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.

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.

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.

Aside from generating new sales leads, blogging also offers the following potential benefits.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Blogs cost little, if any, money. Some public blogging sites are free; others charge only nominal fees. However, you need to have a private domain name registered for your business blog as you will be interacting with your customers (both existing and potentials).

Blogs are often extremely easy to set up and update, with virtually no training required. If you already have a domain name and hosting account, you can create a sub domain and start from there. However, you can register a new domain and hosting account at Nairahost. If you need any help in setting up your business blog, you can drop us a mail and we would take it further from there.

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?

We are a reseller of Directi for domain names. Directi provides support to us and we provide this support to our customers. We have software infrastructure invested in integrating our system with Directi.

Since this infrastructure cost us money, we need to price our domains, so that we can make money on them while balancing this with choosing a price for our customers vs what our customers can afford to pay for it while maximizing our market share.

For our domain names, we have a reasonable profit margin enough to offset our infrastructural cost and product cost.

This covers our administrative overhead for processing domain name orders, providing and updating a Knowledge base of frequently asked questions, providing a domain management interface, and providing support for the domain name our customers register through us.

With a decent profit margin, we are enable to give our customers the support they require and able to sustain our business.

We realize that this isn’t what every customer wants and that we lose customers because we do not give or offer free domain names with our products and services.

Nevertheless, we have many happy domain name customers that know they can rely on our reliability and sustainability, while rendering the top notch support for the services we provide them.

Domain Names are a critical part of most of our customers businesses and we are here to provide the services and support necessary at a price that we hope is reasonable, yet allows us to do this with a small profit that pays for our bills.