In January 2000, INFO Exame — Brazil's most influential technology magazine — named RogerLe.com the best hosting provider serving the Portuguese-speaking market. The story ran in Issue 166.
How it happened
We didn't enter a contest. We didn't submit marketing materials. We were a three-year-old hosting company with a growing reputation and a handful of high-profile clients. INFO Exame's editors did the research, ran the comparisons, and reached their own conclusion.
The call came one afternoon in December 1999. Our first reaction was to ask whether it was a prank.
The magazine
We bought a copy the day it hit newsstands. It is still in our office — the original issue, still sealed in the plastic wrap it came in, preserved exactly as it arrived in 2000. Twenty-six years later, it's a little yellowed at the edges. The award still counts.
What it meant
Two things. First, validation — an independent magazine with no financial interest in our business looked at what we were doing and decided it was the best. Second, responsibility. Every new customer who signed up after January 2000 was coming because a magazine they trusted had told them to. We owed them a service that lived up to the billing.
We think, twenty-six years on, we've mostly delivered.