Today as we continue our LowEndBox Q&A style interview series with industry professionals we’re talking to heavy hitter Server Mania CEO Kevin Blanchard. Kevin and his team have built one of the fastest growing and most dynamic IaaS, Colocation and Cloud service providers in North America over the last couple years so we’re excited to gain his insight and share a bit of their story. So let’s get started with the interview!
Tell me about your background and ServerMania’s history?
Our business was founded in 2002 and rebranded as ServerMania in 2013. During our early days, we offered a wide range of hosting services. As we have adapted with times, we have had to refine the services we provide to ensure it is up to industry standards. This involved an immense focus on delivering the products and services our clients needed to run their business effectively. As ServerMania has grown, we have taken the time to listen to our clients and develop a close partnership with them whenever we can. These activities have led to the growth of our business into eight global data centers and counting.
What would you tell someone looking to start a hosting company today? What advice would you offer?
The hosting industry is hyper-competitive. Unless you can provide something unique or innovative to your clientele, it will not be easy to enter in today’s market successfully. During your infancy stages with the industry, I would recommend becoming a reseller of ServerMania or another credible hosting company rather than doing it yourself. You need to allocate your wealth into branding, marketing, and an excellent sales team before spending millions of dollars on your hardware, core infrastructure, transit carriers, acquiring ipv4 space of your own, etc. Start small as a reseller, and then build from there.
Where do you think the future takes the hosting industry and ServerMania specifically?
With the COVID pandemic, companies are now getting acclimated to working remotely, and this will create a sustained demand for specific hosting services. Particularly, with video and audio streaming. We are working with some of our strategic partners right now to ensure we can deliver the most affordable bandwidth to our clients while maintaining the excellent quality that they deserve.
What makes your company unique in today’s evolving market landscape? How are you evolving with the times?
We have seen several competitors not provide the customization and flexibility that clients need for their businesses. While we display a specific range of real-time server availability on our website, we also can tailor anything that may not on our website. We also offer incredible rates for unmetered servers up to 10gbps for less than $800/month, which very few providers can do, while still maintaining quality of network and service.
Additionally, with over 500,000 ipv4 addresses, we have the diversity that we can deliver to some of the most known and reputable VPN companies on the Internet today.
What do you enjoy most about your role? What do you find most difficult?
What I enjoy most is building strategic partner relationships to help ensure that our client’s needs and expectations can be delivered.
I also enjoy going out of my comfort zone to travel and meet some of our most loyal clients; whether if it’s at a trade-show, or if I have to fly in to meet them at their office. I enjoy hearing the positive feedback or any concerns that they may have so that they can continue positively scaling with ServerMania. The most difficult is always to ensure we can deliver a reliable service at a competitive rate.
Both personally and professionally, what guiding principles ground you?
It is fundamentally important to have integrity and respect from both parties. I don’t believe that a business or you as an individual can successfully flourish if there is deception or a lack of integrity. It is essential to operate with the sincerest intentions.
Give us some details on new and exciting things you are working on?
We are currently launching our new Cloud platform by the end of June 2020. The ServerManiaCloud will give our clients the ability to scale on an as-needed basis. Additionally, everything will be automated and easy to use for our clients. We also are going to be making it very easy for our resellers by delivering a white-label reseller program to them.
Why should customers trust you and your business?
We have been in business since 2003, and we certainly would not be in business if we did not operate with my underlining principals mentioned in my above points. Clients value how serious we take their business, and it is not uncommon for our company to have clients that are a decade old.
Final thoughts and anything you would like to add?
There are always ups and downs in business and life. How you cope with them depends on your frame of mind. Operating with my grounding principals will ensure a safe landing. Follow my lead on positive thinking, remaining persistent, and working with partners you can trust. Strength in numbers has always been my philosophy; it is still easier to deal with challenges when you have friends and partners that you can depend on.
If you’d like to learn more about ServerMania you may do so by visiting their website.
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Great interview!
Congrats on launching your new cloud product line Kevin. Looks great.
Keep crushing it.
Thanks, Dustin.
Hopefully, we can get you onboard with it. :-)
Have a a great day.
Thanks for taking part in our interview series Kevin!
Great Interview Jon Biloh! I hope Kevin cares about his employees as much as he cares about wearing grey on grey. By the way, is that picture of himself hung up on the wall in his Servermania photo lol.