What is your title and position at WebHostAutomation?

Founder and COO. I was one of 2 original developers of the product when we founded the company and since then I’ve gone on to move into a more business oriented role as Chief Operating Officer.

How long have you been in business?

We founded the company back in 2001 and the first release of HELM hit the shelves December of that year. Before starting WebHost Automation I owned a managed a hosting company based in the UK called OpenHosting Internet Solutions (www.openhosting.co.uk).We sold the company a few years ago but it’s still running to this date and from what I hear is growing well.

What is the HELM Control Panel?

HELM is a web hosting control system that automates many of the tasks that web hosting companies need to perform on a day to day basis. It provides a web based system that customers can use to manage their websites and allows administrators and reseller to manage their users, billing, domains registrations and many other hosting related tasks.

Desribe how the mult-server functionality works and why this is a unique feature to HELM?

From day 1 we wanted HELM to work not only for customers with just 1 server but for hosting companies that are growing and adding additional server and distributing services across them. HELM allows you to do this with ease and adding a new web server as you take on more customers is a piece of cake. HELM’s flexibility allows for practically any configuration of servers and can even offer some basic load balancing support when decided which server to host a customer’s new domain on.

How does HELM Differ from Ensim and Plesk?

As I’ve mentioned above, Mult-Server support is a major difference between HELM and most other products on the market. HELM is also one of the only product available today that offers an integrated, fully-featured billing system for FREE.

Describe the Billing Features HELM offers and how it integrates?

HELM’s integrated billing system allows hosts to set up hosting plans, set prices and automatically bills their customers on a recurring basis. With support for most of the major payment gateways available today HELM’s billing support dramatically reduces the hosts involvement in billing activities. HELM also includes a number of automatic signup forms which allow you to have new users signup for a new account, pay online and have their account activated automatically.

Describe the various software(s) that that can be integrated with HELM?

HELM supports around 30 different 3rd party products including the most popular mail servers, dns servers and ftp servers on the market. All these products are fully integrated with HELM and there are no additional charges for use. We’re continually adding more and more products as time goes on based on our customers recommendations.

Where did the name HELM come from?

When we first started running a hosting company and moved to our own servers we tested every automation product we could get our hands on. At that time we simply couldn’t find a product that automated enough got the server management and customers management for us. So we started developing our own scripts and tools to do what we wanted and over a period of 2-3 years this evolved into the first version of HELM. While continuing to develop HELM for the masses we we’re using HELM to control our own hosting company. What used to be a full time job suddenly became 1-2 hours a week with the majority of the day-to-day takes being handled by HELM. Our vision was simple, we want to let the hosting run itself and count the money

Describe the upcoming version and some of the features?

For the past 6 months we’ve been working hard to develop the next generation of HELM. HELM 4 will be released later this year and it’s been redeveloped from the ground up to take advantage of new technologies and to make some fundamentally improvement that wouldn’t have been possible with a simple update to HELM as it stands today. Some new features include an unlimited user model, enhanced multi-server support, and the ability to control almost anything! If you’re looking for a control panel that can make you a cup of coffee, watch this space!

Describe Cross Data Center Support in upcoming releases?

One of the major benefits of HELM 4 will be it’s new server communication model. Today communication between servers can be tricky, especially if those servers happened to be in different datacenter and protected by a firewall. With HELM server communication has been simplified to such an extent that if you can ping an IP then your done. There’s no need for products such as VPN even if your remote server is in a different datacenter on the other side of the world. As well as resolving networking issues this allow allows for quicker, more secure communication.

Describe how customers get support and your online forums?

We provide phone-based and ticket-based technical support for HELM from our Headquarters in the UK. We also have an online community forum that is becoming very popular among HELM users and non-HELM users alike. In our forums you’ll find a vast resource of help and advice about anything hosting related.

Both WebHost Automation and FastServers.Net will be at HostingCon 2005 in Chicago, for more information on this event visit http://www.fastservers.net/hostingcon/ or http://www.hostingcon.com

Over the past couple of months, HELM has become a integral part of our control panel options for the Windows environment. Recently a customer who was purchasing their third server with us asked…”What’s the difference between HELM and Plesk?” We thought this would be an interesting topic for discussion in our newsletter so all customers could see the differences between both products.

Plesk is what we call an “all-in-one” control panel. Plesk 7.5 for Windows has incorporated dozens of user-suggested improvements over previous versions. Microsoft DNS server instead of BIND, web server configuration management, mail server options, 1site statistics, remote backup/restore features, PERL, PHP, and various other components make Plesk one of the most widely used control panels for the Windows hosting environment. Plesk also provides a skinnable interface along with other features that gel with IIS on Windows 2003. The only issues that we have seen for customers is that since Plesk is an “all-in-one” control panel, conducting updates and applying third party add-on components will sometimes not play well with the core environment. Along with the fact that Plesk’s backend database is mySQL, this throws another wrinkle into the configuration as customers sometimes like to configure mySQL to their own specifications. Running two versions of mySQL is possible, but there is a lot of configuration that needs to be performed in order for this configuration to stabilize.

HELM, on the other hand, is what we call the “plug-in” control panel. HELM, by itself, is a control panel – and that’s as far as it goes. The components that you want to run on the server are at your discretion and can be bound to the control panel as “services” for your customers. DNS, email, stats, mySQL, PERL, PHP, and other modules can be added individually and these functions can be delegated to your resellers as needed. HELM’s backend database uses MSDE, and can be upgraded to use full blown MS SQL Server – which in itself can be used for setting up shared databases for customers. In addition, HELM incorporates an internal billing system and various payment processing plug-ins: AWBS (formerly DRAMS), ModernBill, VelocityPay, E-xact and 2Checkout.

Both control panels have an extensive member forum, however HELM’s forum provides more in-depth how-tos, user diagnostics, and detailed feedback from the developers. Also, each control panel offers various options for stats, mail servers, and multi-server support, allowing hosting services to be spread out over multiple servers.

http://forums.webhostautomation.com

http://forums.sw-soft.com

No matter which control panel you choose, FastServers stands behind support for both panels with Platinum-level support contracts with SW-Soft (makers of Plesk: http://www.sw-soft.com) and Webhost Automation (makers of HELM: http://www.webhostautomation.com). For more information on these panels, or to decipher which panel best fits your needs/.

As we approach the Second Half of 2005 I wanted to take some time to write an article on my appreciation towards the existing and new customers that have become part of FastServers.Net. During March, April, and May our company has added a significant amount of new servers to our network. A majority of new business comes from word of mouth one of the greatest compliments we receive.

In 2005, clients from around the world have selected FastServers.Net as partners in success and it is our hopes that we strive to become the best team of sales, billing, and dedicated server engineers to give you the products, services and support that you need. We are always trying to improve service, bring fresh ideas, and break the barriers of the hosting industry. You would be surprised at company events, employee breaks, and general chat the amount of time spent talking about specific solutions, technical issues, sales calls, and billing related issues all demonstrating our obsession with this industry.

I just attended Search Engine Strategies in Toronto, Canada with the goal of sharpening my SEO/SEM marketing skills. During this conference I ran into people that I have communicated with online and who have been to our website to speak with our Sales Engineers. While visiting with many attendees about FastServers.Net I often was asked “What makes you better than your competitors?” My reply was 2 words - WE CARE! Maintaining 1400+ servers is a lot of work, adding many new clients in a short period of time increases our stress level, and waking up to a ordering system full of new orders is exciting, but in the end the amount of time, effort, and energy each employee invests makes FastServers.Net a fun and exciting company to be involved with.

You will notice a few great changes that recently took place. Brandon Ewing, former NOC Engineer of the California Data Center has been stationed back in Iowa to handle the Level 3 and Network Engineering in the Midwest Data Center. And finally a new Sales Engineer, Dave Fish has been added to bring added coverage until 11PM in our Sales Department. With the new FastServers.Net offices opening in Chicago later this year we anticipate a strong and growing team that expands and brings new perspectives from various backgrounds. From these perspectives FastServers.Net hopes to even further our efforts in providing you a better more advanced set of products and services.