We hope you’ll feel the benefits, we’ve noticed significant improvements in performance. Let us know if you have any questions!

I was talking to a friend a few days ago about compatibility. Over 20% of his visitors are using Internet Explorer 6, he was running the latest version of Internet Explorer, which at the time was version 7. Essentially his CSS was rendering adversely in IE6, the main content was pushed under the sidebar, presenting the page as primarily white space. He had therefore alienated over 20% of his visitors/potential customers. A lot of web designers refuse to make their website compatible with old technologies such as IE6. But the fact is, people are still using ancient browsers. If you’re running an e-commerce website, then you simply can’t afford to ignore these visitors.

There are simply too many browsers spread over multiple operating systems, all with long version histories. As a developer or website owner, you’d be mad to install everything internally for testing… clinically insane. Which is where BrowserShots.org comes in handy. Enter your website address and choose from a range of browsers which have been installed on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and BSD.

Processing usually takes around 30 minutes depending on the number of browsers you select. You’ll then be able to access your screenshots, quickly ascertaining which configurations are displaying abnormally.

The service even allows you to select a preferred screen resolution, allowing you to check your design on an 800×600 resolution (among others), which although seemingly redundant, 800×600 is still used by 4% of users according to W3Schools. The Firefox extension Window Resizer is also useful for testing your site in standard resolutions.

Safari on the iPhone is gaining traction, you can preview your design with iPhoney. Unfortunately it’s Mac OS X only and it wouldn’t let me send text messages or make calls!

The WHIR provides online up to date web hosting news, WHIR Blogs, WHIR TV as well as WHIR Magazine. Currently their magazine, published 5 times a year has a total per issue circulation of 25,000. Look out for us in the May 2009 issue! It’ll be circulating at a number of events:

Social Networking Conference
Search Engine Strategies
Affiliate Convention
AJAX World Conference & Expo 2009
SOAWorld Conference and Expo 2009
O’Reilly Velocity 2009
O’Reilly OSCON Open Source Convention

Digital versions of the magazine are available, backdating all the way back to June 2004. If you’re US based then you can subscribe to the hard copy free. If you’re interested in web hosting then don’t let the WHIR pass you by.

“We will deduct flat 6% administrative fee before initiating the refund.”

Generally 6% of a web hosting order won’t be a lot of money, that really isn’t the issue. It’s the principal. 9 times out of 10, the reason a customer decides to leave within the money back period is because they’ve had a bad experience. Let’s say the host did an awful job and caused you nothing but grief, the fact that they’ll profit is simply shocking.

If you find yourself in this situation, point out that the 6% ‘administrative fee’ is ridiculous, they’ll almost certainly back down. If they don’t, be sure to quote the Hulk,

“Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

Just to make clear, we DO NOT have a 6% ‘administrative fee’ and our money back guarantee is unconditional. If you decide to leave within 60 days, you’ll receive a full refund.

DreamHost doesn’t take itself too seriously, a lot of their marketing and pitching takes advantage of comedy. Which is great, we like to be a little silly and colloquial ourselves. The issue is, when problems occur, customers begin to feel as if they aren’t being taken seriously.

On Monday DreamHost posted a customer’s voicemail message. The clip features a DreamHost customer weeping over a stolen domain name and pleading for help. I listened to the clip for a few seconds before switching off. Liam Eagle at the WHIR deliberated over the post,

“But it would be tough to argue that the purpose of the post is really anything other than to laugh at the expense of the customer leaving the message. In case you don’t feel like downloading it and listening, it’s a two-minute clip of a man who sounds very timid and very upset begging for their help. It seems like the last minute is just the man gently sobbing. That’s just my guess, because after 15 seconds I couldn’t take any more.”

It just shows a complete lack of respect for their customers. Brett assured readers that they sent him a ‘huge bouquet of flowers’. Is this to console him regarding the stolen domain or his personal humiliation? The actions of a company that generated revenue of $13.1 million in 2006.

One commenter stated,

“It’s spectacularly bad form to post this.
And then you say you sent him flowers? Yikes.
I’m a DH customer of many years. And now so embarrassed that I recommended DH to my colleagues and friends.
What were you thinking?”

Another,

“Let me get this straight… Your customer support is horrible, so to “make up for it” you expose your customers to ridicule?”

Liam Eagle concludes,

“I have to imagine most hosting companies would avoid doing something like this. I don’t get the sense that this is a calculated move by DreamHost to appear “irreverent.” So it does add to the genuine feel of that approachability that characterizes the company. However, it might also make them seem a little less like the kind of company you’d want to approach.”

We’re celebrating with a promotion, enter coupon code 45TO60 at checkout and receive 25% off your initial order at PinchHost. The coupon expires 30th April 2009.

The refund is based on the cost of shorter periods. The 7 months used if bought separately would consist of the bi-annual payment period plus a single month.

Calculations
USD: $47.40 – ($29.70 + $6.95) = $10.75
GBP: £33.00 – (£21.00 + £4.95) = £7.05

The policy is beneficial for all involved, if you decide to stay for a longer period of time then you save money (rather than paying a greater fee on a monthly basis) and if you don’t, you’ll be refunded. Those who would ordinarily pay on a monthly basis needn’t worry about a NO REFUND policy enforced by a large percentage of other web hosts in the industry.

If you have any questions about any of our policies, please don’t hesitate in contacting us.

Let me start off by saying, all our clients have been amazing! We’d love to share with you some of the comments made. Cindy, (blogging at PouBou since 2003!) wrote a post regarding her move to PinchHost, the quoted text below describes Cindy’s situation, specifically at the moment in time when her previous host unintentionally wiped her content,

“I threw a temporary WordPress blog here that you might’ve seen if you happened to click over here. On it, I mentioned that my last manual backup of my website was from May 2008, hence my panic. (So all the entries about selling our house, moving to North Carolina, the holidays, Catie’s 2nd birthday? GONE.) Then the tech from PinchHost – the same guy who responded to me on Twitter – left me a comment telling me that he had gone through Google’s cache of my archives and found about 100 entries from May 2008 to now, and saved them to a zip file for me to download.”

This also slots nicely into our ‘extra mile’ focus (see homepage). We’ve really gone the extra mile for customers and non-customers alike. Last week we helped a University student solve a problem (PHP) with their Computing work. We were even contacted by a competing web hosting company regarding country-based (IP) redirection and happily passed on our methods. Clearly, we’re still young and eventually we won’t be able to allocate resources to quite so extraneous requests from non-customers, but take advantage, we’re not planning on stopping anytime soon.

Another user made this comment through Twitter,

“PinchHost has just set up 5 domains for me and is uploading themes now brilliant service.”

We’ve also managed to pickup a page rank 4, three weeks after launch. There shouldn’t be too much emphasise on page rank, but it surpassed of our initial target, equalling that of web hosts online for a number of years. Which is a great moral boost. Wikipedia definition,

“PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.”

In terms of support methods, ticket support has been used primarily, due to its prominence on the site. Telephone support has also been great, we haven’t left a call waiting for longer than 10 seconds! We’ll be updating the support section of the site in the near future to better present all of our support methods.

Twitter has been brilliant, we’ve picked up thousands of followers, admittedly not all of which we know intimately. We see Twitter as a great way to increase exposure and communicate with our customers and non-customers alike.

Our affiliate program, although quite hidden has received some attention from external web hosting related websites, no reports of any issues with the affiliate system, it seems to be running smoothly.

In summary, an excellent first month, thanks to all of our customers, affiliate members, followers plus all those who’ve been in contact with us!

In the coming months, it will be implemented, but with such rapid response times on support tickets, we’re reluctant. We’re also thinking about different ways to get answers to quick fire questions. We’re contemplating designing a system whereby the visitor enters a question on any page (without a popup window), we answer the question within a minute or two, while browsing the website the answer will make itself apparent in the website header. This could end up being a waste of resources as the visitor may leave before the answer is left, it may also be difficult to convey clearly how the question-answer system works. But it’s definitely a possibility.

Anyway, these are just sprawling thoughts, leave a ticket or tweet us your favourite support method or any other thoughts. Thanks!

We tested the speeds in the West Midlands (UK) plus Pennsylvania (US). Testing each host every hour on the hour (three times) for 12 hours. After averaging (mean method) the data, we found that PinchHost was 6% faster than HostGator and 11% faster than DreamHost.

HostGator speed was tested on on a random server, but they also provide an official speed test installation, which you can find here, this can be compared against us. DreamHost unfortunately doesn’t have an official installation.

This doesn’t include MySQL queries. We’ll be testing database related speed in the near future.

As part of this, we prefer to take a more relaxed approach to billing and account procedures. That’s to say, your website won’t be shut down or suspended immediately due to an unpaid invoice. We’ll contact you and as long we receive correspondence then we will make sure your website stays online. Clearly though, no correspondence and a long period of unpaid bills will lead to account suspension. If you can’t make the payment on time for whatever reason, contact us and we’ll make sure you’re account isn’t suspended.

Rest assured, our relaxed approach doesn’t apply to the speed of customer support or the quality of our web hosting.

Navigating to the purchasing stage, you’ll find that you actually need to spend $714 for 10 years of web hosting to gain that stated homepage figure. If you wish to pay on a monthly basis then a setup charge of $49.95 is required, plus a monthly fee of $10.95. There is the argument that the asterisk stating, “depending on pre-payment” makes this completely acceptable practice, but it just feels wrong.

I run the risk of excessive self-praise, but at PinchHost we don’t have any hidden costs or setup fees and the prices stated on the homepage are the most that you’ll pay. We’ll be the last web hosting company to move to unlimited plans, we just don’t believe in overselling and unattainable promises.

As a web host, we endeavour to communicate everything that is relevant and give a sense of who we are, primarily through the homepage. Having personally put my faith into hosting companies and being disappointed I don’t want PinchHost to be a profit hungry unethical company. Our profit margins are actually relatively low as a new entrant into the market, we do understand why it might be tempting to exaggerate, but in all sincerity, we would rather be an honest company in a sometimes-misleading industry.

UK: 020 3287 3336
US: (347) 414-8340

Our marketing campaign is currently being planned, but don’t expect to see us on primetime TV (anytime soon). We’ll be using Google AdWords, Twitter, YouTube, independent websites, forums, blogs and most importantly we’ll be advertising in the local area. If you’re in the area expect free merchandise sometime soon.

Find us on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and Skype.

We’ll also be actively searching out websites that we feel are under performing and unobtrusively proposition the owner with an analysis and possible solution. If you’d like your site analysed for free then drop us a support ticket.

As founder, with years of experience in web hosting and customer of dozens of diverse hosting companies I hope I can fulfil my vision to create a company that tirelessly aims to go the extra mile and provide a product with unrivalled support and maybe even make someone’s day. It sounds corny, but it’s the absolute truth. As a customer in the industry I’ve seen support that strives to squeeze every last penny, treats their customers with contempt, makes excuses for their own failings without any sign of compassion plus those that simply treat their customers like an idiot. So in summary, if you don’t want any of the last 4 lines then stay, have a look around and ask some questions. Our 45-day money back guarantee (now 60-day) exists because… we know what we’re doing.

We’ve endeavoured to make the program as straightforward as viable. The process requires that you fill out a brief registration form, after which you’re immediately provided with your affiliate link and banners. You can withdraw your funds after just one sale. Payments occur through PayPal, we payout 60 days after the sale to avoid fraud.

If you have any queries at all concerning our affiliate program, please don’t hesitate to submit a support ticket.