Secure Hosting for Community Bank Websites with Mike Demo – Mix & Matchbox Podcast

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[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, welcome back to another episode of Mixed and Matchbox.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Brent Feldman and we are joined today by Mike Demo.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're the partnership lead North America at hosting.com.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Mike.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How's it going?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's good.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Happy to chat with you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Happy Monday.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Happy Monday as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely looking forward to jumping into the questions here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You've been heavily involved with Jumla earlier in your career, which is also a CMS that is very near and dear to our hearts at Matchbox.
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[SPEAKER_00]: that we leverage basically shortly after starting the company.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And how did you get from doing things with Jumla into where you're at now at hosting.com?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's a journey.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My first wheel CMS was probably PHP Nuke back in the day, and then from there I was looking for something new and I was poking around a fantastico in C-panel, which those that know that tool.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Basically it was soft tackless before soft tackless.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the
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[SPEAKER_01]: different company, but basically it's what it was.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I just stumbled upon Mombo.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so started playing around with Mombo and did that whole thing and then noticed that the Mombo community,
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[SPEAKER_01]: It, the development was a little slow, like something happened like about a year after I started a mom-bub, and then I went to Jumla in from also fantastic and I'm like, this looks a lot like mom-bub, and then, of course, now I know the history of the fork from mom-bub or Jumla, but I wasn't really involved in the community back then.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And they just started doing it professionally, working at agencies for community banks and credit unions, which is funny because that's one of your specialties as well as private equity firms was the other niche that I really spent a lot of time at.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And really got to know the community and started going to the conferences.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I joined the team as supporting
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[SPEAKER_01]: The finance team, helping get sponsorship from the project, because it's a nonprofit, well, not for profit, technically, and working on the GMO world conference and all that fun stuff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, we came to the treasurer and joined in motion hosting as an open source evangelist.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But when Todd, the co-owner of the co-founder of in motion hosting said,
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[SPEAKER_01]: I got this new thing, but it's not Jumela, and I'm like, that's fine.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So like, what's that?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then it was bold grid, which is the Dragon Drop Builder suite that in motion hosting kind of launched.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I was there for a while, did all that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I really got to in on the WordPress community, and
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[SPEAKER_01]: been focused on WordPress oversense and now I'm at hosting.com and helping all open source CMS projects, obviously WordPress is a big focus of ours, but we still go to Jumal events, we still go to Jumal events because PHP and
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[SPEAKER_01]: What I find interesting about the small niche CMS communities is that they really appreciate when hosts give them attention, because a lot of them feel kind of like the forgotten stepchild when at the end of the day open source is my passion.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My favorite quote, I stole from my friend Jessica Dumbar who was the evangelist for concrete five.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not married to a CMS.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in an open source relationship.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there we go.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I actually I love that and actually paying attention to other CMSs that are out there because I do I feel like sometimes WordPress just really gobbles all the air in the room.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's it's a wonderful CMS.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We love it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We've been like on the platform for years, but yeah, actually, you know, there are there's other great CMSs and they fulfill great functions and stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So
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[SPEAKER_00]: it's nice to hear you talk about it in such a way that it is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very open sort of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of the day, I also think it vying for the open source community is also such an important thing where I don't think people realize how critical that is to the functioning of all of these platforms and that so many people give their time generously to see them succeed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, it's cool.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and what's funny is I find a lot of people in the WordPress community are very tribalism, like WordPress needs to be best and needs to be number one, but it's it should be open source versus the, you know, the non open source stuff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And Matt Mullin-Awegg, the co-founder of WordPress, he does this, too, like he contributes financially as a member to the Drupal Foundation, automatic sponsors, a lot of the Drupal conferences, and they have kind of like an open-source area, and they do different talks from different projects, and a lot of the project teams collaborate, especially on security and things like that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So what's funny is that the projects get it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a lot of the community, I think, likes to, you know, feel like they're on the winning team.
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[SPEAKER_01]: When it's really open source versus not open source in my mind.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I, you couldn't have said it better.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, cool.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you've worked in and around agencies, like serving banks and credit unions.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And actually, yeah, I know you just mentioned it here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, what, what did that, you know, sort of world teach you about what these institutions
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[SPEAKER_00]: versus what vendors assume they need.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's interesting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of the clients that we would have
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[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, the community banks and credit unions, I would say more focused on credit unions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, they're there for their members.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But the web, for most of these institutions, the marketing site was not really the focus.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was how to serve the members better.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of the time the people we would teach on like how to update and maintain it would
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[SPEAKER_01]: be, you know, not people in the marketing team that would be tellers or they would be, you know, administrative assistance and people that have been at the institutional time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I think a lot of people have this misconception of, you know, these institutions being.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So focused on assets or focused on this or that when at the end of the day, I think it's more focused on serving the members and if the website is going to help for that, it's a tool, but it's not what people, you know, they're not it's it's a means to an end, I guess I is a way to put it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, that's kind of a weird answer, but uh, I was always surprised that who I was training to like up at the interest rates and things and uh, it was not what I was expecting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, there's big credit unions that have marketing teams about a lot of the time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's like one person and I always found that surprising.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's actually that's that's super salient and I mean, it makes sense because when we've been looking at, you know, at organizations from working with them, I think the assumption is that there are there's like a huge marketing team backing, you know, the this group and it can be that they have tons of different positions tons of people working for the organization lots of different branches, lots of things out there, but the people running the marketing at the end of the day usually it's pretty tight and it's close net and yeah, it may only be one person really.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's also helpful to stay cognizant about what is important to anybody who may be using one of those websites keeping the editing experience easy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't, you know, sort of over-complicate somebody else's job who may have their mind on
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, being a teller, doing like, you know, some other functions for the bank.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that's actually really good to keep in mind to, you know, make sure that you're appealing to just about anybody who may be working on it, making sure the interfaces easy to use the back and editing capabilities, because, yeah, they don't need yet another another job on their play.
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[SPEAKER_01]: 100% so I had developed this concept of I called it a cat template, a client admin template.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so we would always have a view that was when you would log in and you would see just like the three buttons you need.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because 99% of the time they just need to update the interest rate, update the loan rates.
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[SPEAKER_01]: put on, we're closed to, you know, do this holiday or whatever, like, you know, status message, and then like maybe an event calendar.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So those are what they do 99% of the time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So we would literally hide all the rest of the CMS from them to just the things they need.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, there would always be a button that could go over to the full native CMS template.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We would not, I don't believe in locking clients
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[SPEAKER_01]: But like it just makes it super easy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of stole the idea from Randy Kerry who kind of talked about this idea of, you know, admin templates being used to service what they're actually doing with it instead of just having so many options.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because I hated having to do train clients and be like, don't touch this, don't touch this, don't touch this, don't touch this.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it was just frustrating and it just is overwhelming.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So log in, see the five buttons or the three things that you do all the time, and just have easy access to that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, honestly, that's fantastic advice.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's now going to make me think about how maybe we approach a new panel for what we provide to admins, because seriously, just making anybody's job easier on a content editing front, just yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you can simplify one thing in person's day, maybe it just makes the experience so much better.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's so cool that you made the jump, also from agencies, side work, into actually working on platform, infrastructure, kind of stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But what made you feel like that was the right next move for you, and then what kind of surprised you when you actually got into that world?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I've been in the hosting space a very long time, but mostly focused on partnerships, relationships, evangelism, that sort of stuff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So obviously I've been face to with product teams and infrastructure teams, but that's not really my focus.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My focus is people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I loved most about doing the agency work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Even though I was the senior dev,
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to be on the client calls, and the sales team would keep bringing me on the client calls because I was good at talking to clients without really technical and, you know, I could speak clients like I can translate.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I like about it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What does surprise me a lot is
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[SPEAKER_01]: from like the hosting space is the size of some of the organizations, the institutional knowledge that's important, but also how easy it is for, you know, perception to change your feeling on your provider and
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I like the phrase perceptions reality.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it is what, you know, if you had a really bad experience recently with a provider and you had 10 years of great experiences, you're going to remember that that one that didn't go that well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And depending on your relationship, you might be willing to give a benefit of the doubt, but people talk about the bad experiences, they don't talk about the good experiences.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's been my biggest surprise in this world is...
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[SPEAKER_01]: how commoditized a lot of clients' feel it is, which it's up to the providers to add value beyond just the bare minimum through value ads and other services and things like Adhosting.com, we do weekly agency training webinars that you don't even have to get a customer and we get hundreds of agencies on that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: so many people have emailed me being like oh we really appreciate that and the content team the community teams are great job on that so I would say that's been my biggest surprise is is kind of how clients perceive the vendors but on the flip side if they have a really good experience they're super loyal and they'll stick with that vendor a very long time
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of two sides of the same coin, but even though we get that as customers, it doesn't, it's always not always noticeable.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I always use the example like Comcast.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone loves Comcast, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Comcast Internet Exponity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's customer service in the world, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What's funny is if you actually look at the surveys that that have been done on Comcast, but it's like a 90% satisfaction rate.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Really?
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at, if you look at the JD power stuff, like, so that's, that's my point, right, is that it takes such a small percentage to change people's opinion of an entire brand.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And.
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[SPEAKER_01]: that is what I try to do on every interaction with any of our clients or respective clients or partners is just have them have a good experience and if I can add value in help them, I will, if that means our products great, if it means not our products, that's fine too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I do that in a lot of weird ways.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm known for doing lots of weird human centric focused things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Doing COVID, I sent a lot 50 of our partners at in motion when I was at in motion back then.
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[SPEAKER_01]: 80 pounds of pasta to my pasta in the mail and with a handwritten cart and people still bring that up to this day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, uh, uh, uh, I just just weird things that get people to remember you, uh, that's, that's what people will talk about.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I handed out tie pens like when I was, when I was at Bold Grid, these tie pens that are branded handed out a hundred thousand of these.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To this day, people still pull these out in person and show them to me the type and then I gave them 10 year, 5, 6, 7 years ago, um, to the point that we now actually have these that I was
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because we're at Word Camp U.S. And it kept getting brought up like, do you have tied pens?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have tie pens?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have tie pens?
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[SPEAKER_01]: To both in motion and to me at our table.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In emotions like no, we don't have the tie pens anymore.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then everyone coming to me be like, oh yeah, you gave me the tie pen last time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have more of those?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I get tagged probably a couple times a month just, you know, five, six years later.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So whatever you can do to add value is kind of my passion.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a really long answer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But no, that's that's great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think that is good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and also I think you should get it kick back from tide.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They've definitely they've had considerable investment but it's also it's one of those clutch resources at a conference.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to self admittedly say that I always seem to make a mess on myself whenever and especially if you're trying to like hurry you know navigate lunch while you're you know like going through like different conference sessions it's it's actually I feel like that is it's one of the the small things good
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, coffee stain on your shirt, whatever, you know, yeah, no, I've definitely a spiller.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so once I've realized you can get custom branded tide pens officially, it, uh,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Again, it's one of those things that when I brought up the idea to my manager and stuff, people are like, that's the stupidest idea ever.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, trust me, people will love it, and they do.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But again, it's just whatever your thing is, find a way to be human and not just selling yourself.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you can add value,
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[SPEAKER_01]: at over time, it'll just take care of the business.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll take care of itself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, actually, from your perspective, and this may be kind of a hot take thing though, but what are some of the biggest mistakes, especially in regards to like, you know, hosting, but the agencies make, what are the biggest mistakes that they're making in terms of either
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[SPEAKER_00]: security or client trust, you know, and that can be for regulated industries like, you know, like banking, credit unions, stuff, or in general, because I'm sure that you see, you know, probably either notions that have been baked in like for agencies that they're just making mistakes and they don't even realize it or they do and they keep doing it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think probably a few things come to mind first and foremost, I think agencies as a whole treat hosting as a commodity and as a key part of the stack.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They think it's something that they can roll their own or kind of do themselves or it doesn't really matter where you host.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's just isn't true.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen host disappear overnight, unfortunately.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've known companies that have lost their websites.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The decisions you make on where you host matter, and that doesn't necessarily mean hosting a comm is the solution for everything, but right down your priorities, is it cost?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is it phone support?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Does that phone support need to be U.S. based?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Do you care what's the response time?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What's the SLA?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Do they have failover?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, what actually matters to you?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then make those decisions or release talk your client through those things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I would say tweeting hosting as an afterthought is probably a number one thing that I see that a lot of host, a lot of agencies make.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it could be different per clients, maybe one client needs managed and another one is okay and shared or whatever the case is, but have a discussion and also I just actually posted an article about this on Forbes ask your client what's important to them, are they a non-profit, are they a non-profit in the environmental industry, like I was at PIT's work camp, I was work camp US last year, Portland.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All these people like oh yeah, I'm from Portland and I have clients here and I'm like oh cool what type of sites and they're all like environmental sites I'm like okay great to use green hosting and they're like what's green hosting?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, this is such an easy win.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You guys, I talked to like 10 agencies that focused just on nonprofits.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, just ask the question, find out what's important to them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If it's a, if you focus on different affinity groups, like the LGBT community, well, there's a domain register that is certified by the LGBT Chamber of Commerce as own, you know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: have them be your domain of it to start.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Those little singles are what will get people talking about you and will remember you because it shows you actually care about them beyond just the project.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So figure out what's important to you in your clients and then make decisions based on that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then the other mistake I see done a lot is just not having a good
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[SPEAKER_01]: backup plan.
20:34.308 --> 20:39.961
[SPEAKER_01]: So we log in just the host backups or not testing your backups.
20:40.362 --> 20:41.825
[SPEAKER_01]: I find that's a big issue.
20:42.507 --> 20:47.839
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, host backups are probably okay in the majority of cases, but
20:47.819 --> 20:49.481
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, you never know what's going to happen.
20:50.643 --> 20:53.707
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to make sure that you have off-site backup.
20:53.787 --> 21:06.303
[SPEAKER_01]: So at hosting.com we do 14 days of backups for most of our plans that agencies use and then I recommend that they that agencies send it to cold storage after that.
21:06.383 --> 21:09.928
[SPEAKER_01]: So like Amazon Glacier, you can store like
21:09.908 --> 21:13.332
[SPEAKER_01]: a year's worth of WordPress backups for like $5.
21:13.532 --> 21:15.434
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, it's crazy how cheap it is.
21:16.615 --> 21:23.523
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this caveat of Amazon Glacier is, it can take up to six hours to be able to get that data back out because it's called storage.
21:23.603 --> 21:34.735
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you have 14 days of livestock that you can access quickly and then the rest of it, is there, just have a backup plan.
21:34.715 --> 21:37.023
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, make sure the stuff is where it needs to be.
21:37.083 --> 21:46.817
[SPEAKER_01]: And then last but not least, security talk about too fact authentication with your clients, talk about what that means.
21:47.354 --> 21:57.768
[SPEAKER_01]: And also talk about the types of two factor and the risks related to SMS versus E-Metalum versus using Authenticator app or Ubiqui.
21:58.008 --> 22:00.010
[SPEAKER_01]: My biggest two-fact, I'm a fan of Ubiqui's.
22:00.171 --> 22:08.181
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the, we, we force every bank of credit, we used to use a Ubiqui to log into the site.
22:08.161 --> 22:18.175
[SPEAKER_01]: We annoy lots of people, yes, but we knew that if they didn't have that physical key, plus the username and password, they couldn't get into the site.
22:18.555 --> 22:24.423
[SPEAKER_01]: And for that industry, that we felt that was a good trade-off.
22:26.626 --> 22:31.553
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so basically just think about the things that you take for granted is kind of the TLDR.
22:31.837 --> 22:34.140
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely, that's helpful.
22:35.342 --> 22:41.530
[SPEAKER_00]: There are, there's so many different factors that goes into it, but you start it with just basically saying, don't treat it like a commodity.
22:41.610 --> 22:43.712
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like that is so important.
22:43.732 --> 22:53.305
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, make sure if you're going to care what other organizations that you put your trust and money into care about, but make sure you're vetting that for your host and company, too.
22:53.765 --> 22:59.633
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure that, yeah, you're thinking about some of the baseline things like security.
22:59.613 --> 23:04.158
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like that is it's helpful just to like keep the basics in mind, but sometimes people are.
23:04.238 --> 23:09.044
[SPEAKER_00]: If they're just like in a rush where they're not thinking about it or like, oh, this meets the grade price wise.
23:09.124 --> 23:11.287
[SPEAKER_00]: They aren't putting the rest of those things is priority.
23:12.168 --> 23:14.651
[SPEAKER_01]: I think of one other quick answer.
23:14.711 --> 23:22.300
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would also say the other thing that I find agencies make them a stake all the time is a forum.
23:23.261 --> 23:29.248
[SPEAKER_01]: They all agency all the time and I did a talk on this a few years ago.
23:29.549 --> 23:42.875
[SPEAKER_01]: All, I would say the majority of agencies are building forums incorrectly, because in most foreign plugins in WordPress, the vast majority of them say, with Jumla, it's not encrypted in the table.
23:43.636 --> 23:46.342
[SPEAKER_01]: And think about the forums that most websites have.
23:47.243 --> 23:49.127
[SPEAKER_01]: There's PPI in that, right?
23:50.137 --> 24:00.771
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's more than just the, oh, it's a job application, so we need to make sure it's encrypted, depending on your jurisdiction or things.
24:01.409 --> 24:08.621
[SPEAKER_01]: all of this data just sits in the database and it never gets cleaned up, it never gets sanitized, it never gets assault or hashed.
24:09.102 --> 24:14.912
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, yes, there's ways to make an encrypted, there's ways to make it safe, but 99% of agencies don't think about it.
24:15.373 --> 24:17.697
[SPEAKER_01]: They just build forms, build forms, build forms.
24:17.777 --> 24:20.802
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen forms for credit applications.
24:20.917 --> 24:25.123
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, on, you know, just publicly in the database.
24:25.664 --> 24:29.429
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, it's one of those things that if you don't know, you don't know, you don't know what you don't know.
24:29.950 --> 24:32.294
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're like, oh, well, you know, the site's curious.
24:32.354 --> 24:35.298
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, in this form is this is a great form builder.
24:36.179 --> 24:42.148
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it might be an amazing form builder, but no form builder that I know of on WordPress out of the box.
24:42.128 --> 24:42.929
[SPEAKER_01]: has encryption.
24:43.070 --> 24:49.942
[SPEAKER_01]: Now a lot of them have plugins or options that you can use encryption, but it's not just like a default setting.
24:49.982 --> 24:58.498
[SPEAKER_01]: So think out at your forms, figure, make sure that that data can be in the database unencrypted.
24:59.059 --> 25:04.008
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that data went out and you told your client that, make sure it wouldn't be an issue.
25:04.168 --> 25:05.250
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it is an issue,
25:07.913 --> 25:37.920
[SPEAKER_01]: it fix it, and if you don't want to use the work to use a plug-in to encrypt the user or foreign plug-in to encrypt on your local database or whatever, their services out there like foreign stack as HIPAA compliant and encrypted at rest stuff, and there's lots of providers, that offer similar things, but you can also do it just naturally in your CMS, but you just
25:37.900 --> 25:47.352
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't tell you how many times people just don't think about it, and then something happens and then they lose all that data and then it's not fun.
25:47.933 --> 26:03.773
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean like just recently and especially also as we talk about like banks and credit unions like the security not just like scams, but you know like just like general best practice security stuff has to be top of mind.
26:03.905 --> 26:24.006
[SPEAKER_00]: And it, you know, like, we're dealing, uh, I don't know, I feel so bad by using this term, but like, like, uh, we're in unprecedented times, but we are like, you know, but I feel like every new era in terms of like, you know, security or scams, all that sort of stuff is going to be unprecedented because it's uncharted waters.
26:24.286 --> 26:27.429
[SPEAKER_00]: People come up with new ways, new, you know, sort of things to do.
26:27.729 --> 26:33.135
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you aren't taking care of, like, out of you referred to this before,
26:33.115 --> 26:45.509
[SPEAKER_00]: of like, you know, the bare necessities, you're really missing, you know, huge opportunities to prevent future headaches, as well as potentially big, big problems.
26:46.089 --> 26:53.818
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, personal, you know, identify information that goes into forms, that could be, you know, huge disaster.
26:54.198 --> 26:56.401
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where it's funny.
26:56.481 --> 27:02.768
[SPEAKER_00]: I think sometimes we get disincentized to it, you know, you get another like letter in the mail or something that's like,
27:02.748 --> 27:05.074
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you're, you know, this was compromised.
27:05.355 --> 27:07.781
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like, you know, call up trans-unit or something.
27:08.021 --> 27:20.352
[SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like some of that decent, it is desensitizing leads us into maybe making less decisions for our benefit to just like, do the right things from the get go, you know.
27:20.888 --> 27:33.123
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of times, agencies specifically have this like, you know, not my circus, not my monkeys mentality, thanks to credit unions, I think are a good example, right?
27:33.223 --> 27:42.976
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, I can't speak for you, but I pretty confident you can say, you guys are not touching the Corbin provided, you're not touching any of the software that actually doesn't anything financial.
27:43.416 --> 27:46.440
[SPEAKER_01]: And same with us, you know, rappers and all of that.
27:46.420 --> 27:54.491
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day, even if the core financial product is safe, if there's a displacement, the trust in the institution is gone.
27:54.531 --> 28:06.168
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if it actually had nothing to do, like, oh, well, we don't touch the financial aspect, which that's good, that's not your business and it's good that you don't have to touch that.
28:06.608 --> 28:10.774
[SPEAKER_01]: But just because even if that technically stayed safe,
28:10.754 --> 28:14.760
[SPEAKER_01]: doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt the reputation or the any of that.
28:14.880 --> 28:24.655
[SPEAKER_01]: So even if it can be technically, say from a security standpoint, they can still be harmed done reputationally.
28:24.695 --> 28:32.627
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, obviously there's a lot of things that could be done in the browser and, you know, that could be bad, but
28:33.130 --> 28:41.282
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, you know, I hear it a lot with like e-commerce stores, like, well, you know, it goes to Stripe and we don't store any of the credit card data.
28:41.802 --> 28:42.784
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, fine.
28:42.884 --> 28:52.658
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you still, but if the email list gets exposed and then everyone gets email this scam, you can tell people that, oh, your credit card data saved, but it's still not going to be fun.
28:52.908 --> 28:53.409
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:53.489 --> 28:54.290
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.
28:54.891 --> 29:01.660
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, actually, you know, this is perfect because like while we're on this, about, you know, maybe some of these things that people don't consider.
29:01.720 --> 29:14.257
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were, you know, let's say in a bank shoes, bank or credit union evaluating a website partner, what are the hosting security questions that they should ask, but maybe usually don't.
29:14.958 --> 29:20.265
[SPEAKER_00]: And what are good answers, versus maybe red flags, where you're like, oh, these people have no idea what they're talking.
29:22.355 --> 29:43.802
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so fun, a host, ask if they're using a public cloud or if it's their own infrastructure, ask if they have any certifications or compliance, such as I think it's ISO 3701 or 271 that I can ever remember or talk to any of that.
29:43.982 --> 29:50.691
[SPEAKER_01]: So just to kind of ask about that, if it's medical hip, you know, compliance, all that.
29:50.671 --> 29:54.584
[SPEAKER_01]: Ask the what their disaster recovery plan is.
29:54.645 --> 30:01.508
[SPEAKER_01]: Ask what their SLA is for response times.
30:02.737 --> 30:13.893
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just basic questions and I have the certifications and they can point you to like the SOC2 compliance or the HIPAA compliance or any of that, they usually have most of the boxes checked.
30:14.915 --> 30:31.579
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would say that's just a bare minimum, just make sure they have the certifications, then ask if they use in a public cloud or they have their own hardware and that's also important because then you know, we line on a third party that you have to, you know,
30:31.711 --> 30:37.300
[SPEAKER_01]: It just takes out another man in the middle, like the deal with for like, you know, a VACSA, so the data.
30:37.941 --> 30:50.260
[SPEAKER_01]: And then where the data center is, you know, because depending on your industry, there might be data sovereignty needs of requirements.
30:50.527 --> 31:03.507
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, ask if they have a location near you, like we were in Minnesota when I was doing this at my company, we had a data center down to how manyapolis because we were dealing with all local.
31:03.892 --> 31:08.199
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, local, local, you know, banks and credit unions.
31:08.219 --> 31:10.642
[SPEAKER_01]: And we wanted it to be as fast as possible for them.
31:10.702 --> 31:14.889
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the internet's a lot faster than it was 15 years ago.
31:15.029 --> 31:17.733
[SPEAKER_01]: But so it's less important now.
31:17.893 --> 31:23.702
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you have a choice, yeah, you want the data set it would be closer to the customers than farther away.
31:24.764 --> 31:24.904
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
31:24.924 --> 31:25.245
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
31:25.265 --> 31:26.727
[SPEAKER_01]: At least in the same country.
31:26.977 --> 31:28.078
[SPEAKER_00]: that absolutely.
31:28.659 --> 31:48.382
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, there's been a couple of times as we've been talking here that you've mentioned, like, you know, like, outages, disaster recovery, things like that, you know, when something goes wrong, like an outage incident, performance degradation, what does good response look like from a hosting standpoint?
31:48.462 --> 31:55.650
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what what communication, timelines, ownership, like, what do you find that hosting.com does that you feel like,
31:55.630 --> 31:57.272
[SPEAKER_00]: you're like, oh, this is a great way.
31:57.392 --> 32:01.797
[SPEAKER_00]: If we have issues, which hopefully you don't, you know, but what is good response, hopefully?
32:03.118 --> 32:17.314
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so have a status page as publicly accessible, not tied to hopefully not on the same infrastructure or hosting so that, you know, because I have a status page that's not accessible, it's just not useful, right?
32:17.835 --> 32:24.422
[SPEAKER_01]: So have a status
32:24.402 --> 32:33.310
[SPEAKER_01]: there's something that needs to be aware of, but also have an SLA, you know, that kind of makes sense.
32:34.271 --> 32:48.423
[SPEAKER_01]: Some hosts you have to pay extra for enhanced service level agreements, but like look into them and like it's very easy to be like, well, we guarantee three nines of four nines or five nines or it's just, but what does that really mean?
32:48.443 --> 32:54.088
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you read it, it's like, well, if we miss it,
32:54.068 --> 32:54.929
[SPEAKER_01]: that didn't work.
32:55.750 --> 32:57.253
[SPEAKER_01]: And that doesn't really help.
32:57.333 --> 33:02.260
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to know how long until a ticket gets we apply to.
33:02.320 --> 33:03.261
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you reach somebody?
33:03.682 --> 33:07.687
[SPEAKER_01]: And some of this might have cost behind it from different providers.
33:08.909 --> 33:12.955
[SPEAKER_01]: But depending on your customer, that's okay.
33:13.036 --> 33:22.325
[SPEAKER_01]: And then have access, think of if you have the ability to have failover opportunities.
33:22.405 --> 33:27.630
[SPEAKER_01]: So like on our virtual dedicated server product, we have dual redundancy on every piece of hardware.
33:28.051 --> 33:31.234
[SPEAKER_01]: So that, you know, hopefully nothing happens.
33:31.334 --> 33:34.137
[SPEAKER_01]: But obviously nothing's perfect.
33:34.237 --> 33:39.702
[SPEAKER_01]: Cloudflowers had outages recently and big brands have been affected.
33:39.682 --> 33:46.932
[SPEAKER_01]: We were lucky that we were not, even though we used CloudFlare in some of our products, we were not affected on any of our existing customers.
33:47.012 --> 33:51.418
[SPEAKER_01]: We couldn't sell new stuff, but nobody, and it just has to do to how we were using.
33:51.938 --> 34:02.112
[SPEAKER_01]: We were just, I would say, fortunate on how we used the CloudFlare PI, but I couldn't sell you a new server at the time, but at least you weren't down.
34:02.092 --> 34:30.225
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so just kind of talk about the SLA, see if you have an account manager, if you have, I just like having a person to get a lot, basically, just gone, yeah, that's job, honestly, is like for a lot of agencies that I talked to is that they're just happy to have someone, they might not ever need it, but they just happy to have somebody, because you just don't want to be feel like you're just a number kind of lost in the shuffle.
34:32.011 --> 34:40.039
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so again, it's just cool to have any discussion and figuring out what your risk talk and says.
34:40.279 --> 34:46.826
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, you might, you'll pay more for better access or better SLAs or whatever the case is.
34:46.946 --> 34:47.907
[SPEAKER_01]: But none of this is new.
34:48.507 --> 34:57.276
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you're using AWS, for example, or Azure, if you want actually good support from AWS, you're paying $500 to $1,000 a month.
34:57.425 --> 35:02.171
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, to get anything that is remotely within six hours.
35:02.992 --> 35:07.157
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is not just a ticket system, that is just automated and shit.
35:07.177 --> 35:13.866
[SPEAKER_01]: And even then, you're still gonna do, it's so big, you never get to get the same person every time.
35:13.886 --> 35:22.977
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, I really like how our support team takes on a ship and helps clients all the way through,
35:23.480 --> 35:24.282
[SPEAKER_01]: from beginning to end.
35:24.342 --> 35:29.732
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it isn't, if it isn't a nuts thing, we'll try to help them if we can.
35:29.813 --> 35:38.670
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there was an agency you've had a bunch of sites down, but they used a third party, Wath provider that was in through us.
35:38.650 --> 35:41.033
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I did the research.
35:41.054 --> 35:44.539
[SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, I was like, oh, hey, this is what's happening.
35:44.579 --> 35:46.842
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's a link to their, to their doc.
35:47.944 --> 35:49.406
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how you can get around it for now.
35:49.806 --> 35:50.387
[SPEAKER_01]: Things like that.
35:50.527 --> 35:55.815
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't an us thing, but it was, but it was instead of us saying, well, it's not, we're fine.
35:55.930 --> 36:11.695
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, taking that a little bit of extra time and being like, oh, we noticed your DNA is doing this and, you know, we checked with their status page and then they noticed that they're having this footage and you can either bypass it this way or you can wait for them to, you know.
36:12.063 --> 36:14.448
[SPEAKER_01]: get back or whatever the case may be.
36:15.330 --> 36:27.897
[SPEAKER_01]: So taking that little extra time to be on just the that my problem go away just to try to help the solution because hosts get a lot of questions that aren't hosting related just due to the nature of the beast.
36:28.298 --> 36:29.380
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, yeah.
36:29.545 --> 36:30.286
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.
36:30.306 --> 36:51.874
[SPEAKER_00]: And I could see how that at a certain point that's probably, you know, exhausting, you know, but at the same time, you know, trying to be at least remotely helpful, especially understanding just, you know, being compassionate to be a whole situation because this, you know, could be devastating for an organization of business and, you know, and yeah, and just providing that little bit of support.
36:51.854 --> 37:09.390
[SPEAKER_00]: um you know what what is kind of interesting you've touched on like whiff like a couple of times and I think you know like the biggest thing is like everybody's like secure minded you know what is secure hosting in in your mind like what what are what are the layers of security that matter most.
37:10.737 --> 37:31.885
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I'm going to preface this and say I'm not a security expert, so there are people are much more knowledgeable than me, but security in my opinion is multi-faceted, so it starts on the application level, so let's work press as an example.
37:31.865 --> 37:42.457
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, make sure that that's secure, making sure it stays up to date for any security packages, make sure that you're using two-factor authentication and a good two-factor authentication.
37:43.738 --> 37:48.984
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, from there, the CMS is on the CMS, the control panel lives on.
37:49.665 --> 37:54.330
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I know lots of people that use two-factor on WordPress, but they don't use two-factor on C-panel.
37:54.851 --> 37:56.012
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be because they didn't know where it was there.
37:56.853 --> 38:01.298
[SPEAKER_01]: Or two-factor on SSH.
38:01.801 --> 38:06.814
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, things that just people don't know, so make sure the PHP's up to date.
38:07.576 --> 38:11.406
[SPEAKER_01]: All of that stuff on the server level.
38:11.977 --> 38:17.786
[SPEAKER_01]: like so like it doesn't have a product like immunify 360 or some other sort of scanner.
38:17.846 --> 38:23.434
[SPEAKER_01]: In addition to baby you have something on the WordPress level if you want to go a little bit extra beyond.
38:24.676 --> 38:29.924
[SPEAKER_01]: But then from there the host might have an over-artime security layer.
38:29.964 --> 38:36.634
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was in a calm we just announced that we're going to have monarchs AR security on our
38:36.614 --> 38:43.751
[SPEAKER_01]: It literally sets above, it's not application level thing, it sits above the whole infrastructure.
38:44.473 --> 38:55.298
[SPEAKER_01]: And then on top of that, you can even add in a web application firewall if you'd like, which stops all traffic before it even hits the servers.
38:55.278 --> 39:02.008
[SPEAKER_01]: If you especially feel like close to the IP, so that it has to come through the WAF, so that the stuff can't get loaded.
39:02.048 --> 39:10.040
[SPEAKER_01]: So at the end of the day, you just need to add as many layers as possible to try to make it annoying, because a lot of the stuff is automated.
39:10.060 --> 39:21.336
[SPEAKER_01]: The odds of somebody going after your clients specifically are basically in less now.
39:21.637 --> 39:26.127
[SPEAKER_01]: for like, thanks and credit unions and certain institutions that changes a lot.
39:26.147 --> 39:32.161
[SPEAKER_01]: But for most SMBs, nobody after you, the only cares about your coffee shop.
39:32.401 --> 39:37.232
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you have plugins that are out of date, if you have,
39:37.212 --> 39:47.064
[SPEAKER_01]: PHP this out of date, if you're not good doing good security practice, that's when stuff can go wrong really, really quickly.
39:47.084 --> 39:56.596
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of times, you might not even know, like I've known people that have had their service compromise to just for emails and they didn't even know.
39:57.437 --> 40:01.482
[SPEAKER_01]: So just add as many layers as possible is kind of what it boils down to.
40:02.323 --> 40:04.165
[SPEAKER_01]: And.
40:04.313 --> 40:08.444
[SPEAKER_01]: That has annoyance to it, so you need to find the convenience where it's a security factor.
40:08.504 --> 40:18.249
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's kind of why I am a big fan of hardware physical security because it adds just an extra layer.
40:18.289 --> 40:20.635
[SPEAKER_01]: But even if you have a UBE,
40:20.615 --> 40:25.921
[SPEAKER_01]: but you have outdated PHP, it doesn't really matter because then you can still just get in through a different way.
40:26.001 --> 40:31.568
[SPEAKER_01]: So long story short, it's have a bunch of layers and make sure everything's up to date.
40:31.948 --> 40:38.956
[SPEAKER_01]: And please, please, please do not just install plugins and extensions left and right thinking about it.
40:39.877 --> 40:42.260
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a mistake agencies make all the time.
40:42.320 --> 40:48.107
[SPEAKER_01]: Is they treat these plugins and extensions like an app store, right?
40:49.505 --> 40:51.588
[SPEAKER_01]: WordPress Core does so much.
40:52.389 --> 40:54.352
[SPEAKER_01]: WordPress Core Geumla Core Drupal.
40:54.852 --> 40:58.618
[SPEAKER_01]: These Core RC and Messes have so much power behind them that nobody touches.
40:58.678 --> 41:01.942
[SPEAKER_01]: And they always just default to a plugin.
41:02.663 --> 41:07.450
[SPEAKER_01]: Use Core first because the least amount of third-party things the better.
41:07.931 --> 41:12.357
[SPEAKER_01]: Like WordPress VIP, which is a hosting product by Automatic,
41:12.337 --> 41:24.156
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone gets, you know, always it's like, oh man, it's hard to get VIP certified and, you know, but, you know, every plugin has to go through their track and every theme has to go through their track and every agency has to be certified by them.
41:24.817 --> 41:33.130
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but we're hosting things like time magazine, consumer reports, big publications, and, and
41:33.397 --> 41:43.051
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it makes sense for those types of clients, so it goes back to not one product is going to be the same best for everybody.
41:43.471 --> 41:51.743
[SPEAKER_01]: You just think about it for the specific use case and find what makes sense for that need or that client or whatever the case may be.
41:52.010 --> 41:52.371
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
41:52.931 --> 41:54.394
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you mentioned the VIP things.
41:54.434 --> 41:55.976
[SPEAKER_00]: Boy, that brought back memories.
41:56.477 --> 41:57.338
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because we did.
41:57.438 --> 41:59.321
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a site that was on VIP.
41:59.722 --> 42:01.745
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, everything was scrutinized.
42:01.845 --> 42:04.570
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, for a real good purpose.
42:05.411 --> 42:08.095
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you're right that like, you know, people are hopeful.
42:08.075 --> 42:12.526
[SPEAKER_00]: boy, we've inherited sites that have like 70 plugins on them or more.
42:12.927 --> 42:23.232
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're just like, wow, even thinking about it from the standpoint of unraveling problems if there was one, you know, like, you know, all of those could have to
42:23.212 --> 42:30.926
[SPEAKER_00]: pen and it sees on each other that makes a real not only security nightmare, but also just like development in this app.
42:31.006 --> 42:32.569
[SPEAKER_00]: What if something stops functioning?
42:32.990 --> 42:39.702
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, oh boy, that I feel like that's a hallmark of like groups that like it know enough.
42:39.682 --> 42:40.784
[SPEAKER_00]: to be dangerous.
42:41.265 --> 42:44.012
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is where, you know, it can be truly terrifying.
42:44.092 --> 42:58.804
[SPEAKER_00]: And then ever more so as you get into like things like banks and credit unions that, you know, need to understand the component tree that is being utilized because obviously, yeah, how do you make sure that you remediate problems on, you know, something where you've got so many things going on.
42:59.459 --> 43:04.844
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and a lot of times it's people, you know, might be the client, it might be the agency might be both.
43:05.484 --> 43:11.410
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a need, they search for it in the directory, they install it, oh, that worked or didn't work.
43:11.550 --> 43:14.152
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, they probably would just leave it.
43:14.212 --> 43:22.800
[SPEAKER_01]: So like a lot of times, most of those 70 plugins aren't even being used, which is also more terrifying or updated for that matter, you know?
43:23.220 --> 43:27.424
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but again, I think people think about it like the app store on their phone.
43:27.404 --> 43:29.828
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, like, oh, I'll just install stuff, whatever.
43:30.048 --> 43:33.333
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, yeah, it might use up some storage, but what's the big deal?
43:33.693 --> 43:33.894
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:34.314 --> 43:34.535
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:35.516 --> 43:43.628
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I know recently, you were invited to the Forbes Agency Council and our leading hosting and infrastructure group.
43:44.029 --> 43:53.563
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, what themes are you hearing from agency leaders right now about like delivery risk, uh, margin pressure and, you know, sort of like the, the behind the scenes opt stuff.
43:54.522 --> 44:08.650
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so the Forbes Agency Council, I'm very honored to have been invited to be a part of that group and even more so to be able to be one of the leaders of the subgroups in there.
44:09.672 --> 44:11.957
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks by the way.
44:11.937 --> 44:16.123
[SPEAKER_01]: Forbes Council agency pulse is a free newsletter.
44:16.163 --> 44:17.785
[SPEAKER_01]: You can sign up just for free.
44:17.966 --> 44:22.873
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew it emailed every two weeks articles from the Council members.
44:22.953 --> 44:24.155
[SPEAKER_01]: So check that out.
44:24.195 --> 44:25.557
[SPEAKER_01]: It's free.
44:26.278 --> 44:28.862
[SPEAKER_01]: As far I'm hearing a lot of like margin pressure.
44:29.222 --> 44:36.072
[SPEAKER_01]: So from people being like we're all fighting for the same thing like I asked a question like, hey,
44:36.136 --> 44:39.904
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you like to deal with post-price increases?
44:40.405 --> 44:41.988
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you prefer them to be annual?
44:42.069 --> 44:45.255
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you prefer for them to be, you know, weight as long as possible?
44:45.656 --> 44:50.266
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I know some posts that, you know, do very little increases every year.
44:50.306 --> 44:55.377
[SPEAKER_01]: Other ones that wait until they absolutely have to.
44:55.357 --> 45:00.389
[SPEAKER_01]: And I gave some examples like, well, see panels had X number pricing creases in the last decade.
45:00.449 --> 45:05.340
[SPEAKER_01]: NVME desks are, I think, are two or three times what they were even five years ago.
45:05.380 --> 45:07.686
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, everything's a lot more money.
45:07.886 --> 45:11.374
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what I heard from a bunch of these Avestioners is like,
45:12.670 --> 45:13.351
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a host.
45:13.371 --> 45:14.393
[SPEAKER_01]: This is my problem.
45:14.473 --> 45:15.635
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just fighting for margin.
45:16.196 --> 45:22.547
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that is where it can get dangerous when you think about host is hosting as a commodity.
45:23.068 --> 45:31.362
[SPEAKER_01]: So go, you know, figure out what makes sense for you, but I am hearing a lot of pressure on people that are scared about AI.
45:31.403 --> 45:36.872
[SPEAKER_01]: They're scared about a lot of this different solutions things like that, which.
45:37.426 --> 45:41.732
[SPEAKER_01]: I have thoughts on AI, I don't think the sky is falling.
45:41.752 --> 45:53.928
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember when CMS has started coming out and people were upset at that because then no one's going to want to hire a developer and then when Squarespace and Wix, we've really came out.
45:54.008 --> 45:56.171
[SPEAKER_01]: No one's going to want to hire me to make their WordPress site.
45:56.632 --> 46:05.644
[SPEAKER_01]: It's people that are going to build their own stuff, they're always going to build their own stuff and people will always hire professionals.
46:05.624 --> 46:09.269
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's, think about any industry out there.
46:10.471 --> 46:14.657
[SPEAKER_01]: There are still people that pay for those products and services.
46:14.817 --> 46:18.823
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we make fun because we make fun of people like AOL.
46:19.003 --> 46:21.186
[SPEAKER_01]: AOL just shut down their dial up in and out this year.
46:21.226 --> 46:23.490
[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone was like, oh, that's so funny.
46:24.211 --> 46:26.935
[SPEAKER_01]: They had like 40,000 paying customers at the end of it.
46:27.015 --> 46:27.676
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
46:27.696 --> 46:30.720
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, people are like, oh, well, they didn't know any better.
46:30.700 --> 46:36.385
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, according to the last census, like 200,000 Americans, only can get internet on dialogue.
46:36.405 --> 46:44.452
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I, you know, AI is not going to take away your job.
46:44.512 --> 46:45.393
[SPEAKER_01]: You just need to pivot.
46:46.193 --> 46:59.965
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember once I was in New York for a Jumel Conference in New York, and I was canceled the day before by the organizers, because I guess they didn't have enough sign-ups or something, and then they did an emergency
47:01.160 --> 47:06.117
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're all like, everyone here, WordPress has taken all of our business, WordPress has taken all of our business.
47:07.322 --> 47:12.520
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was me with some other, you know, big volunteers that have been in the community of Wile and we're like,
47:13.934 --> 47:24.732
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I've never lost and this is when I was doing zoom on a WordPress so like, you know, like 15 years ago, but uh, or whatever, but I was like, WordPress, I didn't lost a job for WordPress.
47:25.293 --> 47:27.797
[SPEAKER_01]: No client's aren't hiring me for CMS.
47:27.877 --> 47:29.640
[SPEAKER_01]: They're hiring us for their expertise.
47:29.680 --> 47:31.403
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
47:31.383 --> 47:32.164
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it annoying?
47:32.444 --> 47:32.705
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
47:33.085 --> 47:36.990
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, some clients play with AI and, you know, leave.
47:37.110 --> 47:39.292
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but they'll always be people that want expertise.
47:39.312 --> 47:42.816
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you just need to pivot and add value.
47:42.937 --> 47:54.370
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yes, there is pressure on margin, but I think the agencies are figuring out, at least what I'm hearing, it is how to add value and be that expert.
47:54.350 --> 47:58.176
[SPEAKER_01]: uh, beyond just, you know, our service provider.
47:58.236 --> 48:06.027
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I always will recommend agencies niche down, niche down as heavily as you can on something that you know really well.
48:06.107 --> 48:11.295
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, for you guys, thanks in, uh, thanks in credit unions.
48:11.275 --> 48:17.604
[SPEAKER_01]: I did private equity firms at my second agency that I was at after the things that credit union one.
48:17.664 --> 48:20.748
[SPEAKER_01]: So become an expert in your thing.
48:20.768 --> 48:27.357
[SPEAKER_01]: And you probably already have an inch and figure out what that is and become the person in that niche, the provider.
48:27.437 --> 48:31.722
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, they'll kind of figure it itself out.
48:31.763 --> 48:35.848
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, if you add value, the business will take care of itself.
48:35.828 --> 48:41.636
[SPEAKER_01]: but I am margin pressure is a thing because everyone is just fighting for what they can.
48:41.656 --> 48:44.620
[SPEAKER_01]: I also don't the AI problem is going to burst.
48:45.822 --> 48:46.443
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to burst.
48:46.803 --> 48:53.573
[SPEAKER_01]: The tools are going to settle, figure out what makes science to use on a day-to-day basis, but all the AI companies are losing money.
48:53.893 --> 48:55.035
[SPEAKER_01]: They can't.
48:55.015 --> 49:01.063
[SPEAKER_01]: even on the open AI and the two or four, I've heard all our month plans, they're losing on their customers.
49:02.565 --> 49:15.042
[SPEAKER_01]: So either it's going to give really, really expensive or it's going to kind of settle down on, okay, AI is good to use this, not using this, you know, it's going to it's kind of settle.
49:15.523 --> 49:17.666
[SPEAKER_01]: My opinion is those are just don't be one.
49:18.507 --> 49:24.195
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, boy, we don't have time
49:24.682 --> 49:32.394
[SPEAKER_00]: I very much align with your theory on AI, but maybe another episode.
49:34.217 --> 49:34.557
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fun.
49:34.638 --> 49:35.018
[SPEAKER_01]: It's cool.
49:35.078 --> 49:35.419
[SPEAKER_01]: It's neat.
49:35.459 --> 49:37.522
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to say it.
49:37.722 --> 49:40.667
[SPEAKER_01]: I went to an MIT certificate last year on AI.
49:41.008 --> 49:46.616
[SPEAKER_01]: I got certified through a course through MIT last year, and it was super interesting.
49:47.618 --> 49:52.866
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was more just the mathematical big data stuff, not the gendered part.
49:52.846 --> 49:53.747
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot more calculus.
49:53.807 --> 49:55.289
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was expecting when I signed up for it.
49:55.689 --> 49:56.791
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow.
49:56.831 --> 49:59.154
[SPEAKER_00]: That had to be a shock.
50:00.075 --> 50:01.276
[SPEAKER_01]: But I got an MIT certificate.
50:01.296 --> 50:01.877
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's nice.
50:02.077 --> 50:03.719
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that is that is pretty cool.
50:05.481 --> 50:07.804
[SPEAKER_00]: So last question for you really here.
50:07.844 --> 50:16.534
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking 12 to 24 months ahead next, you know, year to what sort of changes do you expect in hosting expectations?
50:17.555 --> 50:18.837
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, whether it be for
50:18.817 --> 50:31.594
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, being people that need a lot of security, you know, or just in general, like are there big things like kind of already rumblings that aren't so much in the community, but are our things that you guys are talking about like what's on the horizon.
50:33.532 --> 50:49.313
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it was interesting, so web pros and Cloud Linux just came out with a 2026 state of hosting an agency study like last week and they surveyed tons of agencies.
50:50.120 --> 51:16.212
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it kind of goes back to what we kind of talked about is I think the middle is getting squeezed out the most so like I think there's going to be a lot agencies are either going to go down to their commoditized route and just like the basic of the basic or digital ocean droplets, but I think the bigger growth opportunity is in the coasting space is
51:16.192 --> 51:31.973
[SPEAKER_01]: maintenance packages, do it for me products, engineer expertise, stuff beyond just providing software or infrastructure, being able to really kind of be
51:31.953 --> 51:51.233
[SPEAKER_01]: a partner hosting.com, we do that a lot of different ways, one thing that we do for our agency partners is we help some of them write their proposals and come up with strategies to help them close more business, because at the end of the day it helps us.
51:51.473 --> 51:58.180
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that is where
51:58.328 --> 52:08.502
[SPEAKER_01]: I think because of that, I don't know what's going to happen with MSP, so MSP stands for managed service providers that are more traditional and traditional IT infrastructure and stuff.
52:09.944 --> 52:19.797
[SPEAKER_01]: I think host are going to take over a lot more of what MSPs we're doing as a value, and it makes me wonder what MSPs are going to be doing now.
52:19.777 --> 52:31.374
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, if you're an MSP and you're providing like physical infrastructure and stuff like that, you'll be fine, but a lot of MSPs are just kind of providing their expertise on top of just be selling products.
52:31.394 --> 52:41.910
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think hosting is going to add a lot more of that expertise to the end customer as service offerings for lots of different things.
52:43.432 --> 52:43.472
[SPEAKER_01]: So
52:43.452 --> 52:49.018
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I wonder what's going to happen more in the MSP space than the hosting space.
52:49.559 --> 52:52.262
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes a lot of sense.
52:52.282 --> 52:54.805
[SPEAKER_00]: That's cool and I really appreciate your perspective on that.
52:54.845 --> 53:01.132
[SPEAKER_00]: Because right now, MSPs, if you think about it exactly, where are they adding value?
53:01.272 --> 53:03.655
[SPEAKER_00]: How might they pivot based on that?
53:03.835 --> 53:12.565
[SPEAKER_00]: But if the hosts and hosting providers have the access to
53:12.545 --> 53:19.578
[SPEAKER_00]: pipeline to add theoretically more service offerings to them, you know, why not capitalize on that.
53:19.978 --> 53:21.020
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think you're totally right.
53:21.601 --> 53:24.587
[SPEAKER_00]: We are, we're unfortunately in this spot where the middle is getting eroded.
53:25.067 --> 53:33.743
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, and there's, there's a lot of, you know, people right now that, you know, maybe aren't providing an extreme amount of value over,
53:33.723 --> 53:35.387
[SPEAKER_00]: the lower side of things.
53:35.407 --> 53:39.275
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I feel I absolutely feel like that's going to split.
53:39.575 --> 53:54.347
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that's like definitely, oh man, this could be a whole other conversation about AI and about like the middle eroding, but yeah, I completely, I think that's really helpful for people to think about, though, and especially MSPs.
53:54.327 --> 54:01.819
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually am part of IAMCP, the International Association of Microsoft Channel partners, and I do that just for visibility the other side.
54:01.839 --> 54:18.546
[SPEAKER_00]: It's obviously not my day-to-day in PHP world, but at the same time it's great to learn about what does Azure Cloud and Co-Pilot and all this other sort of stuff look like from that side, but definitely that's great consideration.
54:18.526 --> 54:18.967
[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
54:19.047 --> 54:20.711
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this has been a lot of fun.
54:20.891 --> 54:24.519
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that yeah, we got to talk through a, you know, a lot of different topics.
54:24.940 --> 54:29.790
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything that anybody should take away from the podcast, go to hosting.com.
54:29.810 --> 54:31.253
[SPEAKER_00]: I assume anything else.
54:31.857 --> 54:35.701
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, hosting.com, hosting.com slash agency.
54:36.762 --> 54:41.567
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm most active on X, or Twitter, MP Mike.
54:42.809 --> 54:48.955
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a private account just for, I don't want to be spammed, but I'll accept it if you're a real person.
54:49.956 --> 54:54.521
[SPEAKER_01]: Just due to some changes on the platform, I just, I don't want a bunch of bot following.
54:54.541 --> 54:58.185
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, and then if I can ever,
54:58.486 --> 55:06.193
[SPEAKER_01]: help anyone in anything and it doesn't just mean hosting or any of our products that don't hesitate to send me any email or DM.
55:06.815 --> 55:10.588
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I have a resource, I'll be more than happy to help you.
55:10.754 --> 55:11.275
[SPEAKER_00]: That's cool.
55:11.355 --> 55:12.076
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
55:12.176 --> 55:13.499
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, Mike.
55:13.519 --> 55:28.525
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole conversation I must say I really appreciate how much you're in it for the community of open source that I think that means a lot and, you know, yeah, trying to help people out because navigating all these things figuring it out is soup can be complicated.
55:28.926 --> 55:30.889
[SPEAKER_00]: So definitely thanks for all your input and insight.
55:31.628 --> 55:33.251
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.
55:33.271 --> 55:33.953
[SPEAKER_01]: We really appreciate it.
55:34.333 --> 55:35.115
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.
55:35.395 --> 55:38.361
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this has been another episode of Nick's End Matchbox.
55:38.522 --> 55:39.724
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Brent Feldman.
55:40.125 --> 55:42.630
[SPEAKER_00]: Please Look out for more content.
55:42.670 --> 55:44.974
[SPEAKER_00]: Please like and subscribe and we'll be back soon.
55:45.415 --> 55:45.756
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks