Unlike many website hosting services, activ Digital Marketing offers a hands-on, personalised and bespoke hosting support service to all of our website clients. To be more specific, those hands belong to our Technical Support Manager, Richard Griffin.
Richard has been with activ since its inception in 2008, known among the team as our technical king! Over his tenure with the business, he has launched thousands of new websites for clients and franchisees alike as well as managing their ongoing maintenance. Alongside our wider technical team, of course.
In our latest interview with our technical wizard, Richard is encouraging small businesses who may be unhappy with their current website host to consider switching to activ. Here’s why…
What kind of server reliability and uptime scores does activ offer?
The reliability of our WordPress servers are excellent, we have monitoring software on all our servers which report any issues, uptimes are between 99.99% and 100% on all servers.
What range of hosting do you offer?
We can offer hosting for any brochure or eCommerce website, however, if you also required a larger project we could certainly cater for that. Bespoke pricing is available on request. To view our standard pricing based on your website size, take a look here.
What does the hosting package include?
Our hosting packages include:
- Ongoing security checks
- Nightly backups
- SSL certificates
- Web application firewall
- Plugin management
- Regular updates
- 1 hour of website edits per month
- Dedicated technical support from myself
- Access to a team of experienced website developers
What is activ’s downtime history?
Over the last 2 years we have had very little downtime, when issues do occur, we have a reporting system where we can monitor our servers and because we have server support any issues are resolved instantly.
What is activ’s backup policy?
We back up all our networks of websites daily and we also take additional backups of the live websites weekly. We are extremely risk averse!
Do you allow add-on domains?
Yes, of course, we do allow additional domains if our clients own more than one address.
What kind of security features does activ offer?
We use a range of security plugins to monitor the websites and network, we use a Web Application Firewall and we also monitor for Viruses and Malware. We maintain a suite of tools in our armoury to protect against other potential issues too – no website goes unprotected.
How many customers are on each server?
We choose to restrict our WordPress servers to a maximum of 100 sites, this ensures we never experience slow loading speeds and that our clients’ website visitors always have a good website user experience.
What is your level of technical experience?
Extremely high, if I do say so myself! I have been Technical Support Manager for activ since 2008, launching and managing thousands of websites and domains for thousands of clients. There’s nothing I haven’t seen in my tenure. We also have a team of highly skilled technical project management and website developers on hand for any clients wishing to develop their sites in the future.
How responsive is your customer service and tech support?
We are extremely responsive. There are no call centre queues to sit in or ticket systems to use in order to wait for a response. Pick up the phone and talk to me directly or send me an email and either myself or one of the team will respond with a fast turnaround.
Who would I speak to if I had an issue as your customer?
Me! We are a very hands on team, no problem is too big or small for me to investigate. I also draw on the team’s knowledge and support in order to solve problems and keep everything ticking over. Call me any time you have a concern.
What’s it like to manage multiple client’s hosting service at activ?
For me, it’s no problem, if it was, I may not have decided to stay at activ since 2008! Every job has its busy days, but knowing we have the technical experience, knowledge and fast customer service response times is what keeps clients coming back to us time and again for the website development and hosting support.
What are the main benefits of taking a hosting package with activ?
Apart from everything we’ve already discussed, here are the main points to remember for businesses considering the switch:
- Our servers boast a 99% uptime
- Our portfolio of WordPress websites have NEVER been hacked
- Our approach is personalised – no call centres
- Daily maintenance and backups
- Weekly plugin updates
- Strict security protocols
- Free hour of website edits
- Affordable pricing based on your website size
- Access to our team of developers for redesign, enhancements, integrations and bespoke features
So there you have it, a review directly from Richard on our hosting service.
If you’d like more details on our hosting service or to discuss transferring your website to activ for ongoing management, please contact us for a no obligation chat.
