Back in the early 2000s, two brothers saw that New Zealand had space for a developer-focused hosting company that puts customer service first. Today around 50 people work around the clock (and around the world) to serve thousands of SiteHost customers. The brothers' big idea is as true ever.
SiteHost was founded by brothers Nathan and Quintin Russ in 2004, and we've grown strongly ever since. Today we're the largest NZ-owned hosting provider, and proud of it. Plenty of our competitors have found overseas owners or other exits, while we're still run by the guys who started the company. Our commitment to the local business and tech scene is as strong as it has ever been. It feels like we're just getting started.
SiteHost HQ is a good place to find nerds. It's an office for people who enjoy reading operating system bug reports, debating the merits of various coding languages, and talking about where chip design is - or should be - heading next.
What makes this technical knowledge useful to you is the way we apply it. Whatever we're working on - from hardware to hosting platforms - we think about real-world problems that need solving.
Two examples: The slick, simple caching that's built into the Cloud Container platform is something that we rolled out at top speed when covid-19 hit and the country's new Covid Response website needed it. Every time you clone or synchronise containers, you're using a feature that developers wanted.
There are plenty of businesses in their second decade as SiteHost customers. Nothing makes us prouder than these long-lasting relationships.
The foundation of any hosting partnership is trust. When you need clear advice or quick answers to questions, we deliver. A lot of our customers tell us that our 24/7 management lets them sleep well at night, or even take holidays without worrying. They know that our people, platforms and infrastructure will keep delivering.
To me as a business owner, we’ve built our company on people as much as technology. SiteHost people turn up and meet us, so we know your faces and names. There are people behind the company, and it feels like it's a relationship and a partnership.
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The first time we worked together, you helped us with an unglamourous and challenging migration. The helpful, responsive and caring nature of how you did that was a critical part in our decision to move the rest of our business to SiteHost.
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If there is a problem with the hardware or environment I don’t need to wake up to deal with it. This used to be a significant point of stress for me and made it hard to go away on trips. So I would say peace of mind is one of the biggest factors.
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SiteHost has thrived for so long because we put customers first. Now we've scaled up to a point where we run our own data centre, develop and maintain our own innovative hosting platforms, and offer 24-hour support from an in-house team of experts.
We could have saved the investment in our own data centre and rented more space elsewhere, but we wanted to offer more options and better service. We could have stuck with standard shared hosting rather than creating and maintaining Cloud Containers, but we knew that we could build something better. We could save a few dollars by outsourcing customer support, but this would never match the experience of dealing with us directly.
Time flies when you're busy growing a hosting company unlike any other. Even though it feels like we're only just getting started, here are a few of the milestones that we've already passed.
The installation of 384 solar panels - as many as we could fit on our building - changed our power consumption for good. On a sunny summer's day our data centre and office are close to 100% powered by the sun.
Two of our brands were serving similar customers with similar products, but on separate technical platforms. We wanted to spend more time focusing on customers and less time maintaining business systems, so we combined the MyHost brand with WebSliceNZ's superior technology.
Founded in 2016 by Daniel Williams, Domains Direct began as a plucky little start-up. After four years of growth it was much more than that, so it was time to end the one-man band. As the new owner of Domains Direct we committed to the principles that were already working so well - do one thing well, compete hard on price, and keep it simple.
We got in ahead of the global transition to remote working in 2019, when one of our support team members decided to leave Auckland and move home to Brazil. "Hey Andre," we said, "do you reckon you could take your job with you and cover the nightshift?" Indeed he could, and so began the support team's spread across multiple timezones.
After years of operating out of locations owned and managed by other companies, we built our own data centre. With control of the design and hardware we made sure that this new DC, which we call AKL01, is as resilient and efficient as possible.
Domains-and-hosting retailer WebSliceNZ had grown well, and needed a bigger home than its owners could provide. We become its new owners, the company kept growing, and customers stayed happy. In 2021, this brand was merged with another of our sister brands, MyHost.
As SiteHost grew, we needed more space. This led us to become the owners and tenants of 44 Olive Road, Penrose, where you'll still find us (and the data centre that we opened a few years later).
Developers wanted hosting that was more flexible than shared hosting, but without the system administration burden of a VPS. We saw potential in technologies like SaltStack and Docker, and so we invented Cloud Containers. (The launch announcement from March 2016 is still on the blog.) We've been maintaining and upgrading the Cloud Containers platform ever since, which helps explain how it's become our most popular hosting product.
With more customers operating in Australia it made sense for us to locate gear in Sydney. Our partnership with Equinix continues to this day.
A milestone of less-than-epic proportions, perhaps, but a milestone nonetheless. Once our total number of team members reached double figures it's never looked back.
MyHost has a history stretching back to 2000, but for us the important year is 2009, when the company's founders decided the time was right to move on. We loved the brand they'd built, and they knew that we'd take great care of their customers, so a deal was done.
We were one of the first in world to let customers provision a new VPS themselves. At the time, no-one else in New Zealand could match us.
Web hosting options were limited back in 2004, especially in New Zealand. People wanted a hosting company that they could rely on to run their successful projects, and so did Quintin and Nathan Russ. So they started SiteHost with one small server used to sell Shared Hosting, a determination to focus on customer service, and many sleepless nights.
SiteHost is proudly trusted by thousands of great developers, designers, and businesses. Here are just a select few of those.
