WGAN-TV | 10 Reasons to Choose or Switch to Ionblade for WordPress Hosting with Greater Los Angeles area-based SSLGURU, LLC (Ionblade) Director of Business Development Mark Stathatos.


Free! WGAN-TV Training U (in Matterport) 1-Year Membership when you use this WGAN affiliate link to sign-up for WordPress hosting from Ionblade.

Transcript | WGAN-TV Live at 5: 10 Reasons to Choose or switch to Ionblade for WordPress Hosting

Hi All,

✅ Creating a new website and need WordPress hosting?
✅ Switching WordPress hosting?

Then, this WGAN-TV Live at 5 show that aired on Thursday, July 15, 2021 is for you:

✅ WGAN-TV: 10 Reasons to Choose or switch to Ionblade for WordPress Hosting

My guest is greater Pasadena, CA area-based SSLGURU, LLC (Ionblade) Director of Business Development Mark Stathatos. Mark has been my "go to" for years because We Get Around Network offers free WordPress Gold Hosting – powered by Ionblade – to WGAN Standard and Premium Members.

Over the course of many years, I have found Ionblade Customer Support (24/7) to be spot-on and super-faster. And, WordPress powered by Ionblade is rock-solid. Plus, the We Get Around Atlanta Gallery of Matterport 3D Tours - created with WP3D Models WordPress Plugin - runs on WordPress hosted by Ionblade.

Best,

Dan

Two Special Offers

Special Offer 1
Free! WGAN-TV Training U (in Matterport) 1-Year Membership when you use this WGAN affiliate link to sign-up for WordPress hosting from Ionblade.

Special Offer 2
Free use of WordPress Hosting Gold powered by Ionblade for WGAN Standard and Premium Members.


Screen Grab 1: Ionblade website


Screen Grab 1: Ionblade website

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Links

✅ Ionblade Website
✅ Mark Stathatos LinkedIn
✅ Ionblade on TrustPilot

Transcript (video above)

- Hi all, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, July 15th, 2021 and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.

We have an awesome show for you today: 10 Reasons to Choose or Switch to Ionblade for WordPress Hosting. And here to talk to us about it is Mark, Mark helped me with your last name?

- I know it's kind of complicated, it's Stathatos.

- Stathatos, thank you. And Mark I should know that because I've actually been talking to you for years, and I've just really known you by Mark at Ionblade.

And Mark is the Director of Business Development. Mark is an awesome subject matter expert and here to talk to us about Ionblade for WordPress hosting. Mark before we jump into this topic, 10 Reasons to Choose or Switch to Ionblade for WordPress hosting, first, what services does Ionblade offer?

- Sure, so from a top down kind of hosting perspective, first it is domain registration: .com .net, .org domain names. We have around 120 different domain names, so there's some like .photography, .media, some newer the acronym is GTLD: Global Top-Level Domains.

And then below that we offer four or five different types of hosted environments: shared hosting; virtual private servers; cloud servers; and then dedicated servers.

And then a bunch of Add On products for the different hosting packages. So things like SiteLock; different email hosting services like Google Workspace. And then we offer backup software; and some other security products for web servers and virtual private servers.

- I reached out to you a number of years ago because our Webmaster said, "Oh! Ionblade is rock solid" and We Get Around Network Members have asked about WordPress hosting; we've just been referring them to Ionblade.

So I thought it would be great actually to have you on the show, and talk about Ionblade because every time I've reached out either to you or to Ionblade Support the response time is nanoseconds . It's super-support.

So I thought it'd be great to have you tell your story. What are some of the reasons to choose or some of the reasons to switch to Ionblade for WordPress hosting?

- So specifically for WordPress we've designed the Panel that as a client, you have access to specifically for WordPress.

So within the hosting panel you have the ability to basically create a WordPress environment, with a few clicks of a button.

You can clone, or duplicate that WordPress environment to let's say a sub-domain or a dev environment; so you can make changes to the site not on the production site; and then clone it back to the production site.

And then also the ability to create backups; make changes to DNS. Basically we've created an entire Panel kind of focused around WordPress: making it easier for our clients to use.

- Cool! I have a lot of follow-up questions based on that, but I do want to let our viewers know that we're going to have two special offers related to Ionblade coming up, so stay tuned for that. I'm geeky but I'm just not a tech savvy person.

So Ionblade: getting calls and emails from prospective clients that are still struggling figuring out even what WordPress is, knowing that they need it.

Because let's say in our Community www.WGANForum.com they're interested in using WP3D Models, WordPress Plugin or if they've been using some other kind of hosting; all of a sudden they have a need for WordPress without necessarily knowing what WordPress is. Okay for newbies to get in touch with Ionblade?

- Yeah, definitely. I mean WordPress, it's a content management system. So if you don't have a control Panel that allows you to easily install it, the manual way could be kind of confusing. So again, our Panel makes it really simple but if you're brand new to hosting or to WordPress, we offer phone, email and live chat support.

So a new client could always call us and we could walk them through setting it up and kind of getting familiar with the account and how things work. Or, if they really are kind of in a difficult position maybe after the install, or having some issues logging in, then obviously walk them through fixing those problems or fix the problems for the clients.

- What are some of the reasons that companies switched to Ionblade for WordPress hosting from another provider?

- There's a lot of reasons. Sometimes it's more cost-effective to go through us, it's pretty wide. For example low cost hosting you might be able to pay $5 or $10 a month for WordPress hosting, but you kind of substitute the support, right?

So you pay a kind of on the smallend of the spectrum, a few dollars a month, $5, $10 a month, but you don't get any support.

On the other side of that spectrum you may be paying a few hundred dollars a month but you don't need that much support.

So we are, I would say, depending on the size of the website somewhere between $10 to let's say $30 or $40 a month, but you get that same White Glove kind of customer service level that you would get with some of the more expensive hosting companies.

And we're not a really large company. Some of our competitors have hundreds or thousands of employees. We have 60 something employees so it's a smaller company but large enough to offer 24 hour support. And Yes. It's kind of more of like a White Glove approach to hosting but at a reasonable price.

- Maybe you could speak a little bit more to White Glove because I think it's easy for someone to say, "we provide great service." You can call us. You can set up a ticket. You can chat with us online.

- Yes. So basically some of our competitors you'll call them; you'll wait in a phone queue for 15 minutes, and they'll have tiered service. So when you call in you'll talk to a tier one; a customer support agent.

That agent doesn't really have the ability or access to make any changes to your website or to your hosts and account. So he basically takes the information from the customer, puts it into a ticket, and then submits that ticket to an internal queue, where eventually one of the tier two or tier three customer service agents will address it.

So we don't have that system. If you call us, the people that have worked for our company, some have been here for eight, 10 years and they're the same people that will take those phone calls and be able to assist you in real-time.

So it's more of I would say, a real-time approach to troubleshooting issues than a ticket based or a queue based approach to solving issues.

And for a lot of people; especially clients of ours that rely on their website for revenue or for lead generation, they can't have the website go down for three or four hours or a day because if they're depending on their website to generate the revenue that is brought in or at least part of the revenue that's brought in every day, it's really important to have a hosting company that could fix an issue on the fly rather than having that issue go through the queue and get escalated and fixed several hours or days later.

- I know that for me, anytime I've opened up a ticket with Ionblade, it really does seem like there's almost immediately somebody writes back and the answer is spon on.

- We try to keep the ticket response time under 30 minutes. And then, obviously if it's a really urgent matter, a lot of people will open a ticket or open a ticket and call in and then we can try to expedite it and have it done within five or 10 minutes.

- I thought I'd read a testimonial for Ionblade from one of We Get Around Network Members, Los Angeles-based Home3D.us Kevin Dole. Kevin has been on WGAN-TV Live at 5. He's a frequent contributor in the We Get Around Network Forum .

I thought it might be helpful just for context, that you may not even have read this in the www.WGANForum.com but Kevin writes here's the personal review: "I moved Home3D.us over to Ionblade a couple years ago. The move was smooth with no break in service. My website immediately experienced a boost in speed.

By that I mean that when someone entered www.Home3D.us and browsed the site; which is huge due to the fact that I have way too many models; meaning virtual tours pop-up really fast.

A bit later, I upgraded to a higher level of service; dedicated server space or something like that. You can tell I'm no expert on this stuff and the site now loads in half the time it did before. Ionblade also has both phone and email tech support. [He doesn't mention Chat support.]

I've really rarely needed anything but called them this week to learn how to better upload myself-hosted 3DVista tours.

Basically I had questions about using FileZilla, a non-Ionblade service. I reached a team member who was fantastically patient for my first-grader questions and I came away knowing how to better service myself. Ionblade has been great, I encourage others on WGAN to learn about their service." I don't know if you have seen or read that?

- No I haven't, but I think I've spoken with Kevin at least once or twice. And I kind of remember, I mean, it was quite a while ago, but I think he had hundreds of gigs of media files. So he had a huge amount of media files and basically moving them to a larger hosted environment, ended up speeding the site. I feel it's been six months a year, year and a half.

Time has kind of flown by since the beginning of COVID but yes, there's a lot of things we could do and it's not just the hosting packages alone. I mean, the servers that are hosting all of our sites are all SSD servers of the hard drives or solid state drives.

So it's the fastest technology; as far as hard drives go. It's the same sort of technology that's used in your iPhone or most newer mobile devices. But we also have a staff of some really good Webmasters. So you can put a WordPress site on an extremely fast server. And it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to load fast.

There could be problems with plugins; image optimization. So being on a really fast server is important but it doesn't necessarily mean the website is going to load very quickly. So, step one: is to make sure you're in the right sort of hosting environment.

Step two: analyze the website and if it's still loading slow; less than let's say 1.8 or 2 seconds, then look into some of the issues or problem areas and try to fix those to get that load speed under two seconds, not only for the visitors of your site to have a more enjoyable experience but as far as search engine optimization goes.

Google recommends having a load speed of less than two seconds and those are all... As a new customer we'd be more than happy to help you fix those issues to the best of our ability.

- If I have an existing WordPress site and I switch it to Ionblade, do you help in terms of porting over the site to Ionblade?

- Yes. So for all new clients, we'll do the website migration for free; assuming that we have access to the older than the current post environment. So for example, let's say you're at a XYZ hosting and you wanted to switch over to us.

Typically, we just need either a WordPress admin access and FTP access or access to the control panel, if it's Plesk or cPanel or direct admin, those are basically the two options.

So either admin access to WordPress and FTP access to the hosting environment and then it is migrated all over for free. And usually, I mean, depending on the size of the site, maybe it could be done the same day but usually we say within one to two business days.

- I would say many of those in the We Get Around Network Forum Community aren't necessarily the most tech savvy.

We're all pretty geeky as photographers in terms of the kinds of photography that we do. So we often have somebody who is our Webmaster that's actually taking care of our hosting needs; not necessarily self-hosting but the design and creation of the site.

So it sounds like if we're going to migrate to Ionblade from another hosting service, is it typically best to put the Webmaster in touch with you directly rather than being in the middle of the conversation with the things that you just talked about? I have no idea what all those things are that you just said.

- Yeah, I mean if you're not familiar with that terminology then probably the best second step would be just to have the Webmaster communicate directly with us. And, once the account is created there's the ability to add sub-accounts.

So if you want to add your Webmaster to the Ionblade account then he could simply log in and communicate directly with us via a ticket or call us and give us the information that we need via email or over the phone.

But let's say you hired a Webmaster to build the site a few years ago and he's no longer in the picture. Maybe, you lost contact with them or some other reason, just give us a call because we can at least guide you in the right direction and try to tell you the exact steps to take in order to get control of the website.

And then once you have those access points, usually it's like a username and password for the hosting account or for a cPanel or Plesk once you have that information, then basically we have all that we need to move the data over.

And once that's completed, then we can walk you through the next step and kind of take you step-by-step through the process rather than trying to overwhelm you and kind of present everything at once.

- If I'm setting up a new site: a typical example for our Community is -- "I'm a residential real estate agent but I decided to buy a Matterport camera and set up a separate business offering Matterport virtual tours to my fellow real estate agents.

So I am literally starting from scratch in terms of setting up a domain and hosting and WordPress, et cetera. Should I go ahead and get my domain through GoDaddy or some other platform, and then talk to Ionblade about WordPress hosting?

Or should I get my domain from Ionblade and why does it make sense maybe to get it from one place rather than one thing in one platform and one from another?"

- GoDaddy, for example, offers basically the same domain extensions, the GTLD: Global Top-Level Domains. We include some of the services that GoDaddy will charge extra for like privacy protection.

So for example, every time you register a domain name you have to put in your first name, last name, address, email address, and phone number it's required by ICANN. They're the legislative body that overlooks domain names.

So when you register a domain and privacy protection costs an extra $5 or $10 a year, you might opt out of it.

Well, then the problem is you end up getting a ton of spam emails and phone calls because that becomes public data. So we include privacy protection for free for all of our domains. So maybe that's a good reason to choose us as a domain registrar. I think .com - which is the most popular domain ending - it's $9.99 to register it.

And that's valid for one year and then or actually up to 10 years or few, let's say you registered for 10 years, it would be $99.99.

And then once it renews, it's $12.99 per year but that includes the domain name; privacy protection; DNS management; and I think one free email address. So we bundled those three kind of Add Ons for the domain and we flipped them all in one price.

- So if I think I'm getting a deal, maybe by going to another platform to get my domain for cheap: first year -- all of a sudden I'm opening myself up to getting a ton of spam because that filtering is either I got to pay more for with another platform or I opt not to get it and then all of a sudden I'm actually overwhelmed at the number of companies that actually start emailing me.

- Yes. It becomes a big problem. I mean, we've had clients in the past that have registered domains. And I mean to the point where they're getting hundreds of emails per day.

So definitely something you should really consider doing if you're going to register a new domain and the Internet's kind of pushing for it to be a standard like the GDPR laws in Europe, I think it's required now.

And I think in Canada but not in the United States. So yeah, I mean, that's like one of the reasons also depending on who you're buying the domain from they may give it to you for let's say 99 cents for the first year but they'll add on a couple of products like Office 365 or a 10 email accounts or inboxes and not charge you for the first 30, 60 or 90 days.

So you have to remember to go in and cancel those products or after the 30th day you'll be automatically billed for them.

So that domain that you, if you only needed the domain and you paid a dollar but you forget to cancel the Add On products that you opt into when you purchase it for that promotional price.

And then 30 days later you get invoiced or charged $70 or $80: you just have to be kind of careful about promotional pricing for domains.

Because a lot of the time it's either going to renew for a really high amount and/or they're going to try to add on some products that basically will be free for the first month to three months. And then they'll start billing you for them down the line.

- Since We Get Around Network Standard and Premium Members actually get the free use of Ionblade, we've been involved in conversations with our Members and with Ionblade where there's been the challenge that comes up is We Get Around Network Member has just bought the domain with another platform.

And then we're setting up free use of Ionblade or free use of WordPress hosting powered by Ionblade and the easiest thing to do would be to move the domain from that other provider to Ionblade. But I think we found a 30 day lockout or something. Can you speak to that?

- Yes. When you first purchase the domain, there's a 90 day period from the date of the purchase that you can't transfer. It's a 90 day transfer lock and that starts as soon as it's purchased. Also, anytime you change any of the contact information.

So let's say, you registered a domain six months ago, you log in and you update the email address for WHOIS it's called, WHOIS information, the registrar, data, admin and technical contact for the domain. If you update any of the contact data, it'll then put another 90 day transfer lock on it.

So this happens quite frequently where people don't really understand; these rules are actually really important because it's meant to prevent domains from basically being transferred away from somebody.

So, but again, it can be kind of a pain because if you want to switch registrars or make some adjustments to DNS, these transfer logs could make it more difficult because a lot of domain registrars don't have a very easy Panel to manage.

It's called DNS, it's a domain name system. It's basically how your domain name connects to where your website's hosted and where your email is hosted. And a lot of registrars and Panels don't have a very robust kind of DNS management system.

So it can make it really difficult to try to say -- you wanted to use Google Workspace or Office 365. It can be kind of difficult to set those products up correctly because their Panel doesn't have the right tools to edit DNS records.

- Well, I think that kind of speaks to if you're new and you're planning to set up hosting, get the hosting from the same company that you get the domain from.

And ideally if you're getting the free use of Ionblade through We Get Around Network, then really, it would be way easier to just get your domain with Ionblade, get your hosting from Ionblade than to try and have the domain in one place and the hosting in another.

Now there is a work-around, could you speak to that of what you do when the domain is actually -- it's just been bought; it's yet someplace else, but the hosting is purchased through Ionblade.

- Yeah, so basically, if you want to... if the domain; let's say is that GoDaddy and the website is hosted with us once the website is let's say -- if we migrate the website over once the website's migrated or if it's a new WordPress site and you want to start building it, all you have to do is log into, for example, your GoDaddy account and update -- their called your Name Servers -- .NS records -- to ours.

And it's really simple, if you just Google search how to update Name Servers on GoDaddy. It's the top article; it's very transparent and easy but if you're with maybe a smaller domain registrar and it's a little bit more complicated, it's still the same process but their Panel might make it more difficult to do it.

So feel free to, again, contact us and we can help walk you through it. Or we could even reach out to that company on your behalf and try to get it done for you.

- So that's kind of a way of saying if you're just starting out again maybe a real estate agent that's setting up a photography service business and therefore you now need a new domain; you need a new hosting; try to get your domain at the same place that you get your hosting ...

- It's just easier for everyone. I mean our prices are really competitive but I would say more importantly, it gets rid of a lot of the frustration because if let's say you're ready to build the website and you have all the content and you gathered all this information and then you get to the point of actually starting to build it, or your Webmaster. somebody is starting to build it.

And then you realize, "Oh! I don't have access to my domain.

I registered it here years ago or my friend registered." It could become an ongoing issue and if Ionblade has both the domain and the hosting, any issue that we could ever encounter, we can fix because we have access to the domain and the hosting.

Whereas if the domain is somewhere else and there's an issue with the website, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a problem with our server.

It could be a DNS issue and we don't have access to what's for example, your GoDaddy account to log in and to troubleshoot it. And it could just kind of be a more inefficient process if you don't have both the domain and the hosting within your account.

- And so it is possible to have the domain in one place and to have the hosting elsewhere. And I've been the one who has felt the pain because I've often been the one that's between We Get Around Network Member who is now setting up free Ionblade service through We Get Around Network, but they went ahead and just bought their domain someplace else.

And it creates this challenge. And then there's this conversation that goes back and forth, trying to understand DNS and this .NS if I'm saying that correctly.

- It's NS as in November; S as in Sierra - that's the acronym for Name Servers It's probably the most important DNS record out of all of them.

- Yes. And even though I've literally been doing this for years with Ionblade; working with Ionblade and We Get Around Network Members, I still don't fully understand it. And I'm so thankful for the team at Ionblade that just says, "copy and paste" with what you send back to me to give to the client; to give to their Webmaster and then have that conversation.

But I'm trying to provide this kerfuffle conversation in order to say, it's so much easier to get your domain at Ionblade and get your hosting at Ionblade. And then if there are any issues or challenges, it's much easier for Ionblade [to trouble-Shoot for you.].

- Yes. That's a lot easier for us to fix, for sure.

- Yes. So I'm new. I get WordPress through Ionblade but I still have my domain somewhere else. You do this Name Server dance to make it all work; where does the SSL fit in? And why is that important?

- So SSL for the audience -- people that don't know what it stands for. It's an acronym, it stands for Secure Socket Layer. It's an encryption protocols.

So it basically encrypts any information between your website visitors or people visiting the website and the server. So usernames and passwords for let's say, WordPress credit card information online forms, it's mandatory for HIPAA and PCI compliance, but highly recommended for every site.

And we include that for free with our hosting. So if you sign up for WordPress hosting, we will add the SSL certificate for free and then help you optimize the website.

So it's being used correctly because we see a lot of new clients, for example, that'll switch over to us and they have an SSL installed on the server but the site will say, "not secure" in front of the domain name and the web browser.

So even though they have paid for one and it's installed on the server it's not being used correctly. So we will make sure not only that this certificate is issued but being fully optimized on the website. So you get that padlock icon in front of the domain name so that people visiting your site feel secure.

- And so it's way easier and faster, once again, if you have the domain name registered at Ionblade to do that implementation?

I want to say if the domain is someplace else and you have to set this Name Server thing back and forth then the We Get Around Network Member has to go do the Name Server thing. And then there's a piece of information that needs to go back to Ionblade. So [Ionblade] can implement the SSL.

- Yeah, that's correct. Because we can't issue the SSL certificate until the domain name is pointed to us.

So it's - again - it's just easier if the domain is registered with us because we can from the beginning of... as the account's created, the domains registered with us we can very efficiently get this completed in 3, 5, 10 minutes rather than going back and forth and trying to troubleshoot getting access to the domain registrar.

I've had instances where it's taken weeks or months to get the domain or access to the domain.

And especially in a circumstance where maybe somebody else within the organization started or registered the domain and their name.

And they had left the company; the process of reclaiming the account could take weeks or even months sometimes. So, yes. Keeping everything in one place is the best; I would say probably the most efficient way for sure but also the best way to keep things organized.

- Yes and Mark I could imagine that this is so over the head of so many of our viewers because I'm barely treading water trying to ask the questions that kind of cover this subject matter only because I've been in the weeds of trying to understand, "On! We need to get this SSL." Oh, we can't get it until the Name Server from GoDaddy is pointing back to Ionblade.

- We've had situations where it's taken days or weeks to kind of sort through it all.

So, yes. Definitely. I mean, it's just easier for everyone to have it in -- I would say one place and it's going to save let's say there's another domain registrar offering you the domain for $1 for the first year through us here it's $9.99 but it could literally lead to hours of your time wasted trying to figure out how to get access or update Name Servers, get EPP codes stuff like that.

- Yes. And I'll make it easy for We Get Around Network Standard and Premium Members because WGAN will pay for the domain registration as well for Standard and Premium Members.

So that means if you're trying to save $9 by getting the $1 domain in the first year from GoDaddy, and then getting your free hosting through We Get Around Network, let [WGAN] pay for the domain and the registration for you.

You can still have your website name -- you pick it out through Ionblade -- you register it or we'll register it for you for your company, but you'll have your domain and your hosting and your SSL all managed by the same company in one place and avoid this challenge.

I think that probably the last five or 10 minutes has been about that probably makes everybody's eyes glaze over -- the takeaway is make your life easy and simple by getting your domain and WordPress hosting all in the same place.

- Right. Yes. It's the best case scenario as far as making everything easier for both parties: us and the client.

- Yes. Even anticipating some of the things that can go south. So if you have yet somebody else working on setting up your site and they've registered your SSL but it's somehow in their name, it's not in your name.

And then all of a sudden, as you're I guess talking about trying to reclaim the ownership and get it kind of passed through -- it's hard, it's difficult.

- Yes. Really difficult. Sometimes you have to get a notarized letter; bills in your name; submit your identification. I mean, it can take weeks or even months to reclaim it. It's a whole process that you have to go through.

- Little bit of a challenge. So back to reasons to choose or switch to Ionblade for WordPress hosting. And I think these are actually some of those reasons, if someone wants to just try out Ionblade, is there like a free trial period?

- Yes. So we have a 30 day free trial period. If you sign up, you get 30 days for free. And for some reason you don't like the service, there's no risk on your end. If you do like the service you get basically the first 13 months, first month for free and then you can either pay monthly annually bi-annually or tri-annually.

- Okay, so it seems like Ionblade has a lot of Silver, Gold and Platinum plans because everything seems to be either Silver, Gold and Platinum.

Can you speak to that a little bit, maybe a little bit deeper in terms of without necessarily going into pricing but I think you kind of have for Silver, Gold and Platinum in every different iteration. So whether it's WordPress or other types of hosting platforms that seems...

- Yeah, and most people either fit into the Silver or Gold package but basically it's just a Silver, like the basic package. The first tier package is really intended for one or two websites. I think the majority of WGAN clients usually have one or maybe two sites.

So I think 95% of the referred clients are within that first tier. And basically the Gold package is -- I think three to five websites. It depends on the hosting package where if we're talking WordPress specifically it's going to be, I think, three to five sites included.

And then the largest tier, I'd have to double check, but I think it's like five to seven sites or something like that.

- Yes. I think that the point is because most of the WGAN Community is self-employed: one website. Photography website.

Maybe the spouse is doing something that the Silver plan is actually going to cover. And then you can choose to say, "are you the kind of person that likes to pay month-to-month?" Or you are the kind of person that wants, "give me the best price. I'm willing to prepay for three years."

- Yes. So if you paid for three [years], the advertised price on our website is going to be that three year price broken down into monthly.

If you pay month-to-month, it's still relatively inexpensive. I think it's, I mean, I could double check but I think it's like $14.95 a month. And then if you pay for a year, it comes down to $12. And if you pay for two years, it comes down to $9 or $10. And if you pay for three years, it comes down to $6 or $8; or something like that.

- Easy enough to go to; all your prices are on your website. I'm going to take people through our affiliate link, which is: www.WGAN.INFO/ionblade because there are Membership benefits to using the WGAN affiliate link: www.WGAN.INFO/ionblade All the prices are on the website. It's easy to figure out pricing. I wanted to go a little bit and talk about network uptime.

Today, Thursday, July 15th, 2021 just before we went on the air, Matterport actually had an incident that took off the cloud hosting of Matterport 3D Showcase and Matterport Workshop; not affecting everyone but affecting some.

So, every once in a while we always think, well, these things are always up they never go down but even the largest provider for our Community had an incident today. Can you speak to uptime of Ionblade?

- Yeah, sure. So we won an award. I think it was through hosted by SLA for shared hosting at 99.98%. So that's - I forget exactly; maybe two or three hours a year, four hours a year of downtime. But we have had instances where our shared hosting environment hasn't gone down for two or three years.

And that's because we're constantly monitoring our shared servers, keeping them updated with the newest patches and software updates. But we also exchange our shared servers. Again, it kind of depends on the server itself but typically every three to four years. So we're migrating older servers to newer servers.

We don't keep any legacy servers in our data centers. We cycled through them every three to four years, depending on the type. So we guarantee 99.98% uptime for shared hosting and then our highest SLA for cloud hosting is 99.99%.

So again, not that much of a difference and in most instances, you're not going to have any issues except for maybe scheduled maintenance, things like that.

But most of the time when we schedule maintenance for one of our servers, it's being done somewhere between midnight and 3 AM Pacific Standard Time; usually on a Friday or Saturday night. And again, that's not very typical and maybe once or twice a quarter.

- Well speaking personally for We Get Around. One of our accounts is with Ionblade; for hosting WP3D Models [using WordPress], [gallery.we-get-Around.com] of Matterport tours; rock solid.

It just works. And our Members in the We Get Around Network Forum Community that use Ionblade - I think even the example of Los Angeles based www.Home3D.us

- Kevin Dole - has been super-happy because it's just been rock solid and super-fast. Mark, I promised a couple of special offers for our viewers. First ... You get one year free of WGAN-TV Training U when you use the WGAN affiliate link to sign up for Ionblade for WordPress hosting powered by Ionblade. WGAN affiliate link: WGAN.INFO/ionblade

And for We Get Around Network Standard and Premium Members, you get the free use of WordPress powered by Ionblade. WordPress hosting by Ionblade is free for We Get Around Network Standard and Premium Members.

You also get the free use of WP3D Models WordPress Plugin; which is often the reason that people ask me "Hey. I want to get WP3D Models WordPress Plugin but I'm using a non WordPress site; who do you recommend for WordPress hosting.

And we recommend Ionblade and we include the free use of WordPress powered by Ionblade for WGAN Standard and Premium Members. Mark, are there other reasons to choose or switch to Ionblade for WordPress hosting that we haven't talked about?

- I mean, I would say probably the best reason is the support we offer. Earlier on in my career, I would deal with a lot of other hosting companies for issues on the behalf of our customers because I started off in a more niche kind of product.

So I was contacting a lot of the big hosting providers and I would say, I'm going to focus on one thing specifically about Ionblade and it's going to be the customer support and response time.

I would say that to have -- for this price -- to have basically a staff of people that are very responsive to any trouble tickets or issues that you're having, and then it's kind of like having your own team of internal employees that kind of monitor your website.

So I would say that's probably our biggest added value if you do become a client of ours is the fact that we were providing some of the best support in our industry.

- I would say it's the White Glove support that Ionblade provides is the reason I reached out to you, Mark, to be a guest on WGAN-TV Live at 5.

I just find most of us probably don't have a reason to actually call, email, open a ticket or chat, except when you start an account and most of what we've talked about were some of the pain points and challenges is often when you have a domain name registered someplace else.

And so I've had to interact with Ionblade on behalf of WGAN Members who get the free use of WordPress powered by Ionblade.

And I just find every time I've ever opened a ticket, the response time has been amazing. I know you talk about... you try to respond within a half hour but I feel sometimes it's often within minutes.

- I mean, that's really -- we know if we want to compete in our environment, we're not going to compete at cost because there's going to be lower cost providers. We don't compete on costs. We compete on service and we try to provide the best service in the industry, again, at a reasonable price.

- And it's hard to say that because everyone would say, "Oh! We provide the best service." but I'm not talking specifically about hosting companies but just in general in the world, whenever we call companies it's, "Oh! Sorry. Our wait times due to COVID are extended. The Earth's rotation is taking longer than expected, please hold."

Every place we go to get help or support for whatever it is, it seems like companies haven't figured out how to answer the phone; how to respond to an email; how to answer a chat. It can be a kind of a service nightmare and yet when you reach out to Ionblade you get a fast response.

I don't want to over promise you because I know you say generally within a half hour but frankly it's been within minutes.

And then more importantly the response is spot on. It's not some boilerplate response that doesn't align with what my question; problem or challenge is.

Somebody, obviously intelligent on the other end, is focused on exactly what I've asked and then I get back a laser-sharp focused answer. And so kudos to the team at Ionblade that's figured out how to be super-responsive and use that as a differentiator from other companies.

Yeah, Mark, before I let you go, there were just two other things I wanted to ask you about not necessarily WordPress related but for our Community, that's constantly creating single property websites for real estate clients.

The address, the URL could be exceedingly long. Can you speak to registering domain names and just pointing them to other URLs to make it easy, to give a client a vanity domain, like a 123MainStreet.info

- Yes. So I actually kind of went through the list right now of some of the new, global top level domains that are available. So real estate related; they have .property I know you guys are doing 3D modeling or images so they also have .media

They have, for example, .xyz, .co it's actually global, it's a country-specific global top level, top level domain it's intended for Columbia but a lot of people use it because it's almost like .com it's a little bit shorter.

They have specific domain endings. Now for cities, for example, Miami has its own ending. So if you want to do something like www.123realestate.miami for example, it may be available, you'd have to check.

- Yeah, but even just for a specific property address.

So if the address is www.3423PiedmontRoadNE.media then it's super-easy.

I only bring this up because for our photographers, this is such an easy Ann On to offer for $25 or $50 that costs you $10 and it takes two seconds to order the domain and link it to the URL. Boom! You're done. You made $25.

And if you step and repeat and you do that a hundred times during the year then that may be another $2,500, another $5,000 that goes to the pocket of the photographer. And you can use Ionblade to do all that domain buying, yes?

- Right, correct.

- And then the other thing is there are so many members in the We Get Around Network Forum that are using a Gmail address for their business. What's the process with Ionblade so that I can actually get a vanity URL for an email address?

- Yes. So basically once you set up the hosts and account, we don't limit basically the amount of emails. So you can have as many emails as you want. So once you set the host and account, you could start creating email addresses.

So let's say a domain name was xyz.com and you wanted: info@xyz.com Once the host and account is created you could create that email address and let's say you wanted one specific like mark, for example, or dan@xyz.com

You could create as many email addresses as you'd like specific to your domain name. So it's kind of a more professional way to present yourself to clients or customers because you're not using an email account that you created when you were in college or something that you may want to separate business, personal life from.

- Awesome. And then my last question actually relates to there are many Members in the Community that are starting to use a 3DVista software and are looking to host models that they create that have super-large files, Kevin at Home3D.us, for example, does a lot of 3DVista models and these models tend to be super-large.

That's not necessarily WordPress hosting. Can you just speak in general about either the--

- So if you're starting to gather, let's say, I think Kevin has hundreds of gigs. I would have -- I don't know off the top of my head -- but let's say you start to get into the hundreds of gigs or even terabytes of data. We have options for Amazon SES storage.

We have a couple of differences -- they're not servers intended for hosting websites because they're super-slow but we could configure storage servers for you to host or to store all those really, really large files. So you're not wasting the money to put them onto a hosting server but you have access to them. And you're not paying an outrageous amount.

We could configure and set all that up for you and we can include it within your Ionblade account; accessible from your Ionblade Portal. I think I'd have to look... but I think a gig of some of our storage is a half a penny per gig per month or something like that.

- I wouldn't even ask you to quote pricing but I think the point is if you have a large volume of content that needs to be stored on the internet and maybe some of that content needs to be live and a great deal of it is -- I still need to store it. I don't need to have it active, Ionblade has solutions for them.

- Exactly. We can set it up for you and help you manage it and it's all accessible through your Ionblade account.

- Awesome, Ionblade.com again, if you use the WGAN affiliate link to get there at: www.WGAN.INFO/ionblade there are some benefits that we talked about earlier about using the... We Get Around Network affiliate link for Ionblade. Before we say bye, was there anything else that you wanted to chat about in terms of Ionblade?

- Off the top of my head I can't think of anything. I want to thank you for having me on the show today.

We'd been working together for I'd say at least three or four years now and it was a pleasure to see you or talk to you because I know most of the communication we have back and forth is just through email now but it's always great talking to you guys.

And again, if any of your customers or clients need anything, feel free to have them contact me directly, I'd be more than happy to walk them through any issues that they may be having or helping them get the account set up or transfer websites whatever's needed.

- Awesome. Mark, thanks for being on the show.

- Yeah, thanks. It’s my pleasure.

- We've been visiting with Mark -- help me out with your last name Mark. I'll never get it.

- Stathatos.

- Stathatos, [Efharisto: Greek for thank you]. We've been visiting with Mark. He's the Director of Business Development for Ionblade. Ionblade: based in the greater Los Angeles area.

For Mark, I'm Dan Smigrod [in Atlanta]. Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.