Our warmest thanks goes to everyone who entered Rock Out Your Website. We were touched by some of your stories and intrigued by them all. Earlier we announced the winner on Twitter, and as we said there, choosing a winner for this contest was officially the toughest decision yet in Surpass contest history. There were entries that made us laugh, a few nearly made us cry!

We’re excited to announce the winner, AmyBlades.com. She’ll be receiving a site makeover and free hosting! We’re posting her before screenshot now. Within the next few weeks we’ll have the after, as well as a peek of elevating traffic and SEO statistics! We will also analyze this redesign experience and share successful tips and tricks with those of you who entered.

We’ll keep you updated on the exciting progress here on our blog, at Surmunity and through Surpass Flash.

One login, multiple services. Manage your existing hosting accounts, order new plans, and request support under one login.

Email notification control. Choose the way you receive emails for billing, support, newsletters and extra features.

Details at your service. Access information and resource usage all in one place.

New helpdesk, new features. We offer more privacy and security with your new Customer PIN number.

To win, just fill out the entry form with why your site is the perfect candidate for a complete makeover by experienced members of the Surpass team. Try to include information on the past history of your site and what you envision it to be like in the future. This prize is a complete, detailed makeover that will likely take weeks of work for us to get everything perfected! So give us your best shot at explaining why your site needs it more than any other! Plus, we’ll give you a free hosting credit for the following year. This is true rock star treatment!

You must enter by October 31st and we will choose the winner the following week. The lucky winner will be announced here (on our blog) on Thursday, November 5th. Good luck!

Today is Software Freedom Day as announced by SFI based in the USA!

“Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business—in short, everywhere! The non-profit company Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local SFD events to impact their own communities.”

Their vision is to empower all people to freely connect, create and share in a digital world that is participatory, transparent, and sustainable. Surpass agrees! We use open source applications each and every day and so do the majority of our customers. Empowered is an understatement!

In honor of this day, we are giving 10 shared or reseller hosting clients a free hosting credit for 1 month. Just leave a comment on this blog post and you’ll be in the running! Credits will be issued on Monday, September 21, and this post will be updated this evening at 6 PM EST with the names of the 10 winners. We will also tweet the results. Good luck!

WINNERS!
1. Vishwa @ http://www.pinebelthosting.com
2. Zach @ http://www.zachflauaus.com
3. Ankur @ http://www.ankur-gupta.com
4. Steve @ http://www.waterlooroadtv.co.uk
5. Mike @ http://www.mikeboylan.com
6. Shi @ http://www.randomsoul.com
7. Doug @ http://www.thehtmlartist.com
8. Tiffany @ http://www.aoi-tori.org
9. Cal @ http://www.fwiwhosting.com
10. Sudaththa @ aht.htad.us

55 Surpass customers entered our Brilliance Contest to win the grand prize of a Wacom Intuos4 tablet and compete for prizes in our other categories!

Every time we host another contest, it becomes increasingly more difficult to judge them and Brilliance is no exception. We were absolutely amazed by the entries and the response to this art contest. We thank each one of you who entered for truly enlightening our week with your own pieces of brilliance! Although we would love to award everyone with prizes, there can only be a few, select winners. So without further ado, here they are:

Best Painting or Drawing - Zo
Many of us thought of the Firefox logo when we saw this entry, proving that we are just a bunch of geeks! But we also appreciated its vibrant colors and magical energy. Zo will receive a $50 Amazon certificate! Visit Zo’s site at ZoDotCom.

Best Photo - Nathaniel
Another nature themed entry ended up being narrowed down as a favorite. Maybe it was the bright, summery feeling we got while sitting at our desks! Nathaniel will receive a $50 Amazon certificate! You can visit Nathaniel’s site at NathanielGuy.

Best Illustration or Graphic - Jon
There was just something about the fun style of this illustration that really caught our attention. Jon will receive a $50 Amazon certificate! FunctioningDesign is where you can find Jon online.

GRAND PRIZE - Thai Children - Painting by Tina
Tina is our Grand Prize Winner and will receive the Wacom Intuos4 Tablet to let her imagination run wild - digitally! We found her painting to be very real, authentic and calming. Also it made us think about future generations who will be using the Internet and finding it to be an amazing place. Tina’s blog and other art can be found at AntiqueMommy.

Techies can’t get the spotlight all of the time, so we declare August 26 to be a day of brilliance. This contest is for all of our clients who are illustrators, photographers, painters or graphic designers. (And by painters we do mean canvas or digital, not houses.) And the request we have from you is: Show us your most beautiful piece of art. It could be something you already made or something you create just for this contest. It could be a drawing, a painting, a photo, or graphic.

Just show us your brilliance.

The Grand Prize Winner receives a medium Wacom Intuos4 which any artist can use.

Depending on how many entries we receive, we will also be giving a prize for Best Photo and Best Illustration or Graphic. Those two winners, if awarded, will have their prizes announced on August 26.

Send in your artwork to kayla@surpasshosting.com by August 15 August 24! We have extended the date to give more time for you to enter. We’ll be posting all of the entries on the Surpass website on August 24. Your name and website can be included if you like - you can get great publicity for your site. Voting for the winner will be done by our staff and announced on August 26 here on the blog. Good luck to everyone who enters and shine on.

In honor of Father’s Day, June 21, we are offering a 15% off coupon for the life of a new shared hosting plan for all dads out there!

This coupon code is for new accounts only (this means new domain, never hosted with Surpass before). If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments! 

If you’re not familiar with the contest, we asked Surpass clients to give us a Surpass video review in exchange for a free Flip cam. These are the clients we picked to tell their stories!

Tad is the force behind an amazing one-man band and wrote a song about Surpass called “Friend in the Cloud” which almost brought tears to our eyes. Check out his music at TadDreis.com.

Steve, an adventure seeker and amazing video editor, raced down mountains in his biking video while recollecting his Surpass experience. You can find his website at SteveOreno.com.

Thank you for the amazing videos, we really loved them! And enjoy your cams for many films to come!

We gave $25 dollar Chipotle gift cards to four Surpass clients that follow us on Twitter!

@mrheadrick @summertea @angielaa @robmonroe!

Congrats to you all and enjoy that free grub! And remember, if you follow us on Twitter, you can win too!

We’ve had great success with this sale and so many people have been ecstatic about the affordable price coupled with our caring support. We have decided to continue this sale until… June 30!

Remember that if you follow us on Twitter, you can get your certificate for only $15 by simply entering your Twitter username into the comment box on the order page. You can purchase multiple years as well at this price, but only until the end of June.

For more information on why you should get your own SSL certificate, please read our SSL information page here.

However, please remember that SSL Certificates are not automatically renewed. They are purchased for a specified time period and are no longer usable after that period, which means you must purchase a new one when it expires. With that said, we recommend you purchase the certificate for multiple years as we can’t guarantee a price this good forever.

Just click here to begin your order! You will have your SSL, installed personally by us, within the next 24 hours.

*All SSL enabled domains are required to be issued a dedicated IP address. Without a private IP, the SSL will not function. IP pricing is as follows: $4.00/month for shared hosting, $3.00/month for reseller hosting and $2.00/month for dedicated server clients. (If you are not a client and will be purchasing a certificate from us, you’ll need to contact your server company to make sure you have an IP address to use.)
* These certificates are RapidSSL® Stable, 128/256 bit single root install SSL certificates ideal for lite ecommerce.

Thirteen may be considered an unlucky number by some, but it’s very lucky for us! We are so happy to announce that we have reached another milestone at Surmunity with a total of 13,000 members today. Our community is the core of Surpass and we could not offer such a great experience without each and every one of you. We thank you for participating in our contests, promotions and for joining us on Twitter and Facebook.

Most of all, we immensely thank you for being loyal customers who always let us know what we are doing right or wrong. Feel free to always reach out to us for anything you need - we are here to help and make your experience the best!

I feel like I’ve said the words, “This was the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make” before, but this time I really, really mean it! We received over 40 wonderful entries for our Flip Cam Contest. We truly thank everyone for contributing and for your kind words!

In the end, after reading the emails over and over, we finally figured out the three lucky winners.

Sam Liu - Just like us, he is all about community! We love it!

“I love surpass because I can develop on it without a hitch. From Ruby on Rails to my hosted Facebook application (Export Photos 2.0), things just work! I’ve only had downtime once in my four years with surpass (2 years sharing with a friend, the past 2 years I bought my own plan). And when I have any problem, surpass staff get to me quickly! I recall one instance where I locked myself out of my account (made a password I forgot)—my email was returned within the hour. I am active on the startup scene and was actually overjoyed to see TipJoy (a YC-funded company) making inways especially in the newsletter of my favorite hosting company. Surpass is perfect for startup folk like me who need a fairly-priced and reliable shared host for development needs. I haven’t used and therefore can’t vouch for the dedicated services, but certainly they remain in future considerations also.

Best of all, Surpass does stuff like this in the Surmunity (love it!)—my first site hosted here was a forum board for my school (previously hosted on a now-defunct British host)—my friends appreciated the speed and reliability increase. Some 70 classmates pitched in a couple bucks each to pay for the first two years of hosting with Surpass. From the start, it was all about preserving a community, and after I started hosting here, another vibrant community was what I found. I was really glad to be hosted by a company that engaged with its hostees.”

Steve James - We chose him because of the excitement and the unknown!

“I’ll secure and strap on that camera and ride down a technical downhill section in the Sierra Nevada mountains while explaining my positive experience with Surpass over the many years I’ve been with you. It should be a rush! ”

Tad Dreis - Instrumental, indeed!

“My video would feature me playing harmonica, mandolin, and hi-hat cymbal (AT THE SAME TIME!) and singing an original song expressing my joy at the value and ease of use I’ve enjoyed since hosting my original music website with Surpass.
I’m a writer and musician, not a techie.  With Surpass’s competitive rates and intuitive interface, my hosting plan can grow as my audience grows, and I’m able to manage my online presence without a degree in computer science.”

We’ll be sending off the Flip cams next week and will be excited to see their video entries next!

Once again, thank you to everyone who contributed.

From now until May 31, 2009 - purchase your SSL from Surpass and only pay $20.00. Twitter users can get their SSL for $15.00. For more information on why you should get your own SSL certificate, please read our SSL information page here.

However, please remember that SSL Certificates are not automatically renewed. They are purchased for a specified time period and are no longer usable after that period, which means you must purchase a new one when it expires. With that said, we recommend you purchase the certificate for multiple years as we can’t guarantee a price this good forever.

Just click here to begin your order! You will have your SSL, installed personally by us, within the next 24 hours.

*All SSL enabled domains are required to be issued a dedicated IP address. Without a private IP, the SSL will not function. IP pricing is as follows: $4.00/month for shared hosting, $3.00/month for reseller hosting and $2.00/month for dedicated server clients.
* These certificates are RapidSSL® Stable, 128/256 bit single root install SSL certificates ideal for lite ecommerce. 

Are you in a review-kind-of-mood? What about a new video camera-kind-of-mood? We’ll give you a free Flip Ultra Cam to record a video about Surpass and you can keep the camera in return! We’ll choose 3 of you to receive a camera in the color of your choice!

Just email kayla@surpasshosting.com with why you love Surpass Hosting and why your video would be the best! Based on your responses, we’ll choose 3 favorites and send a Flip Ultra Camcorder your way!

Today we introduce our United Kingdom hosting services, reaching out to European customers seeking reduced latency and greater accessibility. With servers physically located at the BlueSquare private data facility near London, we will be able to serve a wider variety of prospective customers and satisfy increasing demand from our existing Europe-based customers. Our UK-based services will offer greater redundancy, increased bandwidth, and fewer network hops to web users throughout Europe and Asia.

Hosting plans in the UK are similar to our United States-based plans, but are priced marginally higher to account for greater operating costs in the new market. The Power UK shared hosting plan, which includes 500GB of disk space and unmetered bandwidth, starts as low as $8 (about £5.4) per month. As of today’s launch, there are four shared hosting plans available for the UK market.

“With such a broad range of customers, it is important for our team to continually reevaluate how we can best serve the constantly-evolving hosting market. In recent months, we have noticed increasing demand from Europe-based customers seeking to host their sites on Europe-based servers, without sacrificing the affordability and flexibility Surpass Hosting offers in the United States. Based on these demand conditions, it makes sense for us to offer a similar service in Europe,” said Kayla Fleming, vice president of sales, Surpass Hosting.

In the coming months, we hope to offer similar services in Brazil, New Zealand, Mexico, and Malaysia.

To learn more about United Kingdom hosting from Surpass Hosting, please visit http://www.surpasshosting.com/hosting-uk-solutions.php.