ServerBeach Takes the Time to Understand Customer Needs

All of us at ServerBeach strive to go above and beyond when it comes to understanding customer needs. Jason Collier from CertFX was kind enough to send us the following feedback, letting us know his reasons for choosing ServerBeach.

“I’ve been running my web-based business for a while now, and one of the biggest decisions I had to make was which company to use as a server company. I chose ServerBeach for a lot of reasons, but the thing that really cinched the deal was that, unlike a lot of companies out there offering similar services, ServerBeach really took the time to understand what I was looking for and then recommend the service/product/answer to a question which was exactly what I was looking for.

My old provider wasn’t the best in terms of providing customer service. Sometimes I would send them questions related to sales or support and they wouldn’t get back for me for hours, or even days. In the high-paced world of internet commerce, that simply doesn’t cut it, and my business was suffering as a result of their being unable to provide quick, direct, and useful support.

All that changed when we moved our business hosting to ServerBeach. Their response time to questions (either sales or support related) has been unparalleled: whatever time of day or night we get in touch with a question or support need, they’re right on the other end of our communications, ready to give us a hand and solve our problems. ServerBeach is always available no matter what my or my colleagues’ questions or support needs, and unlike some hosting companies that come across as not caring one bit about how your business might be suffering due to a hiccup in service provision, ServerBeach has always communicated their understanding of how their business affects MY business – making them one of the best server hosting companies I’ve ever had the luck to deal with.

Of course, we had some practical issues to consider when we made the move to ServerBeach, as well. Money was a big concern, since we’d been paying inflated pricing for sub-par service with other hosts. ServerBeach’s hosting packages are priced competitively, and they have enough tiers of service provision that I was able to discuss (without feeling pressured) which service tier was going to fit the needs of my business and how much that should cost, then elect to take on that service plan.

I think this is uncommon in the arena of web hosting – there are plenty of companies which give you some basic numbers then expect you to be able to sort out what kind of impact your business is going to have on your web use and web traffic, but this feels like a lot of guess work and isn’t at all intuitive for someone who’s not trying to simply replicate a website and move it from one hosting company to another, but actually wants to grow their business in a positive direction and might therefore need more capacity than they historically have as they move forward.

I was impressed by how ServerBeach was able to listen to my plans for my business, then suggest the areas in which we could anticipate growth and direct us to a plan which fit both our current AND future needs.

Since we moved to ServerBeach, our business has been growing well and we’ve had a lot of opportunity to re-evaluate our move. Every time I’ve sat down and compared the headache and frustration of dealing with our old server company to the ease with which our dealings with ServerBeach have taken place, I’m astounded at how much time and energy I used to spend worrying about getting assistance and answers from our old host. Compared to what I put into my dealings with ServerBeach, the time difference is huge. Now that we’re with ServerBeach, I’m able to spend a lot more time concentrating on my business, my staff, and most importantly my customers – so the service is paying for itself not only in terms of the actual cost but also in the benefits my company is reaping as regards the time we spend serving our customers, instead of getting entangled in lengthy, aggravating communications with our old hosting company, which didn’t seem to mind spending hours of our time without giving a satisfactory answer to our questions.

I’m thrilled my company was able to make the move to ServerBeach. Our bottom line has seen improvement since doing so, and equally importantly, we’re all a lot more relaxed and a lot less stressed since we changed over to working with ServerBeach for all our hosting needs.

Thanks, ServerBeach – you’ve really been a lifesaver!”

Thank YOU Jason. When you succeed, we succeed.

ServerBeach Sponsors WordCamp Chicago

WordCamp Chicago was great. Myself and co-worker, Richard Lopez -
Account Manager for The Beach arrived at the UBS Conference Center
around 8am and met Chris Wilson, husband of Lisa Sabin-Wilson for the
first time while Lisa was running around tying up last minute details
for the event. ServerBeach was one of two sponsors attending so we
were able to set up at the registration table with our swag and greet
everyone who came through the door to attend WordCamp Chicago. The
turnout was great with approximately 200 people and gave us the
opportunity to really talk to people and get to know a little bit
about them. We were also able to help out with the registration
process which was a lot of fun.

Saturday night we attended the official Wordcamp Chicago party at
Morton’s Steakhouse.  We had drinks with Wordcamp attendees and dinner with Chris, Lisa, her assistant Lindsay, and her fiancé then called it a night early since we had to attend day 2 of Wordcamp at 8am.

On Sunday, we arrived early in the morning to the conference to catch
breakfast and begin the (short) day – WordCamp Chicago ended around
12:30pm.  We said our good-byes as everyone left and decided to tour
the City.  After the conference ended, we decided to go to the Sears
Tower – the views were great! Following the Sears Tower, we went to
Navy Pier for some lunch and went on to board a train to Chinatown
which I have to say was, well…different.  Much, much different than
San Francisco’s Chinatown – where some of us from ServerBeach were
just recently to attend WordCamp San Francisco.

We decided to go to the airport early so we didn’t repeat our Phoenix/
San Francisco fiasco again, which is a whole new blog post in itself, hah!

My overall impressions of the WordCamp Chicago:

• Much better than the Wordcamp San Francisco since the group was
  smaller and we had more time to talk to everyone and really get to
  know people.
• Not as many “bells and whistles” as San Francisco but overall a
  better atmosphere. The city of Chicago is great. The people are nice
  and it reminds me of San Antonio – just much, much, bigger.

We had a great time at WordCamp Chicago and I look forward to attending another WordCamp in the future.

View pictures from WordCamp Chicago here: http://tinyurl.com/n8xtjj

Ruben Dominguez
Sales Executive

ServerBeach Attends WordCamp SF 09 & TWTRCON 09

A few of our employees spent this past weekend in San Francisco to attend WordCamp SF 09 and TWTRCON 09. What a busy weekend it was. WordCamp SF had another great turnout this year with another round of awesome folks to speak at the event.

PEER 1 - ServerBeach Staff at WordCamp SF 09

ServerBeach is a proud sponsor of WordCamps and has sponsored the following 2009 WordCamps:

WordCamp SF 09

WordCamp Chicago

WordCamp Dallas.

Be sure to stop by our table at these events and say hello to our staff and pick up some cool “Beach” swag.

On Sunday, I attended the first ever TWTRCON 09 conference in San Francisco. Being the Community Evangelist for PEER 1 – ServerBeach and utilizing Twitter for both company and personal use, I was excited to see what this conference was about. I would just like to state that I was completely blown away with the entire event. Not only was it well organized, there were some major companies who spoke at the event – Guy Kawasaki – Alltop, Ed Terpening – Wells Fargo, Porter Gale – Virgin America, Jeremiah Owyang – Forrester Research, Richard Brewer-Hay – eBay Inc, representatives from Carl’s Jr, Comcast, PR Newswire, the Phoenix Suns and so many others. View the entire list of speakers here: http://twtrcon.com/

Talk about information overload. These companies spoke candidly about how they used Twitter for business and what they’ve learned along the way. I spent the day listening, learning, and of course…taking pictures, which you can view on our PEER 1 Flickr page.

I’d like to share a few things that I took away from TWTRCON -

* Marketing – Influence (was): attracting attention to yourself. Influence (is): providing attention and value to others.

* How to measure Twitter success: Engagement. New relationships. Meet customers. Brand loyalty. Fun.

* Your company account needs to have a personality. Create your voice. Engage with personality.

* Twitter is dramatically changing era of top-down management of corporate communications, in real time.

and finally – “News no longer breaks…it tweets.”

If you’re already on Twitter, please give us a follow and let’s connect. We’re @ServerBeach and @PEER1. Which reminds me of another thing that I learned at TWTRCON – be totally transparent, both personally and professionally. With that note – I’m Charnell Pugsley, the Community Evangelist for PEER 1 – ServerBeach and @charnellpugsley on Twitter. Give me a follow, I’ll follow back and we’ll connect!

View pictures of our weekend of events in San Francisco – WordCamp SF 09 pictures & TWTRCON 09 pictures.

First Dedicated Servers Provisioned in PEER 1 UK Data Center

We’re happy to share a photo of the first full rack of dedicated servers provisioned in PEER 1 – ServerBeach’s new UK Data Center.

New and Improved Curiously Strong Nicotine

Confused? Yes, you read the title correctly. Leave it to a PEER to come up with the wackiest yet coolest gadget around. Our very own Jennifer Van Gorkom from our San Antonio ServerBeach office has masterminded again! As the resident female McGyver, she’s put her “mad electronic skillz” to work.

ServerBeach Developer, Donnie Moore has quit smoking his Marlboros and has taken up vaporized nicotine. (Doctor’s orders) So a little Developer’s magic and voila, Jennifer put the spin on it.

We present to you the JVG-X1 (codename) or otherwise known as The Curiously Strong Nicotine Inhaler

Specs:

• USB power
• Built in battery
• Recharging circuit
• Tactical manual switch

It’s not available at the Sharper Image just yet.

PEER 1 Finalist for Company of the Year Award

The BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) announced the finalists for the 2009 Technology Impact Awards and our parent company, PEER 1 is one of two companies up for Company of the Year. Marking the awards’ 15th year, the 2009 finalists reaffirm British Columbia’s status as a global leader in innovative software solutions, mobile communications, and energy conservation technologies. We’re very excited and honored to be recognized by the association. More importantly, it is a testament to the hard work and tireless dedication of our staff throughout the years. Our congratulations to the other award finalist, Sierra Wireless. Winners will be announced on June 17th at the Technology Impact Awards Celebration, at the new state-of-the-art Vancouver Convention Centre, amongst 700 guest.

Read BCTIA press release

ServerBeach Sponsors WordCamp 2009 San Francisco

It’s that time of year again. ServerBeach will be heading out to the Mission Bay Conference Center in California May 30, 2009 to sponsor and attend WordCamp San Francisco.

WordCamp is a conference organized by the creators of WordPress for users and developers. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. This years schedule is packed full of great speakers that include:

Tim Ferris, Author of 4-Hour Work Week

Matt Cutts, Head of webspam team at Google

Andy Peatling, Lead developer of BuddyPress

Chris Pirillo, Founder of Lockergnome

John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, makers of Firefox

And many more, including of course Matt Mullenwig – Founder of WordPress and Automattic

You can view the full schedule here: http://2009.sf.wordcamp.org/schedule/

Come join Matt, the WordPress gang, and be sure to stop by the ServerBeach table and say hello!

ServerBeach Developer Releases 1-800-Tech-Support: Web Series

Back in November 2008 we blogged about one of our very own ServerBeach Developers, Travis Thomsen founder of Dark Design Pictures, a film making company in San Antonio, Texas. In August 2008 he began creating a script about something he knows all too well – Web Hosting… and 1-800-Tech-Support was born.

The web series follows the “interesting” life of tech support workers in the web hosting industry. The series is based on a short film called “The Night Shift” that was created for the National 48 Hour Film Challenge.

Travis, from San Carlos, California now residing in San Antonio, Texas began his independent films in 2002. In his career thus far he has won two awards – his second film, “Joined” won best picture for the 2006 Short Ends Winter Film Festival in San Antonio and his third film, “Don’t Go back to Rays” won 2nd place in the local SA48Hr Film Experience. Travis has also worked on 2 independent feature films as a both director of photography.