i2Coalition Member Spotlight: BigScoots

For 14 years and counting, BigScoots delivers managed web hosting with a human-to-human ethos. BigScoots now serves tens of thousands of clients and facilitates billions of pageviews each day. We caught up with Tim Monner, Chief Marketing Officer at BigScoots, to discuss the nuts and bolts of managed hosting, the role of AI, and the value of the human touch. 

i2Coalition: Can you give us the elevator pitch for BigScoots?
Tim Monner: BigScoots is a fully managed WordPress hosting and performance services provider that can uniquely support scalable enterprise and e-commerce needs by owning and operating our hardware and network infrastructure. 

Our team of human service experts is available 24/7/365 within 90 seconds, redefining hosting support and service expectations. This is why BigScoots has consistently received 5-star client reviews and top-quartile Net Promoter Scores (NPS) from over 20,000 clients since our start in 2010. It is also why BigScoots is the best and final choice organizations will make in choosing a true hosting partner.

i2Coalition: With your human-to-human ethos, growth becomes its own challenge. How have you maintained that personal touch at scale?
TM:To this day, BigScoots maintains a human-to-human approach to our service and support, and we do not plan to change that. 

The key to our successful growth since 2010 has been the ability of our team to deliver a real human connection with our clients 24/7/365 when they need assistance. We know how important it is for our clients to reach a real human when they need assistance and we intend to keep our promise to be there for them.

Despite significant growth over the years, we feel that we are delivering increasingly personalized service year over year. This is because we consistently try to stay ahead of business curves by hiring and training talented team members ahead of anticipated business needs.

But the most significant factor is our constant commitment to refining our processes and operations to be as efficient as possible. After 14 years of doing this, we are still constantly learning new and better ways to serve our clients. Some of this comes from listening to the expertise of our team members, and some comes from the development or utilization of tools in the background. 

i2Coalition: What impact do you think recent geopolitical events have had on your more recent growth?
TM: The most significant risk that BigScoots has faced in recent years has been the same that many other IT service providers have faced. Most notably, this includes the availability of, and access to, hardware infrastructure such as servers. 

BigScoots owns and operates an entire tech stack within a Tier III+ data center facility in Chicago, which means that as our business grows, we need to be able to order additional infrastructure hardware and network equipment. And if new taxes and/or tariffs come into play on IT equipment being shipped in, that could be a new concern, as well. 

This is potentially concerning for us as we make every attempt to keep our hosting prices stable for clients, despite outside factors. In fact, in our 14 years of business, we have not made any significant price increase to our service plans at all. 

Fortunately for us, we have wonderful relationships with our hardware distributors and providers that have prevented availability issues in the past and are already identifying ways to protect costs for us and our clients if new taxes or tariffs become a reality. 

i2Coalition: How does a human-centric web hoster interact with or leverage AI these days?
TM: While we have not bowed to AI for client engagement, it is unavoidable as a tool to deliver operational efficiencies. 

Unlike many other hosting providers, we have specifically chosen not to utilize AI for any front-facing client engagements such as chat. We still believe wholeheartedly that clients want a real human person when they come into a chat or need support assistance.

However, AI does help to support our team to deliver services faster and more efficiently behind the curtain. BigScoots has begun to adopt AI services for data analysis and reporting, monitoring operational efficiencies, and even identifying and making recommendations for how our team can better communicate ideas or convey information to clients.

AI is a powerful tool that offers immeasurable advantages to operations—but BigScoots still believes in the power of human connection first when dealing with clients. 

i2Coalition: Why did your team find it important to join the i2Coalition?
TM: Our organization is truly a team of individuals who are passionate about technology and how it should be used for the betterment of all. Each of these people brings different commitments or ideals to causes such as using open-source technologies, net neutrality, utilizing eco-friendly green IT solutions, you name it. But in the end, we are all committed to the ideals of community being a driver for change.

The  i2Coalition represents a way for BigScoots to participate in, and support, a bigger voice for advocacy and real change in the IT space.  

There is much more for BIgScoots to explore with the  i2Coalition, but just joining and making ourselves available to help is an exciting first step for us. 

i2Coalition: Which i2Coalition initiatives connect most deeply with your team’s ethos?
TM: As a web hosting provider, BigScoots faces many of the same risks as other hosting providers that are trying to deliver safe and reliable client services.

As such, issues of security encryption are always top of mind for our e-commerce clients who are using WooCommerce or other tools to support their online sales. The efforts of the i2Coalition to advocate for full end-to-end encryption directly impact the strength of security measures we put into place to protect our client sites, as well as their clients’ data.

Concerning our own protection, issues such as Intermediary Liability (Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act) is something that we have to think about frequently. BigScoots exists to provide the best possible hosting platform for client sites, not be a judge of who they are, their thoughts or ideas, or what we feel they should be able to say publicly. BigScoots is committed to being a responsible hosting provider, but being expected to police every client site’s content is not reasonable for anyone. 

Lastly, because many of our team members believe in the principles of open technologies and a free Internet, of course Internet governance is also something we feel strongly about as well.