mattheaton.com

Ive been asked to give so little…

On this 4th of July I look back at what has been sacrificed by so many others for the freedoms and benefits that we enjoy today. I am someone that is always looking at how to improve something, how to make something better. In doing that, I often forget what was required to get us to where we are today.

Not today, today I express my absolute sincere appreciation for our armed forces that have in many cases given up their lives so that I might by able to pursue my life and raise a family. When I look at my life in comparison to these brave men and women and I am embarrassed at the opportunities that have been offered to me at the expense of our soldiers.

I am eternally grateful. I love you for your dedication to your country and freedom, and I promise that if the same requirements were put upon me that I would follow the same course to uphold the values we hold dear and to ensure the livelihood of the freedom we all enjoy now.

Freedom is a gift from God, but must be protected by man. God bless every one of our servicemen for your service on our behalf. I thank you, my family thanks you, and all Americans thank you for your service!

Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com

In the next 2-3 days we will surpass the 1 million sites/domains hosted mark across our network. That is a feat beyond all our original expectations and goals. I would like to have said that it was all in our original plan, but it wasn’t.

I clearly remember a “meeting” between Dan Ashworth (My business partner) and myself to discuss what we wanted out of Bluehost. I am a person that shoots high, but sets reasonable, attainable goals for myself. At the time we ran a free hosting company with a paid upgrade option. We had about 10,000 paying customers. We knew we wanted at least that many with Bluehost and hoped if we really worked hard that we could get up to 20,000 new customers on our (At the time) new platform - Bluehost.com.

Our previous hosting platform relied heavily on a single parter to generate about half of our business. A great day for us was 40 new hosting customers, and a terrible day was less than 20. The big partner (Bravenet.com) eventually started doing their own free hosting and that left us in a bind. In hindsight I am SO GLAD they left. It really was a major factor in the decision to start Bluehost - Thanks Bravenet! Now a terrible day is 650 signups and a great day is 850 signups. Its amazing how things can change in just a few short years.

Thanks of course go to the real people that make it happen day in and day out - The Bluehost/Hostmonster staff. You are all incredible! Our hosting family is what sets us apart from other hosting companies out there.

1 Million down - 10 million to go!!!

Thanks everyone who hosts with us - we appreciate every last one of you!

Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com

If you want to believe that the CEO of Bluehost and Hostmonster is a mature, controlled individual skip this blog entry

Everybody loves to win, but sometimes you lose. Unfortunately this was the case for my beloved Utah Jazz a couple of weeks back. However, to my extraordinary pleasure something almost as good as the Jazz winning happened yesterday.

The LOS ANGELES LAKERS LOST!!!!! YEAH, YES, INCREDIBLE, SPLENDID, STUPENDOUS, SUPERB, DELUXE, FANTASTIC, EXCITING, DELIGHTFUL, DELICIOUS (Only took 10 seconds to come up with adjectives to describe my joy).

I love to hate the Lakers. Images of them winning cause my body to contort and spasm with disgust. Watching the Lakers win is like having 100 chickens pecking my eyes out little by little for the whole NBA season and then throwing me into that pit/monster thing in the Return of the Jedi at the end of the season. Lucky for me I don’t have to worry about this anymore.

Congrats to Pierce, Allen, Garnett and the rest of the Boston Celtics. They truly deserved it this year and I’m pleased as punch that it happened.

Matt Heaton

If you don’t want to hear another rant from me you can skip this blog entry. As the politcal season heats up towards November’s election day the tax rhetoric is being spouted by the party faithful on both sides of the aisle. By the end of this blog you will clearly understand which side of the aisle I am on and why.

Democrats are talking up the importance of letting many of the “tax breaks” and especially those of the “richest 1%” to fall back to previous increased rates in 2010. While we can debate all day long what constitutes the richest 1%, let me tell you that increasing capital gains taxes (Which will affect more than 100 million Americans) is a HUGE mistake, and increasing taxes on small and medium businesses is a mistake of epic proportions. Heres why.

If you were offered a check for $2500 (Lets call this reduced taxes, but assume it was immediate and you got a check for $2500) but in return taxes on small and medium business was increased 5-10% and capital gains tax increased 5%, would you accept the check? If I was dangling the check in front on you would you take it? Unfortunately 90% of Americans would. I can certainly understand why. People/families are hurting. $4 gas doesn’t help, and unfortunately financial discipline and financial knowledge is a not a resource that most Americans can count amoung their assets.

The issue is that increased taxes on small and medium businesses means less profits, and less profits means lower wages and decreased benefits. This is NOT rhetoric, this is undeniable fact. As these businesses, many of which are already struggling, try to fight competition and increase growth they HAVE to cut costs. Those costs are almost certainly going to make the working Americans life worse in every way. All of a sudden the $75K a year jobs are $65K a year jobs. Those 35K a year jobs go to 28K a year jobs. Those health care benefits go down every year as the cost of those same benefits increases.

It must be the greedy businesses that always want to make more money causing these problems right? In some few cases the answer is yes, but in the vast majority of the cases it’s because they are TAXED TO DEATH and the average American is the one who pays the price.

Whats worse is that all this is done in the name of the “Average American” - to help them, and to help them deal with the financial burdens that are sometimes too much to bear. It does give them very short term benefits (3 months maybe), but then reality sets in when wages stagnate or drop and health care is trimmed again.

Why can’t politicians see this? Why Why Why? There are really only two options. First, they want to pander to the general ignorance of most Americans when it comes to this matter even when they know better - or 2, they really don’t understand and they think that taxing businesses really will help the situation and make the lives of average Americans better. Either way they are wrong. One way, they are dishonest by pandering, and the other they are just plain stupid. There is NO THIRD OPTION!

I have run many businesses over my short 36 year term on this planet, but one thing I have learned having employed many hundreds of people over the years is that when I make money my employees make money. And when I don’t make money my employees hurt as a consequence because there isn’t enough to go around.

QUIT TAXING SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESSES TO DEATH - IT HURTS EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com

Bill Gates time has come. Next month he will officially retire from Microsoft and turn full control over to Steve Ballmer. This is a significant event for many reasons. In all the ways that really matter Bill Gates is Microsoft. It is molded after his personality and it shows itself for better or worse in all aspects of Microsoft’s business.

I admire Bill Gates and have tried to emulate certain traits that I have identified that I feel made him successful. It doesn’t mean I an an advocate for Microsoft business practices or that everything about Bill Gates is admirable, but it is undeniable that he is/was a technical and marketing genius. I don’t think I have a ton of similarities between myself and Bill Gates, but there is one area that feel I am very similar to him. We both love the technology side of things more, but are better at the business/marketing angle. I am a bit of an enigma in the technology/linux/hosting world that I live in because I am a geek that isn’t a geek (I guess some people would argue that Im 100% geek ). Let me explain - Bill Gates is and was a brilliant software engineer. It is his passion and he has a great talent for it, but what really made Microsoft successful was that he could use that technical knowledge to strike business deals. He is an extremely savvy businessman.

Technical expertise almost never goes hand in hand with great business sense. So many technology companies are started by amazingly talented developers, but fail because they don’t realize that a great product doesn’t always translate to a great business. I feel Bluehost and Hostmonster is way ahead of the game compared to so many hosting companies because I have a love of the technical side of the business. In fact, if I could pick any job to do full time (Just for fun) it would be a system administrator. I love to develop software as well but realize that I am only a moderately talented developer compared to the great developers we currently employ.

Technical expertise at the top enabled Microsoft to maneuver quickly and make business decisions based on a solid technical background. I feel the same way about Bluehost. Get ready for a very arrogant comment - Rarely (Never) do I talk with CEOs of other large hosting companies where I feel they have a super strong hands on technical understanding of the underpinnings of linux, system kernels, storage systems, etc. Many would argue that they don’t need to know and understand all the “details”. That is what admins/developers are for right? Maybe they are right, but for my businesses I don’t feel comfortable not being able to work directly with these groups.

If you don’t have a deep understanding its hard to really know what to fix and how to improve. Without that knowledge how do you lead? If you can’t lead, how do you succeed? Bill Gates was the master at this. Conversely, in my opinion, Steve Ballmer is the antithesis of this method. Look at the complete mess Microsoft is today. Microsoft’s top decision makers aren’t the “get their hands dirty” technical guys that used to run the operation and it shows.

Whether you admire or despise Bill Gates you have to respect him and what he has done. He single handedly took down IBM in the personal computing arena against every conceivable obstacle. I salute his incredible accomplishment!

Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com

I am someone who always says that something can be done regardless of the circumstances, and usually I’m right. There is always a way to fix a problem if you are determined and creative enough.

However, as I become older and more experienced (Not mature - no one will ever accuse me of maturity) I can appreciate the problems associated with the exception to the rule. At Bluehost and Hostmonster we have tirelessly added new features since day 1. I feel very confident in saying that we offer more features than any other shared hosting service that I know of.

Even with our vast array of features there are still many functions that users requests that are technically possible for us to implement - even easy to implement, but that we are unable to accommodate because we operate a larger scale operation. Early on we made many exceptions to allow for these requests and in the end it caused issues as we upgraded our systems. We were unhappy because of the extra time and expense to ensure these features worked going forward and some customers were unhappy because some of the custom features would break repeatedly as Cpanel and other third party applications were “unaware” that these changes existed.

This is why small hosting companies, in fact all small companies, will ALWAYS have a place with consumers. They offer a level of specificity to user needs that no larger company will ever be able to match. This is how Bluehost started in the first place. We offered many options when we started that other hosts didn’t have available or didn’t want to offer because of security concerns.

I believe our standard package can and does fit the bill for 98% of users out there, but for those that have needs outside of our offering there are a myriad of choices to get exactly what you want. I encourage you to look for something that does what you want out of the box rather than looking for an “exception” to make it happen. You will be happier in the long run!

Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com

We have hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers right now and add tens of thousands of new customers each month. With that many happy customers it also means we have our fair share of dissatisfied customers. As obvious as that statement is many companies wouldn’t admit to it. We try very hard to meet everyone’s needs, but we can’t be 100% on customer satisfaction.

What we can do is avoid adding insult to injury. If someone is unhappy with our service or no longer requires hosting services they can cancel anytime with no cancel fee and no hassles. You see, we respect our users even if they no longer need or want our services. This is important for two reasons. First, I despise companies that force me to do business with them on long term contracts and so I will never require that from my own customers, and second customers love it - even if someone leaves because they don’t need their website anymore they remember that we didn’t try and force them to stay or charge them to leave. Our customers know this and refer extra business our way because of it.

We deal with many companies that have a VERY different view than ours on this issue and it just causes problems for us and pain for their customers. King of the list for us is GoDaddy. GoDaddy is the largest registrar of domain names in the world. Because of this we HAVE to deal with them everyday to move domains to our system to provide hosting for many of their customers. Transferring of domains has many rules that are required by Icann, but instead of making it easier for their customers to choose where they want to go the system GoDaddy employs is to hassle, obscure, deny, and provide such poor support that their customers finally give up and stay because its so impossible to move. This is good for them in the short term because the customer stays out of sheer exhaustion from trying to leave. However its bad in the long term (And good for us) that they do it this way because once a customer successfully leaves GoDaddy they never want to go back. GoDaddy leaves such a sour taste with so many customers that no matter what they won’t go back.

If you respect your customers they will stay and refer new business. If you don’t they will leave and never come back. Pretty simple to me.

Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com / Hostmonster.com

My Utah Jazz lost tonight It pains me greatly to write this blog entry. Its like getting my finger nails ripped off one by one, or maybe hosting with Godaddy - whichever is worse.

In the second round of the NBA playoffs 16 of the last 18 games were won by the home team. Teams fight all year long to get home court advantage. It is an undeniable fact that home court makes a huge difference. The Utah Jazz went 37-4 at home (The best in the NBA), and 17-24 away.

What I don’t understand is why? I really don’t. My personality completely rejects the notion that I need to have someone cheering for me to do better. I go to most of the Jazz games and I certainly can tell that when the crowd gets into a game that the Jazz play WAY better. When I play a sport or am in some kind of competitive situation I CRAVE opposition. I do well when someone is cheering or wants me to play well, but I do better when someone says I can’t do something.

In business or in sports the FIRST thing I want is to be underrated, to have someone believe that I can’t achieve some goal, and to root against me. I LOVE IT! I feed off of the negative energy. There is nothing better than to crush someone’s expectations that you will do poorly. When I am left alone I tend to be mediocre at sports or business interests, but tell me you’ll be beat at something and I will try 10x harder. Make me mad enough and I WILL win!

My desire to win comes from within. It isn’t given me by a “crowd”. All great players are motivated, but the outstanding players are those that thrive in a hostile environment. They learn to use both positive and negative energy to win no matter the circumstances standing in their way. They will find a way to win!

Do you need the home court advantage? I don’t and never will…

Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com

The need for top notch security in the hosting industry can not be overstated. Consumers and businesses are becoming more and more savvy to the need for security in all aspects of computing. However, understanding that you need security and implementing it are two very different things. Let me give you an example.

To fly to Mexico from Salt Lake City (Where my FAMOUS Utah Jazz are from!! GO JAZZ) requires a passport. My brother was supposed to fly to Puerto Vallarta today. He THOUGHT he didn’t need a passport to fly there, but of course he does. Don’t worry, I let him have it for being completely unprepared. He called me up and was depressed that he couldn’t be there with his friends. Being the person that I am I NEVER take “No” for an answer. I immediately started thinking how to get around this “security problem”. Driving into Mexico requires far less documentation than flying into Mexico (I’ll never understand why - actually I do, but lets not get into a political discussion when talking about security!!). I then called several Mexican airlines to ask if a US Citizen needed a passport to fly within Mexico. The answer was no. Fantastic, what if my brother flew from Salt Lake City to San Diego, took a 30-40 minute cab ride to Tijuana, and then jumped on a plane to Puerto Vallarta. It couldn’t be that simple. Surely I couldn’t get out of the need for a passport to fly internationally in an hour?

Sadly the answer was yes. Its great news for my brother who is getting on a plane in a couple of hours but pathetic that our countries “security” is so ridiculous. When security hassles legitimate customers but does nothing to stop determined individuals it isn’t security at all. So many products and services prey on individuals desires to be safe but really provide nothing but a VERY false sense of security. Unfortunately ignorant decision makers set security policy in every aspect of our lives. From banks, and financial institutions, to our borders, to our own computers security - its broken from the top down.

What can I do to provide better security for our customers? A lot! We work all the time to educate ourselves and update our servers with all the latest “real” security options available to us. I think we do a pretty good job, but we can always be better. I have seen huge hosting companies that are open to attack in multiple areas where one abusive person could literally destroy the company. I won’t name any companies, but I have first hand knowledge of many companies that take a less than stalwart stance when it comes to security in the hosting industry.

We do our best to segregate customers from each other so that when a customer of ours makes a foolish decision, or doesn’t keep their own code and security up to date that their own site will be compromised without affecting our other users. Security for our servers as a whole is our responsibility. Security for individual sites and those who choose to run scripts such as blogs, forums, etc is the responsibility of our customers. Please take that responsibility seriously!

Thanks,
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com

When a product or service tries to be all things to all people it usually fails. You usually don’t even think about all the little things that “just work” because they almost never fail to do what they are supposed to do. When is the last time you looked at that light switch and wondered if it was going to work the next time you try it. There are many products that fit into this category - watches, basic utilities (gas, water, electricity), even TVs (Although DVRs are bringing a level of complexity that TVs didn’t used to have).

At Bluehost we are struggling with this concept. We are always adding new features, but we want to make sure that the features we add are to the benefit of ALL customers (SimpleScripts is a good example). We are also working to roll out features that combine multiple step into a single or double unified step instead of adding additional complexity.

Web hosting doesn’t HAVE to be complex although at this point it is. All that means is that we have more work cut out for ourselves. We need many more layers of complexity reduced to a few simple steps. We are constantly working towards this goal, and more and more third party products are doing the same.

Web hosting is still in its infancy in my opinion and has only began to offer the real potential that is available to our clients. It will take people with vision that understand that power doesn’t mean complexity. We are getting there little by little and hope that you will stick around to see what it can become!

Thanks,
Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com