Interview: Dmitry Asafyev – Chief Marketing Manager, HOSTKEY

HOSTKEY has been serving in the market with competitively-priced colocation services, equipment leasing, and reliable cloud solutions for clients across Europe, Russia, and North America for more than a decade. We talked with the HOSTKEY team about their services, the future plans of the company, and the cloud market.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect HOSTKEY and the web hosting market?

Due to the corona crisis, our sector (dedicated servers and private cloud) is growing rapidly. Before the crisis, growth was significant, but the pandemic strengthened this trend, as many companies reoriented to remote work, people began to order more online, more actively use different online services. All this requires additional capacities and network bandwidth. And we are happy to meet the highest demands of our old and new clients.

You have launched dedicated servers based on the new GPU RTX3080 graphics cards. Could you please tell us about this service?

As you know, NVIDIA released new cards in September, despite the huge demand and the shortage of new cards, we managed to get some samples for the test. We are currently testing different configurations with our partners involved in AI and data science industries. But it’s already clear that 3090-based servers are showing impressive performance. They run only 15% slower than Tesla V100 / A-based servers. Due to the fact that RTX3090-based servers will be much cheaper than Tesla, our customers will be able to greatly reduce their computing power rental costs.

Can you tell us about HOSTKEY reselling and affiliate programs?

Recently we established our new affiliate program and at the moment we are looking for dedicated and passionate affiliates to represent us and our services online, making stable competitive income for themselves.

With our program affiliate partners get a recurring payment according to the scheme of 10%-5%-2% whenever a referred customer buys a service from us. Once a click from the affiliate website becomes a sale, they get paid. With our recurring revenue option, affiliates can continue earning for the lifetime of that customer. All they need to do is to direct traffic to our cool offers and watch commissions growing in their account! They can also invite other affiliates and grow the partnership net at the same time receiving commissions on their sales as well – this is real passive income!

Participating in our affiliate program is a real profit-sharing by giving a repeating commission for the whole lifetime of the referred customer.

HOSTKEY customers rarely leave, so repeating commissions hold real value over the long term.

Also recently we refined our reseller program. In the usual business world, you need to rent or purchase the servers yourself first, and only then sell or lease them to customers. However, to do this you need a serious investment in hardware and you will need to pay the re-location costs even if you haven’t sold or leased the servers yet. With us at HOSTKEY, you can become a server reseller without having to buy the servers in advance. You will be selling our server configurations under your own brand name (White Label), so you don’t need to invest all of that money first. Reseller can order directly from the website where his discount(s) will be effective immediately.

With this program we offer high, life-long commission for each signed up client, as well as high-quality services and high-level tech support. Keeping clients happy means that they will stay, and resellers can earn good money for as long as the client stays with us, even if they stop actively working on their business! We also assist with marketing tools to help our resellers to grow their business as fast as possible. Wide choice of servers and work through API integration contribute to business skyrocketing, and the assistance of the personal account manager will smooth the pathway to the inevitable success.

What is Gambling Hosting? What differs from traditional hosting services?

The Netherlands has passed a law on online games. This activity will be licensed. And we are ready to provide all the necessary infrastructure to companies that have a license from the Dutch government. Gambling projects require an increased level of personal data security, transactions, and they must also cope well with peak loads, as well as be always available. We operate on the basis of TIER III data centers, our servers are located in the Netherlands, New York, and Moscow, we are connected to large traffic exchange networks – all this ensures good connectivity and stability of workflow. Also, our team of highly qualified engineers can implement and support complex distributed projects.

What are the advantages of using HOSTKEY regarding Cyber Security, especially DDoS attacks?

In the USA and the Netherlands, we provide basic protection for all of our clients. For many, this is enough. But we also have enhanced protection plans. We use a combination of hardware and software protection, real-time monitoring systems, which allows us to protect our clients from the most sophisticated attacks.

Tell us about your Private Cloud and Windows VPS services.

For the last year, we have been actively developing the Private Cloud direction based on Ovirt and VMware technologies. We not only offer turnkey solutions but also offer customized solutions that meet the needs of our customers. Sometimes these are very difficult projects, but we are happy to take on them.

From which locations do you provide Colocation services? Do you have any plans to build more locations?

We offer colocation services in Amsterdam and Moscow. We also launched the “remote smart hands” service. We are ready to serve the servers of our clients not only in our data centers but also in any data center in the Netherlands and Moscow. It is much cheaper and more convenient for customers than hiring your own team or sending your engineers from the company’s headquarters. This became especially true during the pandemic.

What defines a qualified hosting service for HOSTKEY?

Reliable data centers, 10 years of experience, a highly professional team, well-built partnerships with suppliers and vendors, our own know-how developments – all this makes our service unique in quality.

What differs HostKey from its competitors?

We offer a wide range of servers from the simplest to servers with the latest Intel and AMD processors. We are actively developing GPU solutions. We also offer server maintenance services in any data centers in the Netherlands. In the near future, we will have the servers based on the latest AMD 2 gen processor, as well as GPU servers based on the new RTX3080 card. We offer our clients not only ready-made popular configurations, but each client has the opportunity to assemble an online server of his own online configuration, which is ideal for the task. No compromise! Also, any client can contact us for help to solve a non-trivial task and our engineers and system administrators will help. Our clients love us not only for high-quality services but also for an individual approach, responsiveness, and willingness to take on some of the tasks and problems. And we, in turn, are very grateful to our clients for their loyalty and do our best to make our cooperation long, successful and pleasant.

Tell us about your support team, please. What kind of support do you provide for your customers?

Our support team works 24/7 and gives the first response within 15 minutes. We have a very solid SLA. We not only ensure reliable operation of servers and solve client problems associated with bare metal servers, but also advise our clients on a variety of issues related to the optimization and construction of their infrastructure, and in addition to consulting, we undertake the implementation of these projects. We consider our mission to remove the load of worrying about their IT infrastructure from their shoulders so that they can focus on their business.

Do you have any plans to launch new products, services, or plans in the near future?

To further elevate customer service, we recently launched Smart Hands, a 24/7 on-site support solution, that I already mentioned. The on-call service includes assembly and installation, system and network administration, maintenance, project deactivation, server, and network support, troubleshooting, inventory auditing, and storage management. In the environment we are currently living with all the pandemic restrictions, Smart Hands assist businesses with remote infrastructure maintenance, allowing less travel, which increases employees’ safety and spares budget. If necessary, we can take photos and video, or even live stream the whole work process and its results.

Also, we are expanding the line of servers based on modern AMD EPYC, Intel Gold and Silver processors, GPU servers based on RTX3090 and RTX3080. We were the first provider in Europe to receive the new powerful RTX cards, and at the moment our engineers and partners are testing them. Anyone who is involved in AI, ML, and Big Data projects can apply to participate in new servers testing, you just need to contact our support and submit your application.

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