HostReview.com Web Hosting Interviews

An Interview with
Amy Armitage, Business Development, Sales & Marketing Lunarpages

February 07, 2007

Tell me something about yourself and your position in the company. What were you doing before starting Lunarpages?
Sometimes I forget there was life before Lunarpages ;) Straight out of College I was working in film and television production (in Australia), and then unexpectedly I had a child (4 months early) so because I was forced to stay at home due to his oxygen dependency (2 years strapped to an oxygen tank) I started tinkering on my computer and landed on lunarforums.com

Please provide us a brief history of your company?
Ron actually created Lunarpages back in 1998 and came up with the name after he watched a late night episode of Star Trek.

Our staff consisted of about 5 people including Lee Coleman and Chad Riddle and we offered free hosting and community forums.

That is where I met Ron. Not long after that we expanded the hosting offerings from free to about as cheap as possible. People wanted support, managed hosting, and then Dedicated and VPS, so as our clients voiced their opinion, we listened and gave them what they wanted. It’s funny how a company can start with a handful of people running servers in a closet to having hundreds of employees, two datacenters, and over 120,000 extremely-happy customers.

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

The basic principles of excellent customer service have served us well and to this day it is our greatest strength.

In today's economy what is the most challenging thing to overcome in your industry?
The competitiveness, and devaluing web hosting by reducing prices and increasing resources that some hosts are unable to provide. We simply offer what we know we can backup and we promise to do our best to serve each and every customer who joins us.

What does your company see as the most important thing to retaining customers?
Just being honest is so important in this industry. Some hosting providers have a bad reputation for promising the moon and then making customers jump through 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 our practices and open in everything we do – on LunarForums.com we don’t delete or try to hide customer issues. That’s not how you learn to be better and to fix what’s not working. Plus.. we openly show the process to resolve any problems our webmasters face.

Have you or Lunarpages learned any hard lessons along the path?
Towards the end of 2006, we experienced some challenges with our phone system. Within a month, we had all these issues fixed, and we got a brand new phone system that’s more equipped to handle call volume like we’re seeing now. We’re incredibly proud of our support team, but that was a huge hurdle we had to jump to get where we are now. As always, we were and continue to be honest about what doesn’t work, because that’s how we improve. :)

What makes Lunarpages different from other web hosting companies?
Our 24/7 support, honest approach, and our outstanding reputation in the business. And, we listen to our customers and provide them with the same upgrades as we do to our new customers.

How do you see Lunarpages positioning itself in the coming year? Are there any major changes on the horizon?
The internet is an ever-changing entity, so it would be unrealistic to say we don’t plan to change with it. In the coming year, we’re going to push the boundaries. ;) That’s all I can say about that.

What do you see as the most important information a hosting company can have?
Web trends!! While some people think it’s silly to pay attention to trends, I think it’s one of the most important things in the world. When you want people to know who you are, you have to stay ahead of the game in such arenas.

Customer Feedback – Listening and applying the changes and features they suggest and request.

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

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

It’s fast loading, easy to navigate and very personal.

What's the key to running a successful hosting company?
There are a ton of factors, including owning your own hardware, staying on top of exploits, caring about your customer base not just seeing them as numbers and having realistic ideals for what you can and can’t offer.

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

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

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