In a Sea of Competition, Managed Hosting Provider Reels in Success

Many website owners still lack the necessary technical skills and turn to managed hosting providers like ChemiCloud for immediate assistance and resolution. The ChemiCloud Website Builder makes it easy to create anything from a simple website in minutes to complex sites with multiple blogs, photo galleries, and more, all without requiring code or design skills.

With its business growing rapidly, ChemiCloud’s cloud infrastructure provider was not keeping up with critical needs for prompt technical support and world-class service. The company’s founders and developers were especially worried about how to defend the ChemiCloud website — and client websites — from large-scale denial-of-service (DoS) attacks without losing access to valuable services.

“Their support was just untimely and amateurish, and they didn’t step up to the plate and offer premium offerings or premium support,” said Michael Thomas, ChemiCloud’s Special Projects Manager. “A lot of the time, it felt like they were working against us.” In fact, according to the ChemiCloud team, it seemed like the provider made contacting their support team intentionally difficult, leaving them waiting to get help, which resulted in lost time and revenue.

Company leadership knew it was time for a change. ChemiCloud grew exponentially in a short time because of a “high touch, concierge” approach to customer service; a seamless transition for new customers; and affordable, high-performance services. “Not only are our services designed to be affordable for the average end user, but they’re also highly performative,” Thomas said.

The ChemiCloud team evaluated the industry’s big cloud providers. After reviewing the data, Akamai was the clear choice for ChemiCloud, and the migration away from its cloud infrastructure provider got underway.

Today, ChemiCloud uses many of Akamai’s (formerly Linode) data centers across the globe. “I’m proud to say that roughly 98% of ChemiCloud will be running on Linode [now Akamai] when all is said and done,” Thomas said. ChemiCloud now receives the essential services the company needs to stay competitive in the web hosting market. Clients range from personal websites to small and large businesses with mission-critical operations because Akamai “satisfies even our most complex redundancy requirements.”

Akamai's cloud computing services includes Cloud Firewall and advanced cloud distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection as part of a comprehensive set of free bundled services to help developers and businesses launch, secure, and scale applications in the cloud. Both free services have been game changers for ChemiCloud. The company’s previous hosting provider was ineffective at managing even the smallest attacks, and responses to hacks were even more frustrating. “Even if we had a small DoS, they would null route our server and kill it,” Thomas said. “We’d have to open a support ticket with their team and wait for them to undo the null route so we could bring the server back online.”

As ChemiCloud continues to grow, the company is looking forward to Akamai’s commitment to innovation, specifically the introduction of a bare-metal offering. At the same time, ChemiCloud will continue to position itself as an industry leader as its partnership with Akamai continues to grow. “We have a great working relationship with the support team,” Thomas said. “When we reach out to them, it really feels like they have our back.”