GlowHost: Helping Customers Illuminate their Online Businesses Through Managed Hosting Solutions Since 2002

TL; DR: GlowHost has delivered a range of shared, virtual, and dedicated server solutions for nearly two decades. The trusted managed services provider is known for around-the-clock support, white glove migrations, and lightning-fast connection speeds. With a selection of extras, including domain registration services and a DIY web builder, GlowHost aims to serve as an all-in-one solutions provider for customers worldwide.

By the tender age of 23, Matt Lundstrom was a jack of all trades. The Colorado native had dabbled in ski-rental management, commercial Alaskan salmon fishing, nightclub security, and heavy equipment operation. In college, he added web design to the list and began creating sites for local dog walkers and ski shops.

The experience introduced him to the underbelly of web hosting, plagued with poor support and frequent downtime. In 2002, knowing he could do better, Matt decided to add one more specialty to his ever-growing résumé. That year, he saved up several hundred dollars to rent his first dedicated server and founded GlowHost.

Now, almost two decades later, Matt is still committed to providing expert shared, virtual, and dedicated web hosting solutions backed by attentive customer service and quality infrastructure. Founded before the days of large-volume hosting giants, the company has always maintained the personalized, hands-on approach of an early boutique hosting provider.

“We’re not a commodity web host,” Matt said. “We’re out there going the extra mile to help growing businesses thrive, and that’s why so many of our customers have been around for 17 years or more.”

GlowHost offers a wide variety of web hosting services, from wallet-friendly shared plans to fully managed dedicated packages suitable for high-end corporate sites. With 24/7 support and customizable hardware and software configurations designed to meet exact specifications, GlowHost is committed to tailoring its offerings to the ever-changing needs of the growing businesses it serves.

Matt told us he first realized GlowHost was taking off when his friends started teasing him about the number of notifications he was receiving on his 2000s-era Nokia work phone.

“We’d be on our snowmobiles, or skiing down the mountain, and my phone would go off,” he said. “My friends would be like, ‘Now what?’ and I would say, ‘It’s another order on the website.’ I felt so lucky.”

It wasn’t long before the job turned into a 9-to-5 commitment, and with the help of a growing and talented staff, GlowHost continued to serve more and more satisfied customers.

Matt said the company often helps beginning web entrepreneurs who may not have the time or know-how to build and manage a site. GlowHost’s assistance in handling the technical aspects while providing excellent support frees up time that entrepreneurs can use to focus on their businesses.

Through the years, he’s guided many of his customers from shared plans to virtual machines and even multi-server clusters with load-balancing capabilities. “If it wasn’t for us saying ‘Hey, we can help you, we know how to do it, we love to do it,’ they might not have turned into the fantastic, lifelong customers they are today,” Matt said.

While larger brands have swallowed up many smaller hosts, GlowHost remains independent — and Matt is proud of that. “Our focus is on making our hosting service better and better for our clients, rather than just trying to expand as much as possible,” he said.

Frank, a customer from Mississippi, says it best: “I’ve been using Glowhost for several years now, and the service just keeps improving. My last trouble ticket was resolved in under 14 minutes on a Friday afternoon. The tech support is amazing and unfailingly polite. What more could you want?”

Startups and SMBs that don’t expect massive spikes in traffic often start out with GlowHost’s highly affordable shared hosting plans. The company offers a range of shared plans that include unlimited disk space and traffic plus one automatic backup per week.

The company’s other shared plans come with daily automatic backups, no storage restrictions, and are typically faster. All shared servers are housed in state-of-the-art datacenters in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Montreal.

If a business outgrows its shared hosting site, GlowHost offers more powerful options, such as Cloud Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) hosting packages that provide more features than the traditional virtual private server (VPS) and four times the protected storage. For full root access and proactive support, the company’s fully-managed dedicated server packages include free migrations, a hardware and software configuration wizard, and guaranteed 20-minute response times.

To maximize content delivery speed, GlowHost offers dedicated server connectivity through more than 18 high-quality datacenters spanning the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, Japan, and Hong Kong (GlowHost recommends companies choose a datacenter closest to its intended audience to boost speed). In addition, the company’s Global CDN boasts more than 77 points of presence worldwide.

Between high-performance rates, dollars and hours saved, and an improved return on investments, GlowHost customers enjoy a number of benefits. And although Matt told us there’s no precise recipe for hosting success, the right people and a culture of perseverance pays off.

“It’s somewhat a mix of being at the right place at the right time, having good contacts, and a little bit of luck,” he said. “But, more than anything else, it’s the hard work and extra effort put in by our staff that makes the biggest impact.”

GlowHost’s services don’t end with hosting. The company’s goal is to provide everything businesses need to build and maintain a permanent web presence, so it also provides add-ons such as free domains with selected plans. For those looking to keep the ownership of their domain name under wraps, GlowHost offers affordably priced privately registered domains that do not expose contact details publicly. The company also serves up bulk domain registration, bulk transfer, and free domain renewal.

For a small fee, GlowHost grants users access to a professional website builder with instant setup, hundreds of templates, integration with social media sites, and 24/7 support. Or, through GlowHost’s “We Build It” service, businesses can sit back and relax while a professional design team creates a refined, search-engine friendly site including an intuitive editor that can be used to make changes at any time.

GlowHost also protects against hackers through Sucuri, a monitoring and alerting tool that performs an overall scan of a company’s normal activity and usage before checking for abnormalities at regular intervals. If problems are detected, Sucuri notifies GlowHost before working on getting the site back up and running.

Other add-ons include SSL certificates, confidence-building trustmarks and badges, free design templates through DigitalOcto, and even toll-free numbers for businesses. What’s more, GlowHost is so confident that its customers will be satisfied that it offers an unconditional money-back guarantee for 91 days.

It’s all part of Matt’s mission to improve upon the unsatisfactory web hosting environment he encountered so many years ago as a web designer.

“Ultimately, our success relies solely upon the success of our customers,” Matt said. “I know it sounds corny, but that’s truly our business model.”