We continue our interview series today with Ramy of HostSailor. HostSailor has shared some terrific offers with us recently and has more cheap VPS systems on tap for Black Friday! This is a fun read and we thank HostSailor’s leadership for taking the time to reply. Enjoy!
Your company is in Dubai, correct? I think when most people think of Dubai they think of exotic architecture and hot weather. What’s life like there?
The weather is warm/hot all year long, it’s much hotter during the summertime however the rest of the year its quite an enjoyable weather with lots of activities to do. Dubai is a great place for tourism and it’s a very busy tourist destination all year round.
Dubai is packed with tourists from all around the world. Dubai also offers many sandy beaches, accessible from all over the city. It is an amazing place to shop, there are malls where you can buy the top brands of luxury items like fashion, cars and jewelry. The tallest building in the world, Burj al-Khalifa, and many other amazing buildings are here. World-class resorts like The Palms are a top attraction.
In terms of doing business, Dubai is a great place and the many relationships and networks we’ve established position us as pioneers in the local and global hosting scene.
If you said “HostSailor” and “Dubai” to me, I’d think your company was named after the Burj Al Arab hotel. Where did the name “HostSailor” come from?
Water covers the majority of our planet, and that’s how HostSailor imagined itself, a sailing ship that is ready to sail throughout the world.
There are a million hosting companies in the world (or so it seems). What sets you apart from others?
We have focused entirely on our customers (We call them Sailors) ever since 2014 and are always taking full responsibility for any issues that arise on our end. We treat each customer with the same care whether they’re paying a dollar or a hundred or a thousand in service fees. We do our utmost to satisfy our customers, we go above and beyond to retain as many customers as possible. We believe that with the combination of features, low prices, and technical support we offer, we rank highly against the worldwide competition.
What is your company culture like inside?
Teamwork, integrity and team engagement has played a very important role amongst our members as it has helped us build a healthy, honest and non-toxic work environment. We aim to have mutual respect between the team members.
Transparency has always been at the core of our internal and external communications. Fairness within the team has always been supervised to make sure a fair discussion and debate takes place. This approach helps ensure buy-in from all stakeholders to major key decisions
We work in a fast-changing and technically complex environment. To ensure our people are up to date, we offer a lot of learning opportunities during the course of their employment, obviously focused on the hosting and IT space. Courses are usually hands-on with a variety of complex and non-complex cases,
We set different strategies to implement improvements in monthly and annual timescales. We work as a family to achieve them. We try to bring joy to our team by being able to chitchat each day on different topics ranging from pandemics, music, different cultures since
We’re all multi-cultured from different countries around the globe, discussing certain news, and overall make the working environment as easy and fun as possible.
Are most of your staff Dubai-based or elsewhere?
Our staff members are based both in Dubai and outside Dubai in different countries ranging from Russia, Egypt, India, the Philippines, Pakistan, United Kingdom, and Ukraine.
On your site, you say you accept 41 (!) different cryptocurrencies. How do you deal with currency fluctuations in cryptocurrencies?
In business you take the risk, so we take the risk :-)
You’ve been around for 8 years (since 2013). How has your infrastructure and technology evolved over that time frame
HostSailor started with a few servers only, and today we’ve evolved to have hundreds and hundreds of servers under four different data centres with a mix of low and high-end hardware.
How do you see the industry evolving over the next 8 years of your existence?
The current global pandemic has radically changed the way many people do business. We believe that this rush will change the way we all do business online and offline.
The trend is to digitize everything, and we believe that if we follow the customer’s needs, we can be very successful in a competitive industry. The most important thing is to keep ourselves updated with the trends and industry changes and to brainstorm internally to provide bespoke services to the market and customers worldwide.
By adapting to the changes around us and by keeping on top of the industry we will have no obstacles keeping us as one of the top leaders in the hosting scene.
There was a thread on LowEndTalk about your OpenVZ products and it seems you’re still running some OvZ 6. Are you in the process of upgrading?
We have been working on the upgrades for some time now and we’re hoping to complete them in May 2021.
A related question: you offer OvZ, Xen, and KVM. Do you see yourself moving towards KVM over time or do you expect to still offer multiple options?
Different customers have different needs. Some need KVM and others will need other platforms. We’re looking to focus mostly on KVM and we have a lot of surprises this year in terms of our products and services. To keep updated please follow us over Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our mailing list!
Has COVID-19 been a challenge or an opportunity for HostSailor, or both?
It was both a challenge and an opportunity for many IT companies. However, for us, it was a challenge that we have overcome.
When you hire staff, what are you looking for? How do you pick the best people to work at HostSailor?
We look for smart and creative team members.
Anything else you’d like to tell the world about HostSailor?
The company was established in Dubai around 8 years ago. Since then, we’ve faced a lot of challenges that we have overcome. The years have taught us a lot and helped us build a solid body of experience.
We have served over 45,000 customers, of which we have retained several thousand. We have never needed any external investment. With our hard work, we’ve built the company from a few servers and routers/switches to today’s hundreds, fully owned by HostSailor.
This year, 2021 is a year of innovation for us, and we are hoping to use this opportunity to work on several new products, change our strategies, modernise our structure and mindset to achieve exponential growth.
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I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.
I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308
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Always great to hear from Host Sailor!
Hi, the team on hostsailor it’s 5 star, I have a vps on their hosting, and every time I open a ticket they solve the request verry quick, first time I was impressed. ***** the servers are very stabile and always up.
Thanks for sharing your positive experience, Daniel!