or two people in the company. :)

Originally posted by UH-Matt
I think its mainly because the CEO's live for what they do. I browse WHT and post a lot because I enjoy the industry my company is in. That doesnt mean there isnt a team of people behind the company.

It would be kinda wierd if a company asked all their staff to browse WHT.
Very well put.

I think what a few people miss, is the fact that WHT captures at least the feel of the hosting industry, with the various technical aspects, and rubbing shoulders with a few other company heads.

The industry we're in is enjoyable, I for one love it, and wouldn't swap it for anything (even to become a frog psychologist :laugh: )

Simon

Naturally One man show companies will face problems. if they wanted make the company 100% perfect, they should have some alternate arrangements when they are in sick, week end, vacations and etc. either they can have a support team internally or by outsourcing or by having part time staffs as few alternates.

Everyone who has worked with us prefers gaming sites instead of browsing hosting forums. I think why you see prominent front people is the investment made by owners and then those that work with them let them do all the hosting surfing. Of course most employees won't have interest in answering the same questions we do or lining up the next technology.

It must be a lot harder for a one man operation, there of course is no one to share the workload or to cover for you when you need a break.

That doesn't mean a one man band can't manage as I'm sure a lot do just fine.

Originally posted by UH-Matt
I think its mainly because the CEO's live for what they do. I browse WHT and post a lot because I enjoy the industry my company is in. That doesnt mean there isnt a team of people behind the company.

It would be kinda wierd if a company asked all their staff to browse WHT.

Agreed. I would be the only visible presence of my company on here, but that doesn't mean there aren't other people that actually handle my tech support and whatnot.

Originally posted by UH-Matt
[snip] ... It would be kinda wierd if a company asked all their staff to browse WHT.

I've tried to encourage my staff to browse in the past in order to keep on top of consumer demands. Most do seem to skim "Hosting Software and Control Panels".

Bottom line is that few have the time to spend reading the forum during work hours, and employees are rarely into work enough to spend their off time at home in work related forums.

Our Tech staff (Mark and Hillel) browse WHT i would say at least once every 2 days... they were the ones who got me around here :)

At least two of my team have accounts here at WHT, one of which has posted offers from the company. However, I do not think having the whole team here on WHT would be very practical. Also, I tend to enjoy dealing with the PR side of the business and this is the reason I take a great interest in WHT, because it keeps me updated on the industry, what customers are requesting and also what other hosts are and are not offering. Also a great place to chat to other hosts and help each other out :)

But surely it doesn't matter how many people are in your company, as long as they deliver the service they are advertising.

If one person can handle all the support, then why employ extra, unneeded staff?

I think one person companies work better than multiemployees, as they do not have to hold company meetings before making decisions.

They can also make special deals etc. without clearing it with the boss.

1. The examples listed are all not one-man shows. So you probably need to hunt for others ;)

2. To me, for real one man shows, as long as they take responsibility and ensure clients are taken care of, wherever they are (example on holidays), there's no issue I feel. For example, it's easy to set up monitoring services to page when servers are down, etc. So in critical incidents, even if it is one man show, as long as it is taken care of, I think it's fine. For normal non-urgent support tickets, I am sure the clients won't mind waiting 6 hours if the guy happens to be in bed.

So I think it boils down to how responsible the person is.

Depending on size I think it's doable. What I want to do is host my own personal pages, a family members business site and a few others to break even. I do expect to grow and would adjust accordingly.

I personally leave other people in charge when I'm not around, however all emails do come through on my mobile phone (24/7), PDA, and laptop and I'm never more than 20 minutes away from all 3 of them!

Keiron

I've been running my business by myself for more than two years, and I don't think there's any problem whatsoever with a responsible and professional person running their own hosting business, even in their spare time.

I've never had a customer email me at 3AM, ask me for help, and then email me at 4AM, asking "Why are you taking so long"?

Naturally, most of my customers live in the U.S. and aren't running large, mission-critical, websites (although I do host several websites for smaller brick-and-mortar businesses).

When I go on vacation, I check my emails three times a day, and carry a cell-phone in case there's an issue with the server. I get a little nervous when I leave for the airport- there's a 6+ hour gap where the server can go down- but so far, I haven't had any problems over the course of three vacations.

Almost all of my customers know how my business runs, and none of them seem to mind. The trick is in staying calm and professional, and obsessively watching your email.