So let us start the new year with a poll. Is Geographical based hosting something you would be interested in? To clarify the question for those who may be unfamiliar with the term(s), we essentially mean would you prefer to see a choice of hosting servers based on different countries? That is, when purchasing hosting you could choose to have your account based in the US, Europe, UK, etc. Initially these options would likely be limited to the UK and US, but we would look at expanding them in future.

Please vote and let us know your thoughts! Additionally, if there is anything you’d like to see us offer in 2012, please let us know in the comments below.

Semi-dedicated means that each server is effectively broken up into a very low number of clients. This allows each individual client to consume more resources than they typically would on a shared hosting account, because more are available. Additionally, because it’s semi-dedicated, many of our shared restrictions will not apply, namely;

• No MySQL database size restrictions.
• InnoDB is available.
• No restriction on the number of hourly e-mails that can be sent.
• No CPU limit (in minutes).

We’re happy that this new product now almost completes our product range, providing customers with all of the options available to host anything from a simple private website to a fully fledged several million post(s) forum.

Automated and Automatic Affiliate Payouts
I’m pretty sure we’re the only one, if not one of the very very few hosting providers out there who have any kind of automated affiliate payout system in production – and we’re proud of that. This means that without needing to get in touch with us, you can view your affiliate account balance and either send the money directly to your PayPal or add it to your balance with us. All in a few seconds and a few mouse clicks.

Redesigned Ticket System
We’ve redesigned our ticket system slightly so that whilst submitting your ticket and before it is sent to us, you are prompted with possible suggestions and solutions to your questions or issues you may be facing – with information pulled directly from our knowledgebase. This is primarily to reduce the number of what we refer to as “obvious tickets” containing very common questions which are already covered within our knowledgebase. We’re really trying to push our knowledgebase as the first port of call for any questions clients have, and we’re always adding to it. Many companies have knowledgebases and Wikis detailing how to complete common tasks, and the intent is to reduce support time.

I’m very happy to say this is working well, and our support times are lower than ever

Automated Domain Name Changes
Previously a feature we’d charge for (due to the Administration involved), we’ve now developed a system where you can modify the domain name of your account from within the client area. This is to assist those who may “flip” their websites regularly, or want to let their domain expire and utilise their hosting account on another domain instead. You can find this by selecting ‘My Hosting Accounts’ and then clicking the ‘Manage’ button next to the hosting account in question. At the bottom there will be a new button allowing you to change the domain name.

Promotions Page
Many people ask or want to know if we’re currently running any promotions. To aid those and to boost the use of our promotional codes, we’ve created a page on our website that pulls currently active promotional codes out of our system and displays it on the website, along with the value of the code and the expiry date(s). Never miss a promotion again! Don’t forget, there’s currently 50% off all hosting accounts throughout April.

As always, we’d love to hear from you if you have any comments or suggestions. Thanks for being a part of this*.

Please be advised that downgrading from a reseller package to a shared package will result in any accounts you’ve created within WHM to be terminated. This is of course because reseller permissions do not exist on shared packages, therefore accounts via WHM need to be removed as a result.

The upgrade pages themselves are currently being reworked and redesigned, as the default templates are… rather ugly. Please bear with us whilst we complete this over the next few days.

In other news, we’re looking at launching “semi-dedicated” packages for those who currently have higher CPU usage than our AUP allows. Semi-dedicated packages are essentially the same as normal packages, except that there are far less accounts per server, resulting in those accounts being allowed to consume more resources than on a typical shared account. Currently you are allowed to consume up to 120 CPU minutes (2 hours) per day. With semi-dedicated accounts, we expect to allow significantly higher margins of usage. Before offering this, we’d like to know if this is something that customers may see a use for. Naturally these semi-dedicated packages will be provided with the same this* quality you expect from us. If there’s an interest in this, we’ll spec up some approximate details and pricing and let you all know.

If you’re not an affiliate of us, why not? You will earn 10% recurring commission for everyone you refer to our service by giving them your unique referral link found within the affiliates section of the client area. You’ll earn 10% of every payment they make to us for their hosting account, for as long as they remain a customer of ours. There are no limits to how many people you can refer, and no limits on how much you can earn.

If you’re an existing customer of ours, simply click the ‘Affiliates’ button found within your client area. If you’re not a customer of ours but would like to promote our service, keep checking back and we’ll have some news for you soon.

More after the jump.

At this* we’re very happy with the new website design. We’re a fan of dark styles, and cleanliness, and we feel this is the best of both worlds combined. Of course, we’re always happy to welcome constructive criticism – so if you have any suggestions, “bug” reports, CSS/xHTML code fixes by all means please let us know. We’ve received one or two comments from people who simply dislike the design completely. That’s OK, we realise that no one website will be to everyone’s tastes – and color wise at least this is dramatically different from our previous design. Please bear in mind however that comments such as “I don’t like it” are not constructive at all. If there’s a particular and justified reason that you don’t like it – we’d love to hear why.

New Packages & Pricing
Yes, packages have changed again. Because of previous feedback regarding the “unmetered” discussion we had on the blog, we decided to go against that train of thought. Instead we took things back to basics and re-evaluated our packages from scratch. We also looked at competitor offerings to try and get a feel for demand and what people were looking for from their hosting package. The result is what you see on the shared and reseller pages. These packages are by no means final, and again we’re looking for feedback on them.

Packages have now been seperated into Shared and Reseller offerings. On our previous website, many people were confused when looking for reseller packages, so this should no longer be an issue.

Pricing has also changed. The new prices are by no means a comparison or reflection on our previous pricing – again, this is something we’ve taken back to basics. We’ve looked at the package offerings and tried to determine a value for each. This is based on many factors, and we feel that the pricing is pretty much spot on. We may adjust it slightly in the future, but currently we have no plans to.

Existing clients packages/pricing
For existing clients, nothing has changed at all. Your packages and pricing have remained the same. Currently if you wish to upgrade or downgrade your package, you can do so at the previous package levels that we offered. We’re currently looking into the feasibility of allowing customers to upgrade or downgrade to the “new” packages if they wish, but due to complexity and some limitations of our billing software, this may take some time. Stay tuned.

Server Changes
Over the last few months, in addition to becoming rebootless due to the installation of K-Splice, we’ve also deployed CloudLinux across all of our shared servers after some extensive testing. This essentially provides individual CPU limits to individual websites, and prevents a single (or even several) accounts from consuming all available server resources. These limits, as I discussed in a previous blog post, are very generous and you are unlikely to notice anything client side.

I’m pleased to say that since deploying it, we haven’t had a single ticket regarding site loading times, site unavailability or shared server load. This means it’s working exactly as we anticipated.

Client Area Development
Now that the design is complete, we plan to extend the functionality of our client area further. Some initial plans are to automate affiliate withdrawals (currently a manual process), and allow customers to modify their own billing cycle(s) and payment method.

Is there anything you’d like to see within your client area? We’d love to hear your ideas, so please get in touch.

If you follow us on Twitter you may have seen our comments regarding the launch of the new site which we’d planned for last weekend. During that time, we’ve actually been testing some new server side technology which will allow us to far better manage the resource usage of accounts on our servers. After successful testing, we’ve decided to postpone the launch of our new website whilst we rework our packages yet again and get the infrastructure in place to handle the new changes.

Originally we’d planned to offer a selection of shared hosting packages, and split reseller hosting into its own category. Simply put, shared hosting packages would not have reseller access but would have unlimited/unmetered addon domains, subdomains etc and a scaling disk space and bandwidth allocation – much like we have right now. Resellers would have much bigger packages in terms of disk space and bandwidth, however the smallest package for this would be significantly higher than the shared hosting counterpart.

After the testing of the technology, and the impressive results that we’d seen, we’ve decided to revamp the packages for one final time. Instead of offering scaling shared hosting packages, we’ve decided to offer just two. The first package would be a ‘Starter/Blog’ package offering you a single website, no addon domains, no subdomains, but unmetered disk space and bandwidth. The second package would be a universal package, offering you any number of websites with unlimited addon domains, subdomains, and unmetered diskspace and bandwidth. Before you begin possibly panicking, let’s clear up a few things.

What is the new technology you’re talking about?
The new technology essentially allows us to control the CPU usage of individual websites and limit them accordingly. In short, this allows us to prevent a single account from consuming a massive amount of resources on the server and bringing everything else slowing to a crawl. To be clear, unlike some competitors who track the CPU usage and then respond by disabling your account after you consume a set number of resources within a period of time – this will instead limit the amount your acount can consume.

The limits we’ve tested are very healthy and will allow your website(s) to load just as quickly as they currently do.

Unmetered? Is that the same as Unlimited?
Not really. We don’t like using the term “unlimited” because it refers to something that has no limit. “Unmetered” on the other hand means there is a limit based on the physical limitations, however your actual usage of that resource is not tracked.

So, to be clear on this. Unmetered disk space – you are not limited to how much you can use on an account, but there is a limitation in the sense that disks can only store a certain amount of data. Unmetered bandwidth – you are not limited to how much you can use on an account, but there is a limitation on the connection attached to the server.

Why are you thinking of going unmetered?
As a hosting provider managing shared servers, the biggest and most valuable commodity on a server is CPU usage. Historically there has been no real method to control (in real-time) the usage of accounts from this perspective. You can track the usage and then let people know if it’s higher than you’d consider acceptable, but the usage could still have a huge affect on the server itself. An example of this would be if someone were to reach the front page of a social networking site – the CPU usage would escalate to the point where it could consume an entire server.

When selling shared hosting we need to take the CPU usage into consideration with the size of account packages that we offer. A bigger (Ultra) package with reseller access and many sub accounts is likely to consume more resources than a Starter/Blog package. It’s not set in stone, but it’s a fairly logical assumption. If we then are able to control the CPU usage of each account (which we can now do), the disk space and bandwidth become almost a non-issue entirely. If you’re using 20MB or 20GB of space, your CPU resource usage is what’s more important to us. Disk space and bandwidth are always something we can add more of – CPU usage is not. As a customer it can be very difficult to know just how much disk space or bandwidth your website requires. Now that the CPU usage is no longer a factor, why do you then need to make a choice?

Will there be any additional limits with unmetered disk space?
Yes, there will. Basically you will be limited on the number of files and folders within an account – and not the combined size of this content. The reason for this is that accounts with significantly high numbers of files and folders can dramatically slow down the backup process, even to the point where there account alone can take up to an hour or more to process. This clearly makes the backup process ineffective so something needs to be done about that.

The likely solution will be to remove the account(s) in question from the backup schedule. However, accounts that have a ridiculously high inode usage consumption will need to reduce this or move to a different hosting solution.

Is this definitely going to happen?
We would like it to yes, but we’d love to hear feedback from you. How do you feel about these possible changes? Please let us know.

What are the new packages going to look like?
We’ve discussed the shared hosting packages above. In terms of reseller packages, think something like our current shared hosting packages that scale in disk space and bandwidth. Exact figures will be released soon.

So will you be overselling?
No! With this new system, resources are controlled by the server in such a fashion that they are limited and will prevent users from consuming them to the point of causing an effect for others.

What will happen if my website hits this resource limit?
The limits we put in place will be very generous, but if your account hits the resource limit your website may begin loading more slowly. In very extreme cases, additional connections to your website will be dropped and an error message displayed. Please be aware that this is only in very extreme cases – and would only occur in periods of extreme activity (such as being on the front page of a social media website, etc).

Will you move existing clients to these new packages?
No. As always with any package changes we make, existing clients will remain on their existing packages. If you wish to upgrade or downgrade to one of our new offerings, you may do so by requesting this within the client area.

What does this mean for you? No more downtime every month or so due to Kernel updates. Our uptime is already very good but now it’s going to be even better!

The key area we’re now looking at is daily CPU usage per account. This gives us a far more accurate representation of single site resource usage consumption, than on a per-process basis where you may have a very high period of activity, but not much happening for the rest of the day.

This is a very difficult topic to write about and discuss, since it effectively hits at the very heart of a topic which is essentially “Is my site fit for shared hosting?” Many hosting providers in the past have put limits in place on resource consumption, and whilst we don’t want to do that, we do need to have limits in place which provide a guideline we can use to determine when a site has exceeded shared hosting placement and needs its own dedicated set of resources.

At this*, as you should know, we don’t oversell our servers. This lets your sites run very well in all but the most extreme of conditions. Whilst we don’t oversell, given the nature of shared hosting, it’s simply not feasible for us to host websites which by their nature or by the mere traffic they receive, out-consume others by many many times. Out anti-overselling policies simply aren’t in place to allow very popular and active websites to “get by” on a shared hosting account without needing to upgrade to something that better suits them.

Many people may instantly jump to the conclusion that “If you need to take action, you must be overselling!”. That’s simply not the case at all. To throw an (extreme) analogy your way; if we deploy a brand new server and had a single account running on it that consumed approximately 60% of the load (permanently) – that’s most certainly a site that needs its own server. It’s not financially viable for us, or any other hosting provider out there, to maintain a website that large at the cost of shared hosting.

We’ve been monitoring accounts for the past few weeks, and we think we have a good idea of a guideline on CPU resource consumption in a “minutes per day” measurement. The sites that have currently exceeded our approximate guideline generate (on average) at least 750,000 hits (and in some cases much more) every day. We feel that’s certainly beyond what you would expect from a shared hosting account, and we’re happy that the guideline is “fair”. If we were to implement a guideline or “limit” on CPU minutes, we would not take immediate action on websites – such as a suspension or termination. Instead, we would notify the user and offer them an alternative solution, or at least make it clear that action needs to be taken, whether that’s a VPS or Dedicated solution with us (coming soon) or another provider. Our intention isn’t to disconnect anyone and leave them without their website. Your websites are important to us, and ultimately we want you to be in the best possible position.

To be clear, this isn’t a package issue. We’re more than happy for our lowest package users to use exactly the same amount of server resources (CPU and RAM) as our highest package users. This is fundamentally a Shared vs VPS/Dedicated issue.

We’re looking for your feedback on this subject. Do you believe what we’ve outlined is fair? Do you have any questions or suggestions on this topic?

Enjoy!