Daniel Draga, VP of Virtono
Wow! Virtono has been on Low End Talk since 2014! They have a lot of Low End experience! And, they’ve been growing! Today, Virtono has 17 worldwide locations and plans to expand to 30 locations by the end of this year. Virtono most recently posted on Low End Box to celebrate its new locations in Japan, Canada, and Poland.
Low End Box owner Jon Bilow recently talked with Virtono VP Daniel Draga. They discussed internet merket evolution and Virtono’s differentiation, infrastructure, locations, policies, customer trust, and experience with Low End Box and Low End Talk. Please continue reading to see the entire Interview! Plus a lifetime discount code and a signup link!
Tell me about your background and Virtono’s history?
It’s always nice to go back to the beginning, I find it to be a good exercise to keep myself grounded and with a vision for the future.
Virtono has its roots in Romania, we’ve started as a local hosting provider offering local shared hosting through the domain cloudweb.ro, which now redirects to our current website.
We come from humble beginnings, and our core team is still around in the same formula as when we first started. Our team was built on years of expertise in web hosting, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, and customer support.
We started to notice that our VPS, which we offered only as an upgrade for customers that were growing quickly, but it soon became apparent that the demand for our service was going to be far greater than we first anticipated.
That was the first step that led us to go outside of Romania.
In 2014 we rebranded under the name of Virtono, and we began supporting a small handful of European locations. The journey was inspiring to say the least, we climbed the ladder and we maintained the same mission as when we first started, High Quality at Fair Prices.
Today we are present on 3 continents and over 17 locations, and across our journey, we still want to maintain the same dedication to customer satisfaction as when we started, we know that in this competitive market big brands tend to not care about their customers but to us they will always be important.
Virtono started in 2014, so you’ve seen the market evolve – What would you tell someone looking to start a hosting company today? What advice would you offer?
Thinking back, it would be easy to assume what would work and what would not, because we have the means of hindsight, but if we learned one thing is that you can never fully predict where the market is going. The general advice when it comes to starting this business, or any business for that matter, is to be alert and flexible. These 2 attributes helped us a lot in keeping our business on track, but you need to fully understand the concept of always being on the lookout for the next opportunity because the market rarely just moves in one defined direction. Understand that and you are one step closer to success.
As we know the web hosting industry started somewhere in the early 90s, but it change dramatically and gained a considerable market share about 10-15 years ago.
This industry as a whole has gone through many changes in that time, from wild growth to terrifying business climates. Each time the industry adapted and pushed forward with new technologies and concepts. You can be sure that our times are no different, change is coming, and you need to be there in order to seize the opportunity.
We think the concept of cloud will be a big thing in the market for a period of time, as more services migrate to this type of infrastructure, so you could start by looking into this tip. One important thing to keep in mind is that you will always need a team to succeed, there is no doubt about it when you have people that are success-oriented and performance-driven you can rest assured that you are on the right track no matter the market changes. Keep this detail in mind, because you can not do everything by yourself, the sooner you learn this the faster you can become a top-tier entrepreneur.
Where do you think the future takes the hosting industry?
That’s a good question, and I am going to tie it to the previous one, “you can never fully predict where the market is going” because “the market rarely just moves in one defined direction”.
The starting point for the web hosting industry was the National Science Foundation’s decision to lift commercial restrictions on the web and allow traffic from commercial networks to use its NSFNET internet backbone network back in 1991. From that point on it has only got bigger and bigger, new concepts are coming in every year, and sincerely not all of them are great. But improvement and change are always a great sign for a market. What we are seeing, for the near future at least, is an increase in cloud infrastructures and cloud hosting services so for now we think that this is a trend that the market is following.
Of course, we are talking here about the backbone and fundamentals of the industry, because otherwise there are a lot of trends to follow such as integrated website builders, e-commerce store integrations, and many more.
We are now living in exciting times, everything is so fast-paced that basically every day something new happens, so to tie the question with an affirmation, we would say that the industry is moving towards complementary services based on fast and easy-to-use integrations and cloud infrastructures.
How does Virtono differentiate itself from other VPS-focused hosts?
This is a good one, we believe that each provider is unique in its own way, well most of them at least… one of our most distinguished traits would certainly be our customer-first policy, as we said already, for us the customers are the most important part. Of course, we supply this policy with brand new servers, top-notch hardware, the latest security technology, high speeds, and a very professional team to put it all together.
We also strive to have a large number of locations all across the world to be closer to our customers, we currently have 17 locations across 3 continents, and we plan to reach over 30 locations by the end of the year, we always work with renowned datacenters with a premium network to ensure the maximum quality for our customers.
And most important of all, although we invest quite a bit in our infrastructure and technology, we remain true to our mission: High Quality at Fair Prices.
Talk to us about the Virtono cloud service – what type of infrastructure do you use? How did you select your vendors?
Our cloud infrastructure consists of multiple nodes in each region, interconnected with each other and virtualized using KVM. We only use one type of server for all of our nodes from a single vendor, all with the same specs: intel Xeon gold 5218 CPU, 512GB DDR4 RAM, 24SSDs raid-protected storage, and 2 x 10Gbps network
When it comes to selecting our vendors it’s easy because we work with just one vendor, so that’s taken care of. Why do we work with our vendor? Well, first and foremost the quality, secondly the price, and combining this we manage to fulfill our mission yet again: High Quality at Fair Prices.
Virtono has many locations, which locations are growing most quickly? What do you attribute that growth to?
Well, we have 17 locations at the moment, and we plan on growing to 30 worldwide locations by the end of 2022. All of them have shown great potential and are keeping up with our standards, but statistically, locations in Asia tend to outperform others, we just launched Tokyo a few days ago and there are constant purchases, for that matter, we are planning to grow our overall presence in Asia as it seems to be a logical step forward for our company.
Of course, all areas are still of great importance to us, because I said we are focusing on reaching 30 locations worldwide by the end of the year.
I think the growth potential in Asia is backed by their dynamic economy and competitive environment, those 2 would be the most important factors for the location’s constant growth, when you think of Tokyo you can’t skip the business aspect of it.
Tell me about your top two failures in business? What did you learn from them?
Anyone who talks about entrepreneurship and success without mentioning failure is a hypocrite. Entrepreneurship is a journey and a journey is not always linear, it comes with ups and downs but that is exactly what makes it fun and rewarding.
No one likes to talk about their failures and we are no different, but we believe that such discussions can be educational and more importantly inspirational for young entrepreneurs.
So here are our takes, DO NOT let success get to your head, because what goes up must come down. We had to learn this the hard way. Back in the day when we experienced our first growth spurt we were so excited to do more and reach for new heights that we forgot this basic principle, and after a growth spike we experienced a fallout, we were so focused on the initial growth that we forgot to take this into consideration, that’s how we first got caught off guard and we were forced to slow down our rapid expansion plan when the bills came around and some clients didn’t remain.
So principle #1 keep your head in the game and do not let success get to your success. Now another important lesson, learn that you cannot do everything yourself. When we first started we were young and full of energy and often times we had a tendency to do all the tasks ourselves, we had strict rules and we believed that we were the only ones that could meet our standards, as we started to grow our stubbornness proved to be an obstacle and not a plus as we first saw it. We learned to trust and educate people and slowly but surely we formed a team with the same principles and vision as us and that might have been the best thing that we managed to do.
Principle #2 don’t be stubborn and trust other people.
Tell me about your top two successes in business?
When it comes to success there are a couple of important milestones that we want to mention. The first one that we’d like to talk about it’s a fairly recent success and a major breakthrough for our company, and that is the expansion in Asia. We have been working towards this goal for a long time and we always managed to come across different obstacles that prolonged our process, it seemed to us like we were always out of reach. But after numerous trials, we finally managed to get everything sorted out and we got our first location in Asia, to be more specific Hong Kong.
After all that work being able to finally have a location in Asia felt so rewarding words could not make it justice. First of all, it was a step forward in our expansion plan, and secondly, it was a new area where our clients could have access and in the end, these things made all the effort worth the while.
Another success that we’d like to mention and I think it’s important to be noted is our team, as we grew and expanded our company we grew our team as well, and we can proudly say that we couldn’t ask for a better one. We truly believe that team spirit is the driving factor for our success as a company because each and every member has the same morals and ambitions.
We believe that having a team is a success in it itself but having a big and functional team that’s just on another level.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
Although having a C-level executive position is fun, I never looked at it that way. In our company we don’t approach things by a hierarchical status, we are constantly working together, whoever is there to solve an issue will do it, no matter if he is a manager, COO, CEO, or tech support.
We are a family and we support each other no matter what, as per my obligations this is another story, as I am responsible for keeping everything in check and I am always looking to keep my team and our customers happy.
It’s a hard job but hey, someone has to do it.
Both personally and professionally, what guiding principles ground you?
Great question, I find it interesting to study human nature and the principles that guide us as beings, and often times I am left to ponder what really makes a good principle foundation.
We like to think that morality and needs tend to go hand in hand but more times than not humans have a deep unpredictable nature, and I think that in order to reveal our true potential we need to set a set of guiding principles to help us stay true to our vision no matter our instinctual tendencies.
Sorry about my rant but this is a dear subject to me, so to be concise I rest my belief system upon morality, equality, and self-worth.
Really it’s quite a simple concept, we all tend to have a moral compass, you just need to follow it. Basically don’t do anything that you wouldn’t like done to you.
Treat anyone as an equal, because first of all you never know a person fully, and judging a book by its cover can prove to be a dire mistake. And secondly back to the first principle, don’t do anything that you wouldn’t like done to you, and I suppose that you’d like to be treated as an equal to anyone.
The last one is important to master, pay attention to how you treat yourself, at the end of the day you are everything that you really got, and no matter what you should love and nourish yourself and your spirit. When you take care of yourself, everything around you takes tends to follow your lead. So yeah, here are some secret insides on how to lead a better life.
Give us some details on new and exciting things you are working on at Virtono?
Currently, we are focusing on improving our reach and infrastructure, we have 17 locations opened worldwide and to name a few: Tokyo, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, Miami, and many more. We want to give our clients the best possible coverage, that’s one of the driving factors of our continuous expansion.
In the last year alone we have grown exponentially compared to previous years, and we plan on keeping up the pace. We have some cool features in mind but we’d like to keep it shush for now, all I can say it’s that building a website will become easier than a walk in a park.
Why should customers trust you and your business?
Great question, we know that sometimes it may be difficult for some to trust a new provider or to find a reason to change providers.
To jump straight to the point we don’t expect customers to trust us straight away, we understand that things take time but we come up with some solid points in regards to our legitimacy.
We have been in business since 2014, almost a decade, so we believe that we know a thing or two about what we are doing.
Year over year we increased our market share, and expanded to new locations, we always reinvest massively in Virtono and I think this shows our commitment to our community, and it shows our dedication to the high quality of our services.
After all these years, and all the advancements that we made we still keep the business human, we always strive to have a great relationship with our community and clients. We believe that there is no greater feeling than knowing that someone is actually listening to you on the other side of the screen.
To this day our support team is regarded as one of the best in the market and we take great pride in that.
Tell us about the experience Virtono has had at LowEndBox and LowEndTalk?
This one hits home because we believe that our experience with LEB and LET can be summarised with one powerful word, partnership.
Our community was built here and we believe that it will stay here for the foreseeable future. When we wanted to know what our community wants we came here, when we wanted feedback regarding our services we came here, and when we want to know where should we go next we come here. We will always be thankful for the endless source of inspiration that this channel provides us. We believe that at the core of every business it’s a community and without you guys that would have been infinitely more difficult to accomplish.
We truly believe that LET has been a stepping stone for our business and that’s why we will always see our collaboration as a partnership.
We appreciate you guys, and we wish you all the best, truly all of Virtono’s team.
Try out Virtono’s new locations with a special lifetime-discount offer. Limited discount, only 100 spots are available for each location. Use code: LIFETIME25 at checkout and get a 25% lifetime, starting with KVM 2G and above. Order Link!
Virtono also has a 512MB RAM KVM VPS for € 2.5 monthly and 1GB RAM for just € 3.95. This is Virtono’s summer sale. After the summer sale ends, Virtono might remove the 512M and 1G from their website.
Final thoughts and anything you would like to add?
On the end note, I’d like to talk about a subject that is close to our hearts and that we believe should be of more importance in the market. As you know global climate change is a real problem and unfortunately not many businesses take their responsibility seriously.
As a business we have direct responsibility over how we act because we influence communities and people all around the world, we think it’s important to hold ourselves to high standards and we believe every business should do so.
CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) should be implemented in every corporate environment, and best practices for the environment should be applied constantly.
On another note, we have some big projects coming, so you should keep an eye out for those.
We want to thank our customers for being at our side, and we want to thank them for their constant support, everything that we achieved is thanks to them and we want to say a big, warm, Thank You!
We also want to thank the LET & LEB team for hosting this interview and for helping us promote our services to the community.
Daniel Draga
VP @ Virtono Networks SRL
www.virtono.com
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My Low End Adventures started here at LowEndBox, when just a few years back, I found the perfect deal on a dedicated server from OVH!
These days I own my own gorgeous antique server named Darkstar. She is colocated in Dallas, Texas USA at LevelOneServers.com.
Besides writing for LowEndBox, helping as a moderator at LowEndTalk and running Darkstar, I'm trying to learn a little about programming and networking.
All these years, and, still, so much more to learn! So many people here who can teach me!
It's very, very fun here on the Low End, isn't it? :)
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I don’t have anything to complain about Virtono hosting. In fact, I enjoyed the hands on experience. The team is always there to back you up in areas that you need help with and they have always been happy to help. With the tools that they have, I find it very easy to set up my website to my own preference.