NUKERN’S FEATURED WEB HOST SERIES
June’s featured web host is Press Wizards®, a California based company.
We’re running a new blog series called “Featured Web Host” where we learn more about a web hosting company, where they’re from, how they got started, tools they couldn’t live without and some tips and tricks for other web hosts.
For our first “Featured Web Host” post, we had the chance to catch up with Rob Marlbrough Jr., Founder & CEO of Press Wizards®.
Philippe Rivard: Hello Rob! Thanks for giving us the opportunity to learn more about you and your company. Can you briefly introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from?
Rob Marlbrough Jr.: I was born in Santa Clara, CA but moved to San Diego, CA when I was just 1–2 years old, and have lived here ever since. I have corporate experience in software engineering, web development, server administration, and technology integration. I also worked in corporate IT in the financial, healthcare, infrastructure, and e-commerce areas for over 15+ years.
PR: You’ve been in business with Press Wizards® since 1997, but have experience in so many different fields. Can you tell us how you got into the web hosting business?
RM: I’ve been into computers ever since my elementary school got a computer lab with Radio Shack TRS-80 computers in them, and I would help boot them up each morning. I ran my own BBS on a 300 baud modem using a Commodore 64 when I was in Junior High School, and that put me on a course to graduate with a B.S. in Business/Information Systems from San Diego State University. I realized at a very young age that technology was the future of human and global communications, and I wanted to be a part of it.
I started my web hosting business in 1997 with a reseller account. A few colleagues and friends wanted websites back then, but they grew fairly rapidly. That meant having my own server clusters, and now running multiple large VPS servers housed in a data center in Texas.
PR: The good ‘ol reseller account. It’s great to see how much it grew since then. How did you come up with the name Press Wizards®?
RM: It started out in 1997 as Web Wizards, and it operated as a web hosting company under that name for many years. But in the last 5 years or so, we became more focused on WordPress development. About 2 years ago, I rebranded and incorporated the company as Press Wizards®, Inc. to emphasize our specialization and expertise in WordPress development and hosting. But we host our existing customer websites, which ever platform they are on.
Because I realized someone else had already trademarked and incorporated “Web Wizards” just 5 years ago, and possibly could’ve tried to force me to change my company name, I went the extra step and trademarked the name.
PR: I think it’s a good idea to focus on one particular area of expertise, like WordPress in your case. Can you tell us a little bit more about the team behind Press Wizards®?
RM: We have a core team of WordPress site builders/customizers, content editors and security retainer customers. I’m leading the team as Chief Developer. We don’t use any offshore resources for our website development. For the most part, everyone is in San Diego or Los Angeles. We keep our core team small and focused, but bring in additional local resources as needed to meet client deadlines.
For hosting, we rely on our server admins and the data center team for keeping things running smoothly. Our support is top-notch, and we don’t shy away from recommending code changes, handling site maintenance requests for our monthly maintenance customers. We won’t send you to a cryptic knowledge base to solve it yourself, like typical hosts.
PR: Awesome! Your clients must like the fact that you’re really hands-on and make recommendations. With so many hosting companies out there, why should anyone choose Press Wizards® besides the hands-on approach?
RM: We focus on personalized support and in-depth WordPress knowledge. That way, we can troubleshoot and fix things without being hands-off like most hosts are. We’re also security focused, so all our sites have the wp-login.php file protected from bot attacks at the server level and we block blacklisted IPs. We also refuse to have hundreds or thousands of sites on one server. You get the resources your site needs without worrying about having to repeatedly upgrade or reconfigure VPS resources or juggle container limitations.
I was invited to speak at WordCamp San Diego. We’ve sponsored the event and we’ve contributed two WordPress plugins to the wordpress.org repository (one with over 10,000 active installations). We’re very involved in the WordPress community, love giving back and supporting other WordPress-focused companies and open-source efforts. We also offer WordPress training classes through our Meetup group.
PR: Talk about being an expert in your own field. What are your plans for the future with Press Wizards®?
RM: Press Wizards® is growing, with the first half of 2016 being our largest development and hosting revenue period ever. We’re moving into new corporate offices in the next 2 months, adding a large training/seminar room and two large conference rooms to our office resources, and setting up a video and photography studio to help with website development needs.
We’re running a proprietary control panel, billing and automation system, but we’re looking into switching over to cPanel to take advantage of some of the leading industry-standard options, as well as moving to a more modern billing system.
PR: Speaking of which, what software or apps do you use daily and couldn’t live without?
RM: These days I use Chrome and WordPress daily, Freshbooks for development estimates and billing, Sublime for file editing, Join.Me for screen sharing and webinar recording, and the Sunrise Calendar for meeting scheduling.
PR: Why did you decide to switch your web hosting billing to Nukern and where do you see Nukern fit with all the aforementioned apps?
RM: Nukern is one of the cPanel/WHM billing solutions I’ve been evaluating for our cPanel billing needs. It has a superb modern interface, clean and simple connectivity to cPanel/WHM, and looks like it will fulfill all of our needs in what we’re looking for in terms of a billing and automation system.
PR: We’re definitely aiming at being the best billing and automation platform for web hosting providers. Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Looking back at how you started and what you know today, any tips and tricks for anyone who would like to start a reseller web hosting business?
RM: My advice is to find a reliable host that has a great white-label system, easy billing software, and handles the servers so you can focus on marketing and growing your hosting or web design business, while also growing the residual income that hosting provides.
PR: Reliability is definitely core to a hosting business. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. Best of luck for the next couple years. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
RM: It’s a pleasure seeing how far Nukern has come in such a short amount of time. I look forward to using it more, and helping out with suggestions and feedback.
If anyone has questions about web hosting, I invite you to join our WordPress Hosting group on Facebook. We have over 3,800 members world-wide!
You can find Press Wizards® on Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. We’re just getting started on Instagram, come and say hi!
Are you like Press Wizards® and offering web hosting services to your clients? Do you like to challenge the status quo and get things moving? If so, we’d love to feature you in our “Featured Web Host” series. Get in touch with us at featured[at]nukern.com, we’ll get right back to you :)
