Aiktern, network specialist from Waysoft

In a recent case, one of our customers informed us that they’ve been experiencing duplicate emails and timeout problems. Their connection to our mail server was also extremely slow. We took immediate action to set up a test and confirm that the problem cannot be solved off-site. Though we suspected that the problem was largely due to their network problems, saying “No” to a customer isn’t how we like to do things.

Within a day, we arranged to have Aiktern, a friend and network specialist, attend to our customer in Johor. The on-site investigation was performed and all aspects of the network were checked. A summary of findings was compiled and shared with the customer.

This is how we like to deal with our customer’s email problems, after all, that is our main business!

Speaking of Gen-Y, let us share some stories from the people working behind the scenes at 1.my. Customer satisfaction may be an organisation’s primary focus, but at 1.my, we don’t just focus on this; we also ensure that our clients are clear on what we’re doing behind the computer, and put our best efforts in sharing our know-how. We also look forward to learning things from our clients. In other words, we treat each client like a friend. Pin, the founder of this company, is known for attending to his clients/friends attentively and promptly.

Adrian and David - The Project Managers

Adrian and David, the Project Managers who form the core that drives 1.my’s website maintenance, not only do so at lighting speed, but are so dedicated they’re in cyberspace 24 hours a day.

Adrian works from almost everywhere

As an example of our fast response time, allow us to take one of our most prominent clients, Yinson Holding Berhad as an example. FYI, Yinson provides a comprehensive range of transportation and logistical services, as well as general warehousing facilities. Being a listed company, it is essential for them to update their company announcement system, and a few months back, we installed a Content Management System (CMS) for them to enable announcements by their employees. After making more than 10 announcements, they realised that there wasn’t a link to previous announcements. When they came to us with this issue, we solved the problem within an hour, and now it works perfectly, displaying all the relevant Bursa announcements.

In another success story, one of newest clients, Mr Shamaan, Managing Director of OGP Nova Sdn. Bhd., subscribed to our 99.9% uptime web hosting service. After we set up his corporate website, we quickly created three temporary pages with content from one of his power point presentations. After some time, Mr Shamaan wondered why he was unable to search for his website on search engines, although it was perfectly set up. We explained to him that newly created websites will be not be automatically indexed by search engines. To help in this issue, the web developer would have to set up meta tags for description and keywords, and submit the website URL to search engines. We did all this for him in an hour, and the team’s effort was rewarded with a thumb’s up from Mr Shamaan.

Other than our quick response time, we’re quite proud of the fact that we’re not like other web developers who are content with being passive. We’re proactive. Take our meeting with Maslow Trainers & Consultants, who are based in Kota Kemuning, Shah Alam.
They wanted us to meet up with their senior staff to discuss the development of a Human Resources (HR) Touch System.

Although we didn’t charge them for consultation, we shared a great deal with them at the meeting, including our goals, how the system will be set up, and we even discussed the benefits of online marketing. We believe that defining clear goals before trying out something new is vital to securing future ventures, while maintaining a hold on current businesses. Of course, in return, we learned a great deal from them too on how to manage human resources efficiently and effectively.

Another of our strengths is post-sales support, or after-sales support. For this, allow us to use our client, e-Suria from Petaling Jaya as an example. After we successfully set up the company’s blog using Wordpress, we customised the theme to suit their corporate identity, and we also provided them with a tutorial on how to manage their blog with Wordpress CMS.

At 1.my, we’re always there for our clients, so if you’re looking for tech support you can depend on, you know who to call.

Hi everyone, the team has been working hard to compile various reports on our uptime and performance this year. They’re now ready for you to download, so check them out:

1) Performance Report

This report details data we’ve collected since May 2009. It indicates the average response time in which our test servers connect to various services every 15 minutes.

Download Report

2) Webmail’s Uptime Report

Our average uptime in 2009 is 99.986%. We experienced two outages, which were recorded in May and June 2009, both lasting no more than 30 minutes.

Download Report

3) Incoming Mail Server’s Uptime Report

Good news! Out POP3 or incoming mail server achieved 100% uptime this year! In fact, we’re proud to say that no downtime was recorded since March 2008. Users should be receiving emails perfectly each time they press the download email button in their Outlook or Outlook Express, but may still encounter problems such as timeouts, which could be caused by ISP or email client problems

Download Report

4) Outgoing Mail Server’s Uptime Report

In 2008, we recorded two outages, but this year, we’ve reduced it to zero. We’re happy to report that the average uptime in 2009 is 100%. Despite the 100% uptime, however, users may still encounter problems with sending out emails. Usually, this is caused by ISPs blocking our SMTP and configuration problems in email clients.

Download Report

5) Mail Server Comparison Report

This comprehensive report reveals the uptime of various email-hosting companies in Malaysia. The monitoring was provided by Hyperspin, an independent 3rd party monitoring service. The monitoring, carried out at 15 minute intervals since December 2007, was performed from multiple monitoring stations worldwide, to eliminate false alarms. All reported downtimes are confirmed by 4 stations. The ‘Monitoring Total Outage’ report refers to the number of downtimes for both incoming and outgoing servers. Total downtime includes the duration of the outage for both incoming and outgoing servers. Just click on individual uptime figures to view detailed Hyperspin reports.

Download Report

Malware injection attack is spreading like wildfire these days, and countless websites have been affected. The attack is done via a compromised FTP, and many believe that the virus can actually “sniff out” FTP passwords and send it back to the hacker. The hacker then uses your FTP password to access your website and add malicious iframe coding to infect other visitors who browse your website.

Malware injection warning sign by Google Chrome

Most web browsers will put up a notice when they’ve detected malware in your website. This prevents other people from unknowingly downloading the malware. If you’d like to check if your website has been infected, use the Website Security Check from Unmask Parasites.

Security report from Unmask Parasites (beta)

You might also like to take the following preventive measures to protect your website from malware:

1. Upgrade your Adobe Reader to the latest version
2. Install anti-virus software like Malwarebytes and Comodo
3. Use SFTP instead of FTP
4. Remove all malicious coding from your website
5. Upgrade to latest WordPress if you have a self-hosted Blog
6. Change your FTP password

For further reading, check out Hidden iframe injection attacks

Retaining customers is one of our core businesses when it comes to email, web and domain name management services.

Tug of war, who wins?

The following are the sort of challenges we regularly face:

1) Once customers have signed up for our services, we keep them up to date on not just the server status, but also with tips, e-books and information that are useful to them. Sometimes, however, the service updates may not go to the right person – the decision maker, so we need to constantly improve our system records and track the most relevant contacts to ensure that our updates are delivered to the right people.

2) We wish there was a better way to say this, but we are expensive. Our web hosting and domain name services are among the priciest in town, but that is only if mailbox storage is your only concern when choosing an email service provider.

Recently, one of our customers had decided to opt out of our hosting services. Unfortunately, they found that the entire process was not being properly planned by the new service provider. The customer was left clueless and their website became inaccessible. No one informed them of the plan or who would be taking care of the domain name.

At the end of it all, the customer chose to stay with us, and we are ready to keep them happy in the long run! That’s why in all circumstances, we’re proud to say that our mission is clear, and we intend to provide the best for our customers, even when they’ve decided to leave us.

Jamie’s approach to web design is definitely off of the beaten path. Not only does she use her own name as her website address (jamiesoon.com), but she always replies to your emails in a short but sweet fashion that makes you feel like you’re working with a friend, rather than a company. She’s definitely someone you can trust, and gives you peace of mind.

Jamie has been designing websites since 2001

On her website, you’ll find her impressive portfolio and also interesting travel photos of the places she has explored. You can tell by looking at these that she’s a very passionate person and it definitely makes you feel like you want to work with her. She has also posted some interesting articles such as: ‘Getting the right colours for your design‘, ‘Why making changes is a good thing‘, and ‘Getting a website without spending money‘ – I think people may not understand the joke.

Camping in Gunung Nuang

We’re proud to say that she’s now one of our hosting referrals. We’ve worked with her on many successful migrations, transferring her customers to our new hosting servers. Here’s what she has to say about our services:

“I am glad that I finally found an affordable hosting plan at 1.com.my. The hosting package is perfect for installing a blog and the price makes it more affordable for my clients who are starting small businesses or want to start a personal or non-profit site. It’s cheaper than other hosting plans because the email hosting is a separate package, but it’s no problem because my clients can use their Yahoo or Gmail email accounts. Not only is the price great, I’m impressed with the friendly service, fast response to my enquiries and the effort put in to get the new hosting is up as fast as possible. I highly recommend Pin and his team at 1.com.my!”

Thanks Jamie! It’s been a pleasure working with you too! So, if you’re on the lookout for a web designer/developer, do check out jamiesoon.com.

Having good response time isn’t good enough for us, in fact, our team enjoys getting creative and “cracking their heads open” to find solutions that can rid our customers’ of their problems – even if it’s not really part of our job scope.

Why do we bother? Well, don’t you just hate it when someone tells you, “Oh, it is not part of our support system, please call xxx-xxxxxx.” See, we’re not like that.

Once, TM’s Streamyx was down, and our support team became an impromptu “TM support team,” providing a bunch of solutions that helped our customers solve their broadband issues, and ensured that they could continue using our email system.

In another instance, one of our customers complained that they have been experiencing problems with their email, in that sent emails were not being received by the recipient. Not a good thing! Once we confirmed that nothing had gone wrong on our end, we continued the investigation into the recipient’s mail server. To do this, we requested a demo account from the recipient’s mail server provider. Why did we do this? Simply because we believe that we can provide the best customer support by solving the problem, not by pointing fingers.

Support level comparision

Recently, we heard from Frederick of Maycare, a company that sells medical equipment and machines to hospitals, and runs a retailing business selling medical products and equipments to consumers.

Frederick @ work

Frederick’s job is to provide front-end support to the ERP system, and also the POS System on the retail side. Besides that, he is in charge of the IT dept, which manages the servers, computers and all the IT hardware in the company. He is also involved in maintaining the company’s website and design work for the company’s corporate identity.

When asked what he thought of our services, he said, “I like the way 1.com.my provides these kinds of services and facilities to the customer, because it is really a very effective and faster way to renew our domain online because everything is just a click away.”

He also said he did not encounter any problems with our “Payment Acknowledgment page“, as the instructions were clear and he found the system user-friendly. Frederick also offered us a idea on how to improve our services. He suggested, “Perhaps, what you all can do is provide a SMS reminder service to the customer when it is about due, sometimes the client may miss the email if they are too busy.”

Thanks for your feedback Frederick! We’ll look into that suggestion of yours :)