About Us

Our Story

Sozo Hosting was founded by Dean Carrera in Atlanta, Georgia in 2002. Dean enjoyed building technology platforms so much that he would come home from his IT day job and experiment with servers and network equipment. This eventually evolved into building out a hosting platform for companies. The next thing that happened is he went from one server with a control panel to 2 cabinets full of servers and many customers. From that point on, Sozo Hosting continued to grow in size and customer base.

Dean has always enjoyed working with people and making a difference in their business operations by implementing the right technology solution for them. Dean has found that providing personal attention to a client’s hosting support issues and technology needs is key to building a relationship and understanding their business. Today Dean has adopted this philosophy of providing personalized support and attention to customers as a core value of Sozo Hosting. In our clients’ eyes, this is what separates Sozo Hosting from the competition.

Sozo provides cloud and hosting services to clients throughout the United States. Our understanding of business and how to leverage technology to enhance a business process is our specialty. We can customize a solution to fit your business needs, whether it is offsite data replication, a hosted server or a hybrid cloud solution.

The Data Center

The Sozo data center is located in northeast Atlanta. Our data center provider is XO Communications which is a Verizon company. The data center is SSAE-16 and SOC-2 compliant. The data center has gated card readers for entry, internal card readers, locked cages, redundant HVAC systems, UPS power, generators, camera systems, fire suppression, and a 24-hour network operations center. Our network has been designed to provide the client with fast response to their e-business needs, a secure architecture to resist intrusion, and the ability to scale for future growth demands.

Reliable Networks

Our bandwidth to the internet is provided by XO Communications. XO provides a private, nationwide, multi-terabit network which delivers industry-leading IP connectivity at the fastest speeds available today. The XO network has a high-capacity IP network with a terabit-capable routing core that provides speed capacity and flexibility. XO has extensive network peering relationships which gives them direct paths to all other major network service providers so that your internet traffic travels shorter distances and at peak speed.

Network Security

Firewall Systems – Our network has firewall systems which only allow access to specific ports as needed for our clients. All other ports are closed so the outside internet does not have access to our network.

Intrusion Prevention Systems – Unlike other hosting companies, Sozo Hosting uses intrusion prevention systems which are used to scan incoming and outgoing network packets for signatures that may resemble a hack attempt. The intrusion prevention systems filter out all hack signatures that are recognized before they reach our network. This is another level of security we offer to prevent systems from being compromised.

Spam Prevention – Our network is protected in real-time from spam email. This system is always being fine-tuned to intercept spam before it reaches our servers or clients’ mailboxes.

Physical Security – The data center is equipped for security with a gated card reader for entry to the premises followed by card readers into the facility and locked cages.

Technical Expertise

All of our technicians have over 15 years of experience in specific internet specialties that include network security, software development and server implementation. We also provide on-staff engineers that specialize in Windows, Linux, and Coldfusion shared hosting and administration as well as windows dedicated server, linux dedicated server and coldfusion dedicated server hosting.

Our Dedication to Customer Satisfaction

Sozo Hosting aims to provide rapid resolution to all submitted customer support requests. We strive to know each of our clients and meet their internet business needs. We provide 24/7 support, so we will be there whenever you need us. We find it important to provide our clients with personal attention to their e-business needs while also providing prompt customer support and service.

We Grow with Our Clients

As a client grows we can provide them with additional services ranging from additional bandwidth, dedicated servers, or their very own VPN connection.

An excellent way to grow dynamically is with cloud computing. We offer windows cloud server solutions, Linux cloud server solutions and more.

We Do Not Oversell

You will find that when you host a site with us it comes up very fast and the network is very responsive. Some hosting companies are known to run several hundreds of websites on one server with the goal of saving money. In the long run, this will cause sites to run slowly and create management headaches for the clients and the hosting provider themselves. We are very careful about scaling our servers to accommodate only as many sites or applications as they can handle. Your sites will scale well and respond rapidly on our servers and networks. Another item that we do not oversell is bandwidth. If you sign up for a plan with 50 gig of bandwidth or more, we make sure that we have the bandwidth you signed up for.

The Best Value

All of our hosting accounts come with an easy-to-use control panel with an array of features including the ability to modify your own DNS records, read your site statistics, and set up email accounts. Our resellers can set up their own billing system that will automate client billing. Sozo Hosting proves that saving money doesn’t have to mean compromising service.

What does “Sozo” mean?

Sozo is a Greek word that means to “save, heal, restore, and deliver.” These words fit well with practices in the IT and hosting industries.

Save, Heal: Recover a system or network that is not running optimally.

Restore: Restore a client’s data if there has been data corruption or loss.

Deliver: We have several layers of security in place to proactively deliver, or protect, our clients’ systems from compromise or hacking.

Dean Carrera

President & CEO

Dean Carrera is the Founder of Sozo Hosting since 2002. Dean has over 23 years experience in the field of IT. He has also held positions as a consultant and full time employee with Corporations like INET Space Services-Kennedy Space Center, Georgia Pacific, ICE (Intercontinental Exchange), Fiserv and Cox Communications. As Founder and Technology Manager at Sozo Hosting, Dean leads teams in maintaining and building hosting platforms that sustain excellent performance and reliability for Sozo Hosting customers. Dean has day to day experience with architecting and designing end-to-end technology solutions for small, mid-size and large corporations. Dean has a vision for the company to provide a service for clients that will adapt to new trends in technology to help clients leverage technology to optimally run their businesses.

Email Dean

Gary Richards

Operations Manager

Gary has been in IT for over 30 years. Gary has served in the IT industry as a consultant and employee for IBM and Radiant International. Gary’s role with Sozo Hosting is to provide client management, hosting operations support, system and network monitoring, and support staff management.

With his background in hosting, hardware, software, programming and databases he can often find problems in people’s code or database faster than others. Gary’s skill set provides an added value to Sozo Hosting clients and staff.

Email Gary