Our Customer Support

At IslandSam we understand that not all our customers are alike. We have some customers who understand all of the technical nuances of web hosting and have the capability of opening their control panel and doing everything themselves. We also have customers who are completely new to hosting a web site and having their own emails and we know that the experience can be intimidating and that some of our customers will need a fair amount of hand holding. We work to cater to all those tech savvy customers, all the “newbies” and everyone in between.

Hiring And Training The Right People:
It takes a special type of person to be able to provide high quality and friendly web hosting support. The person must be knowledgeable in all the technical aspects of web hosting as well as the particular differences in the services we provide. In addition our service representatives must have patience and must be able to communicate in the simplest terms to customers who lack technical expertise.

IslandSam counts on English speaking customer technical representatives for our English speaking customers. We also count on Spanish speaking customer technical representatives for our Spanish speaking customers. We understand that communication between our technical staff and our customers regarding some of the technical aspects of their web hosting services can be difficult. We feel that communication must be done in English or Spanish, as most of our customers are English or Spanish speaking customers. All of our technical staff are located in North America.

Our support training procedures are very important. All of our support service personnel must be able to communicate effectively regarding all of the services we provide. Our service agents undergo training and mentoring by support managers and more experienced staff.

The Three Layers Of Support:
There are really 2 types of customer support that we provide, communication support and technical support. The work flow is divided between 3 technical support groups so that each group can focus on the areas that they are best able to support clients. Items that are better handled by representatives with more experience and more access to the servers are pushed up to those higher level queues. This allows a more streamlined work-flow for our service agents and a faster response time for our customers.

Communication support is our level 1 support department. They are able to help clients with learning where they need to go within their account to be able to do certain things like installing scripts, adding emails and minor technical fixes like a password reset.

Level 2 support technicians are the second level of support technicians, they have greater access to the servers and are more experienced in resolving issues when something seems amiss or broken within a clients web site or hosting account.

Our level 3 support technicians are our system administrators. The system administrators are responsible for monitoring the servers, making sure that they are running at optimal levels and support our level 2 technicians when there is an occurrence that they are not 100% certain of how to fix or when there is a server side issue.

Quality Information:
In the area of communication to our clients many of our clients rely on the information we have on site in our Knowledgebase/FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section to be able to handle certain actions themselves. In addition we have within cPanel a set of step by step walk through video tutorials which assist our clients with learning things that they can do within cPanel to enhance their web sites.

Summary:
At IslandSam we know customer support is a huge part of the satisfaction of our clients experience with our company. We focus heavily in this area to make sure that we have friendly, qualified English or Spanish speaking technicians to assist our clients, 24x7x365. We also make sure that we have systems in place to expedite information to our clients so that we may provide them with correct information or resolve any of their issues quickly and effectively.

Uptime & Servers

We know that it does not do much good to have a web site that is not online. When your web site is down so are your emails and your online business is unavailable to your customers. This is the #1 area of customer frustration in web hosting and it is the #1 area that our quality assurance team focuses their attention to prevent server failures.

Here are the ways we manage our servers and maintain our 99.9% up-time.

Quality Hardware And Data Center:
It is essential that in today’s web hosting environment that a web hosting company acquire high quality servers. Server requirements vary radically in a number of areas including disk space, processor speed and connectivity capabilities. Some companies purchase servers with low requirements in some or all of the essential areas, IslandSam does not. We acquire robust energy efficient servers with the latest Xeon processors, 8GB ram, Large Raid 10 storage arrays for maximum performance & redundancy.

In addition our servers are housed in a world class co-location data facility with raised floors, dual city power grid feeds with backup power generators. The facility boasts an FM 200 fire suppression system with early pre-fire detection mechanisms. The facility is staffed by administrators and security personnel 24x7x365, including biometric and key card security systems with a rack level locking mechanism.

The Amount Of Clients On A Server:
Too many clients can overload a server in the disk space, bandwidth and processor usage. Unlike some of our competitors IslandSam does not try to squeeze as many clients as possible onto a server. We gladly sacrifice some of the profit we could make by adding more customers onto a server by not adding those “extra” and thereby lowering the server workload to ensure that it is running at optimal levels.

Pro-active & Reactive Server:
Server monitoring is an essential part of what we do to proactively ensure that any potential problems on any of our servers are addressed quickly before issues arise. We have a 10 second monitoring system on every one of our servers and the services that run on them, such as HTTPD, MySQL, EXIM (Mail) and other critical services. This allows our system administrators to be notified of a failure within 10 seconds, which results in a quick resolution time to any service interruptions that may occur.

On top of our reactive 10 second server/service monitoring, we’re proactively monitoring the servers health in real-time. This serves as our early warning system which allows our system administrators to quickly identify problems and temporarily kill any processes that could potentially cause extended periods of downtime. If an abusive client or script is identified as causing repeated load spikes on the server that is affecting service, the clients account is suspended until we are able to work directly with the client to resolve the issue. Clients who are identified as abusers are removed.

Summary:
Our uptime guarantee and how we maintain our servers.
Server uptime is of great importance to our company. We understand that this is essential for our clients and we take uptime very seriously. Our robust hardware and world class data facility as well as the lower amount of clients we have on a server and our pro-active/reactive service monitoring permits us to run at absolute efficiency and maintain our great service record. In the event that a hardware failure is beyond recoverable we have backups and we are able to get our web servers back up quickly and efficiently.

Features & Quality of Service

IslandSam offers three of the most feature rich web hosting plans available anywhere on the Internet. The iHut package even includes a free domain name.

Open to All:
As a matter of our Open Access policy, IslandSam’s Help features and as many other areas as possible are open to the public. This means you don’t have to have an account with us. Many of the knowledebase articles will work with other providers that also use the cPanel. We have an excellent collection of help article and Flash Video Tutorials and would be pleased if they are a help to the general public.

Web Site Control, Site Builders And Scripts:
Our truly feature rich accounts provide our customers the tools they need to build extraordinary web sites. One such tool included is a cPanel, which is the most popular and easiest to use control panel available for web hosting. Included in cPanel is the Free Fantastico script library which has a 1 click installation for all of the scripts in the Fantastico library. Some of the more popular scripts include; Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. Any one of these will allow you to build a robust and sophisticated web site.

The Fantastico script library provides the most comprehensive and trouble free web site scripts available on the internet. The types of interactivity that you will be able to have on your site include:

• Blogs
• Portals and Client Management Services
• Customer Support Services
• Forums and Discussion Boards
• Shopping Carts and Ecommerce
• FAQ Sections
• Guest Books
• Mailing Lists
• Polls and Surveys
• Project Management
• Wiki’s
• Classifieds Site
• Realtor Site
• Auction Site

To view a sample of the Fantastico scripts we support please click here.

Additionally, you will find in our cPanel, two template based web site builder programs called SoHo Launch and RV Site Builder. These template based web site builder programs are the best way for novices to get a web site up and running quickly and easily, without knowledge of HTML. Either of these two builder programs are enough to build a simple web site. If you desire a more elaborate web site you can modify or have someone modify your web site and/or then use other site builders like; Joomla, WordPress and Drupal, which will allow you to construct an even more advanced and interactive web site.

Support:
IslandSam is here to support your growth and some of the ways that we do this include the tutorials section within your cPanel account and with-in our support area. We have purchased the latest cPanel licenses which include simple walk through Flash video tutorials (available from our knowledgebase) for a variety of ways to use the system including how to setup an email account all the way to how to install a script on your web site. We also have created many step by step walk through instructions in our Knowledgebase section for our customers.

Fight For Air Climb

Sponsorship of The American Lung Association

IslandSam is proud to be a part of an effort that sponsors The American Lung Association’s Fight For Air Climb at the Aon Center in downtown Los Angeles.

The climb was held on Saturday April 24, 2010 to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day. All of us at IslandSam are proud of our efforts to help promote Green Energy in the web hosting industry and for the businesses we support. We were thrilled when the American Lung Association approached our providers to sponsor their Earth Day event.

The current 2008 Federal Standard for air quality measures days exceeding .075 part per million for 8 hours or longer. In 1976 Los Angeles had 213 days over the new federal standard limit with a high of 234 days in 1979. By 2008 the number of days exceeding the 8 hour limit was brought down to 120 days with a low of 108 days in 2007.

Air quality in Los Angeles has improved over the last 3 decades but there is more to be done to improve air quality in all our communities. I am thankful to the American Lung Association for approaching us for the opportunity to work with them and I look forward to the climb and the event.

Here’s to breathing cleaner air!

Alex Orama
CEO IslandSam

Our 2010 New Earth Day Commitment

Providers in Europe
We are very excited about our 2010 Earth Day commitment! This commitment is intended to force businesses with operations in the European Union (including North American subsidiaries) to become more efficient and reduce their carbon footprint.

CO2NeutralWebsite.com initiative neutralizes website emissions by buying carbon allowances and investing in renewable energy projects.

Here is how it works. In the European Union (EU) member countries have instituted policies that forces businesses within certain industries to take responsibility of their carbon (GHG) footprint.

The “EU ETS” is a classic cap-and-trade system, the main features are:
an absolute quantity limit (or cap) on CO2 emissions has been placed on some 12,000 emitting facilities located in the European Union.

Tradable allowances (Carbon Credit equivalents) have been distributed to these facilities (typically for free) in an amount equal to the cap, and these facilities must measure and report their CO2 emissions and subsequently surrender an allowance for every ton of CO2 they emit during annual compliance periods (this would include the allowance plus any shortfall).

Through www.co2NeutralWebSite.com there is an opportunity for people or businesses to buy EU Allowances and lower the total amount of allowances available to those 12,000 facilities. By taking away a larger number of allowances from the EU ETS, the 12,000 emitting facilities will have to pay a higher price for fewer allowances. This will force businesses to implement means to lower their carbon footprint rather than buying allowances to cover their carbon footprint.

Those facilities that achieve operational efficiencies and reduce their carbon footprint will not have to buy as many allowances via the EU ETS as those who have not reduced their carbon footprint. Supply and demand market forces will dictate the price per carbon allowance enabling facilities to include the real price of carbon into the production and supply of their products and services.

EU member countries have National Allocation Plans (NAP). These are central to the EU’s effort to achieve its Kyoto obligations. Each Member of the EU must submit a NAP that lays out its allocation scheme under the EU ETS, including individual allocations to each affected unit/facility/industry.

The pledges for how many EU Allowances you buy are in “buckets” of traffic volume. IslandSams’ providers get more than 50,000 visitors each month so the pledge is for the 100,000 visitor bucket. They do have smaller as well as larger size buckets if you are interested in pledging to purchase some of the EU Allowances, please see info here.

All participants can use the CO2 neutral website icon on their website. Participants also receive a certificate that validates their participation in this great initiative.

Let’s celebrate our 40th anniversary of Earth Day this year by pledging to reduce our carbon footprint as well as helping others to do the same.

Alex Orama
CEO IslandSam

Go Green – Profitability

At IslandSam we have two important goals:
Provide quality, dependable web hosting services at affordable rates with the best customer service in the business.

We live by very simple and important principle, which is, without customers we have no business. Our customer’s satisfaction is the #1 focus for every team member of the company and I personally guarantee my attention to every customer.

Promote every web site on the internet to be hosted by a web hosting company utilizing green energy.

We hope that if you do not choose IslandSam to host your web site, please choose some other certified green energy web host. When you do choose a green hosting company please promote that fact on your web site. We want your web site visitors to see that you support green energy.

When you put a green energy logo or green energy web hosting logo on your web site we all win. You and the millions of other web site owners can make a huge impact on the amount of time that the billions of web site visitors are faced with some sort of reminder about the efforts of going green. The goal is to have a green energy marker on every web site and of course in reality it would be next to impossible to reach that goal. Just imagine for a moment though if we could accomplish even 10% of that goal. Can you imagine what a powerful effect it could have in stimulating the conscious and sub conscious of hundreds of millions of people into being more attentive toward going green.

When you host with IslandSam we provide stylish logos you can use to make sure people know you are green. Check out the IslandSam logos. Together we can create momentum toward going green and this grass roots effort can be easily started by the web hosting community and especially by you, their web hosting clients. As consumers looking to spend money on web site hosting you have a strong individual voice and a huge collective voice that can demand change in our industry. I guarantee that if the public starts to demand green energy for their web site hosting, that every large web hosting company would go green. So we would like to ask you to use your voice to choose green energy web hosting, even if you decide on some other green energy web hosting company. Please make sure that if you are hosting your site green and that you make a mention of that fact in some place of prominence on your site. You may think that you have a small site or that you don.t have much traffic but remember this is a numbers game and anyone, even one person, who made more of an effort to be green because of your site means you have made a positive contribution.

Once we have made our choice to go green for our own web sites and we’ve told all the web hosts to go green, we will then need to hit all of our favorite online stores. Remember we’re the consumers, use your friends and your internet acquaintances and have them email your favorite online store and let them know they will lose your business until they decide to go green. And when they do go green ask them to post that fact on their site and thank them for doing so.

We believe that if we all join in this effort to enhance green messages on all personal and business web sites we can cause a green momentum not yet seen on the internet or anywhere else. Please help us support this effort and please know we are greatly appreciative for any assistance you can provide.

By the way, going green for your own web site and your business almost assuredly will lead to higher sales compared to your non green competitors. In 2006, 81% of Americans polled by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies felt that they had a personal responsibility to do something positive about the environment. So all things being equal and you’ve gone green and your competitors have not, you should win the business 81% of the time and that’s where going green and promoting green makes good economic sense.

We have all seen in articles, news reports and documentaries about how we’ve failed to realize until relatively recently how harmful many of our actions have been to the environment. To think that we need to reverse over a century’s worth of heavy pollution on a global scale can seem daunting. This is why at IslandSam, we feel that now more than ever we can and must collectively work together to heighten awareness and force a change in philosophy for as many individuals as possible.

You can start today to make your lifestyle and businesses greener. We offer some information and facts on how to go green within our site to help individuals and businesses learn more about what they can do. It is also important to remember that there is still a huge percentage of our population who doesn’t know how to be effective in their energy and natural resource consumption as well as recycling and there are easy ways for them to get started.

Remember, turning around our environmental errors will take a collective effort. We have the numbers and the interest, at least 81% of us, now each of us needs to start to do something about it.

Thank you for your support,

Alex Orama, CEO
IslandSam.net

Why IslandSam.net

It’s Important to Choose an Eco-Friendly Web Host. Many people are surprised when we tell them that the internet is not green and that by no means is the web hosting industry eco-friendly. In fact studies show that by 2005 the web hosting industry used as much energy to power their servers as the equivalent of 14 major power plants. Studies have shown that by the year 2020 that the web hosting industry will be as big of a polluter as the airline industry. Click here to read the third party analysis.

In addition to changing the web hosting industry’s environmental impact we have an even greater strategy which we believe will help to spread a greater eco-friendly consciousness, please read about IslandSams’ Green Mission.

It is important that this industry becomes green and IslandSam is part of the world’s most eco-friendly web hosting providers. We would like for you to choose a certified green, eco-friendly web hosting company to host your web site. We hope that you will choose to go green with your web site, please allow us to tell you why we feel we are the best option.

Green Power Recognition.

IslandSam employs providers of services that work with the likes of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to buy wind energy credits to offset energy consumption and to put more energy back into the grid which was produced by wind power technology. In 2009 IslandSam providers were invited to join the US. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Green Power Partner program.

How are we green?

IslandSam providers pulls energy from the grid just like every web hosting company. We must pull energy from the grid in order to make sure that we have a constant power flow for the servers and to make sure the servers would not be interrupted by a lack of power. Unfortunately much of the power that flows through our grid today was produced by polluting technologies like fossil fuels.

In order to compensate for the polluting power we pull from the grid we purchase wind energy credits for the energy we consume from the grid. In fact we replace, with wind power, 3 times the amount of energy used by our servers, so if we pull 1X of power from the grid we purchase enough wind energy credits to put back into the grid 3X of power having been produced by wind power.

Other ways we are green.

In addition to purchasing wind energy credits IslandSam providers work on all of our servers and reconfigures them so that they run more efficiently using less energy and running cooler. What this means is less energy consumption on the server as well as less energy needed to cool the server. (Co-location data centers are constantly cooled [24x7x365] by enormous cooling fans which use a tremendous amount of energy). These attentions to detail on the servers allow us to be more energy efficient in our data centers, but we don’t stop there.

Use only what’s needed.
IslandSam providers are also hyper conscious about the offices carbon footprint. Rigorous recycling procedures are employed and we make sure that only legal and essential documents are printed to conserve paper. Any non essential documents which are printed by mistake are returned to the recycle paper area of the offices for reuse in any other printing that needs to be done. In addition auto lighting control systems are employed to make sure that the lights are not on when no one is in their offices and all unused equipment is powered.

Lunch and dinner at the offices.
Our provider employees take turns bringing in home cooked meals to the office to reduce the amount of times they go out to eat which helps keep bodies in their seats for your support as well as reduce the amount of paper, plastic and Styrofoam which typically come with take out orders.

Telecommuting.
IslandSam providers search for top notch personnel and sometimes find talented and skilled service personnel who are not located near the offices. Rather than try to relocate these talented employees we allow them to telecommute from home or a shared office near them. This allows some of our employees to not have to commute to work saving money and carbon emissions on gas consumption for their cars.

There are many more minor ways that IslandSam is eco conscious and we’d love to hear your thoughts on how we are green, how we may improve and also how your own organization is going green. Please email us at sales@islandsam.net with any comments, questions or suggestions.

Our Green Eco-Friendly Hosting.

IslandSam’ commitment to going green extends beyond our own company and the customers we serve. We look at the direction of the web hosting industry and we saw that unless we started to turn the tide sooner rather than later that our industry was headed for an environmental calamity. In addition we saw secondary benefits to promoting green energy hosting through the web hosting community and how individual web sites could help to promote a more eco-friendly consciousness through the web.

We sincerely hope that you will choose a certified green web hosting provider, even if you do not choose to host your site with IslandSam.

Alex Orama, CEO
IslandSam.net