I have officially decided to revive Harmonious Hosting! Over the past year I have signed up a small group of people to help evaluate domain, webhosting, email, and mailing list offerings. We have seen tremendous improvements in 2014 and see that Harmonious Hosting is, in many ways, the superior provider.
What does this mean to East Texas Design and Michelle’s Masterpiece? Although profit margins will go down, it will be nice to have help with basic customer service. It should also be easier to train do-it-yourself clients to use the Harmonious Hosting backend than to have them run separate accounts for each service.
What does this mean to me, the client?
- Access to 24/7 customer support. No more waiting for Michelle to become available if there is a server issue or if you simply want information about upgrading or adding a service.
- Clients using multiple services can now have the convenience of controlling everything from one main account. That means less passwords to keep up with and less places to keep up-to-date with your current billing info. (Web design and consulting services provided by Michelle will still be billed separately.)
EastTexasDesign.com will still provide cPanel webhosting to select customers upon request. This may be the better deal if you need less than 5GB space and/or a want a disproportionate amount of space dedicated to email. Harmonious Hosting will still be the recommended provider for your domain name and other services.
What do you mean by “Revive”? Harmonious Hosting was actually started in 2005, when some friends and I wanted to sell domain names along with our web hosting business. We had no idea how competitive the industry would be and eventually got tired of working our tails off to lose money. I have learned a lot since then:
- It is crazy to spend $600/month on a dedicated server before you build a good reputation as someone who knows what they are doing.
- Even when you do know what you are doing, putting yourself 100% in charge of sales and support can be time consuming.
What makes this time different? Bringing back Harmonious Hosting has been a significant investment. I had to take a serious look
- I have a client base! I have been doing business with my most long-term clients since 2006/2007. They were happy to switch to Harmonious Hosting once they realized I can offer equal or better service for a lower price.
- Harmonious Hosting products have significantly improved in 2014. One of the changes I am most excited about is the offer of cPanel webhosting.
- I know what I am doing! I have tried out many of the products I am offering. (as opposed to last time when I only purchased a few domain names from myself and went to a dedicated server to manage everything else) I think it helps a lot to know you are selling something that you can be proud of.