Interviewed on 5 Feb 09
Jeff Wright, Founder and Owner
Crystal Host Web Solutions are a provider of extremely competitive hosting solutions for both the end-user and the budding new hosting company. We provide a wide range of services which include; web hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated server rental (Soon to be offering co-location hosting). We also offer Automation solutions for clients. We are now the ONLY authorised reseller listed with AWBS (Total On-line Solutions) for the UK area. We have also grown a strong relationship with Globalsign for SSL Certificates and Netearthone as Authorised/Trusted Partners allowing us to offer resellers and end-users excellent value for money on SSL Certificates and Domains. We are a young company of just over 2 years and we have driven our team to perfection offering excellent end-user support. Our website design solutions are designed to lift a budding on line merchant or advertiser into the future with a customisable system that allows for easy editing and maintenance whilst paying a reasonable price. We pride ourselves on the ability to offer EVERYTHING customised on all of our solutions, whether it is a custom hosting solution to something completely out of the ordinary.
What unique selling points do you offer?
We strive to be the best we can with all of the resources we have available. We never oversell our products unlike some hosting companies who cram as many websites ont a server just before it falls over. So there will be no “UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH & SPACE” offers anywhere near Crystal Host, both space and bandwidth cost money. Unfortunately some people fall for it hook line and sinker. We believe we have a good balance of resources and if we find problem sites which affect performance, the site owners involved are contacted and offered different solutions for the heavy sites, like VPS Solutions or Dedicated Servers. We don't turn anyone away unless they abuse our system or start hosting illegal content or breach our Terms Of Service, this only happens in extreme occasions.
Describe the services you offer?
Simple! An advertising space or billboard in layman's terms available to BILLIONS of people if you advertise it right with the correct content. People really under estimate the power of the web. Many websites I have seen are not a true representation of a company because it was badly represented either on a slow host or designed by an inexperienced website design team.
Describe your target market?
We target those individuals or companies willing to extend their business arm to the WEB. It is now becoming a popular place for advertising just about anything. We have embraced this and cannot stress the importance of a web presence. The majority of our customers range from end users with personal email right up to small to medium sized businesses and their on line empire building it from strength to strength. I am sure that everyone is aware now that we are a “One Stop Shop” for the vast majority of customers with the services we provide.
How is your company planning for the future?
Sunning ourselves on a beach somewhere, I wish! We will be keeping ourselves abreast of new technologies as usual, with every release of a new operating system, control panel or design tool comes more work in training and customer support. May I say that even from an end users point of view using Windows XP and then going to Vista or even Windows 7 beta it is quite a steep learning curve even for the most proficient users. We have, the forthcoming non beta release of cPanel for Windows 2008, which is going to allow users familiar with the Linux best seller control panel to migrate to the windows platform giving a much wider scope for their customers. There shouldn't be such a big learning curve for this product as most people from all walks of business have experienced the easy of use of cPanel at some time in their on line hosting experience. There are many more advances from other control panel providers as well leading Crystal Host into the excellence of support by providing top support and training for the future Panels and OS's. As for the business we are growing at a steady strength, even in this time of economic adversity. We see people becoming more comfortable with the security of on line commerce and see a HUGH growth in that area, we will be investing a lot of our resources into this area of development.
What benefits can you offer your customers?
We offer a wide range of products that a web designer or company can use, whether it be design templates or customised hosting solutions for any legal website entity. We will offer the best advice to give them an excellent head start so they don't run into problems later on with their projects. I feel that our teams' experience will shine through in the end and make the designer comfortable in the know that he is in extremely capable hands.
How do you support your customers?
We offer our usual non technical telephone support and sales service that all companies offer but we have a good live chat following for our customers requiring level 1 support from our team. Due to the nature of the way we deal with support we like to deal with all of our support queries on line through either our support system or live chat service. I have seen myself personally on to midnight and beyond with a customer or customers client, if they so wish, to resolve any issues or problems they have been having whether this is with a site's code that seems to be acting up to a VPS/Dedicated Server that needs software installed. We try to offer as much support on the live chat as possible in the first call, rather that having to ask the customer to come back to us at a later date. We have phones (you don't say) and we use them, if someone doesn't know how to do something and another person does, well we will either get the solution and relay it to the client or pass them over to someone who specialises in that field. Most of our customers seem to ask for urgent support out of hours so we have followed suit and we offer most of our support out of office hours, within reason, someone contacting us after 1am in the morning with a lengthy problem may be asked to leave the details and we will look into it when someone is fresh and ready.
