IpHost Offers Nearly Two Decades of Experience in Shared, Virtual, and Dedicated Servers, Plus Domain Name Registration

TL; DR: IpHost, founded in 2002 as an early entrant into the Greek hosting space, is on a mission to provide top-notch cloud infrastructure, datacenter, and domain registration solutions. The company takes a forward-thinking approach to the customer experience via continuous upgrades, an intuitive online management system, and close customer contact. Through tried-and-true word-of-mouth advertising and all-new marketing services, IpHost is poised to become one of the most renowned hosting and domain providers in Greece and beyond.

Greece is the birthplace of Western civilization, spawning many of the major conventions we take for granted today. The Balkan Peninsula’s southernmost country brought forth democracy, groundbreaking scientific and mathematical principles, Western literature and drama, and even the Olympic Games.

And while the historically innovative country isn’t known for the rise of modern internet technology — we have Silicon Valley to thank for that — one company is helping build a local name for outstanding hosting infrastructure and customer service.

IpHost, located in Agia Varvara, Greece, was founded in 2000 by Charalampos Toulkaridis. The entrepreneur worked at Forthnet (now known as Nova), the first company to bring internet service to Greece. After working for Forthnet for two years, Charalampos moved to start his own web development company, which he initially named Site Effective. He later evolved the company to the full-fledged hosting and domain registration company IpHost, one of Greece’s most well-known IT service providers. There, he pioneered an automated, API-based method for creating orders for Greece’s top-level domain — .gr.

After working for Forthnet for nine years, Charalampos moved to start his own company, which he initially named IpDomain. He later evolved the company to a full-fledged hosting and domain registration company we now know as IpHost, one of Greece’s most well-known IT service providers.

“IpHost is now one of the largest domain registrars in Greece,” said George Angelopoulos, Marketing Director at IpHost. “The company is also known for offering solutions through cloud infrastructure and datacenter services.”

On the hosting side, IpHost now offers shared, virtual, and dedicated servers plus packages optimized for Joomla and WordPress sites. Domain services include forwarding, transferring, and access to hundreds of all-new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), among many other offerings.

Today, IpHost has 25,000 customers, has registered more than 65,000 domains, and owns approximately 600 servers.

The company is one of the top three authorized registrants of the .gr and .eu domain names, approved by the the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT) and EURid. The company is a member of RIPE NCC, the regional internet registry (RIR) for Europe, West Asia, and the former USSR headquartered in Amsterdam. IpHost is also the first official cPanel partner in Greece.

The company is further known for its cutting-edge network infrastructure via Lamda Hellix, Greece’s largest carrier-neutral colocation provider.

IpHost leverages Lamda Hellix’s Athens-2 datacenter, a market-leading facility developed according to the Uptime Institute’s Tier III standards for datacenter availability. Athens-2 also features extended connectivity opportunities, rigid security systems, and compliance with USGBC LEED v4 Gold BD+C certification for green buildings.

“It’s one of the best datacenters in Europe,” George said. “I haven’t seen anything else that compares to it; it’s ahead of many others.”

According to the IpHost website, the company’s management system makes it easy for customers to manage both the domains and the associated free hosting services it offers.

Beyond providing robust technology, IpHost’s mission is to offer customers the best solutions and customer experience possible. The company is known for delivering savings packages in combination with quality services and direct support.

George said the company’s ultimate goal is to free users of technical burdens and worries so they can focus on what’s really important: growing their businesses. The company’s tagline — Always There, Always ON — is very much in line with this mission.

George told us that IpHost’s leadership is always eager to invest in the latest and greatest server technology available.

“I am amazed by IpHost’s approach to infrastructure,” he said. “It’s updated frequently even when it’s not absolutely necessary to ensure the best possible service. Charalampos is constantly researching the best hardware and software on the market. All of our HDDs have been replaced with SSDs, and we’ve moved from Gluster to Ceph storage.”

Even the company’s shared hosting plans are run on SSD storage, with three packages that vary in security hardening, web applications, storage space, sites hosted, and access to a site builder, among other features.

The company’s virtual servers are ideal for professionals looking for a scalable solution with a precise amount of RAM, processing, and hard-drive space. IpHost customers can choose between four plans that fit their needs in that regard with a handy VM cost calculator that helps estimate final pricing.

All packages include fully redundant hardware, firewalls with VLAN support, hypervisor technologies, InfiniBand, built-in network security, backup and snapshot options, a dedicated IP, cloud server monitoring, flexible resources, cPanel, and SSH access.

The company’s dedicated servers, housed in the same world-class ATHENS-2 facility as the virtual servers, offer users a single-tenant environment with increased electronic and physical security. All dedicated servers include an access control system, a closed-circuit TV system (CCTV), and redundant infrastructure.

“Charalampos always prepares to ensure our infrastructure is ready,” George said. “He’s the kind of man who doesn’t want even one bad review. He’s always there for the customer and will personally call them should a problem persist,”

The IpHost website describes the company’s support approach as extreme: “Technical support is provided by our experienced staff, who are always willing to respond to your request as soon as possible via telephone, chat, and our ticketing system. The tech team is here not only to solve but to prevent any problem.”

George, a consumer of website hosting himself, has experience as a user of multiple providers and can vouch for IpHost’s stand-out service.

“I’ve used Hetzner, LiquidWeb, and SiteGround before IpHost,” he said. “The support was responsive at these other companies, but they did not help much. All of them could only get to a certain point and said, ‘We cannot go beyond that. You should find another person to do that for you.’ IpHost always crosses that line and is happy to help everyone. And this is how they treat all of their customers.”

George told us he joined the IPHost team in 2020 to help advance the company’s marketing efforts. Until now, IpHost has relied only on word-of-mouth to grow the company — a true testament to just how happy customers are.

“IpHost has grown without a single penny to marketing — everything is inbound,” he said. “The company has been able to succeed because it stands strong behind its support. In Greece, the line between the developer and DevOps is a bit thin. Some developers have no idea how to manage a server. IpHost helps them by offering management along with hosting.”

The IpHost team is planning for a busy 2021 with a brand-new marketing calendar and, as always, continuous infrastructure improvements.

“We’re starting out with the first marketing calendar from a hosting company here in Greece,” George said. “We are hoping to get more influencers talking about us.”

The easy-to-reference calendar is intended to help the businesses IpHost serves to ramp up their marketing efforts through strategic promotions around key holidays and milestones.

As far as IpHost’s products and services go, customers can expect more value for their money.

“We have just upgraded all our switches to the latest Cisco Nexus models and supercharged our backbone network connections from 10Gbits to 40Gbits,” he said. “There’s also going to be a price reduction for our VMs.”