About WWW4: who is behind your hosting
WWW4 is the hosting and server brand of JAAN bv, a Belgian software company from Zelzate that has been building and running its own platforms since 2000. Your website, database and mailboxes run on our own hardware in two Belgian data centers, and whoever calls speaks to someone who maintains those servers personally.
On this page you can read why a software company puts servers in a rack itself instead of reselling hosting, how we manage that infrastructure day to day and what you can expect from us as a customer.
Our story
JAAN bv started in 2000 in Zelzate, East Flanders, as a software company. Whoever builds software for customers also has to run it somewhere. You can outsource that to a large provider, but then you are stuck in a queue at every outage, with no view of the machine your customer's site runs on. We wanted to be able to open that machine ourselves.
So we do it differently: our own servers, in our own rack space, in two Belgian data centers, with our own IP range. That way we know at any moment which machine is doing what and can step in ourselves. WWW4 grew out of that choice: first for the applications we built ourselves, then for anyone who wants to host a website, a mailbox or a server in Belgium.
Today WWW4 is one of the four brands of JAAN bv, alongside SMSBOX for SMS traffic, 2Mail for email delivery and JAAN for custom software. The infrastructure behind them is the same, and that is no coincidence: what we consider good enough for our own platforms is what you get as a hosting customer.
How we work: four principles
These four commitments determine how we manage the infrastructure and how we deal with customers. You may hold us to them.
Own hardware, no reselling
The servers are ours, we rent the rack space ourselves and the IP addresses are our own. There is no other party between us and the machine your site runs on. If something goes wrong, we look at the server ourselves and do not have to call anyone.
A clear line between our work and yours
The operating system, the web server, PHP, the backups and the network security are maintained by us. Your CMS, your theme and your plugins are your territory. We say so up front, so you know what to expect from us and what to plan yourself.
Advice that dares to say smaller
For most websites an ordinary hosting plan is enough, even with thousands of visitors a month. We only recommend a VPS or a server of your own when there is a reason for it. Ask us and you will get that answer, even if it earns us less.
A person on the line who knows the server
Support is not a separate department that passes tickets along. You speak to the people who manage the servers, in Dutch, French or English. We also move your website and email to us ourselves, and that is part of the service.
Infrastructure: our own servers in Brussels and Ghent
Our hardware sits in our own rack space in two Belgian data centers, in Brussels and in Ghent. Processing and storage thus stay in Belgium, within the European Union. What we can confirm about those locations is on the data center page; what we are not sure of, we do not write down.
What you can expect from support
Whoever you call or email manages the servers your site runs on. That makes a difference: you do not have to explain what a PHP version is, and nobody has to pass your question on to the technical team.
Jaan Colman is managing director of JAAN bv and ultimately responsible for the hosting infrastructure. If your question goes beyond the first line, it lands with someone who helped set up the servers himself. LinkedIn profile
The sister brands of WWW4
WWW4 is one of the four brands of JAAN bv. Being a customer of one brand means the same login and the same invoicing everywhere. Many customers therefore bring their website, their SMS traffic and their email delivery together with us.