After many years in the business (since 2001 as a company and working in IT since 1997) I've seen many things change in the industry as a whole. I remember the good 'ol days when I was excited by my next door neighbor buying a 14.4k internal modem connected over an ISA port. We were still running 9600 baud external through a serial port at my house. Now we have Google installing 1Gbps home connections in many cities around America. It's amazing how fast the world changes from year to year, day to day at a rate that seems unimaginable a few years ago.
One of the things that changes very fast is the web and hosting industry. Looking through the Wayback Machine we can see how sites themselves change in just a few years time. Now in the matter of two to three years we've seen a huge shift from standard HTML4 websites, to responsive websites with HTML5 and CSS3 to Mobile Apps. It is an ever evolving industry, a beast that must feed constantly, that will devour any technology in the matter of months. This evolving technology requires servers to upgrade constantly to keep up with sites. It also requires company upgrades, constantly.
As a company this is fun to keep up with, it requires innovation, fast thinking and ever changing thought processes. This can be seen by the great leaps taken by SpaceX and Tesla Motors in the past 2 years alone. Paving the way for a new generation and new technology that will devour past endevours by great minds. Go to sleep at the helm, and you'll be swallowed in a matter of months (relating to seconds in the IT industry) by the wave of ever changing IT.
In the past 2 months Microtronix has changed, added and removed many things. These things I would of never thought of changing two years ago. Now it seems a must to survive.
A New Wave
One of the things that is changing fast in the hosting industry is the type of products offered, or more importantly the type of service we give our customers. A few years ago we saw a major shift in hosting, the industry overloaded itself with budget hosting companies. They were all the rave. Individuals from all over the world decided to start running small hosting companies, since it was becoming cheaper and cheaper to do so with DC prices dropping for server rentals.
This created a firesale, for lack of a better term, on everything hosting related. Prices started dropping like rain as the big companies saw the shift to WalMart style hosting prices. Liquidation became the name of the game and LEB (LowEndBox) units became all the rage for prices like $15, $12 and even $5 a year!
So Microtronix did as most companies did to stay ahead of the game and keep up with our ever demanding customer base, lower our prices. This price gouge created a frenzy that many companies couldn't keep up with. Creating massive demand for LEB boxes, customers purchasing them at insanely cheap prices of $1 a month, then still requiring full OS support for VPS units, Dedicateds and Shared hosting.
The problem arose months after this price drop occurred, companies realized that they couldn't keep profits, customer happiness, staff moral and wages all up at the same time. The problem arises in that the IT industry has some of the highest paid employees in the market. IT personal with certifications to work on Linux and Windows servers don't come cheap.
This problem has now caused a shift in the hosting industry, demanding companies to rethink our past changes to better serve our customers. Microtronix and many other companies have realized we need to re-think our hosting offers. We need to place a new emphasis on support and service for those units we rent.
This shift has caused many companies to re-brand their products, start offering more support to their customers and placing fewer and fewer customers on each individual server.
The Changes
What does this shift and change mean for Microtronix? Microtronix is shifting from offering budget VPS, Dedicated's and Shared Hosting to offering premium hosting services. This does mean our prices will be going up in the coming days and weeks to support the extra servers we need and fewer customers per server, also our increased support time and newer equipment.
One of our premium offerings is that all VPS, Dedicated and Shared hosting units come with Full support. Meaning we are no longer offering unmanaged VPS or Dedicated units. All future sold units come with Full support for your system. If you have a problem with your OS we will help you resolve it, our goal is to give our customers more support for their units, keep a long and lasting relationship with the customer instead of short term budget hosting.
We are working hard to keep prices down for current customers/subscribers. At this time there is no plan to up the price for anyone currently paying for a unit. If this does happen we will be giving a heads up to all customers, but we do not see this as being needed for the time being.
Another change you will notice is that all newly purchased Shared Linux hosting comes with some incentives added along with it. If you pay annually for your shared hosting you will now receive not only full support and management but you will get a free dedicated IP and a free Comodo PositiveSSL certificate to secure your site over HTTPS.
Yet another change we are working on is the shift away from Ticket based support and live chat. We will still be offering this service for all customers, however you will soon notice that phone support will be available during normal business hours by calling our regular line posted on the site. A quick call can help you resolve any issue you might be having.
Locality Matters
Microtronix is also placing a new emphasis on local business.We are working hard on being a part of the local community around us in Paulding, Ohio, focusing on customer service and support as our main goal.
Another shift we will be making soon is our move away from our Florida Datacenter with QuadraNet. Though we appreciate all the work QuadraNet has done with us over the past few years we are looking at a Datacenter a little closer to home for us. At this time we are negotiating with multiple Datacenters around us and do not have a definite move date nor a location to publicize. As soon as this information is clear we will be releasing the information to our customers.
This move closer to our main offices will allow us to better support all our customers by having our servers closer to home and within arms reach of our talented staff of Linux engineers.
As I close this update I would like to thank all Microtronix customers past and present for the 15 years of exciting work you have given us. Thank you for your continued business and our hope as always is to help your business grow in the coming years.
