Hosting Advice Interview

the people of Hosting Advice, an American blog that covers the latest news tec from the world of hosting, interviewed us this April. Your #1 editor, Jon McDonald, wanted to know more about our beginnings 16 years ago and how we evolve day by day in such a changing market. Of course, we tell you everything, and you can read the original published note here.

But since we are very respectful of our audience and our native language, we decided translate the note to make it available to everyone.

Interviewer Jon McDonald has been writing hosting reviews for over a decade, many of which have been published in the New York Times. From Argentina we thank you for your interest and good vibes on behalf of all of Duplika.

“Duplika offers innovative, efficient and secure shared hosting services for entrepreneurs and companies”

By Jon McDonald

Their responsive support team and free migration services also bring peace of mind to entrepreneurs. Duplika emphasizes the threat mitigation and strong security practices to minimize the most common drawbacks of shared hosting.

Juan Manuel Zolezzi Volpi had built several websites for a company affiliated with amazon for which he was working in Latin America when he encountered a challenge. The company's web provider informed you that one of your shared hosting accounts was using too many resources, and convinced him to upgrade to a dedicated server.

Time later, he decided to optimize the software Drupal used, making the use of the dedicated server drop to approximately 1% of its available capacity. That experience led Juan to want to tackle site optimization issues professionally..

‘This is a problem many people have with growing websites.', says John. 'A hosting provider tells a client that they need a terrific server when they really don't. That was how it all started.‘

Juan founded Duplika to help small businesses maintain affordable websites using only the real resources needed.

The discrepancy between what a hosting provider recommends and what a company needs can be significant, something that happens even when everyone is acting in good faith. Vendors have little incentive—and often little experience—in optimizing a bespoke software platform for a specific use case.

And it's not uncommon for companies to lack the technical know-how to handle those consolidations on their own. The result is a less than ideal setup that can leave security holes and lead to inefficient use of server resources.

‘I understood that the same problem that I had, other people also encountered when focusing on their businesses [online]', Juan tells us. 'They have no idea if the cost is too high or if their web infrastructure needs to scale. Well they're not alone.’

The company's portfolio includes email marketing, transfers from other providers and implementation of SSL certificates, offering entrepreneurs right-sized options to grow their businesses.

Attention to detail makes shared hosting a more powerful solution

Juan tells us that hosting has evolved considerably since Duplika launched 16 years ago. In the early days, the technology stack on the vendor side was not as robust, and failures, including software licenses and failed updates, negatively affected the entire ecosystem. Also, some vendors dropped customers who presented too much of a challenge for management. Many ultra-low cost hosting providers have come and gone, leaving a bad reputation for the entire industry in their wake.

Over the years the Duplika team has learned that a gram of prevention weighs a kilo of cure.

‘We suffered a tremendous DDoS attack five years ago'John tells us. 'It was then that we decided to partner with Cloudflare. These attacks are hard to stop, especially when today anyone can buy them on common web forums targeting specific companies or vendors.‘.

Also it pays to be proactive to routinely plug security holes even when customers don't pay attention to it.

"Another typical theme is WordPress," he stresses. 'The WordPress XML RPC was a big hole in our websites, so we install mitigation software on all of our servers. The same thing happened with LiteSpeed.’

The risk of shared hosting is that when a client on the server is hacked or compromised, many ISPs along with major email providers blacklist the offending IP address. The problem is that all other innocent clients on the shared server are negatively affected by that blacklist.

Some hosting providers take a hands-off approach by suggesting their customers use a third-party email delivery service instead of relying on the shared host's native email software. However, that posture adds cost and complexity, and offloads the responsibility of managing IP management reputation. Duplika would rather reduce the risk of a blacklisted IP than impose mitigation on their customers.

Committed support gives customers peace of mind

One thing that surprises many of Duplika's business partners and customers is their deep commitment to technical support. John points out that Duplika tends to get a more varied nature of clients compared to other hosting providers.

He recounted a conversation he had while working with a consortium of Argentine companies dedicated to business development.

'No one answers support tickets. Some people are surprised that I'm still dealing with it personally, but I think is the best way to understand the problems our customers experience. Also, I love that way of working.'

Duplika maintains a dedicated team focused on customer support which it touts as one of its competitive advantages. Most hosting providers specialize in niche products, customer service, or infrastructure quality. This is because accommodation is primarily a basic service that no longer allows for a significant price discrepancy. Duplika emphasizes support and even provides a transition service for companies migrating from a different provider, giving new customers even more peace of mind.

Duplika's emphasis on risk reduction translates into fewer support tickets.

‘It is somewhat difficult to provide the best hosting service when it comes to large companies that do not have unified DDoS protection or LiteSpeed', observes John. 'However, we have a better general quality of life where no problem is a sudden emergency, and thus we avoid having to stay up late at night answering endless claims..’

Duplika: Innovative leadership in hosting with excellent support

Duplika has carved out a niche for itself as a support-focused company that prioritizes security while keeping costs down. The company offers a complete portfolio of hosting services and some additional features including email-marketing and e-commerce via WooCommerce.

The company's approach to security is derived from its experience and learning from the mistakes of its competition. Duplika is an 'oddball' among budget hosting providers because it provides add-on services, including Cloudflare, Litespeed, and other tools that mitigate security risks and operational inefficiencies.. Although the overhead of the company is slightly higher, that is offset by a drastic reduction in support tickets, a telltale sign that there are happy customers on the other side.

The company also offers a handful of specialized application platforms including Magento, Moodle and LearnDash with their relevant licenses. In addition, it offers optimized servers of Node.js for web applications and API functions to work smoothly.

Duplika's current roadmap focuses on servicing Managed WordPress, along with original professional plugins and licenses.

'We are promoting managed WordPress as an add-on to our hosting plans,' Juan tells us. 'We are constantly learning about the most used plugins, and we always focus on the expert management and optimal performance of WordPress. We've found that many customers have no idea how to get their platform moving faster.'

Duplika offers good performance, low cost, responsive service and strong security back end. These virtues can be difficult to balance, but they are certainly worth it.

'We keep these additional security tools because it gives us real peace of mind,' says Juan.