VPS Hosting Website Review

[ThatDevAaron]

That’s not what I said. How do we actually know it’s your hardware? I can’t see any labels or other indicators that they belong to you or are even in Chicago.

We've got a laptop open with our company website displayed etc, that is more than sufficient enough, by all industry standards.

 

[ThatDevAaron]

And it is in a datacentre, the build-room..... Also, people don't always show servers in datacentres, in a lot of cases, they'd take a picture in person, then ship it off to the DC, unless they've got a presence in the DC, which we're assuming is across an entire ocean.

 

[fisicx]

We've got a laptop open with our company website displayed etc, that is more than sufficient enough, by all industry standards.

Proves nothing as that could just be a screenshot.

I get what you are trying to do but not sure it adds any value.

You asked for a review so I’ve just commented on something I consider to be superfluous when there are so many other issues with the website.

 

[ThatDevAaron]

Proves nothing as that could just be a screenshot.

I get what you are trying to do but not sure it adds any value.

You asked for a review so I’ve just commented on something I consider to be superfluous when there are so many other issues with the website.

No, you are single-handedly very suspicious. Not one person has contacted us regarding our photo's legitimacy, or asked any follow-ups after we've provided said pictures, post-query from the customer.

Like I said, its sufficient by industry standards, which is why those familiar with industry standards, won't question it. Based on our previous interactions, I see why you questioned it

 

[Alan]

Well, that depends on a range of different things, our primary location is Chicago, so lets assume you have a need for this location, comparing us to other Chicago providers, we beat most simply by offering Fair Usage, unmetered bandwidth by default from as little as a £0.99/mo vps commitment, and offer favourable usage terms, alongside being one of a few providers that can actually assure customers they'll be able to access 'dedicated resources, with no over allocation'.

Neither of which I got from your site

the 0.99 plan immedaiately went from my head as my brain dismissed itas too trivial to be useful
the next plan up seems slightlly large at 8gb and my gut feel was it was expensive, ironically pricing in £ made it difficult for me to mentally place the pricing as most services are priced in $ - but now looking it seems very cheap- too cheap to be true?

Then you say is I want a chicago VPS - but nothing indicates location and price in £ make me think you are UK .

I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to say, deciding where to host something is s erious decision and Iwould be looking for indicators of trust and credibily. And thissite does not give out those signals.

Example, to find a phyical address (and important partof the way I investigate unknowns ) Iclickon contact expect a form and hpoing for phical addresses /locations too-instead I just get an email link launched


Ok I can scroll down and find on the footer but then I have more questions than answers, like what is akhtar

 

[ThatDevAaron]

Neither of which I got from your site

the 0.99 plan immedaiately went from my head as my brain dismissed itas too trivial to be useful
the next plan up seems slightlly large at 8gb and my gut feel was it was expensive, ironically pricing in £ made it difficult for me to mentally place the pricing as most services are priced in $ - but now looking it seems very cheap- too cheap to be true?

Then you say is I want a chicago VPS - but nothing indicates location and price in £ make me think you are UK .

I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to say, deciding where to host something is s erious decision and Iwould be looking for indicators of trust and credibily. And thissite does not give out those signals.

Example, to find a phyical address (and important partof the way I investigate unknowns ) Iclickon contact expect a form and hpoing for phical addresses /locations too-instead I just get an email link launched


Ok I can scroll down and find on the footer but then I have more questions than answers, like what is akhtar

So yes, we're a British Company, and've decided to strategically place our first location in the United States, this is actually visible on our landing page, under `Chicago Datacenter`.​

​

We aren't actually too cheap to be true, we're simply a start-up that's invested in competing against monoliths, we've been in the works for years, I myself, have been waiting years for the right moment to enter the market.​

​

We're going to be introducing dedicated server hosting in London (EC), but as of now, have no plans to really enter the UK VPS market.​

​

Akhtar Technologies is our Parent Company.​

 

[Ray272]

Forgive me for saying this but this is my point, are you both sure you both know what each other is talking about?

Thatdevaaron - what are you actually selling and whom will it be ideal for?

The reason I ask is because it does not appear like you are selling a type of 123reg service but maybe more a specialist service?

Understanding the types of clients using those services and why would be good to explain just to make sure everyone is on the same page, clearly I am not so I am just seeking to confirm the services etc.

The free VPN for example, is a software tool you are demonstrating?

I think you need a server like this for many types of Saas business nowadays but for non tech guys like me it is hard to understand what you do and you do not need. Like an email marketing business, would they use this type of hosting on the back end?

 

[mxnCTO]

The site loads really quickly which is good. It is very clean and cluttered, nice work!

 

[ThatDevAaron]

The site loads really quickly which is good. It is very clean and cluttered, nice work!

Thanks a lot, we've got some work to do admittedly, but your kind words are appreciated!

 

[lesseo]

My review for the website is simple and minimalist, but still not very close to a corporate line.

When I looked into it in detail, I noticed more problems. For example, there is only 1 person's identity as a team. This may seem like an honest approach at first, but I have been in this industry for 20 years and if it is never completely corporate for a hosting company, trust is a problem for me. And a one-person team is completely far from corporate.

 

[ThatDevAaron]

We've made some slight changes based on feedback across UKBF and other forums/suggestion areas.

We'd love to hear what you think: https://hammervm.com

 

[zomex]

We've made some slight changes based on feedback across UKBF and other forums/suggestion areas.

We'd love to hear what you think: https://hammervm.com

Your website looks clean and functional. But I do find the design a little too basic, it doesn't scream big player to me.

It may be personal preference but I find the colour scheme very bland. White space is good but in your case there is no contrast. It's too white. The grey background used on some of your sub pages helps with contrast. But your homepage is all white.

Your team page with yourself on one side is transparent but on the other it may put off potential clients knowing it's a one person company. Trust me i understand as have for the most part always been a one-man band myself. Clients always assume there is a team because I try and portray that kind of professional look. Something to consider.

Spacing is a issue with your website. There's a lot of text too close together.

Colour/design of your footer is nice, spacing is a bit off though. A bit cramped.

 

[ThatDevAaron]

Your website looks clean and functional. But I do find the design a little too basic, it doesn't scream big player to me.

It may be personal preference but I find the colour scheme very bland. White space is good but in your case there is no contrast. It's too white. The grey background used on some of your sub pages helps with contrast. But your homepage is all white.

Your team page with yourself on one side is transparent but on the other it may put off potential clients knowing it's a one person company. Trust me i understand as have for the most part always been a one-man band myself. Clients always assume there is a team because I try and portray that kind of professional look. Something to consider.

Spacing is a issue with your website. There's a lot of text too close together.

Colour/design of your footer is nice, spacing is a bit off though. A bit cramped.

Your comments on the colour scheme of our landing page have been duly noted, I will certainly be making it less white and adding some colour to the background; We've chosen a colour scheme of White as our secondary colour and a mixture of blue-ish colours for our primary colour.

Our footer is overdue a design upgrade to be honest, we initially wanted to wait until overtime it grew to the size it is now with all the quick links we've added etc.

The teams page is primarily our management team, we do have staff for support, engineers for our hardware etc, its just when it comes to managing operations, that's who we display on our teams page.

To extend on the teams page comment; how do you think we can better improve this, I did try to specify clearly on the page that it only displays our management, but I'd love to hear what you think, should we just remove it (from our nav-bar at least, will probably leave it in the footer)

 

[zomex]

To extend on the teams page comment; how do you think we can better improve this, I did try to specify clearly on the page that it only displays our management, but I'd love to hear what you think, should we just remove it (from our nav-bar at least, will probably leave it in the footer)

To me I think having a team page with 1 team member could put off potential clients. It would be better to add your full team or remove the page completely.

Also your discord within the menu looks out of place to me. I wouldn't value it so much to put it within the menu.

Blue if good as a main colour. I just think you need another compliment to white.

The grey on the VPS page is good: #f9fafb I would look to apply that to the homepage to break down the white.

 

[YasmeenLondon]

We've chosen a colour scheme of White as our secondary colour and a mixture of blue-ish colours for our primary colour.

I like the blue on white combo and it's inline with a lot of tech companies, look at vultr, Krystal and Digital Ocean's website to name a few, all have similar colour schemes, you can use different shades of blue, if it helps.

Where I think your site still falls short is in the consistency of design, for example consistency in spacing where elements are not on the same line, elements off centre etc, elements not aligning on a single axis at the start/end, as well as very little design elements such as graphics, pictures, textures, patterns etc.

 

[fisicx]

Every aspect of the design, content, navigation and calls to action will depend on your marketing plan.

How do you plan to market the business?

 

[YasmeenLondon]

Every aspect of the design, content, navigation and calls to action will depend on your marketing plan.

How do you plan to market the business?

Mate it's very easy to keep repeating the same phrase over and over, yes definitely marketing plan is your first step, but there's more to how a website looks than a marketing plan.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

but there's more to how a website looks than a marketing plan

Agreed, but until you know who your audience is and what their triggers are, you cannot effectively attract and engage them.....

 

[YasmeenLondon]

Agreed, but until you know who your audience is and what their triggers are, you cannot effectively attract and engage them.....

Definitely, identifying your target market and creating a marketing plan are pivotal to any business' success, no 2 sane people can argue about that, but there's still plenty of advice that can be given with regards to visual hierarchy and web design principles that OP can benefit from.

 

[ThatDevAaron]

I like the blue on white combo and it's inline with a lot of tech companies, look at vultr, Krystal and Digital Ocean's website to name a few, all have similar colour schemes, you can use different shades of blue, if it helps.

Where I think your site still falls short is in the consistency of design, for example consistency in spacing where elements are not on the same line, elements off centre etc, elements not aligning on a single axis at the start/end, as well as very little design elements such as graphics, pictures, textures, patterns etc.

Yeah, we're working on some more UI updates, although, I must say, I don't agree on the alignment comment for our landing page, I think the lack of consistency is a bit refreshing wouldn't you agree? I think if the middle was filled with text, and the left and right side of the screen was just a plain background, wouldn't look as good as it does now, especially considering we don't have too many graphics to display in the blank area, the aim is, as we get more data to populate our landing page with, we'll change the look of the page.

I'm certainly going to look into adding more pazaz to our NAV and FOOTER, hopefully that will give us time to come up with nice UI features.

 

[ThatDevAaron]

Agreed, but until you know who your audience is and what their triggers are, you cannot effectively attract and engage them.....

We've actually got a good grasp of our audience, and our target audience, in-fact, our demographic is so diverse our website was designed to appease everyone; not something so oriented toward cyber security, it puts of the average joe, yet, not something so simplistic, we lose a potential business client, as although we serve anyone, we do drastically prefer B2B.

So our goal is to simply be, neutral. And we do believe our brand meets these standards.

 

[YasmeenLondon]

I don't agree on the alignment comment for our landing page, I think the lack of consistency is a bit refreshing wouldn't you agree?

Honestly I do not but to each their own, this is why identifying you target market is important, if you're after B2B, businesses value stability and consistency, and IMHO your design should reflect that.

especially considering we don't have too many graphics to display in the blank area, the aim is, as we get more data to populate our landing page with, we'll change the look of the page.

Definitely agree your page could use with a little more graphics.

 

[YasmeenLondon]

our website was designed to appease everyone;

Try and appease everyone and you appease no one.

 

[fisicx]

So our goal is to simply be, neutral. And we do believe our brand meets these standards.

Fine. But that didn’t answer my question. What’s your marketing plan?

Are you relying on organic ranking, ppc and adverts, direct marketing or a combination of whatever?

This will drive the content and structure of the site.

 

[ThatDevAaron]

Definitely agree your page could use with a little more graphics.

What kind of graphics? You think some vector/illustration images? Or what kind? I'd love to hear the feedback on this, because this is what our next major step is going to be for upgrading our frontend, getting the right kind of graphics.

 

[fisicx]

The right type of graphics once again depends on your marketing plan and who you are targeting.

For example if you are promoting on gaming sites looking to attract streaming users then some high tech hardware with neon lighting would be suitable.

 

[Logwasen]

Since VPS has had much better uptime, is much faster, and gives you much more freedom, since you can install any panel you want for example, it will be the best hosting solution for webmasters and newbies.

 

[Devin_Cai]

The price is acceptable compared to the aliyun servers I use.Is there any standalone ip, home ip provided?

 

[antropy]

Since VPS has had much better uptime, is much faster, and gives you much more freedom, since you can install any panel you want for example, it will be the best hosting solution for webmasters and newbies.

This is pure AI.

Paul.

 

[ThatDevAaron]

The price is acceptable compared to the aliyun servers I use.Is there any standalone ip, home ip provided?

Yes, all servers come with dedicated IPv4 Addresses, although, our addresses are datacentre quality, not residential (not a big problem at all, unless you're wanting to hide the fact your IP is routing to a server, instead of a residential connection).

Fun fact; our price for hardware is actually 40% below the market price, seriously, compare VDS prices for EPYC 7642, only 1 provider tries to match us (netcup)

 

[ThatDevAaron]

This is pure AI.

Paul.

idk Paul, I think you need to backup your claims with serious evidence.

 

[antropy]

idk Paul, I think you need to backup your claims with serious evidence.

Either way it's a useless cliché non-answer.

Paul.