Some of you may have noticed a sudden drastic change not only in the appearance of our website but also in our Hosting Account offerings. If you were planning on purchasing one of our accounts before the switch, you are probably scratching your head with the recent changes. Rest assured, the new plans we are currently offering provide more features and better capabilities than our previous accounts.
The Reason for the Change
Our previous Hosting Accounts were utilizing a platform called Sphera. Over the course of the last few years we had noticed that the platform as a whole was falling behind some of the competitions features and capabilities. While at the time we implemented the system it provided a superior system compared to the competition in terms of a chroot environment and security, in the recent years we’ve noticed a customer dislike for the usability of the control panel when it came to management.
To top it off Sphera was even bought out by a large competitor, Parallels. Parallels actually was currently offering an even better system than our Sphera platform in their Virtuozzo system. This new platform offered the same separation of resources and security by implementing a similar chroot environment, in addition they offered a higher level of QOS (Quality of Service) in maintaining each environment. When paired with the Plesk Control Panel, the system is very user friendly and easy to administer.
After a thorough investigation into all our options, we found the Virtuozzo Containers to be the best option for our future Hosting Accounts.
Other Changes and Improvements to Expect
In our new Hosting Platform, we have a much more sophisticated billing system. In the past, notifications of renewals and invoices were not automatically sent out to customers. We also implemented a lot of new hardware, which allows us to offer more resources such as diskspace and bandwidth in our plans.
The new system also offers the ability for us to provide additional services to our customers as a value add. Many improvements have been made in terms of integration of additional services, billing, ease of installation, etc.
How Does an Existing Customer get Setup on the New System?
Unfortunately there is not any magic wand that can migrate your entire account over to the new system. A little bit of work has to be put into ensuring a smooth relocation to our improved system. That’s where we will help.
First, naturally a customer would need to purchase the new hosting plan. This gets a new account setup, and also sets the customer up in the new billing system. No need to worry about loosing any existing payments on the old system. If a customer has paid for a year up front on the old system just let us know and we will apply a prorated credit in the new system.
Next, you’ll need to set up the account. After purchasing the new account, several emails will be sent out. One as a order confirmation, another as an invoice, and the last will be the login details of the account. Once logging into the account, various tasks will need to be completed. The domains that need to be hosted on the account will need to be configured. The email accounts for each domain will need to be created.
Finally, if a customer is unfamiliar with moving website files, or re-installing a system such as a dynamic content application, asking our tech support personel for help is always an option. Whether it’s “can you move the files for me?” or “I can’t figure out how to set up an email account”, that’s what our support department is here to do.
Conclusion
Hard Hat Hosting has always strived to be a company that offers quality hosting. We don’t offer six million terabytes of diskspace for fifty cents. We don’t have a tech support department based out of India. But Hard Hat Hosting offers quality hosting that works. As always we keep within strict limits on every account type as to how many accounts will share the same server. This ensures that your service works when you need it. And if a customer is having trouble getting it to work, they’ll find our customer service is there to assist.