Interviewed on 24 May 10
Harvey Raybould, Managing Director
Compila is one of the most established hosting companies in the UK. It was formed in 2000 and currently serves 1000’s of customers both in the UK and worldwide. It’s hosting prices are on average 26% cheaper than it’s major competitors, without any loss of quality or service, guaranteed.
Compila serves small businesses, charities, schools and partner resellers, such as web and graphic design agencies, SEO companies and IT consultants. Compila delivers a ‘no hidden fees’ service with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, meaning your web site is online 24/7.
It prides itself on offering high quality customer service, provided by real people based in the UK. Furthermore, it’s web hosting plans come with the world’s most popular control panel and a huge range of features and benefits.
Compila also offers a completely unique “no risk” service thanks to it’s 60 day money back guarantee.
It is a values-led business, committed to the environment and it’s local communities. Compila is a corporate partner of The Woodland Trust.
It’s commitment to reducing energy usage, through a constant review of it’s business practices and IT infrastructure, could make it even cheaper for clients.
The bottom line for the customer is great service, unbeatable prices, and the knowledge that they have saved money by working with an ethical business.
What unique selling points do you offer?
Compila is a multi award winning web hosting company. We have demonstrated our longevity in the nine years since we were founded. Our green ethos, value for money and customer service sets us apart from other hosting companies.
Our user friendly sales process and technical support make Compila ideal for both expert resellers and hosting novices. We save clients money, time and at absolutely no risk, with our 60 day money back guarantee.
Unlike many of our competitors, over 80% of Compila’s new revenue comes from repeat custom and recommendations. Proving that not only are our prices great but our service really is as good as we say it is.
Our customer support representatives all have years of experience and knowledge. The benefit for our clients is huge, as most issues can be resolved on the spot.
Describe the services you offer?
Compila’s principle service is web hosting, our plans start from just £13.99 + Vat per year. These are provided either direct to our customers or via our resellers. Recent desk research performed by Compila has shown that we are on average 26% cheaper than nine of our major UK competitors.
Now, we know price isn’t everything. However, in this economic climate, enabling clients to save money and time, helping them to enhance their businesses and still offering them a great service, is really what makes us stand out from the crowd.
Other services provided by Compila include domain name registration from £2.55 + Vat per year for a UK domain name, web site design, SEO services, web site promotion, Ecommerce solutions and SSL certificates.
Describe your target market?
As a web hosting company, Compila’s potential customers include anyone who owns or is looking to own a web site. However we work mainly with small businesses and resellers and over the years we have helped 1000’s of clients both in the UK and around the world.
We are able to offer the support needed by a beginner, managing a single web site for the first time and the competitive pricing and bulk ordering functionality required by a reseller.
How is your company planning for the future?
For Compila, planning for the future is about two things. The first is ensuring we can deliver the best service in the market for the lowest prices and the second is about ensuring our business is sustainable in every sense.
As a result, our management spend a lot of time making sure we are on top of our market in terms of new products and value added services. We are constantly researching what is happening in the hosting world and what new products and services we can apply for our customers.
Compila is also committed to planning for environmental sustainability. This means ensuring we are fulfilling our obligation to protect the environment. We have built a relationship with the Woodland Trust and are attempting to underline our own sustainable credentials by developing an improved environmental plan. This enables us to make less of an impact on the environment as we trade.
What benefits can you offer your customers?
The major benefits include saving customers time, money and helping them to make their businesses more profitable. Our highly efficient, streamlined, working practices enable us to save large amounts on energy costs, office expenses and wastage. We pass these savings on to our clients.
As mentioned previously, we are on average 26% cheaper than our major competitors, so we can save clients money year after year guaranteed. Over 98% of our business processes are fully automated, from instant account setup to renewals. We have invested hugely in modern automatic systems, all of this is designed to save clients time. Our world class control panel is so easy to use and helps clients manage their hosting account effortlessly and in real time.
We also offer a free Welcome Pack. This comes with downloadable e-books and 300 templates. Free software is also included such as CMS, Joomla, Mambo etc, Wordpress, shopping cart systems, in fact over 30 can be installed easily via the Cpanel.
Many of our plans come with a free £20 or £50 Google AdWords voucher. This enables customers to advertise on the world’s biggest search engine. To qualify for the £20 voucher, a client only has to spend, with Compila, £21.99 + Vat or the £50 voucher only £47.99 + Vat. So, a customer who was planning to use Google AdWords anyway, they can effectively get a year’s free hosting.
How do you support your customers?
Compila’s main methods of customer support are via our UK phone lines, our live chat service and a UK manned HelpDesk. We also provide a range of video tutorials, a host of downloadable manuals, graphical handbooks, FAQ’s and a knowledge base. There is also an extensive searchable help function in the control panel itself.
We believe that customer support should not just be about helping customers get online, but also to help them make the best of their web site once it’s active.
Finally, in practical terms, we email our customers to remind them to renew their domains a month before they have to do so. If they don’t renew, they then get a reminder after the renewal date, just in case they have forgotten. This prevents our customers from losing their domains to competitors, who are eager to snap up those locations that are generating high traffic.
