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Customer Profile: CarJam

/ Case study
Since CarJam started back in 2007 they have been with us and grown on our platform from a small site on one server to a hugely popular site on many servers. We had Ben have a quick chat with Geoff who is in charge of CarJam's infrastructure about their experience with us over the last eight years.

I use CarJam regularly because like many others I spend far too much time looking at cars, but for some people who may not know, can you tell us what exactly you do?

CarJam is about providing vehicle facts, history, money owing reports, finance and other products consumers and the automotive industry cannot neglect or ignore when buying, selling or owing a vehicle.

CarJam has been with us since 2007, what made you originally choose SiteHost?

When we started CarJam we knew we would need a server that could be easily upgraded as we grew. Those upgrades happened daily, weekly and monthly during the first year.

Your VPS platform met this need perfectly. We could upgrade the server from the Control Panel and apply the resources at a time which was convenient to us, which was pretty rare back in 2007.

CarJam has grown a lot over the years so what servers do you have with us now?

We currently have a mixture of DedicatedVirtual Dedicated Servers, and Virtual Private Servers with you.

Once we outgrew the VPS we ordered a Dedicated Server. In the seven years we have had dedicated servers with you there have only been two hardware problems that were sorted out promptly with minimum downtime.

This year we investigated the new Virtual Dedicated Servers because of their pricing and performance. Since then we have moved the database from the main server and on to two VDSes in a master/slave configuration. This improved the database performance by a factor of two.

We also have another VDS in your second facility that we use for backups as well as a second database slave which we take hourly backups from.

Have you used any other hosting providers? How do we compare?

We haven’t used any other hosting providers at CarJam. The great service we receive from SiteHost means we haven’t felt the need to look elsewhere.

That’s great to hear. What would you say has surprised you or pleased you the most during your time with us?

The level of support and the prompt response to questions or issues has always been great. I can’t say this surprises me. Rather I would say I have come to expect this as normal from SiteHost.

The VDSs we are now using are also great value for money and they perform as promised.

Would you recommend us to a friend? If so what would you say?

If you want infrastructure with great support, excellent uptime and reasonable prices I would recommend SiteHost.

Thank you for talking to me, anything you want to add or any feedback about things we could improve on?

Nothing at the moment!