Interview with a successful web host provider

Everybody likes a success story and we are no exception. That's why we met up with Sharon Koifman, the owner of Empire Host. To say he's been successful is an understatement. Here's what Sharon had to say about it all.

Can you please give us a brief history of your company?

Well, Empire Host is a company that grew a lot from acquisitions and also a lot from internal marketing and strategic advertisements. We have about 3000 clients through all our brands. Empire Host is a very proven solution where I try to go to all the conferences looking at new technology.

When was the company founded?

We started up in 2004. So we've been in business for four years.

And what are your target markets?

These days our target markets are small to medium sized companies. We're looking for a premium affordable solution. That's always gonna be our target market. We really are focused these days since we do consulting. Consulting for other companies, and in the end of the day we want companies who are looking for an exceptional… A distinguished solution because the hosting industry is very generic on products and all we talk about is SaaS services and other new services but it's still not very widely implemented. I think that there's a certain crucial part of a hosting company that has to be implemented in order to reach a standard which I feel this technology should be. Because I don't know… Maybe it's just because it's a new technology but our hosting industry does not follow the same standards as phone companies do, as cable TV. I mean if the cable TV is down for two hours I'm upset but for some reason there are a lot things that are acceptable in the hosting industry and that's it. That's what we're trying to eliminate using high availability technology which means, if one server goes down another one replaces it. Implementing a security solution on an individual basis making sure that the moment something goes down we have a solution restoring it immediately.

What kind of products do you have now?

We are very focused on shared, we do some dedicated but I can't say that this is our niche market. We want to get more premium shared hosting solution for small to medium sized companies.

How can you charge more for this premium service?

Well, we market it by spilling out our guts. If you go to our website it spells out everything that we have. We leave it up to the consumer to make that decision. After that we do advertisement or we do consulting for other companies with the same products or whatever the case is but at the end of the day, when you come to our website you see that this is a completely different company focusing on more details. There's so much more information about how we are different. We really put so much effort into being different in such a quanta sized industry.

What are your biggest strengths?

I believe that in terms of security, individual shared hosting security, and in terms of the back-up technology. I believe that in two-three years everybody will have this technology but I'm kind of ahead of the game.

Where will your company be in five years?

I can only dream right? You know… I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm trying to be one of the people… This industry is going to merge like every other industry. I don't want to be one of those guys who buy out everybody and turn things into a huge operation.

Where do you host servers?

I host in New Jersey.

Why should somebody choose your company instead of another host?

The companies who come to me are companies who really don't care about spending an extra pair of bucks. It's a very simple concept… Ten dollars are not gonna make a big difference for you but they're gonna make a big difference in the budget that the hosting company has to deal with. This is what I'm talking about in terms of different prices. So clients who come to me are adults who don't care about spending an extra pair of ten bucks and getting the best they can from a shared hosting solution.

Have you ever considered green web hosting?

I'm still at a mystery of what that exactly means. I know that on a data centre level it acquires a lot of structure. I don't believe that anything that a person can do in software can change for green even if some people like to abuse that term, but definitively if there's an opportunity I'd be the first one to jump on it. I like the concept of people trying to improve the earth but since I run a data centre there's really nothing I can do besides picking another data centre. Which, who knows, maybe will be the case.