AbeloHost is a Dutch hosting service that provides offshore web hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, 24/7 support and first-rate data protection. In this interview
Team Supervisor, Emre Kılıç shares their story with
WebsitePlanet along with advice on what to look for when considering a hosting provider.
Please share the story behind AbeloHost: What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
Way back when we started in 2010, offshore hosting still wasn’t an actual thing. We needed hosting for another project, and in search of a provider, noticed major discrepancies between such services based on where the providers’ data centers were located. Some were notably better than others, offering greater freedoms based on liberal local laws.
We saw this as the market opportunity that it was. Through our connections in the industry, we set up a small operation in the Netherlands; arguably Europe’s most progressive country. The response was extremely positive, and the operation gradually grew to become the biggest offshore hosting provider in Europe.
We don’t plan on stopping there, and are always searching for new opportunities. At the moment, we are looking to expand to other major markets, starting with the Americas.
What hosting solutions do you offer?
Aside from standard offshore web hosting (which wasn’t as standard back when we started providing the service), we offer offshore VPSs and dedicated offshore web hosting. The latter includes the largest selection of offshore dedicated servers on the current market, with deals across the price spectrum. We also offer a variety of add-ons, to ensure the privacy and full security of our clients and their data.
What do you think is the most important thing that a hosting provider needs to be a success?
That’s a hard choice to make, but if I had to go with one, I’d settle with reliability. Hosting can be a cruel business, and clients won’t care about circumstances or excuses. If you can’t deliver constant uptime and high reliability, they will quickly dump you for another provider.
We’ve made heavy investments into redundancy for that very reason; to ensure that our servers remain operative even in case of an unexpected event. Or three.
What advice would you give to customers to look for when choosing a hosting provider?
When you’re looking for a hosting company, you’re essentially picking a business partner for your website. And like with any other partnership, you’ll want someone you can lean on.
One way to get a good idea of who you’re dealing with is to read all of their legal documentation, including their terms of service. That may be boring and time-consuming, but you will absolutely want to do it. What kind of service can you expect to get? Will they require you to sign a contract? It’s all there in their documentation, and the only way to know is to read it.
As another trick, you can check the quality of a hosting provider’s support by using their live chat or ticket system to inquire about a potential order. The time they take to respond and the quality of the responses will let you know if their services will be suitable for your business.
Which trends and technologies do you expect to see more of in the coming years within the hosting industry?
I think that advanced artificial intelligence will mark the next big leap in the web hosting business, and I’m not the only one.
It’s only a matter of time until AI not only becomes capable of matching what on-site experts can do, but exceeds them. Imagine the kind of performance, security, and maintenance speed and precision that a learning-capable and self-correcting artificial intelligence can make possible. There will be no need for clients to write support tickets or wait for service; problems will either be fixed within seconds or prevented before they happen. Server uptime will be constant, and security breaches will be nonexistent.
Until that happens, though, we’re stuck doing things the old-fashioned way.
