EI Realty New Webhost?
- on 02.09.09
- Emerald Isle Rentals
- 6 Comments
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It’s pretty pathetic I know, but I watch our local rental market and the businesses in it like a hawk. I really need to get a life LOL. But today as I was cruising Emerald Isle Realty’s website like I often do to keep my finger on the pulse of the rental market, I noticed something was different.
I mean the site looks the same. But something was different. I know they were using Blizzard Internet Marketing to manage their site, and were using Blizzard’s name servers. So I did a DNS report on their domain name and sure enough, they are no longer using Blizzard. By the way there were some minor errors in their DNS. So if you’re in charge of their DNS you may want to clean those up. One of them could be impacting mail delivery. 
Trent Blizzard is a very knowledgable man when it comes to Internet marketing. Their firm is excellent at what they do. I actually dealt with them shortly while I was in the vacation rental software business.
While I’m not sure why they made the switch, I can only guess it was for a couple reasons.
First, I’m sure this switch has saved them a boatload of cash. In the current economic conditions any amount of money saved can make a huge difference in your rental business.
Second, I am of the opinion (this is just my personal opinion) that Blizzard does great work when they have a new client. Their new clients enjoy many benefits at first. Rankings, traffic, and online bookings all improve. Then I think Blizzard focuses their attention on a new client and leaves the existing client kind of hanging. They figure they have their new customer locked in for a hefty fee and now that everything has been migrated they feel they are done. Again, this is just my opinion. Rental managers like to be stroked and have their hands held on a frequent basis.
Third, in my brief experience with Blizzard I felt they were a little on the snobby side. They were no fun to work with from my perspective. If you ever have to call them, good luck. You’ll be on hold for a while, then they’ll talk to you like you must be brand new to the web and how it all works.
Personally, I think Emerald Isle Realty made the right choice in moving their site. Hopefully they maintain a high level of online bookings.
Best of luck to Blizzard and Emerald Isle Realty in 2009!
You do realize that rackspace.com is just a server hosting provider and not a website provider… right? And rackspace is also one of the most, if not THE most, expensive server host pretty much in the world?
Maybe Blizzard just upgraded their servers and wanted some fanatical support.
Actually, I’m very familiar with rackspace.com and what they do. I’m also pretty familiar with Blizzard and their typical DNS setup of the clients they host. I’ve examined about 6 of their other clients they host and ALL of them use Blizzard’s name servers. I guess it is possible that Emerald Isle Realty draws so many visitors looking for rental information that Blizzard moved this site somewhere else…but I doubt it. Plus I think Blizzard is WAY too cost conscious to use rackspace.com (not sure why anyone would really) for Emerald Isle Realty or any of their other clients. Oh and I heard a little rumor they switched hosts as well.
Good theory though Steve.
Stop by again soon.
Either way — if EIR is now using RackSpace, they sure aren’t saving a “buttload of cash”.
Steve,
They’re most likely not using rackspace since I doubt ANYONE at Emerald Isle Realty has the time, or knowledge to manage the physical server their site is hosted from.
Rather, I would wager they have contracted another company to do all of this, and the company they’re using has chosen rackspace as their data center. And i would wager even more this company is doing it for far less than Blizzard was charging EIR. Just an educated guess, but I’d still bet $100 on it. Want to take me up on it?
Jason, Just a short note to say congrats on being #1 on Google for the Crystal Coast area, You have done your job well as my phone has been ringing, thanks agian N.Taylor
Hi Nora,
Thanks for dropping by and for the kind words. While i’m not #1 for the most important terms yet, I am certainly gaining ground. It will be an interesting year for sure.
-Jason