News

Today, EURid’s annual Christmas campaign began, the prizes of which, similarly to the previous year, are several vacations for two people:

• One week package for two in April 2015 at the Saturnia SPA in Tuscany (Italy);
• A four day package for two in April 2015 at the Castel Monastero resort in Tuscany (Italy).

In order to participate in the competition, register a .eu domain name (https://www.zone.ee/en/service/domain-registration/prices/) between 27th November 2014 up and until 23rd December 2014. Answer two questions and enter the competition at https://christmas2014.eurid.eu/ using the domain name you registered.


Those who have answered first the two questions correctly will be awarded in prize order (starting from the top prize). If no correct answers are given, the prizes will be awarded to those whose answer is closest to the correct answer.

The Dedicated Server service, in which client leases a server hardware from the service provider along with internet connection and hosting, just got another significant feature. Namely, it is now possible to let Zone pre-install Windows Server OS on a Dedicated Server and lease the right to use other Microsoft server services.

All this is possible because Zone recently joined with Microsoft Partner Network and through its Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) program we can offer Microsoft software to our customers.

There are some significant advantages while renting software along with a Dedicated Server:

• – the usage of the latest versions of the software;
• – no need of the initial extensive capital investment;
• – license is term-less and in case of cancellation of the server, costs associated with software disappear.

For more information about Dedicated Servers and special offers go to Dedicated Servers section on our website.

Starting this week all Zone clients can assign the location of the CloudServer during the order. You can choose between two data centers in Tallinn and new data center located in Amsterdam.

We have chosen Amsterdam as our new location due to its position at the intersection of Western European data highways and a very good competence in terms of quality of data centers services. In the same building with our CloudServers also stands a part of one of the world’s biggest internet hubs AMS-IX (www.ams-ix.net).

Several updates are also available in Zone services management panel. We have improved CloudServers resources management sliders and they now provide a better feedback after saving settings. Those customers, who have a special agreement in terms of resources, will see this notification on their dashboard.

Beginning from January 1st, EE domain registration fee for one year is now 16,74€ instead of 19.74€ when registering through Estonian biggest domain registrar Zone Media. Registering EE domain for two years is 31.82€ instead of 38.28€ and for three years 45.54€ instead of 55.62€ (prices include VAT).

Starting from first day of 2014 multiple year registration fee includes also an extra discount from Zone.

As we have done on previous years, we will slightly alter our customer service routines during our traditional vacation period. From the 1st of July to 31st of August our telephone support will be unavailable during the lunchbreak which starts at 12.00 and ends at 13.00 (GMT +3).

Also, we would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a great summer!

Transmission of information is one of the key components of any Webhosting service. As of today, a new file transmission tool is available for our customers.

The most popular method of file delivery from point A to point B in our field is FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and the ability to connect to the FTP service via a web-based application has proven to be a very popular feature.

Today we are pleased to announce that we have launched a worthy successor to our current web-based FTP file management tool. It can be found at https://files.zone.ee and is based on AjaXplorer.

We have also taken a number of steps in improving the usability of our file management features. Namely, now the administrator of a hosting service can manage files on his virtual server without additional FTP authentication being required. A link to file management can now be found on the Webhosting Control Panel and on the service overview page.

Additional useful features that come with the new tool include the following:

– concurrent upload of multiple files, including a drag-and-drop feature;

– text files can be edited directly in file management tool, using a web-based source code editor which also supports code syntax highlighting;

– images on a server can be previewed, streamed and edited in an image editor tool.

Our software developers and technicians have updated our webmail client to a new version, which enables new features and hopefully significantly improves the speed as well as the reliability of its use.

First of all we believe that all “cloud” based user data should be free and not “hostage” at the service providers systems. Thus, now all the contacts created in our webmail client can be exported in open formats. Personal contact data can be obtained as a CSV file, vCard or an archive containing vCards.

Another change concerns the features of the user’s email spam-filter. Until now only the spam-filter rules affecting the whole web-hosting account, could be changed in our control panel. Now each and every web-based email user is able to create email address and domain based black-lists, which apply in addition to the account spam-filters. Our webmail had some filtering functionality before, but these filters were applied when the customer logged in to the web-based email. The new spam-filters work constantly in the background.

Third, the recent problems of a large communications provider in Estonia, have made us look over the structure of our own email service. So we have decided to switch to a technology, that uses a replication of webmail data near real time between two separate servers with SSD RAID arrays. This has significantly improved the customer experience and increased the reliability of the system. In case of a major failure we should be able to restore our services even more efficiently.

Estonias largest domain registrar Zone Media LLC added security certificates from world’s leading security companies Symantec, Comodo and Geotrust to its portfolio of identity services.

“The Estonian National Digital Identity Card (ID card) has enabled Estonian entrepeneurs and state organizations to identify their clients or users via the Internet. SSL security certificates in turn will allow users safely identify their service provider,” commented Zone.ee CEO Riho Kurg the need for the service.

“Using a connection protected by a security certificate allows the customer to verify that their service provider is who it claims to be, and signifies an effort by the provider to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of the customers data. It is worth stating that Estonian entrepeneurs take cyber security seriously, even before the formal launch of our service we have sold SSL certificates to hundreds of our customers,” he added.

SSL certificates sold by Zone.ee are based on public-key cryptography and are used in many secure network protocols. Connections secured by similar certificates are used by most of Internet users in Estonia, as the same technology is being used in Internet banks, the State Portal Eesti.ee and e-Tax Board.

Zone Media LLC which operates under the Zone.ee trademark since 1999, is the largest domain registrar and hosting service provider in Estonia.