EarthLinkers Keep Pace with the Boston Marathon

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Pamela O'Connor

4/15/13, 5:45 p.m. EST. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and individuals whose lives were touched by the tragic explosions at today’s Boston Marathon. We are grateful to report that we have accounted for the safety of our employees in attendance there today as spectators and runners.

Monday, April 15^th marks the 117^th Boston Marathon. Race day is always exciting for EarthLink, and not only because the company is the Boston Athletic Association’s (B.A.A.’s) official IT services provider. One team of EarthLinkers has been busily preparing, monitoring and proactively routing web traffic for the Boston Marathon, ensuring that the web site for the iconic event is accessible for the more than 1 million site visits and 12 million page views during the event, while another team of EarthLinkers is preparing to run the race!

Team EarthLink at the Boston Marathon

“EarthLink is a great partner to have our back with web traffic on race day. They provide us with the peace of mind to know that we have ample data storage and servers in our arsenal. Even if we get 100 million site visits, we know we can provide a good experience to each and every one of them,” said T.K. Skenderian, Marketing and Sponsorship Manager, Boston Athletic Association. Click here to view the full press release, and click here to view our B.A.A. case study.

For five lucky EarthLink employees, Monday is the day they will run the Marathon after winning a company contest for complimentary race waivers. Mark Clementi – Circuit Design Tech, Rochester; Christine Antonini – Provisioning Team Lead, Rochester; Justin Davidson – Manager Network Support, Burlington; Scott Turner – Manager System Administration, Atlanta, and Linda Scavarda – General Ledger Accountant, Huntsville will each fulfill a lifelong dream when they compete in the Marathon.

Scott Turner wrote, “I ‘m not as fast as most Boston Marathoners but my goal is to be like a freight train – unstoppable! Life is more of a distance race than a sprint and thanks to the EarthLink waiver, I get to fulfill my dream — running the Boston Marathon on my 60^th birthday!’ And Justin Davidson also shared, “I remember the first time I ran this race for our company in 2011. While running I remember saying to myself, ‘I know it is a race, but I really wish it never ended.’

Congratulations to everyone on Team EarthLink, whether running in the Marathon or keeping the technology infrastructure operating at peak performance!

For the latest EarthLink updates, visit our press release page, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Business Web Hosting

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Tom Sullivan

Happy April Fools’ Day!

Before we get to our regular Monday topic, Web Hosting, here’s a quick roundup of April Fools’ gags from Google, Sony, Twitter, and other companies.

And now, no fooling, back to web hosting. Specifically business web hosting.

Business Web Hosting Defined

What distinguishes regular web hosting from business web hosting? Sometimes nothing, because the terms are often used synonymously. But there certainly are several requirements for a web hosting service to be called business web hosting.

Business web hosting clearly means that the web hosting service is intended for businesses, probably small to medium-sized businesses (the term enterprise web hosting is often used for the largest businesses).

The number-one distinction for business web hosting would be from various forms of free hosting intended for personal consumer use. EarthLink Internet access, for example, gives dial-up, DSL, cable Internet and other subscribers a small amount of free webspace that we host on our home.earthlink.net domain (rather than at their own domain name). People typically use these very small, simple sites to share their interests or post something about their family.

Domain Web Hosting

Business web hosting would always be a domain web hosting service, meaning it would support your website at its own domain name (e.g., www.YourDomainName.com). EarthLink Web Hosting plans support from 5 to 50 domain names depending on the service level, and all plans come with one free domain name. Having your website at its own domain is the main requirement of a business web hosting service. (Take a look back at this post about the best website domain names for SEO, branding and online success.)

Business web hosting often provides domain email service as well, although some web hosting providers outsource this to another email provider. EarthLink Web Hosting plans come with from 100 – 1,000 business-class email accounts, so business employees’ and departments’ communication with customers is a branded experience. (See our previous post about domain email addresses for your business.)

Other business web hosting features may include FTP accounts, database support, support for multiple programming languages, content management tools, and marketing tools (our Business Website Plus plan provides a comprehensive suite of online marketing tools).

Ecommerce Web Hosting

When some people use the term business web hosting, they mean ecommerce web hosting: the hosting of a website with online store capabilities. While ecommerce hosting is always business web hosting, not all business website hosting is ecommerce hosting. Ecommerce hosting is specifically geared towards those businesses that need to provide real-time credit card processing on their website, so customers can buy from an online catalog or store, using an online shopping cart. However, not all businesses, even very large ones, need an online store.

Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting

Other hosting terms related to business web hosting are cloud hosting and dedicated web hosting or dedicated server hosting.

Cloud hosting means building and hosting a virtual server in the cloud (at the cloud hosting provider) that is dedicated to one company (for that reason it is also called cloud server hosting). Cloud hosting isn’t always used for web hosting; often the cloud servers are used for application hosting or other IT needs. Cloud hosting for websites offers businesses a greater amount of performance, scalability and security, since the business website is on its own virtual server.

Dedicated server hosting is when you lease an entire physical server from a service provider such as EarthLink Business. When the dedicated server is used for a website it is called dedicated web hosting. Dedicated web hosting offers an even greater degree of control, reliability and security since you have control over an entire server housed and monitored by the hosting company.

If you have basic business web hosting or ecommerce web hosting needs, EarthLink Web Hosting offers six of the best web hosting plans. For very high-traffic sites or complex web hosting or security requirements, you should probably give EarthLink Business a call at 1-855-873-1393 to ask about Cloud Hosting or Dedicated Server Hosting.

EarthLink Ranks #1 on MSPmentor’s List of Top Managed Service Providers

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Pamela O'Connor

As evidence of EarthLink’s transformation into a leading integrated communications and IT services provider comes news this week that the company has landed the prestigious #1 position on MSPmentor’s 6th annual World’s Top Managed Service Providers (MSPs) List!

Click here to view our top ranking on this prestigious global list. As the editors of MSPmentor stated, “EarthLink has quietly transformed itself from an ISP . . . into a full-blown MSP. Big areas of focus include managed voice, cloud hosting and integrated voice and data services.”

We take pride in providing an exceptional customer experience, and EarthLink’s managed services, such as cloud computing, managed and private cloud, and virtualization services including managed hosting and cloud workspace, and a robust portfolio of IT security, application hosting, colocation and IT support services are designed to help businesses of all sizes leverage the efficiencies of these exciting technologies. Our customers are already in the know, and we are pleased that MSPmentor, a leading industry media voice, now recognizes our success and is helping to spread the word!

For the latest EarthLink updates, visit our press release page, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Experienced Web Hosting from EarthLink

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Chris Chase

In 1995, before Google, before Facebook, before NetFlix and Wikipedia, when AltaVista was the top search engine and email was new…there was EarthLink Web Hosting.

For 18 years (practically as long as the concept of “web hosting” itself has even existed!), EarthLink has been giving businesses (and individuals) a quality option to host their website(s). Many other companies have popped up (and will continue to do so, now that the cloud is here), but no one has the tried-and-true experience like EarthLink. Trust a brand new company, or one that’s proven itself for almost 20 years?

So, if you’re in the market for an experienced web hosting company to be your long-term, stable provider, look no further than EarthLink’s plans. There’s bound to be one that fits your needs; after all, we’ve been around long enough to know!