As we continue our Low End Box Interview Series, today we are talking to Paul Estrada, Serveria’s CEO. So, let’s get started with the interview!
Tell me about your background and your company’s history?
Serveria was founded back in 2009 by a group of privacy-conscious IT professionals in Riga, Latvia. The project started out as a single self-hosted shared server. From the very beginning, we paid great attention to things like security and anonymity of our clients. We are a niche host and we realize we’ll never become super huge like the big guys Hetzner etc… nevertheless, we had a terrific decade and the growth was exponential. From a single shared server to our own privately owned data center.
What would you tell someone looking to start a hosting company today? What advice would you offer?
Don’t listen to anyone, you can do it! Back in 2009 people were saying you shouldn’t mess with the big guys like Hostgator. You have no chance, there are thousands of hosting companies around! Give up! Let go! All it takes is a courage to start, to take the risk, to face the challenge. You and your ideas are unique, you will succeed.
Where do you think the future takes the hosting industry?
More and more mainstream services are going to move to the cloud but niche hosts will still be around offering bare metal servers for specific needs. Stricter anti-privacy laws are coming so people will start to value privacy more.
What makes your company unique in today’s evolving market landscape? How are you evolving with the times?
In fact, lots of things make us unique starting with our geographical location and our views on privacy and security. At the same time, I guess we’re quite similar to most other providers the way our infrastructure evolves. We’re migrating to SSD on a large scale, introducing green energy, IPv6 addressing etc. These processes started a long time ago but still go on as they appeared to be more complex, slow and expensive than everyone in the industry thought initially.
What do you enjoy most about your role? What do you find most difficult?
Both the most enjoyed and challenging aspect is communication with customers. Technical and administration seems easy if you have qualified staff, whereas clients can’t be predicted, controlled in any way. Which is great, because every day brings new challenges, new exciting projects.
Both personally and professionally, what guiding principles ground you?
Customer is a king – everything should be done to please a client and make him happy. Customer satisfaction is our number 1 priority. Anonymity is not a crime. It’s a basic right to remain private online. Under no circumstances we’re going to give customer info/data out to 3rd parties (except a court order from a local court). Of course, it doesn’t mean we’ll tolerate any criminal activities.
Give us some details on new and exciting things you are working on?
If we speak about our latest projects, I can mention that we are developing our own encrypted email service at the moment. Right now we’re still in the testing stage but I can tell you we have some cards up our sleeve to make sure this thing won’t become just another Protonmail clone.
Why should customers trust you and your business?
We are a company with 11 years of experience in the hosting industry. The company never changed owners, most of the employees we hired 10 years ago are also still with us. We also managed to retain many customers who signed up in 2009 and their servers are still up and running, even without hardware upgrades.
Final thoughts and anything you would like to add?
Thanks for this awesome opportunity to let the community learn more about our company! I hope this short interview gives a hint on what our company is about.
Check out Serveria by clicking their banner below!
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