Featured Host: Aussie Hosts
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Above: Marita and Gary Meadows
Author: Lois Summers
He’s been a softball champion, an army corporal, a network administrator, and an ISP provider. Now a web hosting pioneer in Australia and co-owner of Aussie Hosts, Gary Meadows has changed the Australian web hosting landscape and set an example for newcomers to the industry.
Gary’s IT career began when he completed a course in Basic Programming at the Western Australian College of Advanced Education — at the age of 10. He later worked in various IT-related fields for several years. When he was 21, he enlisted in the Australian army for "a change," where he eventually found himself back in system administration.
A rugby-related volleyball injury ended Gary’s seven-year military career in 1998. He and his wife Marita then started a company in Brisbane, Australia, offering dial-up access, web design, and web hosting.
"Over time," he tells us, "the web hosting took over, and that’s where we focused our attention." Aussie Hosts was born.
In this article:
This page
- Aussie Hosts overview
- Aussie Hosts and Enhanced Host: the past and the present
- Future directions for Aussie Hosts
Page 2
- Behind the scenes at Aussie Hosts
- A look at the Big G
- The web hosting industry: accountability and success
- WebHostingTalk from a community liaison’s perspective
Aussie Hosts overview
Aussie Hosts offers a range of plans featuring Linux servers, Plesk control panels, and outstanding support. They have servers in both the US and
Australia. Their services:
- Shared web hosting
- Reseller hosting (currently only Australian-based for new clients; US-based reseller hosting for new clients is expected to be re-introduced in late 2005)
- Fully managed virtual private servers
- Fully managed dedicated servers (Australian-based only)
- SSL certificates
- Domain names
Aussie Hosts and Enhanced Host: the past and the present
The first company servers were located in Australia. In 2000, Aussie Hosts moved to US-based hosting. "Local bandwidth was expensive," Gary explains, "and website owners were looking to the US for more cost-effective services." He and Marita established the Enhanced Host name in 2001 to brand their US-based services with a name that didn’t suggest that the servers were in Australia.
In 2003, after going from servers in Australia to servers in the US, they re-assessed the market and brought back Australian-based services while continuing to offer their US services. Their aim was "to provide a more cost-effective solution than what was generally available here in Australia at the time." Prices for full hosting services in Australia had never been as low, and a drop in other hosts’ Australian-based hosting prices followed. Aussie Hosts, meanwhile, continued to provide the top-notch support they’re famous for.
Website owners approved — Aussie Hosts has been voted the Number 1 Top Buy in Web Hosting by Australian PC User.
Gary describes the Aussie Hosts approach:
Our focus has always been to earn the trust and respect of our clients. We built up a large client base early, and that allows us to concentrate on after-sales service by working with our clients to make sure that their needs are taken care of. Most of our original clients are still with us, and some who left have subsequently returned, because we have demonstrated our commitment to our responsibilities. It’s not hard to do. In fact, it’s probably easier and requires less effort to remain focused and attentive to your clients’ requirements.
How do you measure success? Financial gains are one way, and "our bottom line is high enough to sustain commitments and growth." Client numbers also speak — Aussie Hosts has over 3500 clients in 25 countries, and they host more than 10,000 domains on 29 servers in the US and Australia.
Reputation is another assessment tool. Aussie Hosts is well respected within the web hosting industry by their clients and peers alike.
Gary gives us his perspective on success. "You need to be happy with the way that you’ve been treated and the way that you have treated others. On that score, we have done well. We can look at the fruits of our labour and hold our heads high, knowing that the success we are enjoying has been achieved honestly and professionally."
Future directions for Aussie Hosts
After being a home-based business since 2000, Aussie Hosts is moving into a bricks-and-mortar office in George Town, Tasmania. "There are benefits to running a home-based business," Gary says, "but we’re forming some good working relationships with a number of businesses in our local area, and our new premises will allow us to deal with business matters on a more professional level."
Gary and Marita are also investigating some retail lines that will complement the local market, and they’re starting up an Internet café. The office and Internet café are scheduled to open in April 2005.
A new addition to the Aussie Hosts line of services is virtual private servers. Because of the massive interest in Aussie Hosts’ local VPS service, Gary anticipates that "the launch of our Australian-based VPS servers is going to keep us busy for the first half of this year." Aussie Hosts began offering US-based virtual private servers in January 2005, and they’re gearing up to introduce Australian-based VPS services in March.
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Behind the scenes at Aussie Hosts
To people who know him in the forums he frequents, Gary is the face of Aussie Hosts. But Gary is only half of the Aussie Hosts husband-and-wife partnership.
Marita is in charge of administration. Along with two part-time staff members, she handles custom plans, billing, and account management. She’s knowledgeable enough about Gary’s responsibilities that when he’s away, she can oversee the entire operation and keep everything running smoothly.
Gary describes their working relationship: "Marita and I are very fortunate in that we can work together as an effective team and maintain a strong focus on our work together. We share the same work ethics, and our goals are always in sync."
Keeping work discussions and decisions separate from family life is necessary for the family unit, Gary says. Other family members are also involved in the accounting and legal aspects of the business, and together they’ve built up a strong organization while keeping family ties intact.
A look at the Big G
You don’t expect to learn that someone who has spent most of his life acquiring technical knowledge is a creative writer, but at the Enhanced Host site, we read that Gary is a published poet. Stage script writing was his first interest, and a stage play he wrote when he was 12 won a national competition. While he was working in the remote Australian wheat belt in the late 1980s, his attention turned to poetry. Three of his poems are published in 1989 Anthology of New Australian Poets.
Although writing is one of his passions, he hasn’t had much time to write in the past few years. Recently, however, he’s been writing again, and a Sydney-based country music artist has invited him to provide some song lyrics.
Family is important to Gary, and he works on maintaining a healthy balance between work and time with Marita and their children. "I find that if you lose focus on either," he says, "the benefits gained by the other will be short-lived."
When he was younger, Gary competed in softball, rugby, and squash at national and international levels. Now a father, he enjoys helping his children hone their skills in their chosen sports.
December 2004 brought a change in residence for the Meadows family. At their new home in Australia’s island state of Tasmania, "we have a lot of sightseeing ahead of us."
You’ll also find Gary in various online forums. The main forum, of course, is the Aussie Hosts forum, where Gary answers support and pre-sales questions. He finds time to offer website feedback and to talk and play in discussion threads. He’s a regular poster in Web Hosting Talk Australia, which he and Marita started in 2002 along with The Australian Web Hosting Directory to provide a valuable resource for Australians looking for local service providers. His current post count in the WebHostingTalk.com forum is over 3600 and growing almost daily.
The web hosting industry: accountability and success
The rapid growth of the web hosting industry has taken place with growing pains along the way. Some smaller hosts as well as a few larger ones have left clients stranded when the hosts discovered that their businesses weren’t sustainable.
Closing the doors on their services was the easy way out, Gary thinks. He anticipates a future accreditation process for hosts that will help consumers choose recognized web hosts more carefully and will help recognized hosts attract clients. "I believe we’ll start to see a number of widely recognised associations and organisations forming in order to offer the consumer some sort of protection from the problem with accountability that has haunted the industry over the last few years."
Web host forums provide a limited form of accountability. Prospective clients can read posts in web host forums to observe how the hosts respond to their clients’ questions and how they handle problems when they arise. Hosts and clients benefit if the forum works well, and prospective clients have the benefit of forewarning if they don’t like what they see.
As co-owner of the active and successful Aussie Hosts forum, Gary describes additional advantages: "Forums are a good way for providers to disseminate general information that their clients need to know, and to encourage group discussion on issues that website owners face in the day-to-day management of their websites."
On the other hand, not all clients want to use a forum. "We’re finding that most clients prefer to use a helpdesk to work one-on-one with a support staff member to troubleshoot and resolve technical issues, rather than post their questions on a public forum."
When asked, Gary offered this advice for people thinking of starting a web hosting business:
Research your own providers carefully. Your own efforts can easily be hampered by a bad choice in supplier. Your clients will want to see some stability, and if you are constantly changing providers, you’ll be interrupting the services you provide to your own clients in one way or another. Don’t base your decisions on price alone. Look for demonstrated longevity, stability, and the responsiveness of those you’ll need to rely on to be able to build up a good reputation of your own.
WebHostingTalk from a community liaison’s perspective
Gary joined WebHostingTalk.com in 2000, and he became a community liaison in 2003 "because I saw it as an opportunity to be part of a group whose aim is to keep WHT an organised and respectable part of our industry." He’s there almost every day; if he doesn’t post, he’s still skimming through threads in areas that he’s responsible for and sometimes moving threads to more on-topic forums.
He finds the broadest range of views in the industry in the WebHostingTalk Lounge, and he keeps up with industry developments and shares his technical knowledge in the Hosting Software and Control Panels forum.
"Each of the different forums complements each other well, and I think the administration team, in consultation with their liaisons, guides, and members, have put together a good combination of forums covering a wide range of topics."
In Gary’s opinion, the use of WHT to find services or talk about other web-related topics works well. He has observed the competitiveness among some web hosts getting stronger, though, and "all too often we see providers stretching the truth about the services they offer or when they were established, and spending countless hours seeking out problems being reported about other providers to try to capitalise on them."
The benefits far outweigh the problems, and Gary has formed good working relationships with some of the other members outside the forum. He considers it a privilege to be associated with them.
"It has been a very interesting experience."
Author: Lois Summers
Lois Summers is a web writer and editor with an obsession for words and rhythm, content organization, details, and presentation. She organizes her writing and resources online at wordsweave.com.
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