Toad Hall Cottages choose HA for Hosting and Support
Taking our clients problems and transforming them into solutions
Taking our clients problems and transforming them into solutions
Formed in 1988, Toad Hall Cottages is now the holiday letting agency of choice to thousands of holidaymakers looking to enjoy the beauty and climate of the English West Country, one of Europe’s most desirable regions. Toad Hall Cottages specialises in picturesque properties in much-sought-after locations.
Their range of coastal, rural and waterside holiday cottages is considered second to none. The business lets over 700 properties and continues to grow both organically and by acquisition while retaining their mission for high quality service, high standards throughout, and the desire to go the extra mile in everything they do.
As the family business has grown, it has moved from a brochure based holiday letting concern to one which is now almost exclusively web-based. The Toad Hall websites, with their online search and booking systems, are at the heart of the business. This in turn means that the business requires, and demands, the best hosting service to keep the sites available and fast.
Toad Hall IT Manager Larry Alen, has been in the IT business for 35 years, the last 12 of which have been with Toad Hall Properties, and he has seen solid year on year growth. As the business transitioned from brochure-based to web-based, Larry has seen the importance of the company’s hosting grow to being a key business objective. “We had previously used various big name hosting providers including Rackspace and FastHosts,” says Larry. “We needed a reliable, failsafe, fast platform, but also a company that was able to react and care about our needs.
In our experience larger mainstream providers cannot do this. With our reliance on the Internet, any service shortfall presents a substantial risk to the business. For example, if our hosting infrastructure fails at certain times of the week we would not be able to do business, and booking losses would be substantial.”
"Toad Hall Properties is growing fast, so our hosting partnership will continue to be key to that growth in ensuring our web platform stays sound. The HA247 Directors are the shareholders and very hands-on. The team is excellent, flexible to our business needs. They are small enough to care and to be nimble with support, yet experienced enough to offer substantial infrastructure and redundancy. A great company.”
Larry Alen, Toad Hall IT Manager
“HA247 ticked all the boxes when we were searching for a new hosting provider. They were clearly specialists in the field. I liked the automated failover of the High Availability, 3 server configuration HA247 proposed to us, and their 30 day back-up as standard. The service they claim, really is the service they deliver, and their delivery is seamless. If we have issues, the support staff are quick to respond and often follow up to make sure all is well.”