FAQ’s

1. What is covered under general management?

General management services provide basic support for web hosting services as well as control panel troubleshooting. For a more detailed explanation, please visit: http://www.singlehop.com/managed/general-services.php

2. What is the difference between managed and unmanaged?

Managed servers provide clients the opportunity to have an experienced support team monitor their dedicated server 24/7/365.  Depending on the client’s demands, management can be added with four services (fully-managed) or 2 services (semi-managed).  Experienced clients can also choose to handle the server completely on their own so they are free to choose our unmanaged option.  For more information on management services please visit:  http://www.singlehop.com/managed/

3. How can I receive special deals or discounts?

You can receive exclusive deals and discounts by following us on Twitter at SingleHopSteph or by visiting singlehop.com/teamlarkin.  The discounts are updated often so make sure to check back often!

4. Is my inbound bandwidth really unmetered?

The quick answer is YES!  You can now sit back and relax on the knowledge that all the bandwidth you pay for will be allocated to outbound traffic.  This, however, does not mean you can forget it about completely, so do check from time to time to make sure no overages occur.

5. If I pay my invoice ahead of time, can I get a discount?

If you pay the invoice 6-12 months in advance we can apply a discount to your account.  For six months we will apply a 3% discount and 5% for twelve months.

6. Where are your data centers?

Our data centers are located in the Chicago area.  We recently outgrew our Chicago data center, which is located just southwest of downtown and have expanded into a second one.  Our second center is in Elk Grove Village, and is a brand new facility.  If you want to learn more about the data centers, there is more information listed on our home page at:  http://bit.ly/13XcCz

7. How do I become a reseller?

You are eligible to become a reseller and enjoy a discounted rate after you have obtained 5 servers with us.  For more information, please feel free to contact your account executive.

8. I am not always near my computer, is there any other way to access my server?

You can access your server on your mobile phone!  Now you will be able to change things immediately, without waiting until you get to a computer. Reboot, check bandwidth, even submit tickets on the go.  Just check out Singlehop.mobi to access LEAPmobile.

9. How long has SingleHop been in business?

SingleHop has been in business for 2 1/2 years as its own entity, however, it was previously the dedicated server division of midPhase, inc. This brings the total up to 6 years!

10.  Is your support outsourced?

Our support team at SingleHop is based here in Chicago.  We do not outsource any of our support so you can have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that we are all familiar with your account and server.

I recently took a look at a dedicated hosting directory and there were more then 100 companies listed, with so many choices how does one pick the right host for their needs? To begin, the dedicated hosting market is completely saturated with everything from huge companies that own multiple data centers, (The Planet, Softlayer, Rackspace) to medium sized companies that own their own hardware but lease their data center space (SingleHop, WiredTree), to resellers who operate as middle men between their clients and the datacenter that they resell from, but don’t actually own the hardware or even have hands on access to it (10TB.com, Hostgator). So what is best for you?

So you are looking for a dedicated server, and realize oh geeze I don’t know a whole lot about managing a dedicated server. Besides doing the obvious and making sure your server is managed you should think about getting yourself some sort of control panel. Control panels will give you the ability to do important tasks without knowing the SSH command in Linux, or the right place to look in Windows. Some examples would be: adding an e-mail address, password protecting a directory, setting up FTP accounts, viewing statistics, not having to install php and mysql, not having to install an e-mail server, and on and on.

What kinds of control panels are available?
There are all sorts of different control panels out there. The most popular ones are cPanel www.cpanel.com, and Plesk www.parallels.com . cPanel you can only use on Linux based boxes, and Plesk can be used on both but most of the time it’s used on Windows boxes because cPanel seems to be a bit better with the Linux OS, and it offers more capabilities.

What else will a control panel do for me?
Well do you expect your website, or websites to grow so much your going to need to get into a bigger and better server? Well this is another thing a control panel can help you with. cPanel and Plesk come with a system to help automatically transfer data from one server to another. This takes the very time consuming process of migrating data out of your hands and puts it into the very capable hands of a computer that doesn’t have kids, doesn’t need to eat, and doesn’t need to sleep. Think of all of the other fun stuff you can do while your server does the hard stuff. Another great thing about control panels is that they give you tools to diagnose minor problems, see how much of a load is on your server, check error logs or other various logs, setup databases with a few clicks of a button and much more.

Where do I signup?
Any of our dedicated servers can have a control panel on them. We recommend getting one unless you’re an expert in maintaining a server. You can contact your account executive for pricing and assistance with getting your very own control panel setup on your server.

I remember, many years ago, being extremely excited the first time I logged on the web at 56kbps, everything seemed so much faster and smoother. Then I remember being excited when I finally got DSL, speeds of 700kbps were, in my mind, the best thing ever. Then came cable, with speeds of up to 17mbps I thought that the internet age had finally “arrived”. Now, what would you think when I tell you that SingleHop’s network is soon to be hooked up to a whooping 80Gbps!!! Now that is something to be excited about!!

By the end of June each of our data centers will have IP traffic connectivity of 40gbps from AboveNet and nLayer, for a total of 80gbps in the entire network. Keep in mind though, there is a direct connection between both data centers for redundancy and inter-connectivity between the entire network.

With more IP capacity we are making sure that our growth, in no way, sacrifices performance. It also provides a tremendous cushion against denial of service (DDoS) attacks, on top of the many measures we already have to protect against this. In the end, It makes sure that the network that you rely on is as robust, capable and powerful as possible.

Enjoy!

Hello it’s Stephanie again. I have an update on my experience at SingleHop as I learn the ropes of web hosting. I have to say that, so far, it has been a lot of fun meeting new people and learning tons of new information. Most of my days are kept busy with staying in touch with Team Larkin’s clients and assisting them with any requests they have. Just by doing this I am learning so much about the needs of our clients and how we can provide the best service to them.

My favorite part of my position as Account Manager for Team Larkin’s portfolio is hearing customer feedback. I love to hear how we are satisfying client’s needs, and learning of ways that our clients suggest we can improve. I have heard all sorts of compliments from “I love SingleHop!” to “It is the perfect service” and even “You guys are beef jerky-consuming butt kicking nordic gods!” Also, some of our very loyal clients have written in-depth reviews of us on other web forums and even tweet with us on a regular basis.

While I have been developing relationships with our clients, I have also spent time learning more about web hosting. Our clients often have questions about backup so I am becoming more familiar with them. For example, clients often want to know how to get them setup with the aforementioned service, and I have learned that once clients know how much data they would like to backup, the space is then allocated and we can help configure the backups for their server on a daily, weekly and/or monthly basis. This way, in the event the data is lost or destroyed we can retrieve the data and restore it from the backup.

If you are a client of ours or just have some general feedback for us, I would love to hear it! You can either reply to my blog or catch me on Twitter (singlehopsteph) or LinkedIn. If you have a chance check out some of the reviews our clients have written about us!

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=5174704

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=859935&highlight=singlehop

Hello All!

I wanted to announce a new promotion here at SingleHop. We are now offering free migrations from almost any of the major control panels to our cPanel servers. This is an amazing chance to move from any of these platforms, offered by most of our competitors, to a SingleHop server and the amazing quality of service that that entails. Here at SingleHop we are dedicated to providing as much value as possible with the services that we offer and this is just another way that we can assist our clients. Here is a list of the control panels that we can migrate from:

Dear clients, I am especially excited to present our new status page which you can now access by clicking here: Status.SingleHop.com Control, transparency, and openness are some of the most important values at SingleHop, and at the center of all those values is the need to be informed -that is what Status.SingleHop is all about. We strongly believe that clients deserve to know what is going on with the network they rely on and for this information to be easily accessed. At Status.SingleHop.com you can find information on any upcoming network maintenance, and in case any incident occurs with the network, up-to-date information on system incidents. For the latter reason we have taken great strides to make sure this site will stay online even when the SingleHop network is having issues. So, if you have any concerns about our network, do make sure to check here first. To ensure that you can find this information anytime and anywhere, we made a sister and text-only “mobile site” that can be accessed by going to the same URL address. A sample of how the mobile site looks like can be found by going to the following page and typing status.singlehop.com – click here: mobile site

I would like to show you around the status site and have included some numbers to help point things out.
The status site is organized with Incidents and Notices as the only two events, the most recent of both will be posted inside the main page. Specific buttons in the navigation bar are available if you wish to focus on one or the other.

(1) Notices are for scheduled, or if necessary, emergency maintenance notices. We will post the scheduled event with as much lead time as possible and provide updates until the maintenance window has been completed.

(2) Posts about incidents will only be used when our network or systems are experiencing difficulties. We will provide a message stating this fact as soon as possible, and follow up with updates approximately every 30 minutes until the incident is resolved, at which point it will say “closed”.

(3) Updates will be found immediately under each and every post, simply click on the link that says “+ show update” and the update(s) will appear below the original post. A nice feature that we have added to updates is the ability for anyone to submit their email address and receive updates on that particular post as soon as we provide them. Once the Notice or Incident has been closed. To minimize excessive email, emails will cease to be sent to any registered email address once the notice or incident has been closed. The ability to receive emails for any and all post and updates presented on the page will be available at a later time through a subscription service.

(4) Network performance graphs. These graphs provide instant information on the health of the SingleHop network. The graphs signify the level of traffic going through our network. Note: when you see that the graph line is close to the top, it does not signify a saturation of the network, simply that the amount of traffic flow is high, but nonetheless, at normal levels. What you want to look out for is spikes heading up, or down. Spikes going up would probably mean a DDoS attack, and a deep and sudden valley would probably mean that our network is having issues. The first graph provides traffic data from our DC1, and the second one from our second data center DC2.

(5) Find your cabinet. This feature allows you to submit your cab number and find any open notices that feature it. Its an easy way to find notices or incident posts that could be related to your cabinet.

(6) We will soon add buttons that link you to the site where you can submit tickets on LEAP. For now, in this box we just have a button where you can select to have the status site reload every 30 seconds automatically.

(7) Blog and Twitter Feed. Here you can find feeds from the blog on our main site- Singlehop.com, as well as our twitter feed.

We are excited to have the opportunity to open up our company and provide honest, quick, and transparent information on the network that you rely on. Of course, this being the very first version of our status page, we will constantly be looking for ways to make it more effective and useful for all our customers. If you have any ideas, feel free to drop us a line at pr@singlehop.com