HostReview.com Web Hosting Interviews

An Interview with
Curtis R. Curtis, VP of Sales & Marketing, Superb Internet Corp.

Can you tell me a little about yourself and your role with Superb?
I have been with Superb Internet for over 3 years acting in the capacity of VP, Sales & Marketing. Before that I owned my own ISP, hosting the very first web sites back in 1993. I actually got involved in the Internet back in the late 80s working as a consultant to the federal government, looking into the potential of what was then termed the "Information Super Highway".

My role is quite complex, in that I oversee all Sales & Marketing activities, as well as managed many of our partner relationships such as Microsoft, Ensim and of course, the various telecommunication companies to which we are connected. In addition, given my propensity to better relate to our customers, I tend to deal very closely with all customer-service related issues and conduct regular customer surveys.

What is Superb's history and role in the Industry?
Founded back in 1996, Superb Internet has consistently lead the hosting industry by offering the highest quality of customer service. Superb Internet was founded by Haralds Jass, a Web developer that could no longer tolerate the poor service of his Web Host and believed he could do it faster, better, and be more accommodating to his customer needs. It is this foundation and the devoted adherence to it that makes Superb great. The company continues to ensure that its customers are the primary focus of the company.

Instead of acting as a reseller of bandwidth from Tier 2 or Tier 3 providers, and locating at a data centre operator, we built our own carrier-class data centers and connected them directly from the world's leading tier 1 backbones. Given our high volume of bandwidth and the direct relationships, we are able to pass on our savings to our customers directly, while smaller hosts who collocate their servers at others' facilities see the facility operators absorb most of such benefits that they get and have very little if any such benefit left to pass on to their end customers. It simply makes sense to have a more direct relationship, as then the benefits such as this are passed on faster and in a greater scale, not to mention, the quality and reliability of the network is much higher.

What services does Superb offer? And how do you differentiate yourself in the Hosting Industry?

We were the very first hosting company to introduce private server technologies, partnering with Ensim and its new ServerXchange technology. Now we are the first provider to offer Miva Merchant bundled with all our hosting accounts. Now, customers no longer have to pay a premium to use the Miva Merchant shopping cart! Even smaller customers, who do not have a full-scale E-commerce site, can now use Miva. So, now a customer can come to us and no matter what fully virtual or better hosting option they select, get Miva Merchant included -- the full ($595) version, absolutely free! They can use it as they please, be it for a commerce site, or as a catalogue for a site offering information or products at no charge, or any one of the numerous other uses it can be utilized for. We recently became the first full-service hosting company to offer discount dedicated servers at: http://www.superbservers.net

Also as noted above, we own and operate our own data centers and focus on having connectivity second to none in the industry. At present we are connected to over 50+ major backbones (in fact the number is now approaching 100 backbones).

What impact you have made on the industry?
Superb Internet has played a pro-active role in the hosting marketplace, often introducing leading-edge technologies but if I had to sum up all that we bring to the marketplace, I would have to say it is our superior customer service and focus on ensuring that our customers receive the highest quality hosting experiences possible.

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