Amy Armitage

Tell mesomething about yourself and your position in the company. What wereyou doing before starting Lunarpages?
Sometimes I forgetthere was life before Lunarpages ;) Straight out of College I wasworking in film and television production (in Australia), and thenunexpectedly I had a child (4 months early) so because I was forcedto stay at home due to his oxygen dependency (2 years strapped to anoxygen tank) I started tinkering on my computer and landed onlunarforums.com

Pleaseprovide us a brief history of your company?
Ron actuallycreated Lunarpages back in 1998 and came up with the name after hewatched a late night episode of Star Trek.

Our staffconsisted of about 5 people including Lee Coleman and Chad Riddle andwe offered free hosting and community forums.

That is where Imet Ron.Not long after that we expanded the hosting offerings fromfree to about as cheap as possible. People wanted support, managedhosting, and then Dedicated and VPS, so as our clients voiced theiropinion, we listened and gave them what they wanted. It’s funny howa company can start with a handful of people running servers in acloset to having hundreds of employees, two datacenters, and over120,000 extremely-happy customers.

What competitiveedge does Lunarpages have to offer to its customers?
We’repartnered with the top Web Design Software Company in the world,CoffeeCup, to offer our customers over $700 of webmaster-and-designsoftware free. This is one of our biggest successes and we’re soproud of it! But if that’s not enough, we have 24/7 support,friendly and geeky forums, a blog full of SEO, marketing tips, andgoofy stories, and the best staff in the world. When you joinLunarpages, you’re not just a number in some database – you’rea part of our family, and we truly care about everyone we serve!

The basicprinciples of excellent customer service have served us well and tothis day it is our greatest strength.

In today'seconomy what is the most challenging thing to overcome in yourindustry?
The competitiveness, and devaluing web hostingby reducing prices and increasing resources that some hosts areunable to provide. We simply offer what we know we can backupand we promise to do our best to serve each and every customer whojoins us.

What does your company see as the mostimportant thing to retaining customers?
Just being honestis so important in this industry. Some hosting providers have a badreputation for promising the moon and then making customers jumpthrough hoops to get it. Or worse, not giving it to them in the end,after all of their troubles. So we just aim to be honest in ourpractices and open in everything we do – on LunarForums.com wedon’t delete or try to hide customer issues. That’s not how youlearn to be better and to fix what’s not working.Plus.. we openlyshow the process to resolve any problems our webmasters face.

Have you orLunarpages learned any hard lessons along the path?
Towardsthe end of 2006, we experienced some challenges with our phonesystem. Within a month, we had all these issues fixed, and we got abrand new phone system that’s more equipped to handle call volumelike we’re seeing now. We’re incredibly proud of our supportteam, but that was a huge hurdle we had to jump to get where we arenow. As always, we were and continue to be honest about what doesn’twork, because that’s how we improve. :)

What makesLunarpages different from other web hosting companies?
Our24/7 support, honest approach, and our outstanding reputation in thebusiness.And, we listen to our customers and provide them with thesame upgrades as we do to our new customers.

How doyou see Lunarpages positioning itself in the coming year? Are thereany major changes on the horizon?
The internet is anever-changing entity, so it would be unrealistic to say we don’tplan to change with it. In the coming year, we’re going to push theboundaries. ;) That’s all I can say about that.

Whatdo you see as the most important information a hosting company canhave?
Web trends!! While some people think it’s sillyto pay attention to trends, I think it’s one of the most importantthings in the world. When you want people to know who you are, youhave to stay ahead of the game in such arenas.

CustomerFeedback – Listening and applying the changes and features theysuggest and request.

How many domain and/or hostingcustomers do you currently serve?
Around 120,000 happycustomers! And we love them all!

What was theimpact of your site redesign? In hindsight was the ROI what youexpected?
Gosh, the feedback we’ve gotten has beenincredible. The old site simply was not converting as well for us,and now we’re seeing customers staying longer, leaving happier, andcoming back quicker and for more! The design is simple, easy tonavigate, and even easier to understand, and we tried to keep itbalanced between the stuff that newbies want to see and the stuffthat Ruby on Rails gurus need to know. I think we managed very well.

It’s fastloading, easy to navigate and very personal.

What'sthe key to running a successful hosting company?
Thereare a ton of factors, including owning your own hardware, staying ontop of exploits, caring about your customer base not just seeing themas numbers and having realistic ideals for what you can and can’toffer.

What's your favorite website and why?
Youmean there’s more to the internet than Lunarpages.com,blog.lunarpages.com, and Lunarforums.com?? ;)

I love visitingnews sites, xrez.com, Bopsta.com and reading various blogs.

https://www.hostreview.com/interviews/interview/LunarPages.html