I just finished a three-month review of our site operations for our site OrganixDirect using SeeksAdmin's outsourced server management service compared with doing it ourselves using independent contractors. I'm amazed that costs have gone down by over 70% while server uptime has been 100% (to date) and response time to tickets has gone down to 1.5 hours on average.

SeeksAdmin was recommended to us by a friend who's a CTO as a large ecommerce company. SeeksAdmin provides outsourced server management and helpdesk for around $50 - $100 a month (depending on the level of service).

(Update: check this page to see if SeeksAdmin is still running their 15% discount promotion)

To operate OrganixDirect, we relied on a combination of our hosting company, HostGator, which provides an excellent level of managed hosting services, along with paid contractors we used for additional support and server security. We also hired one full time helpdesk staff to respond to customer support requests. We realized this was an inefficient setup, as it required lots of communication between separate parties. We found ourselves spending inordinate amounts of time helping coordinate and costs were going up.

The idea behind SeeksAdmin is really smart - they act as one single resource which provides all your server management and helpdesk functions. What they do for us:

• Respond to all helpdesk tickets (we chose email only)
• Server performance & optimization review and upgrades
• Server security review and upgrades 
• 24 / 7 server monitoring
• Nameserver and DNS management
• Hacked server analysis and recovery
• Server cluster setup and management
• 1 hour of coding time per month (this is huge!)
• Handle all server kernel upgrades
• View full list of services

How has SeeksAdmin performed for us? So far, SeeksAdmin has exceeded our expectations. They respond very quickly and their staff is very friendly and knowledgable. The initial setup took just a few hours - once we were integrated into their systems and they reviewed our server setup, they did a 24 hour review and came back with a detailed report on optimization and security issues to address immediately. After they applied some of their recommendations, our server response time improved by 12%. They seem to know what they're doing.

We also use SeeksAdmin to respond to customer support requests via email. They have reduced our response time from 24 hours to 2 hours, and after their initial review and a few Q&A sessions, they've been able to handle most issues without escalation. This has been the biggest cost saver for us, we're now paying about $400 / month total for helpdesk support, which is 75% less than we were paying before for dedicated staff.

How much does SeeksAdmin cost? Here's a comparison of SeeksAdmin's server management packages and prices:

• Critical server administration (includes 30 min response time, custom coding services, and clustering setup) - $129 / month
• Full server administration (includes 1 hour response time, proactive security, and migrations) - $79 / month
• Base server administration (includes basic management only, 2 hour response time) - $29 / month
• Helpdesk tickets (email) - approx $2 per ticket (depends on volume)
• Helpdesk tickets (chat) - approx $3 per session (depends on volume)
• Helpdesk tickets (phone) - $0.50 per minute (depends on volume)
• View all pricing & packages

(Update: check this page to see if SeeksAdmin is still running their 15% discount promotion)

For OrganixDirect, SeeksAdmin has been the single biggest operational improvement we've made this year. We're happy with their level of professionalism and the value their service brings to our bottom line. We recommend you check them out too.

Additional home business resources: You may also want to check out this overview of VPS hosting providers (if you are a smaller site) as well as Jason's guide to building a cheap business website. If you run a home business, you should look into online backup like Mozy, as well as Odesk and Elance for hiring contract workers.

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