Sergey from ua-hosting.company
— How many people are on your team?
A difficult question to answer. If you take into account the administrators from Vinnytsia – more than a dozen, I don’t know exactly how many, since Miroslav (manager of the technical department) is in charge of the administrators, and who is allowed into the ticket office is not my headache, and some of the guys were taken into the army ;( These are new realities in which administrators have to live and administer servers sometimes without electricity and with access via Starlink. It’s impossible to say that the quality has not suffered, because a person cannot always think adequately when someone flies next to him. If you don’t take into account the technical department, then four, including me. In 2017, there were a lot of us, only in Los Angeles we flew as a team of 8 people for a conference, the last HostingCon, when we became a sponsor. After all, we had a principle that it doesn’t matter how much the trip costs, and everyone should go, if they have the opportunity. But, as it happens, some people had to be released into freedom, this is described in the article “Confession of a boss: how to work while traveling, fire half of the department in LA and why sponsor Tyoma Lebedev's MexEthnoExp”.
— Tell us a little about yourself. Do you have a family, children? Do you travel often. Where have you been, where are you going? Where did you like the most?
No, no children (except for some clients?), although I have met many families on yachts in French Polynesia. I don’t see any problems with traveling with families with children. It’s important to know and understand how. I don’t travel often, but constantly, especially since 2017, when I left Ukraine and gave up the idea of living in one location or even returning to it. This imposes a number of restrictions: your whole life must fit in a suitcase, and given that I am a diver, sometimes it was still up to two suitcases.
In principle, I told you about how to work while traveling here. But there is no information about the routes, in recent years it is just a sequence, convenient in terms of the price of flights and locations. For example, if you fly from Europe to South America, say, Colombia, it makes sense to go from there to the USA, because flights in the USA are inexpensive, up to Hawaii (about $ 500 from Colombia, and there was a time when you could fly from Kiev to Hawaii for $ 500), and from Hawaii you can fly to Australia for $ 300 by Jetstar. Well, and then towards Asia, and vice versa. Of course, constant moving for 7 years has tired me out, and I realized that I need a catamaran, considering that Starlink for $ 5 thousand a month works in the middle of the ocean, with the exception of the South Pacific, then this is almost real. But hosting is not a very profitable business, and simply paying 700 thousand euros at once (and there are good options for 2-3 million) for some more or less sane-sized Fontain Pajot / Lagoon, etc. is problematic, especially now, when there is complete instability, and it is unknown which of our clients may need help and support. So for now we have to travel on airplanes, diving yachts and cruise liners.
Where did you like the most? A difficult question… It all depends on what exactly you like, and I like everything and everywhere. Colombia really impressed me, I kept coming back there for several months over the years, and I traveled all over by car (it has everything: mountains, volcanoes, rivers, oceans, islands in the Caribbean opposite Nicaragua and near Cartagena). French Polynesia is magical, after watching the movie Coral Reef Adventure, I always wanted to go there and have been there 5 times already, I understand that you can come back for a short time, but to really explore – you need a catamaran, another degree of freedom. Hawaii is also beautiful, I even managed to dive near a forbidden island, and otherwise visited all the islands in 2 months, but it's expensive… I guess there was no place more expensive than Hawaii. You should boldly budget 60-100 thousand dollars for a modest trip if you set a goal to see all of Hawaii. After all, Airbnb cleaning often costs 250 dollars there! Australia – on the first trip for a little more than a month – 18 thousand km by car, if you want to learn Spanish while driving – you should go there? But in general, it's a magical country. Many unique places that guidebooks don't tell you about. For example, Mataranka Hot Springs, google it. Having spent a week on the Barrier Reef in remote areas (by the way, it looks a lot like the Red Sea, only a safari is 10 times more expensive, at least an order of magnitude) and 27 hours underwater, I realized that all the statements of environmentalists are not true, the reef is quite alive and developing.
But life makes its own adjustments, statements from Ukraine that they will not reissue passports abroad made me think about a second citizenship, apparently for this I will have to spend some time somewhere, 5-6 years, and call another country home, but even in this case I will not stop traveling completely, since it allows me to switch, learn something new, meet new people and realize that, in principle, people are more or less the same everywhere. So there is no country that would be ideal for life and in which there would be no downsides. If I had to choose from everything for emigration, I would choose either Australia or Portugal, since Portugal has the best climate in Europe. I would not consider the USA in principle, since there are products that do not spoil for 2 weeks, and you don’t want to get fat from this. Although, perhaps, I could travel for 2 years to all the national parks, different states and cities – it is beautiful there and worth it. Something like that…
— How do you travel? Light or with a lot of things? Do you fly business or save? Where do you stay?
I try to fit into the 23 kg limit, and carry-on baggage of 15 kg (usually always more than allowed, almost everywhere, except for some locations), if diving equipment – 32 kg (the baggage handlers do not load more, and you need to put it in cargo), or 2 suitcases of 23 kg each. Although, once in Washington I bought a DJI S1000 drone in a huge pelican-case the size of a cubic meter, because I was thinking of shooting films. I managed to check in a box weighing 45 kg and huge in size, however, after the security management of JFK airport came to talk to me about why I was so sick in the head. Fortunately, drones have shrunk, and there is no need for such baggage anymore? But sometimes there are just problems. Underwater boxes, drones, diving equipment – all this is very interesting to security services.
If there is an opportunity to take a business class for adequate money, of course I take a business class, for example, from Egypt a flight Sharm El Sheikh-Istanbul-Bogota costs 1800 euros one way in business class, while from Istanbul to Bogota, the same flight is 3000 euros? Of course, it is profitable to fly some Pegasus to Egypt, stay there and fly to Bogota 2 times cheaper and in business class. And there are many such life hacks. You need to look at the routes. And, there are also miles, and upgrades for them? In Europe, business does not make much sense, since European airlines simply do not take the seat in the middle, that's all business … But if it is a normal airline, everything is fine there, and you can try. Once I managed to take Avianca business flights in Colombia in the summer for 3 euros more than economy, and this was a real business. They just sold them at a good price in the summer for foreigners. And then they suddenly went bad, and there is no more of that, they even can’t always accept a card for payment normally now.
Very often, if you are flying alone, you can go to the counter and get an upgrade to business for free, you can place a bet and get an upgrade at half the price, or you can use miles. All methods work, and you can read about them on the Internet. If the price for business is unreasonably expensive (5 or more times more expensive than economy), then my business is a bottle of wine on board, after which you magically sleep even in an uncomfortable hunched position?
The longest flights in economy class are probably Kyiv-Paris-Los Angeles-Papeete-Bora Bora: 37 hours and a lot of transfers? But then there were no options, and economy class round trip cost 3,300 euros, while Paris-Papeete (also via Los Angeles) – 1,200 euros. It turns out that there are different prices for economy class too. So it was quite reasonable to fly to Paris, stay there for a while, and then fly from there. But I only found out about this the third time that they specially reduce prices for the French so that people can afford to fly to their Polynesia, and Polynesians – to France. Now there are low-cost airlines via Los Angeles and San Francisco, well, and, alas, planes no longer fly to Kyiv. In general, French Polynesia has become more accessible to tourists, including due to the emergence of Airbnb.
As for where I stay – hotels.comif you book with a European account, makes every tenth night free, in addition to a discount that is greater than on booking.comsince 2017 with my travel pace I have received 68 nights, is it a lot or a little – it's up to you to decide? Well, I also use Airbnb. Sometimes on agoda.com it was advantageous to take a hotel with a Visa Infinite card to get a discount almost immediately in the same 10%, and not in the form of a free night. And it happens that I don’t stop anywhere and sleep in the car, since there are no hotels. For example, if you are driving through Australia, everything may be woken up in some towns, and the next ones are 500+ km away.
— What do you think about the hosting market in the future?
Everything will develop, this is certain, but prices will rise, since the total dumping that has happened and is happening is not great. I want to believe that sales will not be from those who are cheaper, but from those who are better. I believe that this is the only way to work. Considering the technologies, how much more perfect they have become, there should be no low-quality services.
I would like to ask my colleagues in the industry not to skimp on matches and to work primarily for clients who value quality. And for everyone to say: “those who are looking for cheap are not our clients, we understand this and do not regret it.” The service can be inexpensive, but it should not cost less than a cup of coffee, otherwise it is too much. Of course, hosting can be unprofitable, and basic tariffs for virtual servers – too. For normal providers, they serve for beginners to give them a chance to grow in the future. Nevertheless, much has changed over 15 years, and to say that now there is no way to get a normal VPS (which is quite powerful, like the basic server), is probably strange … When I really wanted to do something at the beginning, I was not stopped even by the price of $ 80 per month for a virtual server, although my scholarship was only 5-10 dollars. It is important to do projects for people, and then everything will work out. Well, whoever works solely for money will most likely fail, I talked about this in my article ““ua-hosting.company” or how to become a hosting provider from scratch and generate more traffic than all of Belarus.”
What awaits us all in the future on the hosting services market? Even greater virtualization, more functions, more flexibility. In the end, hosting providers should be able to provide ideal working environments for new Internet projects. Traffic will also become cheaper. I think that with the growth of traffic, and it grows every year, it will be possible to provide a premium network at the price of Cogent, and the need for separating networks will disappear. So there are only positive moments ahead, it will definitely not be boring, it will be interesting. The main thing is that webmasters, application developers and others come up with new projects, and we, hosting providers, will find the best infrastructure solutions for them and help place them on the Internet.
