The bigest web portal Dir.bg in Bulgaria dead from fire.

Last Friday, millions of users in Bulgaria realized that they have no access to email. The reason was that the biggest web portal in the country dir.bg was down because of fire in the server room. Because all the servers were hosted in a facility that was not built as a data center, there was no adequate fire protection. When the fire department arrived, they used water, therefore completely destroying whatever left from the equipment. My question is why would you want to save few $$$ to host your own equipment when your entire business depends on it. Cheap is always expensive….

Google wants to become an Extreme ISP

According to a recent blog post on the google company blog, Google wants to become an ISP. Typically and as usual, they are going to do this in their extreme way by bringing a gigabit fiber in every home, according to the blog. Naturally I can’t wait for this to happen and to tell bye-bye to my ISP Rogers that in the days of cheap bandwidth is charging me every month for overages. Read more about it here.

Cheap Hosting or Why Did your Site Desapeared

I often have to answer questions from clients as to why our hosting costs so much. On the contrary our hosting is not expensive compared to any of the reputable hosting companies. In fact in many cases it’s cheaper. Here is an example. A .NET Windows hosting account costs $40/month at Bell and we charge $75. The truth is that Bell charges $40 but if you want SQL database, it’s an optional $50/month or bringing your price at $90/month but on top of that we provide a managed service included in the price – We manage your account completely and all is expected from you, the client is to call us. At Bell you get confusing Control Panel and you are on your own but if you require managed service, it’s another $100/month therefore your cost goes to $190/month

Recently we took over a company that was charging $1.99 Canadian for hosting. The company was run by a single person with good intentions however their math did not work as they expected. Their idea was to Rent a very low cost server for $199/month and all they have to do is find 100 clients to break even and everything on top is profit. Sounds good but two problems. The first is finding the bare minimum 100 clients which they did. The second is hosting 100 clients on a server that has less power than a current desktop computer. The previous owner was subsidizing the server for almost a year and not only not making money but  loosing.

Here is a simple math for costs to host 200-250 clients (higher on Windows) without sacrificing performance and customer experience

Server Rental/Lease (Dell PowerEdge Class)  -  $350/month
Rack Space/Bandwidth – $150
Monthly Server Management/ Maintenance/Backup – $100
Control Panel/Billing software lease – $50
Customer Support (1 ticket per customer – 15 minutes technician time per ticket) – $1000
Payment processing/Billing costs – $100

Total cost for serving 200- 250 websites – $1750 – $8.75/client/month break even cost

This is providing that they are all good clients, they pay on time and you don’t have any overdue or unpaid invoices.

So how come there so many companies providing such a cheap hosting? The simple answer is cutting costs or simply no business plan. Some rely on volume making very minimal profit on each client. What do I mean by cutting costs:

1. Slow support or no support or outsourcing the support to a third party company (saving $2 – $3 per client)
2. Lower quality server/bandwidth (potential saving of $1-$2 per client) but sacrificing performance
3. Lowering server maintenance cost ($0.20 -$0.30 per client) but this gives the potential of irreversible disaster
4. Lowering the billing costs by requiring prepayment for 6 months, a year or in some cases for 2 years to get the best deal
5. Overselling the server  (the biggest cost cutting measure by far) therefore significantly endangering the performance of the server.

So, the next time you see $0.99/month hosting think about it and ask yourself the question, what am I sacrificing in order to get this deal.  If you are hosting your personal site or a site that is not really huge deal if it goes down or even worst – disappears, it may be a good deal but if your business relies on it think twice!

Virtual Appliances – Turnkey Website in Ottawa

With our new virtualisation servers, we are able to offer turnkey virtual appliances. What is a virtual appliance? It’ s a Virtual Private Server preinstalled with your application of choice, configured and ready to run with your content. The advantage of this type of virtual appliance is that it’s a custom version of Linux stripped of all the unnecessary components and all that is left is only what is needed to run your application. The advantage over shared hosting is that you will have a dedicated resources of a complete operating system running only for your application. It’s faster and you get better response.

Some of the Virtual Appliances available are:

TikiWiki Content Management System
TikiWiki is your Groupware/Content Management System solution with a long list of features to help you build a compelling web based community.

Gallery Photo Management
Gallery is a photo album organizer that helps you manage and integrate photos with your website. Create unlimited albums then store and share them easily using features such RSS, commenting, and email notification. The JumpBox for Gallery helps you get started managing your photos and movies in minutes.

Ruby on Rails Deployment
The JumpBox for Ruby On Rails serves as a deployment system for your Rails applications. What is the value of deploying your Rails application with a JumpBox appliance? Quite simply, it allows you as the developer to concentrate on your development rather than having to accommodate the potentially infinite number of configuration possibilities that one might otherwise encounter in attempting to distribute Rails applications to end user systems.

PunBB Discussion Forums Software
PunBB is a lightweight discussion forum that provides the essential features to host a thriving community without the tedious database, web server and application setup. It may have fewer bells and whistles than other forum applications but it has an intuitive user interface and renders XHTML-compliant output.

Drupal 5.x Content Management System
Drupal is an open source, web content management (WCM) system. It provides a simple, intuitive interface that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website without programming skills.

Tracks Task Management
Tracks is a web-based application that enables one to cleanly implement the “Getting Things Done” methodology for time and task management. It sports an elegant AJAX interface yielding the feel of a desktop application with the power of a web app. It supports multiple users, a RESTful API, tagging and many options for syndication of content.

Movable Type Blogging Platform
Movable Type is Six Apart’s flagship blog software product, launched in 2001. Today, this robust social publishing platform powers the websites and blogs of many of the world’s largest media companies, Fortune 100 businesses, small and medium sized businesses, and power bloggers. Movable Type is a fully integrated, scalable, proven social publishing platform upon which to build highly interactive websites, blogs and social networks.

PmWiki Wiki Software
PmWiki is a wiki-based system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites. PmWiki pages look and act like normal web pages, except they have an “Edit” link that makes it easy to modify existing pages and add new pages into the website, using basic editing rules.

SugarCRM 4.5.x CRM System
SugarCRM is the market-leading, commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) application. SugarCRM’s open source architecture easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications.

Silverstripe Content Management System
Silverstripe is a standards-compliant content management system that allows the user to manage a dynamic content site. Silverstripe utilizes MVC architecture and has a desktop feel with its use of AJAX-based controls.

WordPress Hosting in Ottawa

With the addition of Linux Hosting, we now offer a WordPress hosting. The pricing is similar as WordPress but with the addition of few very important extras including the ability to install third party plug-ins, full ftp access and email. We can also help you with a custom installation with your own template or we can build one with your site look and feel. Contact us for a quote.

Was your website up? Datacenter makes a diference!

Friday August 14th commemorates the 6-year anniversary of the The Northeast Blackout of 2003. It was the most widespread electrical blackout in history and affected an estimated 55 million people in Ontario and the US…A. Despite all the mayhem, nVira customers were up and running 100% of the time!

Vancouver Wedding Photographer

Currently working with one of Vancouver’s top Wedding photographers – Angela Hubbard.

Angela has been working for many of the world’s foremost publications including, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Spin, People, Us Weekly, Chart featuring rocknroll bands as No Doubt, David Bowie, KISS, the Offspring, Foo Fighters, Shania Twain, Bruce Springsteen & Duran Duran.

Her passion and creativity is now primarily focused on wedding + lifestyle photography. She possess the unique ability to connect with her clients and effortlessly translate their vision to print. Angela will make you the rockstar of your wedding day!

You can reach Angela at her Vancouver Wedding Photographer website or read more about her and her work on her vancouver Wedding Photographer Blog

My India Rant

Businesses in North America and I would guess in Europe are bombarded daily with proposals from Indian companies. The offers are about anything to do with the Internet. From SEO services to Web Development, Web hosting, Technical support. You name it, they have it. OK, there is nothing wrong with soliciting business in another country. I have many clients in the US and Europe and I also have vendors from US and Europe. My problem is with the Indian companies. Poor service, bad business ethics, no attention to details and many more reasons I can list.  The reason for my rant is a good example of bad business practice. There is a search term that I am working on for a client and 5 of the top 10 results on Google are done by an Indian company. These results are using Cloaking and this is why they are there. This is not only against Google’s TOU but is unethical and unhelpful for the end user. I am not complaining because I know I can work around this but I just need to vent, besides I am sure that Google will eventually discover them and they will completely disappear from the index.  Unfortunately long after the checks clear.

Many of my clients used Indian companies in the past and they all are now my clients and they all have the same in common. They were all persuaded by the low price just to learn that they wasted  money for nothing and in many cases they end up paying more than they would in Canada for much better quality work and better results.

Here are few things to think about before you hire an Indian company.

• Communication. If you have a problem would you wait 12-24 hours to get response? Well, because of the time difference, be prepared to wait even longer. Not to mention cultural, ethical and language barriers.
• Business Ethics. First they use pushy car salesman unsolicited ways to grab your attention. Then they give you a price that in everything is done, is blown 2 – 3 or even 10 times. Than when you are unhappy and you want to complain and have it resolved, they disappear.
• Quality of the work. In over 15 years in the business I’ve seen many examples and they have the following in common – Ugly design, Sloppy code, Usability equal to none, performance – Terrible. Oh, I can go on and go on…
• Security and peace of mind. Do you want your customer database that you are liable for to be widely accessible by people in another country that you never even met and our laws don’t apply to? What happens after you pay and the work is not satisfactory or in many cases not even done. Can you sue them in India?

Here is the thing, I am sure that there may be good companies in India but how much do you need to spend and loose before you find them? Don’t look at the price as a single deal closer, look at the whole package. In the end you are better off with a local company and I can guarantee you that one way or another you will end up dealing with a local company.

Vancouver Hosted Exchange

We are now offering hosted Microsoft Exchange Hosting for our Vancouver hosting clients.

Because Microsoft Exchange Mail traditionally requires the purchase and licensing of software and the maintenance of your own server, its robust features had been out of reach for many smaller growing companies who had to settle for webmail or outside POP3 servers.

With Hosted Microsoft Exchange Mail from nVira in Vancouver, you can now harness the power of 13 robust features, all in one solution. See how these features can instantly make your business more productive by comparing them with regular email: Vancouver Exchange Hosting

Vancouver Web Hosting

As one of Canada’s leading web hosting company, we’ve desided to open a Vancouver web hsting office. This will allow us to server our Vancouver clients beter. We will be moving some of our servers from our current data center in Ottawa to a modern data center in Vancouver. Please check back for updates on our Vancouver web hosting office