Maximiliam C. Andersen

Tell me something about yourself and your position in the company. What were you doing before starting Lunarpages?
I was one of the founding two people who started Lunarpages. Before that I was working with technology companies in Sweden like Ikea.

Please provide us a brief history of your company?
Lunarpages came into the hosting business in 2001. One of its first offers was a free hosting plan where we had banners on the site, but that wasn't the direction we wanted to go. We now do a lot of marketing through our affiliate network. Since the start with two employees we now have 20 employees and are growing every month.

What competitive edge does Lunarpages have to offer to its customers?
Our customers get everything they pay for and maybe more. We are very flexible in what we are willing to do for them and never oversell for what we can actually provide.

In today's economy what is the most challenging thing to overcome in your industry?
The most challenging thing is the bad reputation that some other hosting companies have left with their customers. Customers almost expect poor response times or a lack of support for the issues they have.

What does your company see as the most important thing to retaining customers?
Make sure you have very good uptime and service.
Have you or Lunarpages learned any hard lessons along the path?
In the beginning we went after the budget market with a very low rate. We then realized we needed to charge our customers more for what we were providing them.

What makes Lunarpages different from other web hosting companies?
Our service. There are other companies that think they can attract customers with a very low price or even free and not offer service. This is totally unrealistic, as customers will always have questions and need help.

How do you see Lunarpages positioning itself in the coming year? Are there any major changes on the horizon?
We plan to take advantage of the dedicated server market. This will allow us to serve customers from beginning to end in the hosting cycle.

What do you see as the most important information a hosting company an have?
It's very important to see and watch what the competition is doing. This is a very competitive market and you have to be flexible in your approach.

How many domain and/or hosting customers do you currently serve?
We currently have about 20,000 customers.

What was the impact of your site redesign? In hindsight was the ROI what you expected?
While we were already converting at a good rate, we saw an immediate increase of about 15%. The site has pretty much already paid for itself.

What's the key to running a successful hosting company?
With out revealing our secrets I will say that providing to our customers what they bought and offering great service.

What's your favorite website and why?
During the day when I'm online it's all about Lunarpages, and so when I go home I don't go online much. I try to relax and watch a good movie.