Ultraspeed / Hostroute

Located in the heart of the “silicon roundabout”, Ultraspeed /Hostroute is a London-based web host that wears their customer promise on their ‘web-sleeve’.

Jordon Gross, Managing Director of Ultraspeed/Hostroute took a few minutes to answer some questions for our "Meet the Resellers" series

How did you personally get into the Internet business?

I originally got into it in 1997 running a few websites of my own, then I started reselling hosting space. It's all continued from there, really.

Tell us how long Ultraspeed and Hostroute have been doing business and about all the services you offer to your customers.

Ultraspeed has been in business for 11 years now, and Hostroute for about 8. Hostroute was purchased by Ultraspeed at the end of 2007. Ultraspeed specializes in offering Managed Hosting in the UK, and has pioneered a product known as Diskless Servers (No Hard Drives, 15 minute hardware replacement guarantee, low power consumption) that has been very popular. Hostroute offers virtual hosting and domain names, and is currently getting a major overhaul from the billing system to the website to the hosting products.

Where are you located and what makes it such a great place to do business?

We are located in London, England; in a particular area of London called Shoreditch. Somehow we got an office here three years ago, and the area has now become incredibly trendy and filled with media/arty types and too-cool-for-school restaurants and bars. Our techie crew sometimes borrows clothes from the vintage store downstairs just to not stand out like sore thumbs!

Any interesting stories from your company's history?v

Many interesting stories, most of which we can't repeat publicly! One such time was at the end of the 90s in New Jersey, when we spent an entire 24 hour period moving servers in the back of a U-Haul van, fueled only by Dunkin Donuts.

Suffice to say it's been a huge amount of fun (and hard work!) over the years.

How long have you been an OpenSRS Reseller and how has your partnership with OpenSRS helped your company succeed?

Hostroute has been an OpenSRS Reseller since it started really, OpenSRS have always been supportive to the growth of the business, we're looking forward to putting a huge amount more business with them over the next few years.

What can we do to make the relationship stronger?

Not much, really. Tea at the Wolseley?

Thanks to Dr. Neil Clifton for the photo of the Shoreditch Fire Station licensed under the Creative Commons.