Lunarpages
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| Lunarpages | |
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| Type | Web Hosting |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Headquarters | La Habra, California, United States |
| Key people | Ron Riddle (Founder/Chairman/CEO) |
| Industry | Internet, Web hosting |
| Owner | Ron Riddle |
| Website | www.lunarpages.com |
Lunarpages.com, Inc. is a Web Hosting company, which also sells domain name registration and other e-business and e-commerce website features. It was created in the late 1990s by Ron Riddle and Maximiliam Andersen (Andersen was previously with technology companies in Sweden). The name “Lunarpages” was inspired by Riddle’s interest in the popular sci-fi television show Star Trek[citation needed]. In fact, some of their first hosting packages included the “Shuttle” and “Voyager” plans, also Trek-inspired. Their trademarked logo is a small planet with two gold/yellow rings circling it. Lunarpages’ services literally began with a handful of servers housed in Riddle’s bedroom, where Riddle and Andersen offered free web hosting subscriptions to customers worldwide. Currently, Lunarpages serves more than 140,000 worldwide customers and staffs 130 full-time employees. Andersen has since sold his shares of the company to Riddle, who is the sole owner and CEO of Lunarpages Web Hosting.
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[edit] Evolution of Company
With the creation of a web hosting forum in 1998 (which still exists today), Lunarpages garnished interest from webmasters looking for free website hosting. LunarForums quickly grew from a simple place to ask basic questions to a resource for webmasters to find answers on everything from general web design and email to complex coding, software recommendations, and technical issues. The popularity of their free hosting service expanded considerably in 2000, enough that Riddle and Anderson decided to open up the company to paid hosting services in the Shared Hosting market. They created the Shuttle and Voyager Plans; the former was best-suited for new webmasters who needed a quick page or two, while the latter was meant for Ecommerce Web Hosting or sites requiring a larger amount of storage space and bandwidth. These two plans still exist today, in the form of “Basic” and “Business” Hosting.
In 2000, Riddle also recruited three additional staff members to handle new customer loads, take sales calls, and offer technical support for paid services. Chad Riddle, Ron Riddle’s son, managed the new addition of a Sales Desk for incoming calls and tickets. Lee Coleman took over as the IT Manager to handle incoming tech support, server issues, and general server maintenance tasks. Amy Armitage worked alongside Chad Riddle in managing the Sales Team and has since become the head of Business Development and Marketing. These three employees remain with the company today in senior management positions.
Andersen sold his share of the business to Riddle in 2005, and the same year, Lunarpages ventured into Windows web hosting for the ASP.NET and MSSQL hosting platform. In 2006, Lunarpages launched their Dedicated Hosting Plans and added VPS web hosting in 2007. They recently (in July of 2007) launched a Dedicated Hosting Site to house their 20-some Dedicated Hosting options, including their Mega and High-Performance Dedicated Servers. Even more recently, Lunarpages launched their UK site, marking their inclusion as a true world-wide web host.
Today they run 3 data centers (in Los Angeles, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Riverside, California), two call centers (both in La Habra, California), and have more than 130 full time staff consisting of System Administrators, Customer Service Representatives, Developers, and a dynamic Sales and Marketing Team.
They have partnered with companies such as Microsoft (for Windows Web Hosting), TuCows (for domain registration), CPanel (for Linux Control Panels), SWSoft (for Windows Control Panels), Authorize.NET (for Payment Gateways), and Ewisoft (for Web Site building). In addition to Web Hosting, Lunarpages resells domain name registration, SSL Certificates, Dedicated IP addresses, and offers basic web design templates in their Beta release of PageMason.
Recent merges in the web hosting industry (such as IpowerWeb’s merger with Endurance) pose the question of Lunarpages selling or merging with another industry leader, though Lunarpages has spoken out about the compromise this would cause their business. In their “About Us” page, they mention that this is one of their best business moves, as their customers can see that they are not interested in buying and selling but in growing the company and their resources. Ron Riddle continues to manage and operate the company and several of his family members assist, making Lunarpages a family-oriented entity.
Lunarpages also provides their customers with a web hosting blog and newsletter to keep them up-to-date (offering advice on Marketing, SEO, Web Design, and more) as well as provide them with an escape from webmaster issues, with industry-leader, staff, and customer interviews, funny articles, and lighthearted but helpful tutorials.
[edit] The Lunarpages Affiliate Program
Lunarpages launched a Web Hosting Affiliate Program in 2000. This Affiliate Program is an in-house program which rewards their customers and even non-customers for referring new business to Lunarpages with $65 1st-tier commissions and $5 2nd-tier commissions. To date, this program has paid out nearly $4 million in affiliate commissions and continues to be one of the top-ranked Affiliate Programs in the Web Hosting Industry with over 53,000 affiliates enrolled. The Lunarpages Affiliate Program is geared towards web designers but admits any interested party and is one of the only programs in the industry to offer personalized support with two Affiliate Account Managers, Amy Armitage and Tiara Rea.
[edit] LunarForums.com
The forum that helped Lunarpages to become successful is still a working forum, where nearly 40,000 members post on a day-to-day basis. Having a website hosted with Lunarpages is not a prerequisite to posting on LunarForums, and in fact, many people who post help and ask questions are not members but merely tech enthusiasts willing to lend a hand or confused webmasters requiring information. LunarForums is comprised of Lunarpages Staff and System Administrators, new customers who require support that’s outside of Lunarpages’ normal assistance, old customers willing to lend a hand, and a general audience of geeks and webmasters. In existence since 1998, it is one of the oldest forums in the web hosting industry.
