Fused: Web Hosting Services that Merge Performance and Reliability with Fast, Knowledgeable Support for SMBs, Charities, and Enterprises

TL; DR: Customer satisfaction is top priority at Fused, a worldwide provider of shared and dedicated hosting solutions for businesses of all sizes. The company keeps customers across the globe happy with hassle-free migrations, nightly backups, 99.9% uptime, and consistent 24/7 support. With plans for high-performance unmetered storage on the way, Fused is continuing to build upon the company’s 15 years of experience.

In today’s faced-paced, increasingly globalized world, long-lasting relationships are hard to come by. We’re more likely to interact with online gaming friends these days than with our best buddies from high school. Forget knowing someone on a first-name basis — now, it’s an accomplishment if you recognize his or her online alias.

To make friendships last in the digital age, you need to put in some serious effort. And to maintain business relationships? You better move mountains.

Fused Founder David Mckendrick knows this well. By retaining his very first client for 15 years (and counting!), he’s achieved a feat many can only dream about — and he did it through unwavering devotion to customer service. “Even though customers’ needs have changed over the years, the way we provide support hasn’t,” he said. “I think of it like this: We’re a support company that coincidentally offers hosting on the side,” he said.

David knows a thing or two about quality support based on his experience working for other hosts. He started Fused in 2003 on a hunch that he could bring value to the market. He was right, and after some early success, he dropped all other projects to focus solely on Fused.

Today, David has grown the company into a robust provider of hosting solutions that power approximately 4,000 sites in about 34 countries. All hosting packages include hassle-free migration, 24/7 tech support, nightly backups, and a 99.9% monthly uptime guarantee.

As Fused prepares to launch a high-performance unmetered storage option, the company will be sure to retain the around-the-clock support services that have proved so beneficial to thousands of customers around the world.

Fused is powered by a small, four-person team that serves an eclectic mix of customers. “We support everyone from mom-and-pop shops to $80 million investment firms,” David said. “It’s fun because we can learn about how to serve people on both sides of the coin.”

No matter who your customers are, quality support is of utmost importance. Multiple studies indicate that poor customer service experiences lead to increased customer churn. After just one negative support experience, 50% of customers vow never to use an offending company again. On the flip side, positive customer interactions may increase loyalty and encourage customers to spend more.

David didn’t need statistics like these when he launched Fused — he realized the importance of customer service from the start. “Support has always been my obsession, and consistency is key,” he said. “If you oscillate between 45-minute and 8-hour responses, they can’t rely on you, so they seek alternatives.”

For David, excellent customer service is a product of interacting with your clients at every possible touchpoint in a relevant and meaningful way. “If you’re there for them, they will value you much more.”

Fused strives to help customers resolve any problems they encounter and communicate using terms anyone can understand. David said the company also promises to remain honest and trustworthy: “We’ll never sell anything to someone that they don’t require, nor will we share personal information under any circumstances,” he said.

Reviews on the company’s site back this up. “The customer service and tech support are top-notch,” user Rachel Hayward said. “And, they have a sense of humor. I’m not tech savvy, and they helped me every step of the way.”

David’s high standards in customer service extend to server performance as well. “We have stupidly fast servers, and everything works great, but we’re aiming to have everyone’s site load in less than half a millisecond,” he said. “It’s not an easy task, but it’s our goal nonetheless.”

He told us the company’s plans are straightforward and risk-free, with a 100% money-back guarantee within 90 days of signup. The company hosts everything from WordPress sites to WooCommerce, Drupal, Magento, PrestaShop, ZenCart, and OpenCart. Fused also uses cPanel, one of the most popular Linux-based control panels in existence, and a software stack that includes Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Ruby, Python, and Perl.

The company’s base web hosting plans start with 25GB of storage, unmetered data transfers, and 20x-faster DNS clusters. Built for performance, a fully managed semi-dedicated plan with 50GB storage for less than 10 clients per server is also available. Looking for something more flexible and optimized for high performance? Fused’s dedicated servers include backups, redundant drives, and 24/7 monitoring.

Of course, all the features in the world are meaningless if clients can’t find help when the inevitable emergency strikes. “Support is a feature in itself,” David said. “There’s nothing worse than sending your support ticket out and not knowing whether someone will get to you. You’re torn between researching a solution to your own problem and waiting endlessly for your host.”

Aside from 24/7 support, Fused offers a number of perks on all hosting packages. David told us the team handles 100% of its clients’ web hosting, email, and data migration quickly and for free. Each plan features reliable email hosting with POP3, Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), and webmail access, as well as free spam filters.

Customers enjoy the peace of mind inherent in knowing Fused performs nightly backups on all accounts, which the company retains for more than two months so users can restore their sites, email accounts, and databases as needed. The host also boasts a 99.9% standard uptime rate, though David said it frequently averages 100% uptime.

“We make sure to monitor overall trends and solve any pain points for our customers as soon as they arise,” David said. “The caveat with that is that, the more problems you solve, you ultimately arrive at the point where there are almost no touchpoints between you and the customer and they kind of forget you exist.”

He’s seen cases where customers falsely assume Fused isn’t providing them value simply because the service is so seamless. “We do such great work behind the scenes that sometimes we’ll have a customer leave for a week, come right back, and say, ‘Nevermind, you guys are amazing.’”

David told us his team “obsesses day and night” over ways to improve its hosting services. The company is currently working to flesh out a tool that automates easily resolvable support requests in an attempt to prioritize urgent ones.

He’s fascinated by the prospect of scaling his operations — but will always prioritize quality support over internal growth. “You can sell 2 million hosting accounts, offer zero support, and you’ve got a half-billion dollar company,” he said. “We’re on the smaller side right now, and we’re hoping that, by building additional tools, we will ultimately have the best of both worlds.”

David said that goal includes expanding his team of well-rounded individuals to ensure reliable service and consistent support.

In the immediate future, David has set his sights on providing unmetered storage options. “I don’t like forcing my customers into constraints of 30GB or 50GB per user — I’d love to offer them 250 to 500TB, so it doesn’t impede their businesses.”

But fulfilling that objective while maintaining performance is a tall task. ”We’re not there yet, because coupling extremely massive storage allocations with high performance is a really tight line to walk,” David said. “We’re not quite there, but we’re continuing to work on it and hope something will come into fruition by the end of the year.”

The company’s cautious approach is exactly how it’s retained its first customer after all these years — and how it will retain many more in the years to come.