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How important is business transparency to you?
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Is this something you find important when researching a company to host with? Would regularly updated (quarterly, for example) information about how the company is doing make you more likely to go with them?
When I say transparency, I mean the posting of statistics and data about the company's growth (or lack of), etc. Everything from average ticket response time, to customer base growth over the past XX amount of time, to how many nodes are in operation, etc. Other things such as financial information could be posted in the form of percentage increase / decrease as opposed to real numbers. Reviews (both positive and negative) could be listed from different web sources, with responses / comments from the company.
Just doing some brainstorming and wondering what would encourage trust in a company in a market with so many choices.
Comments
I don't see this as a bad idea, but my question is if someone were to do this, how do you verify? How many deadpoolers have said, the day before they went offline even, "We are in excellent financial shape"
not important to me at all. just getting convinced that my provider is smart is already sufficient for me.
Good question, and to be honest I don't have the answer. It'd be nice if there were a trustworthy third party that was capable of compiling this sort of information, but I don't know of any and would be weary of allowing access to any sort of sensitive information to any 3rd party.
One of my considerations when I buy a vm for more than a month is if I think the company will be around, not just for the year I'm buying, but beyond that. If I'm investing a year in getting things set up on a server, it's going to be a bit of a pain in the ass to move it in a year if the company is looking shaky.
At the same time though, I don't think providers should have to post SEC filings to their customers or something.
I too am curious how people envision combining that desire for knowledge on long-term prospects with not putting the burden of a bunch of paperwork on providers.
Not to mention, a start-up would have little to show and this idea may be more damaging to them than that of an established provider, even if they're perfectly capable of providing an excellent service and have a plan in place for the long-term.
The only thing we don't release are client details, client/service statistics, and financial information. I think we're pretty good on transparency though...
We post our average ticket response times for the last 10 tickets in the header of every page: securedragon.net/
We post our server stats (including graphs): securedragon.net/hwstatus.php
We post announcements regularly (yes, even the bad ones): https://my.securedragon.net/announcements.php
We update our timeline monthly: securedragon.net/about.php
We keep an updated public calendar: securedragon.net/servicecal.php
We keep an updated changelog (even of the boring stuff): drgn.biz/forumdisplay.php?fid=23
We're starting either a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter next month but aside from that I'm all ears on how we can provide more information to our clients.
This type of information can be damaging for young and old providers, it can also be beneficial for young and old providers. I think the choice to disclose it or not is based entirely on the corporate culture. I know most of my clients by name for example and have no hesitation to chat about our home life let alone some petty corporate facts, most of which can be perceived by way of how you conduct your business online.
Personally I'd want to know my VPS company a bit more than just by the words on their site, but get to know the actual people taking care of my data. Will they go the extra mile when my VPS self-destructs? A personality will tell you that, not their company statement.
To each his own.
I like this... we might look into it
+1
We're using a free add-on for WHMCS for it, we get a lot of comments on it and people tend to point it out in their reviews of us so it does get noticed. The average times were a lot better before I changed my schedule but I'm not going to remove it just because the times are higher than I'd like for them to be.
I'm not too fond of it. I want you to trust me, and if you need to see my books to do it we probably won't work well together. My business plan is my own burden and I have no intention of encouraging people to over analyze it, requiring me to constantly have to explain numbers easily taken out of context. That context is something you shouldn't have to concern yourself with. Trust me, or don't
Transparency on node info could be very helpful
@MannDude If the CEO of the hosting company constantly talks to me on live chat and email then I'm sold! - if you catch my drift
Here -> goo.gl/nEvfd