Posts filed under 'Press Releases'
Award winning hosting company Novara Technology has replaced Eircom as the second largest hosting company in Ireland as of 1st December 2006.
According to Ireland’s most authoritative compiler of statistics for the Irish hosting industry, John McCormack’s Whois Ireland, Novara now boasts the hosting of a higher number of BIONIC (Biz, IE, Org, Net, Info, Com) and .eu domains than Ireland’s behemoth Eircom.
“NOVARA.IE is for all intents and purposes now the number 2 Irish hoster.” Source Whois Ireland December Report
The hosting and domain name registration market in Ireland is an extremely competitive sector. Providing a high quality standard of service to clients is what makes Novara stand out from its competitors. Niall Considine, Managing Director of Magico eBusiness Solutions agrees: “We are trusting a lot of hard won, valuable client relationships to Novara. That’s not a trust we would place in just any provider.”
Eoin Costello, Managing Director of Novara Technology, stated that he was delighted with the progress Novara have made starting out from humble beginnings in a spare bedroom in his house 6 years ago ( http://www.eoincostello.ie/novara_beg.html ). “We have sustained this growth in the face of fierce competition from under funded Irish hosting operations that have slashed prices and service levels to maintain their growth. Our continued success is simply the result of my staff’s dedication to a high quality of service and innovative product development by our in-house development team. “
August 10th, 2007
Novara Technology has today announced a 13.5% reduction in their .ie registration fees. This puts them on the same level as claimed price leader Hosting365. For the past number of years Hosting365 had always maintained a 20% price differential to Novara services, however this is no longer the case for an important part of their business, .ie domain registrations.
According to Novara Technology MD Eoin Costello: “While we are now matching Hosting365’s .ie prices, we are undeniably beating them hands down on customer service. While our company carries out regular customer satisfaction surveys, external independent measures of customer service are not available in the Irish market. Irish blogging sites are often the only independent indication of the standard of support of a particular provider.
An overview of recent postings in Irish blogs concerning the deteriorating standard of service provided by Hosting365 to its customers will give a good indication of why more and more people are choosing Novara for our high standard of customer service. It probably comes as no surprise to the market place that Hosting365’s former slogan of “Quality, Reliability, Value” has now been dropped by the company.
Additionally it is a new development in consumer power to see the role played by independent Irish blogs. Previously the big Irish hosting companies controlled various Irish bulletin boards by either sponsoring them or owning them, thus making it difficult for independent voices on the hosting industry to be heard. This is now a thing of the past thanks to blogs.
What is also clear is that customers have a choice, poor service shouldn’t be accepted. Companies like ourselves and the newly resurgent Digiweb Hosting (under the management of the respected hosting expert Dan King) can provide competitive prices and reliability without compromising on customer service.”
August 10th, 2007
One of Ireland’s most extensive surveys of customer satisfaction has found that 83% of respondents rated Novara as top for customer service while 76% of respondents found that “Novara follow through on promises”. Over 470 of Novara’s customers were questioned in the survey.
In a market where cheap prices often lead to poor customer service Novara has always focussed on a high standard of customer service (see http://www.novara.ie/news.php?id=12 ). Some companies in the Irish market even charge high prices while providing poor service as evidenced by their churn rate which is almost twice the national average
(http://www.register.ie/latest/novara-matches-hosting365.html ).
Novara spends very little on advertising yet remains in the top 3 Irish hosting companies thanks to the fact that word of mouth referral accounts for the largest number of new customers, 62%, thus indicating that Novara is the company of choice for thousands of Irish internet users.
While the traditional view of customer service in Internet services is sometimes vague, Novara defines customer service as including:
1. Low Average Turnaround time on requests.
2. High level of time saving Automation provided to customers.
3. High Average uptime for services.
4. Generous Refund policy: Novara provides cash refunds where required unlike many in the hosting industry.
5. Low billing errors: While some companies in the hosting industry make repeated errors in removing cash from customers credit cards with little explanation Novara provide advance notification of all bills with full explanations.
To monitor and continuously improve these customer service metrics the company publishes the various measures on monitors at the company’s HQ on O’Connell Street in Dublin thereby ensure that Novara staff work to ensure continuous improvement of the metrics.
The survey also found a high level of satisfaction amongst customers with Novara’s automated support, the text chat support for shared hosting clients and with the human telephone support provided to dedicated server clients.
Commenting on the findings managing director Eoin Costello said: “This is further evidence of why Novara remains one of Ireland’s top 3 hosting providers. We recently were told by a customer of their experience in buying a cheap .ie & hosting from an Irish competitor. It took 2 hours of phone calls to get the smallest change manually implemented thus leading the customer to move to ourselves where the same changes can be done via our online control panel in 30 seconds.
While cheap prices are often considered a deciding factor by those new to the Internet, the hidden costs, such as long turnaround times and downtime, cost people far more in their time than any saving they make on the cheap price.”
July 2nd, 2007
Register.ie has advised members of the public to treat all emails/letters they receive from third parties concerning the renewal of their domain names with extreme caution.
In the past week Register.ie have been notified of a number of questionable marketing techniques focusing on domain name renewal. What typically happens is that a letter that looks like an invoice is sent to the owner of the domain warning of dire consequences if the owner fails to renew the domain and inviting the owner to renew their domain with the new provider.
Register.ie is advising domain owners that if they receive emails or letters from companies offering to renew domains on the owners behalf or asking the owner to confirm details in relation to their domain name, the owner should refer such correspondence to their current registration provider immediately.
This warning comes in the wake of hundreds of Irish domain name holders receiving Domain Name Expiration Notices from the Domain Registry of America.
Eoin Costello, chief executive of Register.ie , stated that while he could not comment on the specific nature of Domain Registry of Americas tactics, he was taken aback by the sheer number of concerned clients that had contacted Register.ie on foot of receiving a letter from Domain Registry of America. As a result of this Register.ie decided they should alert all Irish domain holders.
Mr. Costello stated that his unambiguous advice is that if anyone is unclear about any communication received concerning a domain renewal from any third party please contact your current registration provider, it is better to be safe than sorry.
July 2nd, 2007