Behind the Tech With World Host Group and A2 Hosting: Building for the Future
For over 20 years, we have been committed to providing the fasting hosting available. But that takes more than just having a high performance infrastructure. It’s about continually innovating to meet the evolving needs of customers worldwide.
I recently sat down with Dom Taylor, the Chief Technology Officer of World Host Group and A2 Hosting, to discuss his journey in the hosting industry, the challenges he’s faced, and his vision for the future.
From Harry Potter to World Host Group
Dom’s story of how he got started with hosting began with creating a website in his teenage years.
“I started a Harry Potter fan site when I was 17 in my bedroom,” he shared. This initial passion project led him to explore deeper technical challenges. “I had to teach myself how to build and run servers back in 2002.”
This hands-on experience would eventually lead him to a career in website hosting. Together with Seb de Lamos, CEO of World Host Group, and others, Dom built a successful hosting company.
After years of success, they sold the business with plans to enjoy some time off. But before long, Dom and his partners started a WordPress maintenance business.
They expected to avoid the complexities of hosting. Instead, they quickly realized the biggest issues their customers faced weren’t in the sites themselves—it was the hosting.
“We’d log into customer accounts, create support tickets, and deal with server errors. And time and time again, the root cause was the hosting,” Dom explained.
That realization led them back to their core mission: to build a better hosting company. And that’s exactly what they did. World Host Group has become one of the fastest-growing hosting providers.
Building Affordable Hosting for the Future
“As the CTO, my job is to explore the market and to find the best possible solutions for our customers, giving them the best value, the best performance, and make sure basically we stay at the top of our game,” he said.
Part of continuing to build our hosting platform is to focus on our customer’s needs. Dom boils those needs down to reliable service, security, and value.
“The three most important things for any website are having it online in the first place, making sure it’s available to your customers. Making sure the website is secure. And the third one is a good value for money.”
He later added, “How do we keep ourselves efficient so that we can keep our customer’s sites online affordably?”
While that might seem straightforward, executing on those promises in a constantly shifting industry requires innovation at every level.
“I love building things. I love building platforms and solving problems. We are very much still in the stage of building and perfecting things,” he said.
Whether it’s deploying cutting-edge NVMe storage, expanding our data center footprint, or leveraging AI for better security and performance, the goal is always to provide customers with the best possible hosting experience.
Expanding Our Global Reach
“The key selling point of our group really is we can take our technology and put it anywhere,” Dom noted.
Prior to becoming part of World Host Group, A2 Hosting only had four global data centers to choose from. But now, customers have access to 15 global points of presence (PoPs) in 10 major metropolitan areas on almost every continent across the globe.
Dom jokingly added, “I think we’re still working on Antarctica.”
This has dramatically expanded our offerings, boosting performance, decreasing latency, and providing wider compliance with data sovereignty regulations.
As an example, Dom brought up our customers in Australia and India. While we previously didn’t have data centers in those areas, A2 Hosting customers can now take advantage of World Host Group’s larger infrastructure.
My Full Interview With Dom Taylor Is Available Now
Watch our latest podcast now for my complete conversation with Dom Taylor
We go into more detail about these topics, look at how Dom and his team are using AI to streamline site monitoring, and discuss our commitment to 99.999% uptime reliability.
Also, subscribe to the A2 Hosting channel on YouTube as we continue to explore the evolution and innovation of hosting and how they relate to WordPress, website optimization, and marketing.