HOUSTON----The Planet, the world’s largest privately held dedicated hosting company, today began preparations for the upcoming holiday rush with four promotions geared to meet the demands of online retailers. With holiday sales again expected to set new records – and purchasing that begins in September – customers or prospects can be ready with additional servers and unlimited bandwidth to accommodate the seasonal spike.

“Each year holiday sales hit epic records, and we expect these numbers to once again exceed the 2006 record of $26 billion,” said The Planet’s Vice President of Marketing and Product Management Steve Kahan. “The competition for fast and uninterrupted service has never been higher. Customers expect a better, faster and more seamless experience every year. To be certain they’re prepared, we advise customers to plan now.”

A recent white paper published by Frost & Sullivan’s Stratecast Partners – titled How SMBs Can Increase eCommerce Revenue and Decrease IT Costs – recommends that online retailers accommodate customers with an IT infrastructure that guarantees each visitor with a seamless shopping experience. Among the specific suggestions are redundant and highly scalable Web servers; physical and cyber security; and sufficient bandwidth to prevent access congestion and ensure rapid response times.

Customers can take advantage of The Planet’s four promotions that provide the required server and bandwidth to ensure fast and reliable shopping experiences:

• Ready-To-Go Servers: For customers looking to add servers quickly, The Planet offers Ready-To-Go servers in just one hour. Available with a choice of three processors – a Pentium 4, Conroe 3060 or Dual Xeon – the servers are loaded with the Red Hat Linux operating system and the cPanel control panel:

  http://www.theplanet.com/dedicated-servers/ready-to-go-servers.asp

• Double Down: Core to server performance are hard drives, memory and bandwidth, and The Planet recommends server tuning now before the holiday rush. At no additional charge, customers can purchase twice the RAM, hard-drive space or bandwidth through the end of August or while supplies last: http://www.theplanet.com/double%2Ddown%2Dpromotion/
• Unmetered Bandwidth: Clogged bandwidth translates to a slow online shopping experience, so ensuring ample bandwidth connections is important to sustain customer satisfaction. For just $50 per month, The Planet’s customers gain unlimited access to a 10Mbps uplink from the company’s seven Tier-1 providers; for $250 per month, they gain a 20Mbps uplink: http://www.theplanet.com/unmetered%2Dbandwidth/
• Lowest Hosting Price on The Planet: In its commitment to making the holiday registers ring for e-tailers, The Planet offers a guarantee that it will beat competitor pricing by 10 percent simply by providing the competitor’s invoice. Even better, the offers comes with free set-up and one month of free service on a one-year contract: http://www.theplanet.com/best-price-promotion

About The Planet

The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 2.8 million Web sites worldwide. By offering the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and unmatched network connectivity, The Planet helps turn information technology into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to successfully grow their businesses. For additional information, visit http://www.theplanet.com