The Planet was founded by Peter Pathos in 1994, though it is currently owned by GI Partners (a leading private equity firm with $2 billion of capital under management). The current incarnation of The Planet comes after the merger of two of the world’s leading dedicated web hosting companies: The Planet and EV1Servers by GI Partners in 2006. GI Partners decided to keep The Plant brand name for the newly merged web-hosting company. The new enlarged version of The Planet has quickly become the world’s largest dedicated web-hosting company.

Company and Services
The Planet has its headquarters in Dallas and an administrative office in Houston, with more than 500 employees between them. The company helps more than 22,000 small to medium-sized businesses worldwide hosting 7.7 million web sites worldwide. Nearly half of its customers are located outside North America.

The Planet offers both managed and dedicated server web hosting solutions. The Planet Alpha division offers a suite of self-managed dedicated servers. These come with lots of features backed by comprehensive support so that its customers can run the applications that they want. More recently, The Planet has moved into the managed hosting market with the introduction of Planet Northstar. With The Planet’s managed hosting packages you get a dedicated account manager and support team. They will help you design and set up your website using its suite of design applications and software tools. Northstar’s team will also help you with other considerations such as security, e-commerce, database management and backup. Customer support is provided 24/7 via email and through its live text chat.

Planet Northstar (the managed hosting option) was launched by The Planet in July 2008. Its clients already include Nutshell Mail, Aditude Digital, Canada’s Computan and Sant Corporation. Users of AlphaPlanet include AdWord Media, Proboards.com, Site 5, Hands on and Stone Bond.

The Planet has introduced a number of innovations over the years, including launching a Red Hat Enterprise Linux host environment in 2003. In the same year it introduced the Server Matrix line of entry-level dedicated servers and co-location hosting (where the host’s servers are located at the client’s data center). In 2000 EV1Servers made a name for itself by offering self-managed dedicated servers for as little as $99 – a move that gave the Company a firm footing in this market.

Server Location
The company boasts six wholly owned and managed SAS 70 Type II certified data centers, Texas. Two are in Houston and the other four are in Dallas.

Related Links
Official The Planet Blog
The Planet Forums