Posts in: Partners and Resellers

Meet our Reseller: Webstarts

I just posted the latest in our Meet our Resellers series of articles about the various people and companies that work with OpenSRS.

This latest article takes a look at Webstarts.com, which provides a powerful, yet simple to use site builder and hosting solution for small business. The Tampa, Florida based company has been an OpenSRS Reseller since 2009.

Read the full article

Canadian Small and Medium Business get a leg up from Google

Yesterday, small and medium size businesses (SMBs) in Canada got a gift from Google to jump start their business presence online. Hosted by Kevin O’Leary of Dragon’s Den at the historical Fermenting Cellar, in the Distillery district in Toronto, Canada, SMBs can now get a website & .CA domain for free as part of the “Canada Get your Business online” (GYBO) initiative.

Partnering with Yola inc., CIRA, The Globe and Mail, Rogers, Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and Silver Lining Ltd, Google wants to shrink the gap between SMBs lack of online presence and their customers who are using the internet to find them. “Over the next year, we hope to help 100,000 Canadian businesses build websites and reach customers online” says Chris O’Neill, Managing Director Google Canada.

According to Google, there are over 2 million SMBs in Canada, and close to half have no presence online. These rock stars of the Canadian economy need the help to be where their customers are looking for them and this initiative gets them one step closer.

As someone who has been in online marketing for over 11 years, I am extremely excited to see the GYBO.ca program launched. SMBs struggle with lack of time, resources, amongst other challenges of starting a business and this initiative helps them conquer one important challenge, and that is an online web presence, with a price tag of FREE. We work with many SMBs, as our resellers do, and can relate to the challenges, so having a program that is focused on helping SMBs is fantastic.

Congratulations to Google, Yola, CIRA and the other partners who are giving small and medium businesses in Canada a leg up! Also, a special Thank you to Rogers for drawing my name to win a Blackberry Torch!

If you’d like more information, go to www.gybo.ca

Meet Our Reseller: Hostnet

Hostnet offers hosting and domain services in the Netherlands

Like many hosting companies, Hostnet started small. But thanks to a continued focus on the needs of its customers and a long-standing commitment to innovative technology and superior customer support, Hostnet has grown to become one of the leading providers of hosting and domain services in the Netherlands.

The company was started in 1998 by a pair of students providing web-design services. Soon, they realized that they needed a more recurring revenue model upon which they could grow their business.

Providing hosting and domain (domeinnaam in dutch) registrations was the natural extension that served the needs both of existing customers and allowed them to expand their customer base.

“Hostnet started out as a small ISP, offering web-design and SEO services to go with them,” says Merijn de Brabander, Business Manager, Hostnet. “It only made sense to add hosting services and domain registrations, and at that point things really took off for the company.”

Hostnet: Hosting is a growing market.

It was about five years ago that Hostnet completely shifted the focus to hosting and business services and they have been growing quickly ever since. The company now boasts nearly 60 employees working out of an office overlooking the IJ river in Amsterdam serving hundreds of thousands of customers who run the gamut from individuals to small and mid-sized businesses.

Hostnet is regarded as a leader in the Dutch hosting space, offering a one-stop shop where customers can get online, create brand awareness and grow their business or personal online presence. Hostnet offers low-cost domains, hosting and other solutions aimed at Small and Medium Business including email, Hosted Exchange and SSL certificates. For Large and Enterprise customers Hostnet offers high performance hosting services like Virtual Private Servers and Dedicated Servers.

Hostnet and OpenSRS Long-time Partnership

Hostnet has been an OpenSRS domain reseller since 2000 and uses OpenSRS to power domain registrations and management for a large part of their domain portfolio with the exception of the larger european domain registrations (Hostnet are themselves a .nl, .eu and .be accredited registrar).

De Brabander says the partnership with OpenSRS has played a key role in the company’s growth.

“Working with OpenSRS for the last ten years has contributed to the improvement our services,” he says. “Also, we were very excited to hear that Thorsten Einig has joined OpenSRS and we look forward to an even closer relationship with OpenSRS.” [editors note: Thorsten Einig joined OpenSRS in October, 2010 as the Managing Director for Europe and is based in Amsterdam].

Hostnet Premium Hosting Support

With a customer base of small and mid-sized businesses, support is an important consideration. Hostnet offers a full helpdesk site with tutorials, FAQs and other resources to help their customers use the hosting an domain services. And they have a full customer support team to provide the enhanced level of customer support that their business base requires.

De Brabander says the company knows providing top-notch support is a must. “We try to stay on top of the customer support by constantly adding easy-to-use features to our website and our hosting and domain services, as well as improving the communications skills of our employees,” he says.

Ensuring the company is stocked with top talent is another way it stays in the lead in a very competitive environment. Hostnet recruits from nearby Delft University of Technology, one of the best engineering and technical schools in the country.

The company’s commitment to its employees starts the day they walk in the door. New employees will find a bicycle waiting for them on their first day–bikes being a common mode of transportation in the Netherlands.

Meet the Reseller: ISOCNET

OpenSRS Reseller ISOCNET is a Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky-based company which specializes in providing website design and development, web hosting, e-commerce solutions, and hosted email to small to medium businesses in the region.

A reseller since 2003, ISOCNET uses OpenSRS to complete its suite of Internet services, and to help turn domain registration and management from a headache for its clients into a value-added service and a great source of revenue for itself.

Started as an ISP, Grew by Listening to its Customers

Founded in 1996, ISOCNET started out as a local ISP offering dialup Internet access to customers in the area. They leveraged that early success and began offering email anti-spam and anti-virus solutions as well.

Those customers then started asking whether ISOCNET would be able to take care of all of their Internet needs and ISOCNET began offering a complete suite of Internet services like website development, hosting, e-commerce and collocation solutions.

Turning Domains from Pain to Gain

ISOCNET also identified an important piece of the puzzle in domain name registration and management – their customers were looking for an all-in-one solution provider who would take care of all aspects of their web presence. One of the biggest pain points customers identified was managing domain names.

ISOCNET turned to OpenSRS in 2003 to provide an integrated solution that offered the complete control they required. ISOCNET leveraged their partnership with OpenSRS to offer even more value to their customers and complete the service package their clients demanded.

A Trusted Partner

The payoff for their clients came in the form of peace of mind that their important domain assets were in good hands. For ISOCNET, the payoff was not just in the bottom line, but also in a client base that saw them as a trusted partner for all their Internet needs.

Visit ISOCNET at www.isoc.net

Meet the Resellers: Heart Internet

UK-based hosting provider Heart Internet, OpenSRS reseller since 2004, relies on OpenSRS to provide backend solutions for domain name registrations, SSL certificates and new services like goMobi that will help the company maintain the impressive growth rate that places it at the top of the heap in the UK.

Co-founders Jonathan Brealey and Tim Beresford started heart Internet in 2004. The pair, who had already created two successful businesses in Webfusion and 123-Reg, created Heart Internet to address what they perceived to be shortcomings in existing hosting provider offerings.

Jonathan Brealey, Co-founder, Heart Internet

“It was in a period where any hosting provision was really technical and quite poor and we saw an opportunity to make it easier,” says Jonathan Brealey, co-founder and Director at Heart Internet. To address the need, Heart Internet built a custom hosting control panel at a time when few other companies offered them. Heart combined the easy-to-use panels with hosting packages aimed at resellers.

“That’s an approach that’s still central to our business – making things easier,” says Brealey. From the start, Heart Internet looked to resellers as a way to extend its reach and also as a way to stay lean and focused on further developing its products and services.

“We get to deal with customers who are savvy and understand what they are doing,” explains Brealey. “Thanks to our resellers, we service a large number of websites, but we don’t have a lot of contact with customers because we have our customers who are reselling handling that relationship.”

Wide Range of Reseller Customers

Brealey says they have a good mix of resellers, including full-service agency customers that Heart Internet continues to help expand and develop important customer relationships. “We tell them that if they are selling someone a web site for a few thousand Pounds, then you definitely have inroads to sell hosting, domains and SSL to them as well.”

And for Heart Internet’s smaller resellers, generally one-to-three man shops doing web-design and development, Brealey says offering new solutions like goMobi makes a lot of sense. “We’re reaching out and explaining how to offer services to existing customers like goMobi as a £10 add-on.”

Why OpenSRS?

Heart Internet chose OpenSRS because they were looking for a service provider with a technical background. With innovation comes the need for partners who can provide backend services that keep pace.

Brealey says OpenSRS has always been a good fit. “You guys are technical and that’s how we like it,” he says. “Our developers like your API and the flexibility it offers us in terms of automating our services and keeping costs down.”

It’s a relationship that’s worked well for both companies as Heart Internet continues to bring its unique mix of innovation and simple-to-use, but powerful services to its customers.

Still Growing Fast

The company’s strategy continues to pay dividends. In 2009, Heart Internet found itself second on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 fastest growing technology companies list and was recognized as the fastest growing Internet company in the UK. In 2010, they again made the Fast 50 list, demonstrating the incredible growth opportunities that continue to exist in the Internet and hosting space in the UK.

Heart Internet plans to maintain that growth and momentum by continuing to innovate and by bringing new services and ideas to their resellers to offer to their customers. For example, Heart Internet recently rolled out an innovative service that looks up usernames on popular social media sites like Twitter and Foursquare at the same time as a domain search availability search. Touches like this are what keep them ahead of the competition.