And the number of PeachyPowered sites has grown to 5! Big props to my partner Keith for being the man and getting connected with four out of those five new customers. We've been in contact with a lot of people about making the switch and I'm hoping that that number keeps growing as peoples' commitments to other hosting companies runs out. I think that the word is out there enough about the fine print that goes along with "unlimited accounts" and I've been surprised at the number of people I've talked to who have already known about that… and have been eager to find a business, like ours, that is more open about what's going on behind the scenes. So that's been really nice.
Anyway - I'm thinking of redoing the website soon… an changing it from a one page deal, to something where you can navigate around a little bit. If anyone has any ideas about what pages to add, I'm welcoming any feedback - but for now, I think it would be nice to have a list of websites that are currently hosted on PeachyHost with links to them and a little tagline so that people can check out what sites on PeachyHost are doing. I'm also thinking that, as we expand our plans, we'll want a dedicated page to talk about those… and of course we'll still need a homepage. I wonder if I can eventually move this blog over to the main site… although we think that it's a good idea to also have ways of communicating that are not connected to the site - just to increase the options people have for contacting us.
That's about it for now - but things are exciting, and I'm very happy to welcome all the new sites to PeachyHost.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Here's to hoping
As my last post commemorated, November 7th was PeachyHost's official launch date. On the 9th or so, I talked with a good friend of mine and told her, "So… guess how many sites we have on PeachyHost?"
She thought for a minute and ventured, "100?"
"Nope," I replied, coyly… "zero!"
And we both had a laugh.
But I was only laughing on the outside. Inside I was thinking, "I gotta start pounding some pavement, and getting the word out, because clearly, the word isn't running all over town by itself. It's much too modest."
So the next day, Keith, Nam, and I made a concerted effort to start hitting up people we knew and really spreading the word in a contagious way. By the 11th, we had our first official customer, and are proud to be hosting Thymos.org, a northwest-based Asian American Activism organization. Byron Wong, who writes his own blog, the Big WOWO, focusing on Asian American Activism and Intellectualism, was the first of our friends to get his act together and get his site completely transferred over to us. Thank you Byron, and thank you Thymos.
Several other of our friends and family are in the process of transferring their sites, and we are happily awaiting the opportunity to help them along in this process.
I'm sure that, at some point, all of these technical motions will become mundane, but for now we are savoring every moment of each transfer while we plant the seeds and water the roots of PeachyHost. I'm excited to see the list of sites hosting on PeachyHost grow, and proud to be able to deliver honest and open service to them.
Which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about in this post… and that is the principles upon which PeachyHost was founded. "They" (whoever they are) say that brands and names need to be heard a certain number of times before people will remember them in any sort of meaningful way. I'm sure that the mission, vision, and passion behind an organization also has to be voiced multiple times for them to be apparent as well. And I will be the first to say that I rarely read all the small print - so if a company wants to get something across to me, they better hit me with the big.
So with that as a disclamatory preamble, I am resolute in talking about PeachyHost as, not only a wonderful collaboration of friends (and not just Keith, Nam, and myself, but also Byron and anyone else who wants to join in and Peachy-Power their sites), but as a company that is curious to find out how a company that is open and, more importantly, honest, can fare in a society and an age that is becoming more and more technologically and informationally savvy.
A good friend of mine asked me today about the specs on our plan, and pointed out that 5GB of space wasn't as much as some other hosting sites will promise for comparable prices. And this is true, I told her - she had done her research in terms of what plans advertised well. BUT, as Keith aptly pointed out, "those jokers will shut you down long before you use that allowance."
The idea is this: most people don't use more than 5GB of space, and that is precisely what some other hosting sites bank on when they advertise their specs. And I've heard many a horror story of people who approached their quota and were shut down because at the specs that were promised, it's not actually worth it for the companies.
To make sure I could back this premise up, we did only a quick search and found these:
http://corlan.org/2008/10/13/my-nightmare-monday-thanks-to-godaddy/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-fendelman/why-i-dont-owe-godaddy-65_b_129276.html
The second story was picked up by consumerist and discussed here:
http://consumerist.com/5056063/perhaps-you-dont-owe-godaddy-6579
These companies hope to make money on a false sense of "value" since they sell you things they hope you won't use.
PeachyHost is a reaction to that kind of business model, and we hope to "fight the good fight" so-to-speak, and be straight-up about what you will get for each penny you invest in your company and in your website.
If you need more space then we've allotted in our initial plans, then talk to us, and we will work out something fair. If you purchase an initial plan and start to find out six months down the road that you've grown and need more of everything - that's fine too. We will not shut you down when your usage increases. We will simply contact you and figure out what kind of plan would now suit your bigger business.
This is the first of, I'm sure, many iterations of this ideal. But I think it's important to get across. PeachyHost is not simply trying to provide a cheap alternative to already cheap alternatives. And you should not join up with us just because we are a smaller company that won't have over-saturated servers.
PeachyHost is a reaction to slimy business practices, and an attempt to bring honesty to that invisible hand that runs a capitalist market. Because while the best man may not always win… wouldn't it be nice to hope that he could?
Raise a glass, or pick a peach. But here's a toast to hoping.
She thought for a minute and ventured, "100?"
"Nope," I replied, coyly… "zero!"
And we both had a laugh.
But I was only laughing on the outside. Inside I was thinking, "I gotta start pounding some pavement, and getting the word out, because clearly, the word isn't running all over town by itself. It's much too modest."
So the next day, Keith, Nam, and I made a concerted effort to start hitting up people we knew and really spreading the word in a contagious way. By the 11th, we had our first official customer, and are proud to be hosting Thymos.org, a northwest-based Asian American Activism organization. Byron Wong, who writes his own blog, the Big WOWO, focusing on Asian American Activism and Intellectualism, was the first of our friends to get his act together and get his site completely transferred over to us. Thank you Byron, and thank you Thymos.
Several other of our friends and family are in the process of transferring their sites, and we are happily awaiting the opportunity to help them along in this process.
I'm sure that, at some point, all of these technical motions will become mundane, but for now we are savoring every moment of each transfer while we plant the seeds and water the roots of PeachyHost. I'm excited to see the list of sites hosting on PeachyHost grow, and proud to be able to deliver honest and open service to them.
Which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about in this post… and that is the principles upon which PeachyHost was founded. "They" (whoever they are) say that brands and names need to be heard a certain number of times before people will remember them in any sort of meaningful way. I'm sure that the mission, vision, and passion behind an organization also has to be voiced multiple times for them to be apparent as well. And I will be the first to say that I rarely read all the small print - so if a company wants to get something across to me, they better hit me with the big.
So with that as a disclamatory preamble, I am resolute in talking about PeachyHost as, not only a wonderful collaboration of friends (and not just Keith, Nam, and myself, but also Byron and anyone else who wants to join in and Peachy-Power their sites), but as a company that is curious to find out how a company that is open and, more importantly, honest, can fare in a society and an age that is becoming more and more technologically and informationally savvy.
A good friend of mine asked me today about the specs on our plan, and pointed out that 5GB of space wasn't as much as some other hosting sites will promise for comparable prices. And this is true, I told her - she had done her research in terms of what plans advertised well. BUT, as Keith aptly pointed out, "those jokers will shut you down long before you use that allowance."
The idea is this: most people don't use more than 5GB of space, and that is precisely what some other hosting sites bank on when they advertise their specs. And I've heard many a horror story of people who approached their quota and were shut down because at the specs that were promised, it's not actually worth it for the companies.
To make sure I could back this premise up, we did only a quick search and found these:
http://corlan.org/2008/10/13/my-nightmare-monday-thanks-to-godaddy/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-fendelman/why-i-dont-owe-godaddy-65_b_129276.html
The second story was picked up by consumerist and discussed here:
http://consumerist.com/5056063/perhaps-you-dont-owe-godaddy-6579
These companies hope to make money on a false sense of "value" since they sell you things they hope you won't use.
PeachyHost is a reaction to that kind of business model, and we hope to "fight the good fight" so-to-speak, and be straight-up about what you will get for each penny you invest in your company and in your website.
If you need more space then we've allotted in our initial plans, then talk to us, and we will work out something fair. If you purchase an initial plan and start to find out six months down the road that you've grown and need more of everything - that's fine too. We will not shut you down when your usage increases. We will simply contact you and figure out what kind of plan would now suit your bigger business.
This is the first of, I'm sure, many iterations of this ideal. But I think it's important to get across. PeachyHost is not simply trying to provide a cheap alternative to already cheap alternatives. And you should not join up with us just because we are a smaller company that won't have over-saturated servers.
PeachyHost is a reaction to slimy business practices, and an attempt to bring honesty to that invisible hand that runs a capitalist market. Because while the best man may not always win… wouldn't it be nice to hope that he could?
Raise a glass, or pick a peach. But here's a toast to hoping.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Launched!
We officially launched last night and are set to rock and roll… now we just need some customers! I'm cutting and pasting part of an email blurb we've been sending out:
PeachyHost is more than just a high quality and super-affordable web
host. PeachyHost is the first completely transparent startup. That's
right, we're documenting the entire process and we'll even be
releasing our finances. We plan to connect with customers on an
unprecedented level so we've made it easy to follow our progress:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/peachyhost/
Blog: http://peachyhost.blogspot.com/ (you're here now!)
Web: http://www.peachyhost.com/ (yeah, it's a little rough looking but
we'll get there)
For the month of November we are offering a Grand Opening Special. For
just $5/month you get:
-5,000 MB disk space
-25,000 MB bandwidth
-unlimited email accounts
Want to get started? Click here.
PeachyHost is more than just a high quality and super-affordable web
host. PeachyHost is the first completely transparent startup. That's
right, we're documenting the entire process and we'll even be
releasing our finances. We plan to connect with customers on an
unprecedented level so we've made it easy to follow our progress:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/peachyhost/
Blog: http://peachyhost.blogspot.com/ (you're here now!)
Web: http://www.peachyhost.com/ (yeah, it's a little rough looking but
we'll get there)
For the month of November we are offering a Grand Opening Special. For
just $5/month you get:
-5,000 MB disk space
-25,000 MB bandwidth
-unlimited email accounts
Want to get started? Click here.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
If Only
I was talking with Keith, another of the guys starting up PeachyHost.com with me, and we were just kind of talking about entrepreneurship in general and, in particular, all those things that you totally could have done yourself if only you'd thought of it.
Jackson Pollock is a great example of this. Everyone looks at his artwork and says, "Well, gee whiz… I can do that!"
I just did a quick search for a link to job your memory - but, you know, amazingly, I couldn't find one that had some good high quality renditions of his famously splattered paintings. You can read about him on wikipedia, or, better yet, click here to have your own Jackson Pollock experience (just click your mouse to change colors). Kinda fun. Get those screen shot keys ready and you can make your own artsy screen-saver.
Anyway - the example that we got caught up on, since it also had its roots on the web, was the Million Dollar Homepage. The basic premise was that this guy, Alex Tew, 21-years-old, made a homepage that hosted an image, 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels (one million pixels total). For the price of only $1/pixel, you could buy space on his page to advertise. Because he got so much attention - people went to the site - and people wanted to get their name on it.
Well, gee whiz… a page with a one million pixel image? I can do that!
Of course that's not the point. He had the idea - and it was worth one-million dollars.
Anyway - we're getting ready to launch (I hope that the next post I have up here is an announcement of that) and we've been going over our possible plans and rates and how we're actually going to make this into a viable business… so I got to thinking about entrepreneurship and remembered our conversation from a few weeks back.
If anyone is reading this (IS anyone reading this?) and you have ideas about plans and (realistic) prices you'd like to see offered we're more than happy to field those ideas.
Or if you just want to pass along a million-dollar idea, we'll happily take that as well.
Cheers!
Jackson Pollock is a great example of this. Everyone looks at his artwork and says, "Well, gee whiz… I can do that!"
I just did a quick search for a link to job your memory - but, you know, amazingly, I couldn't find one that had some good high quality renditions of his famously splattered paintings. You can read about him on wikipedia, or, better yet, click here to have your own Jackson Pollock experience (just click your mouse to change colors). Kinda fun. Get those screen shot keys ready and you can make your own artsy screen-saver.
Anyway - the example that we got caught up on, since it also had its roots on the web, was the Million Dollar Homepage. The basic premise was that this guy, Alex Tew, 21-years-old, made a homepage that hosted an image, 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels (one million pixels total). For the price of only $1/pixel, you could buy space on his page to advertise. Because he got so much attention - people went to the site - and people wanted to get their name on it.
Well, gee whiz… a page with a one million pixel image? I can do that!
Of course that's not the point. He had the idea - and it was worth one-million dollars.
Anyway - we're getting ready to launch (I hope that the next post I have up here is an announcement of that) and we've been going over our possible plans and rates and how we're actually going to make this into a viable business… so I got to thinking about entrepreneurship and remembered our conversation from a few weeks back.
If anyone is reading this (IS anyone reading this?) and you have ideas about plans and (realistic) prices you'd like to see offered we're more than happy to field those ideas.
Or if you just want to pass along a million-dollar idea, we'll happily take that as well.
Cheers!
Monday, November 3, 2008
Passin' Thru
Welcome to the official company blog for PeachyHost.com - a brand new company (our website is still under construction if you're reading this as a current post) that aims to operate with a completely transparent business-model, and a forthcoming and honest approach to offering shared-hosting services.
As a quick preamble, I'll set the context of this post with a lyric that Randy Scruggs sang with Joan Osborne in their song, Passin' Thru: "It's a crazy world we live in, but the truth is, we're only passing through."
To me, that line speaks to how much there is going on all around us, and how little time we have to meaningfully participate. In a lot of ways, this sums up the modernizing world, with is widespread inter-connectivity and seemingly shrinking distances. Today, there are so many options, so much to do - and all of it right at our fingertips.
And though this comes with a long list of issues that it raises, what I love about the world today (focusing on the positive…) is that, with the widespread dissemination of information through the internet, the possibilities are limitless. You can learn to solder on YouTube, have a face-to-face chat over skype (provided you also have some webcams), or share your latest project with anyone in the world who stumbles upon in here on blogger.com.
SO.
I've been meaning to start this blog for a while now - but each time I would sit down to write, it just seemed like so much back-story that I was never sure where to start. And then, I'd usually just decide that perhaps another day, with more inspiration, I could sit down and really flush things out.
But who knows when I'm ever going to have time for that… so… I guess there's no time like the present to just jump in and start going. Forgive the quick (or, maybe not-so-quick) synopsis:
A few months ago I began toying (naively) with the idea of setting up some servers in my apartment. The impetus for this was that I wanted to put up a site for myself, and thought that it might just be a matter of getting hard drive space, making sure my computer was online 24/7 (which is was anyway) and then figuring out some HTML…
I began asking around and was pointed in the direction of a friend-of-a-friend, Keith Coleman, who I'd met a few times when he came here to NY to visit the friend in said friend-of-friend connection. Cutting to the chase (and I'm sure I'll fill in blanks and gaps as they become relevant to later thoughts) he was, indeed, running a server system - though his was geared primarily at high (read: impeccable) reliability servers for businesses. Unlike other shared-hosting sites that often boasted theoretically possible, but nominal-in-practice claims about unlimited bandwidth, 100% reliability, etc.… Keith was straight-up about what was and wasn't going to be happening with his server.
Now, this was fairly easy for him to do because he had set his system up so well that he could pretty much give anyone anything they wanted. But still - for many it was a breath of fresh air.
Businesses paid much higher monthly rates (upwards of $100, I think - vs. shared hosting that typically goes for somewhere between $5-$15/month depending on how long you sign a contract for) because they had specs on their service and reliability in the platform that they could count on for an honest 100% of the time. Not 95%, not 99.8%… but (well, I guess it would be infinitesimally close to) 100% (just a hair less since it's always possible that the Russians will finally come and destroy his whole set up, leaving his clients SOL).
But the thing is: for $5-$15/month, you don't get 5%-15% reliability. It's much higher than that. So for most consumer/small-business needs a shared hosting site will be just fine. Sure there will be a few outages here and there because the server hardware is being used to the hilt - sure you may get shut down if business is really booming and it's no longer worth it for bigger shared-hosting companies to allow you to use that much bandwidth - but really… for the substantial savings a few outages are okay… and if business is booming so much you get shut down - well, that's a problem I think most small businesses would love to have.
So Keith and I got to talking - and, in fact, another friend of Keith's, Nam Kim (who was on-board before me, actually), had a thought that, since a shared-hosting server was a coin's toss from the finish line with Keith's set-up, we might be able to use that infrastructure to build our own hosting site without having to sink too much more capital in. And while it might not make sense yet to use the really-premium quadruple-redundancy and instantaneous platform switching capability that Keith currently offers in his more expensive business plans, we could, through more judicious allocation of space within our shared server, offer a more dependable shared hosting service and tap into the "consumer" web-hosting market made up of everyone, their mother, their brother… oh, and their cousin.
Additionally - as a gimmick that we hope might be interesting for some of you, we're going to try to document every step that we take here on this blog. If you dig deep enough, you can probably find out most of the behind-the-scenes things with any company these days anyway. But who cares enough to do all that digging for every company that comes along? If you're curious about us at all, hey - we'll just lay it all out there. We don't purport to know all the answers, but we're taking our best, most educated guesses. We welcome any ideas, opinions, rants, raves, reviews, and more. And if you just want to hang on for the ride and experience an entrepreneurial experience vicariously through us - we are happy to have you in that capacity too. After all - we're the first to admit that it's a crazy world we live in… and we're only passing through.
As a quick preamble, I'll set the context of this post with a lyric that Randy Scruggs sang with Joan Osborne in their song, Passin' Thru: "It's a crazy world we live in, but the truth is, we're only passing through."
To me, that line speaks to how much there is going on all around us, and how little time we have to meaningfully participate. In a lot of ways, this sums up the modernizing world, with is widespread inter-connectivity and seemingly shrinking distances. Today, there are so many options, so much to do - and all of it right at our fingertips.
And though this comes with a long list of issues that it raises, what I love about the world today (focusing on the positive…) is that, with the widespread dissemination of information through the internet, the possibilities are limitless. You can learn to solder on YouTube, have a face-to-face chat over skype (provided you also have some webcams), or share your latest project with anyone in the world who stumbles upon in here on blogger.com.
SO.
I've been meaning to start this blog for a while now - but each time I would sit down to write, it just seemed like so much back-story that I was never sure where to start. And then, I'd usually just decide that perhaps another day, with more inspiration, I could sit down and really flush things out.
But who knows when I'm ever going to have time for that… so… I guess there's no time like the present to just jump in and start going. Forgive the quick (or, maybe not-so-quick) synopsis:
***
A few months ago I began toying (naively) with the idea of setting up some servers in my apartment. The impetus for this was that I wanted to put up a site for myself, and thought that it might just be a matter of getting hard drive space, making sure my computer was online 24/7 (which is was anyway) and then figuring out some HTML…
I began asking around and was pointed in the direction of a friend-of-a-friend, Keith Coleman, who I'd met a few times when he came here to NY to visit the friend in said friend-of-friend connection. Cutting to the chase (and I'm sure I'll fill in blanks and gaps as they become relevant to later thoughts) he was, indeed, running a server system - though his was geared primarily at high (read: impeccable) reliability servers for businesses. Unlike other shared-hosting sites that often boasted theoretically possible, but nominal-in-practice claims about unlimited bandwidth, 100% reliability, etc.… Keith was straight-up about what was and wasn't going to be happening with his server.
Now, this was fairly easy for him to do because he had set his system up so well that he could pretty much give anyone anything they wanted. But still - for many it was a breath of fresh air.
Businesses paid much higher monthly rates (upwards of $100, I think - vs. shared hosting that typically goes for somewhere between $5-$15/month depending on how long you sign a contract for) because they had specs on their service and reliability in the platform that they could count on for an honest 100% of the time. Not 95%, not 99.8%… but (well, I guess it would be infinitesimally close to) 100% (just a hair less since it's always possible that the Russians will finally come and destroy his whole set up, leaving his clients SOL).
But the thing is: for $5-$15/month, you don't get 5%-15% reliability. It's much higher than that. So for most consumer/small-business needs a shared hosting site will be just fine. Sure there will be a few outages here and there because the server hardware is being used to the hilt - sure you may get shut down if business is really booming and it's no longer worth it for bigger shared-hosting companies to allow you to use that much bandwidth - but really… for the substantial savings a few outages are okay… and if business is booming so much you get shut down - well, that's a problem I think most small businesses would love to have.
So Keith and I got to talking - and, in fact, another friend of Keith's, Nam Kim (who was on-board before me, actually), had a thought that, since a shared-hosting server was a coin's toss from the finish line with Keith's set-up, we might be able to use that infrastructure to build our own hosting site without having to sink too much more capital in. And while it might not make sense yet to use the really-premium quadruple-redundancy and instantaneous platform switching capability that Keith currently offers in his more expensive business plans, we could, through more judicious allocation of space within our shared server, offer a more dependable shared hosting service and tap into the "consumer" web-hosting market made up of everyone, their mother, their brother… oh, and their cousin.
Additionally - as a gimmick that we hope might be interesting for some of you, we're going to try to document every step that we take here on this blog. If you dig deep enough, you can probably find out most of the behind-the-scenes things with any company these days anyway. But who cares enough to do all that digging for every company that comes along? If you're curious about us at all, hey - we'll just lay it all out there. We don't purport to know all the answers, but we're taking our best, most educated guesses. We welcome any ideas, opinions, rants, raves, reviews, and more. And if you just want to hang on for the ride and experience an entrepreneurial experience vicariously through us - we are happy to have you in that capacity too. After all - we're the first to admit that it's a crazy world we live in… and we're only passing through.
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