Web Hosting Interview - RivalHost March 2011

Web Hosting Interview - RivalHost March 2011

Todd Reagor, CEO of RivalHost

We talked with Todd Reagor, CEO of RivalHost - a leading high performance web hosting provider since 2003.

  • HOSTSEARCH: Todd, thank you very much for an opportunity to talk with you today. Can you please give our visitors some background about yourself and your role within the company?
    TODD REAGOR: RivalHost is a privately owned company, headquarters located in the heartland of America; specializing in professional hosting solutions, DDOS hosting, e-commerce, VPS, and cloud solutions. Our plans are designed to tailor to specific needs - from personal use/small businesses to sophisticated e-commerce sites with higher requirements for bandwidth and disk space.

    I work close with our sales and marketing experts on fine tuning our current products and services and always looking for ways to improve our service and offer more options to our clients. We are currently working on a couple of new programs which we will be launching by the end of the first quarter of 2006 which should add more benefits to our existing and potential customers RivalHost.

    I've been involved with the hosting industry for the past 12 years as the founder and owner of two previous startups (poplogic.com and urljet.com) that were eventually acquired by other firms and now RivalHost.com. I handle senior level support issues when they arise and work closely with our sales and marketing team on fine tuning our current products and services.
  • HOSTSEARCH: What kind of the hosting services do you offer?
    TODD REAGOR: Rivalhost specializes in providing professional grade hosting solutions, DDOS hosting, e-commerce hosting, VPS, and cloud solutions.
  • HOSTSEARCH: What type of servers do you use for VPS hosting service?
    TODD REAGOR: Our managed VPS nodes are housed on DELL Enterprise class R710 servers with 48GB RAM, utilizing vmware and include HA Redundancy should one physical server fail a new instance of the VPS is created within seconds on an alternate machine Almost guaranteeing 100% uptime.
  • HOSTSEARCH: What are your advices for our visitors who are looking for Cloud hosting service as you offer Cloud platform?
    TODD REAGOR: Presently there is much debate on what a cloud truly is or should be. My feeling is at its very basic cloud hosting should include the ability to scale up or down in RAM, storage and CPU with little or no downtime. A central storage system that can sustain multiple drive failures without affecting the flow of data or performance. And last but not least a fully redundant system. Should one host experience an issue within seconds a new host is spawned effectively decreasing down time to almost nothing due to hardware issues.
  • HOSTSEARCH: As RivalHost is the first hosting provider to reach the prestigious APS 400 certification level for Shared Hosting. Can you please tell us more about it?
    TODD REAGOR: Getting certified at the APS 400 level means that Rivalhost was able to maintain over 99.99% uptime in their shared hosting environment over the three month qualification period; no small feat for any hosting provider. In fact, Rivalhost is the first hosting provider to reach the prestigious APS 400 certification level for Shared Hosting.

    "With all the exaggerated claims and hype out there in today's hosting market we felt it was critical to rise above the noise. UptimeSafe was the best choice in providing uptime transparency so potential clients could feel safe in making a buying decision based on facts rather than hype" said Rivalhost's Todd Reagor.

    UptimeSafe works by monitoring a cross section of a service provider's network around the clock and certifying their uptime and reliability based on a comprehensive set of UptimeSafe standards. UptimeSafe is unique in that in order to maintain the APS(sm) certification; service providers must maintain their uptime level at all times. Providers who meet these certification standards are able to display the UptimeSafe Seal on their websites and in their marketing materials.
  • HOSTSEARCH: Can you give us an idea of your company's facilities, datacenters, and etc?
    TODD REAGOR: We chose GSI Air World Technology Center (ATC) data center as our facilities partner. GSI host some of the most famous brands in the world such as Burger King, Colgate, Nationwide, Simmons, and more. If it's good enough for those guys we're pretty confident of the network and facilities. Located near Kansas City International Airport in the AirWorld Technology Park. The Air World Technology Center (ATC) covers over 5 acres with over 70,000 square feet of secure raised-floor computing space. RivalHost owns and manages our own equipment. We have on-site staff that monitors and performs maintenance so your data stays safe and your site loading fast.
  • HOSTSEARCH: If you take customer care out of the equation what is key to a web host's success?
    TODD REAGOR: Reliability, responsiveness to the market and trends.
  • HOSTSEARCH: What's the core benefit of hosting with RivalHost? What do customers like about your company?
    TODD REAGOR: I think our customers appreciate the accessibility of our staff and techs. Our honesty in dealing with them.
  • HOSTSEARCH: Do you have any other changes or additions to your service this year?
    TODD REAGOR: We just launched our affiliate program this quarter with payouts up to $125 and will roll-out a few reseller packages that allow clients to start their own hosting company under their brand.
  • HOSTSEARCH: Thank you very much for your time today.

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