Hawk Host in 2014 - The Year In Review

As improbable as it seems, 2014 is coming to a close and 2015 is upon us. It’s hard to believe we’ve seen another 365 days come and go but here we are, and at least for us at Hawk Host it’s safe to say this year wasn’t a waste. We’ve made new partnerships, launched new services, and even brought a brand new flagship datacenter online. We were certainly busy, never bored, and as always we’re looking ahead to the next year for what’s to come.

Woo Hoo! 2015!

Where to begin! As I take a step back and look at everything we’ve done this year it’s hard to believe everything we’ve accomplished (and I can’t give everyone on staff enough credit for their hard work). Every single day we made improvements to our existing services, operations, and customer relations. We’ve implemented methods to both streamline and increase support availability. Our network is continually being shaped and grown to cater to our biggest markets. We’ve launched a number of services to fix the most common complaints we received over the year. 2014 was a year shaped and guided by customer complaints, feedback, and requests.

Our New Los Angeles Datacenter

Earlier this year we launched our brand new, flagship, and overall kick-ass Los Angeles datacenter. Los Angeles was selected as a direct result of continual customer feedback about the desire for an improved West coast hosting experience. After extensive research, we selected the facility location and network due to the connectivity, capacity, and overall reliability Los Angeles can provide. Since shifting our traffic from San Jose and Seattle to Los Angeles, we’ve seen a nearly 30% reduction in latency in routes from both the West coast in North America and the Asia/Pacific region. The facility was also built with continual expansion in mind, so both our network and server capacity will outlast demand for years to come. If you’re curious what the network looks like for you, try our speedtests at http://www.hawkhost.com/our-hosting-network/

We’re 10 Years Old

We were extremely happy to celebrate our 10 year anniversary earlier this year. What started out as a hobby/project (and a different name, Devoted Host!) slowly turned into what has become Hawk Host today! We’ve grown from two founders and one part time employee to an entire full time team (we’re here every hour of every day, rain or shine) spread across 3 continents. The web hosting industry is easy to break into but difficult to succeed in, but our hard work and diligence has helped establish Hawk Host as a brand name hosting provider. Ultimately though we have our awesome customers to thank for that. Our work means nothing if we don’t have loyal people supporting us and continuing to trust us with their web based needs. Cheers to you all!

SpamExperts, aka Goodbye Spam

Nobody likes spam. It’s annoying, clutters your inbox, reduces productivity, and distracts from legitimate emails from people you actually *want* to hear from. For entirely too long we were fighting an uphill battle combating spam on our network. We spent hours working with users configuring SpamAssasin or creating custom filters to block inbound email. We spent even more time dealing with blacklisting/RBL issues with spam leaving our network from compromised accounts. We finally decided enough was enough and reached out to our good friends at SpamExperts to solve this problem once and for all. As you can see by the numbers in our recent blog post, SpamExperts filtering has not only met but far exceeded our initial expectations. We’re effectively filtering 99%+ of spam entering our network and our outbound filtering is just as impressive. If you’re having issues with spam on your account, give our free filtering a try. I have a feeling once you see how clean your inbox can be, you’ll never go back.

A Few Others Items

The items above were the bread and butter of this years accomplishments (publicly, at least) but we made progress in a number of other places worth mentioning:

•  We now accept Bitcoin. As cryptocurrency continues to gain traction and credibility, we realized the importance of offering the most current payment methods. So far Bitcoin has been a great success for us and we’re seeing more and more payments as the days go by. Thanks for all you early supporters and adopters!

•  We partnered with 6Scan security services to protect your websites. As part of our partnership you can receive all the benefits of their professional security package for just $2.99 per month. Trust me when I say the price to professionally secure your site is nothing compared to the potential lost time, income, and traffic due to a site compromise.

•  We’ve had SSD based caching on all servers in our Dallas facility for over a year now, which has been a resounding success. We’re also in the process of slowly upgrading machines throughout our fleet to SSD powered systems. We already have a handful online in our Washington DC, Amsterdam, and Singapore locations (and they perform magically). Over the next year we’ll be working on upgrading our entire fleet to SSD powered systems!

On a personal note, I want to send a sincere thank you to each and every one of our customers. At the end of the day I realize none of the above would be possible without the loyalty and support you all offer. The amount of trust you put in us to keep your websites, businesses, emails, and all other services online is truly remarkable, and we work hard every single day to never compromise that trust. A number of times this year I’ve worked with customers who have been hosting with us longer than I’ve been at Hawk Host. It’s an incredibly humbling feeling knowing people have put their trust in us for 10+ years now. Whether you’ve been with us for 10 years or just signed up as I’m writing this post, please know I truly appreciate your decision to host with us, as does everyone else on board with me here at Hawk Host.

On behalf of the entire team, we wish you all nothing but a safe, happy, healthy, and awesome holiday season. Thank you for a successful 2014, and we promise to make 2015 even better.