Overall Editor's Rating
91%		Overall Rating
94%		Price
89%		Features
90%		Support
90%		Reliability
92%		Speed

Business Operation
since 1999

Number of Websites Hosted
7900

Overview & Company Description
Grabweb.net is a fully owned subsidiary of GRABWeb Managed Hosting, based in Chandigarh, India.

Grabweb.net provides a wide array of services within the web hosting environment including shared hosting, reseller hosting, and managed dedicated server services. The company market and sell its hosting solutions to two key audiences: web users that want to stay ahead of the curve in competitive, converging industries, and resellers who recognize they must deliver integrated hosting technologies as part of their core solutions to remain anonymous yet relevant.

Good customer support and reliable hosting services. That's how Grabweb.net sees the heart of its business. Gaurav Arora, the founder of Grabweb.net, and his team of technical support staff have been dedicating their business to understand customers' needs, deliver the right kind of hosting solutions and help website owners to succeed since its their inception in November 1999.

While the company may still have some improvements to make on its hosting technologies, the company is very fanatical about keeping customer data available 24 hours a day.

"When time is counted in tiny fractions of minutes, the smallest piece of data available on its customer's account makes a huge difference" says Gaurav Arora

The company is on the mission to help web users maximize their website efficiency, reduce hosting costs and provide high data availability. Grabweb.net facilitates this hosting service for customers seeking the "win" in today's high stakes competitive dynamic.
 

Why we like this company

• It is a focused web hosting solution company. They don't do designing, SEO etc.
   
• The company understands uptime urgency and is fanatical about uptime and performance
   
• Provides Free Phone support to its clients worldwide
   
• Has a strong reputation of delivering robust technology to enable customers to store, access and manage their business-critical data.
   
• Offering one of the lowest hosting costs at US$2.08 per month.
   
• Provides many free software in its control panel.
   

Customer Support & Rating  90%  
Over the past 2 weeks, HostPulse has monitored the activities of the Grabweb and gathered the satisfaction rating from its customers to find out how the company has performed in the month of November 2004. HostPulse finds that GrabWeb has simply moved beyond the "customer is always right" conventional wisdom, and toward creating a business culture that provides functional and emotional value to customers and its staff.

As online businesses grow in importance, web users need relevant, easy-to-use solutions to create better websites, to understand what is happening on the website today and to plan for the website tomorrow. Grabweb.net is utilizing Linux web hosting technology to deliver good website management efficiency and helping webmasters to manage and control their website settings easily.

In addition to that, as response times for website support and control panel support on the web gets more critical on the web, Grabweb.net justifies the needs by providing emergency telephone support, trouble ticket manager, chat support, and flash tutorials for the novice. From our investigation, we found out that Grabweb.net has the ability to solve problems quickly as the technical support staff are extremely familiar with the web hosting systems. The average response time for an trouble ticket is about 20 minutes.

For more information about the customer support, please go to http://www.grabweb.net/support/index.html.
 

Hosting Plan & Price that stand out  94%  
Looking through all of its hosting plans, the Biz Starter and the Freedom Starter are good hosting plans to consider. Although Biz Starter is only US$25 per year, HostPulse.com prefers the 500MB Freedom Starter with unlimited domain name. The plans also comes with unlimited MySQL, Vault applications, Plesk Control Panel, Spam Filter, Apache ASP. For more information, please go to http://www.grabweb.net/web_hosting/reseller_web_hosting.html.
 

Network Connection and Infrastructure
GRABWeb servers are located in three different geographical areas, San Antonio, Texas, Houston, Texas and Parsippany, New Jersey to provide better stability and secure hosting.

Best Case Routing ( BGP4 Routing )
Data centers utilize connections to multiple backbones and its routing system is entirely switched, using Cisco powered network. The two data centers use Cisco GSR 12000 class routers running HSRP (N+1 hot failover) to ensure that data is routed even in the event of a router failure. The BGP4 protocol standard allows routing of packets, of information sent from the Data Centre's Network. Each packet of information is evaluated and sent via the best route possible. Because of its redundant network architecture, packets may be sent via alternative routes even if they are being delivered to the same end user. If one of the providers fail, packets leaving the network are automatically redirected via an alternative provider

Bandwidth Utilization
Its NOCs (Network Operating Centers) currently have extra capacity, even during peak hours. This allows system configuration and allocation allows the network in the data center to accommodate large spikes in traffic that are often associated with the popular Web sites. NOCs are kept updated by adding network connectivity and new routes in an effort to make sure content is delivered to web users as efficiently as possible.

Physical Security
The data centers are physically isolated from everyone but level three technicians. Public access is strictly forbidden. Access to the floor the data center resides on is restricted to those holding the datacenter military-grade passcards. The data center also utilizing Biometric hand scanners to restrict access.

Conditioned Power
Power systems in the data centers are designed to run uninterrupted even in the unlikely event of a total power outage. All servers are fed with conditioned UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) power that will run if utility power fails. The UPS power subsystem is N+1 redundant with instantaneous failover in case the primary UPS fails. In the event of an extended power outage, an on-site diesel generator can run indefinitely. The generator is regularly tested to ensure that it will continue to function in the event of an emergency.

A Precision Environment
All air is circulated and filtered every 90 seconds to remove dust and contaminants. The data center's HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) system is N+1 redundant to ensure that - even in the event of an entire HVAC system failure - there is a duplicate system on standby to take over. An advanced fire-suppression system is in place to prevent any fire from spreading - in the unlikely event that one could start. All cables to servers and routing equipment are securely tied down, and cable racks suspended from the ceiling provide dual routes for all cables. In the event that all cables on a cable rack are cut or burned, packets of data will automatically be routed to a second set of cables on the other side of the data center.

24x7x365 Monitoring
Additionally, all Network Operation Centers provide round-the-clock monitoring of all hardware, including routers, switches, UPS systems, and servers. The Network Operation Centers also monitors power, environmental factors (such as temperature and humidity), generator status, and network connectivity. All critical services/ports are monitored, including FTP, HTTP, SMTP, HTTPS, SSH and POP3.
 

Reliability Rating  90%  
"The goal is to provide maximum redundancy in every facet of the datacenter environment to facilitate 100% uptime for your entire hosting infrastructure." quips Gaurav Arora, founder of Grabweb.net.

The company has already implemented 24 hour real-time remote monitoring and diagnostic systems to avoid unplanned outages, and boost data availability, and provide even greater benefits in terms of consistent performance and customer retention.

HostPulse.com found out that the company reviews quarterly its case-summary reports that document all support incidents and identifies areas for improvement. This is one of the exceptional hosting management qualities HostPulse.com looks for in hosting companies.

Therefore, Grabweb is very serious about its hosting and storage solutions which must ensure data integrity and uptime. The company has addressed this through higher reliability in its new hosting technologies and have selected to place its server on state of art data centers that provide tape libraries, redundant power supplies and redundant cooling, hot pluggable drives and 24x7 management of libraries over the Internet.
 

Web Server Type
Grabweb.net's servers come from DELL & IBM. Gaurav Arora says that all of its servers are optimized or configured correctly to to performance during peak traffic hours. The usual configuration are:-

Dual Xeon Processor
2 GB RAM
SCSI Hard Drive
Redhat Enterprise ( Linux )
Apache 2 & Plesk

Hosting Features & Rating  89%  

• Plesk Control Panel
• Multiple Domain Hosting
• Sub-Domain Hosting
• Online Backup Option
• Unlimited POP3 Mailboxes
• Daily Webstats
• Webmail - Horde
• SPAM-Filter - SPAMASSASSIN
• Microsoft FrontPage Support
• Password Protected Dirs
• Apache 2.x
• PHP 4.3.x
• PHPMyAdmin
• MySQL
• Private CGI-BIN
• SSI- Server Side Include
• Mod_SSL
• Apache ASP
• Professional Website Editor - It is the easiest way to create, modify and update a website without any need for technical knowledge.
• osCommerce - A very popular online shopping cart e-commerce solution.
• PhpBB - PHP BB is a nice and powerful web forum.
• Gallery - Gallery is a simple and powerful photo gallery.
• Bbclone - Feature rich counter.
• PostNUKE - PostNuke ("Phoenix") is a significant CMS system.
• Mambo - Mambo is an Open Source CMS system.
   
   

Website Speed  92%  
Ping grabweb.net [216.118.117.197] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.118.117.197: bytes=32 time=0ms
Reply from 216.118.117.197: bytes=32 time=16ms
Reply from 216.118.117.197: bytes=32 time=15ms
Reply from 216.118.117.197: bytes=32 time=16ms
Reply from 216.118.117.197: bytes=32 time=16ms
Reply from 216.118.117.197: bytes=32 time=0ms

Ping statistics for 216.118.117.197:
Packets: Sent = 6,Received = 6, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 16ms, Average = 10ms

Testimonials

• You know what... Sign me back up. No one can beat GrabWeb for support and I miss that !
  
  A Returning Client - Jon Leslie, South Lawrence, USA
  http://www.planet42.com
   
• Just renewed for another year, you guys are awesome !
  
  Jeff Morgan, Montana, Bozeman, USA
  http://www.bridgertech.net
   
• I am truly impressed and very very happy. You guys provide an outstanding service. You always handle everything very professionally and to my fullest satisfaction !!!
  
  Ivo Gasser, Switzerland
  http://www.shoppingcity.ch
   
• Before I signed up with GRABWeb, my biggest concern was, service. I had just fired two different service providers because those other companies would always refer me to their online help which really did not help me. Then when I would write my question, they would answer loosely and always referring me again to the online help. GRABWeb's answer was always from a human, personal which was promising me the service I was looking for.
  
  Every single time I received a prompt effective response which helped me tremendously. I truly appreciate good after-sale service and believe it is of the UTMOST importance.
  
  So thank you all at GRABWeb for a wonderful service and keep up the GREAT work!
  
  Sophie Marcil, Montreal, Canada
  http://www.bleumandarine.ca
  
   

Traffic Magnetism
Just a few years ago, ambitious Internet gurus would have proclaimed their new online presence a success if it had generated a million hits per week. Those days are long gone. The dot-com downturn showed that traffic statistics such as hits and page views were only part of the picture. Financial metrics from the world of bricks and mortar, such as monthly operating cash flow and revenue growth, are more fundamental telltales of e-commerce business health. If those measures are going down, the online business can’t be going up. Our investigation on Grabweb's profit margins reveals the company is maintaining a healthy cash flow.

"Managing our growth is one key to maintaining cash flow. Rapid growth often results in higher accounts receivable and higher inventory levels, which translate into less available operating cash. Grabweb.net understands its correct growth rate and if we get too far ahead of the growth curve, we can grow our way right out of business," Gaurav said. "A profitable host can have money in inventory and equipment, and no money to pay taxes."

One of the main key reasons of Grabweb.net's profitability is the company's exceptional customer service that always puts customer first. It means everyone at Grabweb is focused on the customer. Its technical support staff always inform customers of problems early to proactively communicate with the customer to avoid unpleasant surprises. The sales and marketing staff always get feedback from customers and implement new hosting services for new customers to continue delivering high quality hosting services.

In a nutshell, what customers like so much about Grabweb.net can be summed up in three words: Good customer service.
 

Success Factors
Over the past 5 years, Grabweb's journey has been marked by steady growth and steady profit. One of India's largest and most successful privately owned hosting providers, Grabweb commenced operation as a cheap hosting provider under the guiding hands of Gaurav Arora. Gaurav Arora has seen a lot of changes in the industry during Grabweb.net's four successful years in business, "There have been major changes in the web hosting landscape over the last 5 years," he said. "At the time we started the business, most hosting plans only provide 20mb to 50mb of disk space. Nowadays, that's no longer the case - the average Linux hosting plans comes with 1000mb of disk space and at least 10gb of bandwidth allowance"

Grabweb.net's aggressive approach to global market hosting increase and the introduction of many cheap hosting plans created substantial growth for the company. The company expanded through various server allocation in different data centers in the Texas, U.S., London, United Kingdom and an office in Calfornia, U.S.

By 2004, its sales increase immediately when Grabweb.net.com begin to perceive itself as a professional problem solver rather than a hosting company selling web space. The company has shown that market success comes from concentrating single-mindedly on selling to those customers that they have segmented as being the ones who can most benefit immediately from the unique hosting features in the area of cheap web hosting.