Bye Nigeria
Posted on August 1st, 2010 in News updates by Kayode Muyibi
Starting from the 3rd of August, Nairahost Nig Ltd would be operating under a new management and would no longer operate from the Nigerian office or as a Nigerian company but would still serve the interest of the Nigerian market in a more specialised way.
This arrangement was put into action to mitigate and solve the operational conflicts with both our previous shareholders and stakeholders.
I was myopic with the assumption that changes would be in effect and relevant with a local business presence. It was a biz strategic mistake for which I am sorry for.
We became what we are not because we were in Nigeria or a local Nigerian company, but we did so through the impeccable services we rendered in the past 3 years over our 4years of doing business in Nigeria. This is exactly what we plan to do henceforth.
Nairahost Nig Ltd’s GTB Bank account would still be active for the Nigerian customers interested in patronizing its services.
Generis Solutions is no longer a local Nigerian partner and henceforth any problems should be addressed to us via email, support ticket, online chatroom or via the new phone number available on our website. This communication channels would be available from the effective date of this changes.
All pre-existing staff or support crew do no longer work with Nairahost. Hence, we advise against interacting or dealing with them, should you choose to do so, you do so at your own risk.
Pending Transfer Resolution.
If you are an old customer that belongs to the previous structure and you are in the process of moving to a new host we would be happy to retain your services.
All premium customers would now have a chance to enjoy all the promised support, a signed Service Level Agreement and specialised relationship with the CEO.
This new changes means, Nairahost would no longer use a Nigerian support crew to address problems, and all the previous accounts that somewhat are still active on the old structure would no longer be active.
The new premium fee that is chargeable per account would not change for the following reasons.
1. The need to maintain a small number of premium customers, as we find it effective to serve a specific market segment.
2. The need to be able to communicate on a personalized level with our customers
3. The need to be able to control the kind of customers we retain and keep on our servers.
If you do have evidence that your account has been unfairly suspended or terminated due to this arrangement, send an email to complaints@nairahost.com and we are sure we would have either an explanation or a fix to your issue.
Once again below are the correspondence email.
PENDING TRANSFERS: transfers@nairahost.com
COMPLAINTS : complaints@nairahost.com
The old support emails would no longer be working and if you are a premium customer, you would get a new contact email for future correspondence.
This email is effective from the 3rd of August 2010.
Thank you for the journey, thank you for the experience you passed on and thank you for the patronage and feedbacks you sent to me on a daily basis.
The flawless web hosting company factor
Posted on July 6th, 2009 in business,web hosting by Kayode Muyibi
Running a web hosting business is unlike running any conventional service related business as every second of the lifetime of the business counts. This is a business that is strung on a lifeline “drip” with inexcusable lapses in expected deliverables. It can be quite challenging especially when you run a web hosting company with lots of Nigerian customers. This is because the expectation especially as a Nigerian backed company is quiet different. A Nigerian customer expects a Nigerian web hosting company to be bad and of last resort and should be cheap at the same time.
Forget the geographic locations or the smears of bad publicity, a wink at the general expectations can be preposterous to say the least. This is not a generalisation or a sweeping argument, so Don’t get me wrong, this is rather a testament from years of serving the market. I am not saying their expectations from a Web Hosting company shouldn’t be high, but rather I am pointing out the fact that their expectations is quiet different, infact quiet unique, in comparison to other foreign customers.
Sometimes I think they forget that, there is No web hosting company that is flawless, servers are machines, they tend to be prone to certain risks, and not only that softwares running on them can turn out buggy which could expose risk on services rendered on them. A web hosting companies exposure is not even limited to reliance on the deliverables of the companies servers but also to other third party service providers that provide other services such as domain registration, dns management etc.
This been said, this should never be used as an excuse to protect web hosting providers from the expected top notch deliverables but rather an effort to spread awareness on the exposure that should be understood and dealt with through measures such as backups, that is not only technically centered but also policy centered to mitigate exposure and perhaps avoid them totally.
I am yet to come across a web hosting company that has not suffered from downtime or even loss in hardware, data through various means, but the problem with that is most of web hosting customers don’t quiet understand the challenge. The good thing about the exposure to such experience for the web hosting company is, it can learn and setup policies to prevent them from happening again. The bad thing about such exposure is, businesses tend to lose customers that tend to jump from one service provider to another when expose to even the slightest of problems.
Many ex-customers of web hosting companies even go through the extra length of setting up websites, forum threads etc to spread rumors about the services of their former web hosting companies, yet this former hosting companies still would have thousands, if not millions of customers that are very happy staying with them.
A question that comes up regarding downtimes on shared platforms is, what happens if their business relies on 100% uptime for survival. Our answer to that is, most providers that offer shared web hosting would promise a 99.9% uptime, which most including us deliver. If a customer requires impeccable 100% uptime, no excuses, then the best option is a cluster of a few dedicated servers, in house round the clock team, which would cost fortunes.
When it happens that he 99.9% uptime promise falls into jeopardy, then the hosting provider really needs to do something about what is causing its problems. We pride ourselves on our uptime and if it happens that we had a very bad downtime due to an issue beyond our control like it happened with some of our customers last week, we would establish a protocol so that such unforseen factors are dealt with and prevented from re-occuring again.
Nairahost is not a flawless web hosting company, just like every other web hosting company out there, but we are here to serve and ensure that our services are delivered as promise.
Nigeria Internet Registration Association
Posted on January 15th, 2009 in software by Kayode Muyibi
Registering a Nigerian tld was quite cumbersome in the past, but it seems the end to the cumbersome and daunting process is coming with the certification and automated system, NIRA has in place, or would have in place.
The system uses an Extensible Provisioning Protocol , which enables certified merchants to connect to their servers and perform the transaction.
I am about to start coding the modules that we would be using for the connectivity and automation. It could be fun, who knows?
Anyway I would keep you updated.
So you finally sold Nairahost?
Posted on January 14th, 2009 in business by Kayode Muyibi
I got about 4 emails asking that same question and its quiet troubling how people can just decide from one letter, that I have cashed out from a company. I might have, for half a million dollars only (it is a small company, big enough to be no 1 in Nigeria), which is about how much we intend to make from the business. Yes, I am ambitious, but seriously, I am still a decision maker at Nairahost, and our appointed CEO is supposed to oversea that all our goals and vision’s are achieved and of course make us the shareholders happy and you the stakeholder too. Its a lot of work, and appointing someone with experience was a decision we had to make.
Appointing a CEO into a company does not indicate a company has been sold out, rather it indicates that the company has take measures to take its business very seriously and achieve all its goals towards its ultimate vision. You might have heard or not, that Deolu Akinyemi is the current CEO of Nairahost Nig Ltd. Now you have. 
During our search for external funding, I came across a lot of different type of investors, both who are still great friends and one in particular very supportive. One thing I learnt during the search was, people would tell you things to get to read your business plan and later bail out on you at the last hour with lame excuses.
The funny behaviour becomes complicated though, when you finalise a deal without them. This category of “people” would then, say all kinds of things, to make you feel as if you cheated them out of the deal. That aside, let me talk about our new structure “Nairahost Nig Ltd”.
Well over the years we have faced a lot of problems regarding running the company smoothly, managing funny customers and well financial limitations, considering we were running the company with the money we made for 4 years, yes it was a pretty crazy strategy that worked for 4 years. Nevertheless I am the new Chief Technology Officer at Nairahost, and I would be rolling out all the cool features you would see in Nairahost today and many years to come. Some of the cool features we have rolled out are :-
1. Seperate Domain Hosting
Our stardard premium package currently comes with an additional free web hosting account that you can create yourself from your client area. This is different from domain add-on because it runs independently on a single Cpanel account, as opposed to sharing in the case of add-on domains.
2. Bill me Later Feature
We rolled out a bill me later feature for our existing loyal customers, which accommodates credit to all their purchases for 30 days. This was invented to save customers the trouble of going to the bank several times when they want to get their account activated instantly. Its a pretty cool feature and the feedback has been amazing.
3. Software Services
Clients can now request for the installation of any software on their Cpanel Account for free within a scheduled technician time. We have a system within the client area that accommodates for that.
4. Support
We are introducing a 20 minutes ticket response time in our Service level agreement and also a hotline for sales in our Nigerian Office.
We are experimenting on the feasibility more value added services such as software installation automation, one click remote backups etc. Its been a very busy month for us at Nairahost, as we work towards achieving our ultimate vision.
Windows Mailserver Solution
Posted on August 19th, 2008 in News updates by Kayode Muyibi
Dear Customers,
I am using this opportunity to address the issue regarding our windows mail server. I intend to explain what has happened, what would happen, and measures we have taken for it not to repeat itself.
On Saturday the 16th of August, we upgraded our smartermail software which promised more features and better security.
We did this, with the backing up of our data using the windows backup feature which turned out unreliable.
The new upgrade of the software somehow corrupted the mail database, and structure, and we had to re-install the whole software to ensure that you don’t lose new mails.
We re-installed the software, because we weren’t sure how long it would take to rectify the issue. Re-installation ensures that the mail server was back online in reasonable time.
We accessed our backup and it seemed that windows did not backup the files correctly and hence the files became corrupted too.
So what does this mean?
This means that some clients on the windows server, not all, might lose their emails and have problem accessing their email account from smartermail. If you are having problem accessing your email account with your old password, kindly send us an email, and we would try to recover the email users.
What measures have we taken?
We are introducing a product named Evault, a remote backup solution under our E-mail package for clients on windows hosting with the subscription of the service.
We are also introducing yet another backup mail server that is mirrored to the primary server, known as a smarthost. This would be ready this weekend. What the smarthost server does is, it allows one SmarterMail server to accept mail for another SmarterMail server, and hence this would be used as a backup so that if the primary mail server goes down, the secondary server will accept mail for it until the server goes back online.
The smarterhost server would be located in a different location other than the first 2 server locations. This means we have 3 different backup solutions to safeguard your emails.
What is this Evault solution?
EVault is the industry leading provider of secure, reliable and easy-to-use online backup and recovery solutions. Online backup is simply defined as the scheduled movement of “point-in-time” snapshots of data across a network to a remote location. EVault’s solution has significant advantages over traditional backup software:
* Backup data is sent off-site immediately
* Backup windows are reduced
* Tape management issues are eliminated
* Restores of files and folders are user-initiated and lightning fast
* Costs associated with distributed backups are minimized
Our windows server is located in Dallas, and the Evault server is located at Washington. Our datacenter has integrated EVault into our windows server, and the backups would be done on a daily basis using its industry-leading automated services.
Is there a possibility of data corruption as the previous case?
No, this is because this solution was specifically built for backups, and the technology that ensures the data integrity is intact after backup.
Also with this we can assure a 100% uptime to your mailservers, which means this is the end of email delivery unreliability.
How much does it cost?
We would be charging 1500 naira per year for new clients and 1000 Naira for old clients?
How do I order?
Kindly order with your new package or send a mail to our sales department and we would issue you an invoice for the email protection plan.
Are we liable for the lost of your data?
No we are not, by default, we assume customers have a way to backup their emails, because we only host the service and we are not a backup provider We do backup for the sake of courtesy and ensuring we deliver the service featured.
You agreed to our terms of service when you were making the order for your hosting package which protects us from the liability of loosing your data.
Our term of service says “Nairahost does not provide backup solutions, as the available solutions have been deemed unfavorable by our system administrators. Therefore, we recommend you backup your data daily to a local hard drive or you subscribe for the auto-backup feature. Because of the previous statement, Nairahost is not responsible for the loss of your data”
This is a hosting provider standard, you would hardly come across any web hosting provider that would assure you that they can 100% percent protect all your data from loss or damage.
Are You are having problem accessing an account with your login details?
Kindly open a ticket with the domain name and we would look into it.
Once again thank you for being a loyal customer.
Nairahost Administrator,
Kayode Muyibi
Why You Need to Update Your Business Blog?
Posted on April 12th, 2008 in business by Emmanuel Oluwatosin
Having a blog for your business is as important to your business as any other functions. If you still have a doubt as to the reasons why you should have a blog, you may need to read my previous post on this issue. Blogging should be seen as part of your organized online marketing campaigns and can be a very efficient and inexpensive way to reach your customers on a more personal level.
In the past few years, blogging has become a legitimate and even respected medium to reach the public. While you may use your email newsletters to talk about the products or services your company offers, blog posts can serve a variety of other important functions. Blogging is often more story-based in its content. So, by maintaining a professional and accurate blog about your company, you can become a trusted expert in your field, and help your customers and other industry professional put a face to your business.
Blogs also create a platform for you to engage in an open forum directly with your customers. This is definitely a valuable way of obtaining feedback about your business. A major upside to blogging is that it can dramatically improve your search engine rankings. The more blog posts you write and the more your customers comment on your posts, the more opportunities there are for search engines to pick up your content. So, what are you waiting for? Ensure you update your business blog regularly.
3 Reasons Why You Should Have a Business Blog
Posted on April 1st, 2008 in business by Emmanuel Oluwatosin
A large number of new blogs go online everyday. This explosive growth raises the question: Should you start a blog for your business? I believe you should as this becomes an effective marketing tool. Like any other marketing tool, blogs are most effective when used properly. What you are reading now – Nairahost Blog – is an example of a blog.
Aside from generating new sales leads, blogging also offers the following potential benefits.
- A blog creates a platform for you to engage with both existing and potential customers in a direct, informal, no-pressure way. You can use blog to communicate the strengths of your product or service, the expertise of your top executives and the breadth of your company’s experience in ways that traditional marketing and advertising won’t allow. This can inspire customer loyalty.
- Blog is collaborative nature. As such, it can can help you gain insight into customers’ needs and interests. This information can be used to develop new products or services or fine-tune existing ones.
- A blog can make your company appear more “alive” and approachable. A website promoting your products or services is an essential marketing tool. But a blog, in effect, gives your company a personal voice, which also can help boost customer loyalty.
WordPress 2.5 released
Posted on March 30th, 2008 in software by Kayode Muyibi
WordPress after six months of hard-work by the WordPress community, has finally released the WordPress version 2.5 stable edition. In a post by Matt titled 2.5 Sneak Peek, Matt says…
The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages. Read More
All Nairahost customers are encouraged to update their wordpress or request for a free update through our support channels.
Google website listing in 1 day
Posted on March 26th, 2008 in web design by Kayode Muyibi
Michael Jensen in his post “Google Indexing Sites in 1 Day Again” explained how he successfully listed his site in Google within 24 hours.
1) I created 5 pages of content (Home, FAQ, About Us, etc.).
2) I put them in a simple template with site-wide links. I also linked to it from one of my other sites (it’s very relevant so it makes sense).
3) I added tagged the site on only 2 social bookmarking sites.
4) Commented in 1 forum, put the URL in one directory (niche specific), and submitted it to Digg.
5) Installed Google Analytics
6) Created a sitemap, pinged Google, and put the sitemap in my Robots.txt. Logged into Google Webmaster Central and submitted my sitemap there.
This is a great contribution.
The free domain price
Posted on March 23rd, 2008 in business by Kayode Muyibi
Over our three years in the web hosting and domain registration industry in Nigeria, we have been asked then and again with questions like this, “Why are you not giving out free domain names with your hosting packages?”, or “Why do you charge [x]Naira for a domain name when I can get one from [one of our competitors] for [ less than X ]Naira?”.
I am pretty sure that more of this relative question would be asked in the future, even after this post. To begin with, free domain names, are not free, they come with conditions or “strings”. No Registry gets domains for free, For example, a .com domain name, costs the Registrar $6.00 approx 750Naira per year (one .com domain name for one year).
Nairahost even though it uses dedicated servers, resells domain names through a registry. Nairahost, obtains the domains from the registrar at a far more higher price, because the registrars have to make profit from their products. Nairahost is considering becoming a registrar in the future. So perhaps then, it could further reduce its domain costs overhead.
Some Registrars sell directly to the public (GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Register.com, etc.) and some sell through resellers such as ISPs and web hosts (Tucows, eNom, etc.). Registrars provide WHOIS services for their domains, handle abuse reports, and provide the management tools to their customers.
People should not accept any offers for free domain names because they are usually tied to a package which you must be paying for otherwise you would lose the domain name, because that would entail breaching the contract, you agreed to, when you received the free domain name.
It is advisable to pay for a domain name, even if it is just N1.00 than to get a free one. When you pay as little as N1.00 there is a monetary commitment between you and the provider, so the provider cannot withdraw or seize the domain name, should you decide to move away from the provider for whatever reasons, you might have.
Furthermore, paying as low as N1.00 for a domain name should not be done, as services provided under such low cost, are very questionable and often are pre-packaged with hidden contractual agreements that would cost you your domain name, when you breach it.
Some registrars ensure that you can only renew with them at a higher price, some only enable the ability to transfer the domain after a 2 year contract, and others have even more ridiculous terms. So its very imperative, that the customer reads the providers term of service before he or she signs up for a free domain name.
Why does Nairahost charge for Domain names?