John Lee

Can you tell me a little about yourself and your role with Hostway?
I am John Lee, Director of Marketing and co-founder of Hostway with our CEO Lucas Roh and two other University of Chicago alumni. My role at Hostway is to ensure that we are doing all that we can to communicate our products and services to our customers, to better enhance their Web hosting experience. Whether it is on our Web site, in an email, or through word-of-mouth, we want our customers to get a clear idea of what we offer and to know that we are the best choice on the market where Web hosting is concerned.

What is Hostway's history and role in the Industry?
Hostway Corporation has been providing Web hosting services since 1996 and has been growing aggressively every year since then. Hostway has opened offices all over the world in the past three years including offices in London, Seoul, Amsterdam and Sydney. We plan to further expand into other areas of the world in the coming year. Our focus on globalization distinguishes us from the competition in that it shows our customers that we, as one of the few companies in the Web hosting industry, are growing by leaps and bounds, while at the same time, appealing to such a wide variety of customers from different parts of the world.

Furthermore, Hostway's role as one of the largest pure-play Web hosting companies in the market is to be one of the thought leaders in the Web hosting industry. We want to create new comprehensive products and services for our customers, including tools to overcome any barriers that customers face when purchasing Web hosting. We want to make a customer's Web hosting decision quick and simple, with the answer always being Hostway.

What services does Hostway offer? And how do you differentiate yourself in the Hosting Industry?
We offer a range of Web hosting services from shared hosting and ecommerce to dedicated servers, for any company in any industry. We were the first top tier hosting provider to break the $20/month barrier. Our Gold Plan at $13.95/a month represents our best value in basic shared hosting. The features our customers receive in our Gold plan are quite substantial, offering 200 MB of disk space, 6GB of traffic, and free shared SSL. We also offer feature-rich value-driven ecommerce plans as well as dedicated servers for Web sites that require additional features and functionality.

There are thousands of Web hosting companies out there and how can customers be expected to choose Hostway amongst the noise? Easy. We differentiate ourselves by establishing a reputation as a solid and stable Web hosting provider, that will be around tomorrow and the next day and make it a practice to offer the services and products our customers ask for when they ask for it. We are also growing and profitable and we have the means to invest in developing tools and resources to partner with our customers from the start of their online businesses to every stage of the company's growth and development.

What impact you have made on the industry?
Hostway was one of the first companies to offer sub $20 Web hosting while at the same time investing in its resources and technology and establishing itself as a leader in superior service. The three most important factors in providing a superior support are dedication, experience, and technology. First, the whole organization should be organized around providing dedicated support to the customers. Secondly, experience counts. Hostway is staffed with industry veterans who are experts in web hosting. We also run Hostway University for our team members to attend to reinforce the knowledge gained on the floor through formal training programs. Thirdly, the technology has to be in place to maintain the high support level on day-to-day basis. Hostway has invested millions of dollars in building a dedicated web hosting CRM system long before CRM (Customer Relationship Management) was even an acronym. Our system allows us to quickly and accurately respond to customer support requests while maximizing operational efficiency. No other CRM system can know our customers like ours!

In addition to service and reliability, we are very focused on globalization unlike any other hosting company. Most other companies do not have the financial stability or expertise to enter into foreign markets. We see globalization as the stepping stone for developing a truly successful company.

Where do you see the industry going in 2003?
In the past year, we have seen the demise of the financial unstable companies take into effect. Companies that do not have the innovation, knowledge, or stability to compete in such a competitive industry are being eliminated. For the rest of 2003, I expect this to continue happening, which ultimately will come down to the "the survival of the fittest" rule. Companies really have to determine their value-add to the market, and if they do not have the answer, their time will be up soon. This market shakeout works well for Hostway because we expect to be one of the last providers left standing and will eventually accrue market share from the weaker less responsible players.