About Laughing Squid Hosting

  1. What is Laughing Squid Hosting? #

    Founded in 1998, Laughing Squid Hosting is an independently owned and operated web host that provides dependable hosting services to to a diverse range of customers from around the world, specializing in hosting for individuals, artists and bloggers. Our focus is on great customer support, reliability, security and plenty of functionality for the price.

    We are open source geeks who are here to rescue you from the endless void of impersonal and unreliable web hosting.

    Also when you host your website with us, you help to support the Laughing Squid blog, which focuses on interesting art, culture and technology.

    For more info on what Laughing Squid is all about, check out our blog post “What Is Laughing Squid?”

  2. Where is Laughing Squid Hosting located? #

    Laughing Squid Hosting operates as a distributed company with Tentacle Team members located in various cities across the United States.

  3. How do you promote your services? #

    Most likely you are here because one of our customers told you about us, you came across us on the Laughing Squid blog or maybe you found us through an internet search. We grow mostly by word-of-mouth and do very little advertising. You won’t see us on a Superbowl ad.

    We feel that this grassroots approach is the best way for us to grow the right way and serve our customers properly. In fact most of our customers seek us out and choose to use our services because of our reputation in the online community as reliable, scalable and secure web host.

    Unlike many web hosts out there that are constantly bombarding you, we do not spend insane amounts of money on advertising or lower our pricing to an unrealistic level just to host as many domains as possible, with the goal of selling-off our company to some megahost.

  4. Why did Laughing Squid start a web hosting company? #

    Back in 1997, we started a web design company, building websites for artists and others as a way to support the community-based side of Laughing Squid. As new websites were created, it was necessary to find hosting for them. At first we rented shared server space from some of the internet’s largest web hosting companies. This was a very frustrating and unpleasant experience. The servers were always going down, their network connections were continually failing, and on top of that, the customer support was miserable to say the least. After moving our entire operation four times in 1998, we decided to setup our own servers and start a web hosting company. We knew that other people must be having similar episodes of horrific hosting, and they had to be growing tired of dealing with those faceless corporations. So here we are.

  5. What types of websites do you host? #

    Our focus is primarily on hosting for small, content-driven websites, with a focus on WordPress blogs. Many of our customers are bloggers, artists, writers, musicians, bands, filmmakers and other creative individuals. We also host a few non-profits and small organizations, but we do not host any large-scale, resource-intensive websites. For this reason we tend to turn away high-bandwidth websites, overly complex websites running a large number of scripts, and so on. This helps to maintain optimum performance and uptime.

  6. I really want a website but I don’t know much about the Internet. Can you help me develop a website? #

    Laughing Squid provides web hosting only, we do not offer any kind of web design or development services. That being said, building a website these days is far from rocket surgery, and anyone with basic computer skills and a little patience can do it. For instance, it’s now possible to install a weblog script like WordPress in just a few minutes.

  7. Give me one good reason why I should move my website to Laughing Squid. #

    Okay, here’s three:

    1. Service: You may have forgotten what it’s like, but Laughing Squid tech support is staffed by live, helpful humans who actually know what they’re doing. No half-smart interactive mail-jails, no half-trained (and half-paid) offshore temps, just the responsive service you need.
    2. Value: There may be less expensive web hosts out there, but we humbly submit that our service offering is one of the best values on the market. Our hosting plan offers great features and reliable service at a fair price.
    3. Community: By hosting your site with Laughing Squid, you contribute to the wider efforts of Laughing Squid, and help fuel our ongoing support for independent art and culture.