Gandi is coming to the UK
By Wendy on Wednesday 6 August 2008, 12:30 - Gandi UK - Permalink
Yes that's right, Gandi is coming to the UK! But wait you ask, haven't we always been here anyway? Well yes, you're right we have. It is true that Gandi already has thousands of UK customers, with tens of thousands of domains registered, and a sister company located in the UK (www.moonfruit.com), but we don't feel we've ever given the UK as much love and attention as it deserves. So like a friendly cousin that lives just across the Channel in France, we're packing our bags, saying 'au revoir' to mummy and daddy Gandi, and moving to London!
So what does this mean for you? It means a dedicated UK team based in London working to support our UK Gandi customers and promote our ethical domain and cutting edge hosting services to new faces far and wide. The UK Gandi team will be keen to get your feedback on what you like about Gandi and what you think we could do better. We'll be taking our popular Gandi supports policy to the UK which has the goal of helping businesses that share our vision for the internet to get started online (please contact us if you think you’d be a good UK candidate for Gandi supports).
And what is our vision for the internet you may well ask? We intend to continue Gandi’s tradition of challenging the status quo, sticking to what we believe are ethical business practices and codes of conduct and always providing high quality products and services.
And we speak English-English! None of this fancy French-English, or "where's the 'u' gone?" US-English. Just plain old "May I have a cup of tea?" English as the Queen intended (though we don't believe she's a Gandi customer. Yet.).
So there you have it, Gandi is coming the UK: the new arrival of an old friend, it's as if we've always been here...looking forward to catching up with you soon.
Comments
That's great news! Will you have any servers physically in the UK?
That's great news!
Anyway, is the UK team only support UK customers?
How about Non-UK and Non-France customers, is it still supported from France?
Hi guys, we don't yet have servers located in the UK, but are looking at that as a future possibility. With the connectivity of our French datacentres it should make little difference anyway, but I know people like them close to home
@Zhang, the customer support team will still be based in Paris, though some members of the team there do have English as their first language, and many others English as a second fluent language, and we are building up additional languages skills for other territories. The UK team will support the customer service team in Paris and be available to answer things on the blogs and groups. Essentially we're an additional resource to support the UK market on top of the existing Gandi teams.
Looking forward to working with you! Joe
Excellent news! Thanks for coming to the UK Gandi.
Will you have a specific contact form, email address of phone number for UK customers?
Jolly Good
Now guys please come to the US.
Thanks Jake and Sebastien.
Jake, the customer service team will remain in France but there are plenty of English speaking team members who are well set up to look after UK customers. The support team are the experts on anything to do with using our domain name and hosting services. We will set up a UK contact email address so you can talk to the UK team here. Specifically about any ideas or general queries to do with the UK which cannot be answered by the support team. We'll also be setting up a Uk Gandi Bar , where we'll be hanging out to chat with you. More about that when we launch Gandi.co.uk.
Sebastien, like your style
We've always got time for our friends in America and the team in the UK will support you as much as we'll support our UK customers. Please feel free to contact us. Did you know? You have your very own Gandi Bar Manager who is from the US and based in France, Ryan. He will be a great person with whom to discuss any US specific queries.
And of course, crossing the atlantic is on the horizon .......
As a US customer of Gandi Hosting, I do hope that at some point Gandi has hosting in the US, so that I can get better latency to my server. (I love my Gandi server otherwise; I just wish I could get better than 200ms latency.)
Thanks for your compliments!
Yes, as you mentioned, there is some slightly longer latency for our customers across the Atlantic. We are actively working on getting better access to American traffic by maintaining the best possible network peering relationships (more on our architecture), and as Wendy eluded to, we are even discussing the future possibility of hosting that is specifically located in the United States!
To Wendy: Good Job! I want to wish your team well. You seem to be well prepared for the future in technology. May You All continue to perform to your expertice. You seem to have it all together.
One of the reasons I am planning to buy hosting services from Gandi is that the French (and the rest of the truly free world) are about as likely to cooperate with illegitimate demands from American "authorities" as for jewels to rain down from the sky. And it's not just me who is paranoid; my department is legally prohibited from allowing personal data to be stored on any servers under American control, either directly or indirectly. Gandi, if you decide to store any data outside of France, please keep in mind that some of us can't do business with you unless you are protected from America. Thanks.
In reply to Anonymous #10: While I sympathize with your comments, you might keep in mind that France has laws equivalent to many of the more egregious laws in the US (for instance, an equivalent to the DMCA), and also some you might not know about that haven't come to the US. For example, did you know that by French law, if you make a comment about someone, they can legally require you to post their response to your comments on your site? Sadly, no country that I know of has 100% reasonable laws; pick your poison, and hope that technical solutions like Freenet and Tor eventually become universal.
Hi guys, and thanks for your warm welcome.
I can confirm we'll come one day to the US, while keeping our other facilities in Europe. This way, and thanks to our cutting edge hosting and computing technology, you'll be able to choose the exact location of your servers, rack per rack, datacenter by datacenter ...
I leave you guys with Wendy, Joe and the rest of the Uk team, otherwise they'll kick my ... :D
Don't worry, you are in the best hands now !
Stephan
Sandra, many thanks. Where are you based yourself? Curious as Allende is Spanish/Latin? Of course you could be anywhere! We have a significant group of customers in Spain too.
Anonymous and GH Customer, always good to hear debate around the services and products you require. It's invaluable for us and enables us to make the right choices for our customers as we grow. As you can see from Stephan (as if I'd ever do that ; )), we have lots of projects in the pipeline. I can honestly say we're working hard but having fun right now.
Any chance you'll come to the USA too? I'd love the same hosting service with lower latency!
Glad you're coming to the UK.
I'm happy to registered http://www.foxtunes.com with you, although at first I thought you were based in India not France because of the Gandi name
Then I realised it's Gandi not Ghandi 
Iontach Gandi! it is grand, that fancy French-English could be horrible, I know... I use it sometimes 8-( And there are other " fancy Something-English" a lot worst over here!! Then, are you willing to support your friendly neighbour accross the Irish sea, before crossing the Atlantic? I mean, when will you add the .ie ccTLD ?? This little country rank 14th among European states. And Ryan, you have such an Irish first name, did you know?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_(...)
And I must say that Wendy is such a charming name!
Anyway, I gave all my support to all of you from the US (including about 20% with Irish roots!?), Gandi in the USA could be great as well, I will think about you when visiting California next month ;-p
Again, well done to all the Gandi team(s) !
Hi Cyman, yes we do have the US on our horizons, but not yet (see some of the comments above).
@ ivb we're happy to accept all kinds of 'fancy English' ;-). Re the .ie extension we are working our way through all the European extensions and .ie will be on that list. It's quite an expensive tld and requires that we have commercial ties with Ireland, so it can be complicated to get accredited for, but we will get there, and have plenty of Irish customers too to show our commecial links.
I hope that helps, Joe
Hi Joe, sorry for this late reply.
I send an email to Wendy through the support, to keep a promise back from the USA. She must have the photos in hand/on screen now.
Thanks for these details, that helps indeed. So I have pick-up one Irish provider for the moment, with a nearly clean offer: domain name ownership, DNS management, etc... not too bad at 25 euros excl. VAT per domain. I asked them about a reseller account, but obviously it is not as good as Gandi's one, and maybe not free
So I really hope you can complete the accreditation procedure very soon, and in the meantime, I contact the Dream Team, aka Gandi's support service, to make the domains.ie fully forwarded to the domains.com (web+email at least). Maybe the IE domain registry will make it easier for EU registrars. Glad to know you have already plenty of Irish customers! Maybe we can write to the IEDR: do you have some points to relay/ask to them?
And if I can be of any help to you about this little part of Western Europe, you more than welcome (Céad Mile Fáilte) to ask, anytime. I read all the Gandi's blogs daily now