David and I talked about the business climate in Norway which, like many other countries, is quite competitive. Fastline is doing well, despite the challenges, by offering great technology alongside excellent customer support — a common theme amongst our most successful resellers.

You can read more about Fastline here.

Fastline is representative of the thousands of OpenSRS Resellers in over one hundred countries around the world who look to OpenSRS to provide reliable domain registrations, trust products, email and other services with support and technology they can depend on. Thanks again to David for telling us about his business.

You can read more about HostingPanama in the latest article in our Meet Our Resellers series.

We love working with the leading hosting companies in countries around the world – companies just like HostingPanama. And we’re committed to helping all of our resellers to continue to grow their businesses even further. Special thanks to Eduardo and his staff for taking the time to hang out with us in San Diego.

I spoke with Usableweb founder Dimitris Anthoulakis and he graciously explained UsableWeb’s approach, talked about their partnership with OpenSRS and provided some really good insights on the Greek hosting market in general. From talking to him, it’s clear that Dimitris sees lots of opportunity for growth in Greece.

“More and more businesses are realizing the importance of an online presence and the Greek market will grow significantly the coming years,” he says. “The fact that Greece ranks 23rd in Europe in terms of Internet penetration means that there are huge opportunities for growth for our company.”

We’re super happy to be working with UsableWeb in Greece!

→ Click here to read Meet our Reseller: UsableWeb

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

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.

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

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.

Those often tough-to-please designers demand a hosting provider that they can trust to host their customers’ sites dependably and reliably. That meant Media Temple needed partners that they could count on to provide the same level of service.

They rely on OpenSRS to provide a worry-free solution to domain name registration and management that’s fully integrated into their advanced hosting platform.

Premium Hosting, Premium Service

Media Temple offers a premium level of hosting and customer service. The company, in turn, looks to its partners, including OpenSRS, to help them provide that higher level of technology and service.

Rather than competing for customers at the low-end of the hosting market, they instead pioneered innovative solutions like their (gs) Grid-Service along with being early providers of both virtual server technology and affordable dedicated hardware options.

“We made the decision to be a quality host – we’re in high-end data centers, and we use high-end hardware from HP,” says Alex Capehart, VP Business Development, (mt) Media Temple, who adds that, “sometimes the technology of what we do gets lost behind the marketing or branding.”

OpenSRS Reseller Since 2003

Media Temple has been an OpenSRS Reseller since it began offering domain names back in 2003. The company chose to outsource domain registration and management to OpenSRS so that they could focus their efforts on what they do best – providing superior hosting and customer support to their customers.

“You guys have done a great job for us,” says Capehart. “You’re always asking us, ‘What more can we do for you?’ whether it’s adding new TLDs or other services like SSL certificates. When it made sense for us to do it, we could count on you to be there for us.”

Media Temple also recognizes the importance of providing a single interface to manage domains and hosting. Their custom control panel allows customers to manage all aspects of their hosting packages, utilizing the OpenSRS API to completely integrate domain name management into their system.

Capehart says offering this kind of complete integration is key.“There’s no good reason to send customers to another provider for domains,” he says. “Keeping them within our own eco-system ensures that they are getting our awesome customer service and support and a consistent experience throughout the process.”

Committed to people

As part of the commitment to customer service, the company works to maintain its corporate culture, providing an enjoyable and challenging workplace, where employees are empowered to make the customer feel wanted and appreciated.

“The company was built on that and we haven’t seen anything that works better than having happy employees and happy customers,” says Capehart. “It doesn’t matter how big you are, as long as you maintain that high-touch approach, you’ll be successful.”

The company believes that a continued focus on people, combined with in-house development of its hosting infrastructure, along with key partnerships with companies like OpenSRS, will ensure future success in a competitive environment.

The Pasadena, California based webhost started out in 2003 as a shared hosting provider with a twist, offering Windows-based hosting aimed squarely at the ASP.NET developer community.

The company’s developer customers have one-stop access to everything they need, including domain names, SSL certificates and a hosting platform that sports all the latest technologies from Microsoft. That complete package of services enables them to create websites and other web-based applications.

Takeshi Eto, VP Marketing and Business Development for DiscountASP.NET, says that strict focus on the Microsoft ASP.NET market has been critical in building a successful business in the long-term.

“If you try and do too many things, it’s hard to target marketing, and it’s hard to provide adequate support,” he says. “From the very beginning, we made sure that everything we did was about serving the needs of the .NET developer and we’ve been very successful in doing that.”

A Partner with a Similar Perspective

Eto says they looked for a similarly well-focused company when evaluating domain registration providers. Eto found, in OpenSRS, a company that built a reputation for providing the best wholesale domain registration platform and service.

That laser-focus on the specific needs of its wholesale customers was something that Eto could relate to. The fact that he found an API and platform that he liked was icing on the cake.

“We evaluated a lot of registration partners and we liked the APIs that OpenSRS had,” he says. “It made the integration and automation a lot easier.”

Savvy Customers = Tech Support Challenges

DiscountASP.NET’s customer base runs the gamut from hobby sites, to blogs, to businesses. According to Eto, those business customers make up the majority of the base.

“About 60% of our customers are doing some sort of business website with our service, whether it’s the .NET developer themselves, or an application or website that developer did for the business,” he says.

With a tech-savvy customer base like DiscountASP.NET has, providing tech support does offer some challenges. Eto says that overall, the number of support requests is lower than typically seen in mass-market hosting, but that doesn’t mean support is easy.

“The sophistication of the support tickets is very highly technical,” he says. “The challenge for us is to make sure our tech support staff is trained on all the new stuff.”

To ensure that his customers get the help they need, Eto has to look around a little more to find the right people to work in tech support.

“Trying to find talent to hire may take us longer,” he says. “But those that join our team are assured of a dynamic environment where they will always be learning and working on new technology. It’s fun and challenging.”

On Trust

DiscountASP.NET developed its own control panels and hosting platform using .NET technologies because they wanted to demonstrate to customers that they were the best option. “What better way to show that we’re .NET experts? Our control panel is .NET, our website is .NET — it all helps in the marketing message,” he says.

He also says the company works very hard to keep up with the latest developments from Microsoft and aims to be ahead of the needs of the customer.

That kind of commitment to keeping ahead of the game also means Eto needs to rely on, and trust his chosen vendors to do the same.

As far as OpenSRS is concerned, Eto says dealing with the company has been “great,” and that he’s always found OpenSRS to be “very responsive.”

Eto also says that he appreciates the regular interaction he has with OpenSRS people. “I see them all the time at different mixers and networking events and they’re always cool, fun to hang out with and good to do business with,” he says.

It’s definitely a relationship that is paying off and Eto sees a solid future for DiscountASP.NET.

Mexico-based webhost Xpress Hosting has used a customer-centric approach to doing business to become the leading webhost in the region. It was only natural then, for Xpress Hosting to seek out a wholesale Registrar with the same focus on the customer.

Xpress Hosting began working with OpenSRS in 2009. Julian Flores, CEO of Xpress Hosting, says that the company went looking for a vendor that “went beyond, ’okay this is the API, this is how you integrate it…there, you’re good to go. And that’s it.’”

He says they found just that in OpenSRS.

Challenges and Opportunities

The company started out as a specialized application host in 2001, but when customer demand for shared hosting swelled, they listened. That was a move that paid off in spades. The company now provides hosting services primarily to small- and mid-sized businesses throughout Mexico and the surrounding region.

Xpress Hosting sees huge opportunity in a country that is rapidly emerging as a technological nation. But Flores says being in Mexico means the company faces some unique challenges.

“There is a very interesting contrast in Mexico regarding technology,” Flores explains. “We have three major metropolitan areas – Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey – and more than 60% of our customers come from those cities.”

“The urban customers are informed and educated,” Flores says. “They know what they want and they knock on our doors asking for it.”

But those in the rest of the country often need more help from a customer support and education perspective, something that Xpress Hosting is glad to provide. They’ve built their business on providing that kind of one-on-one customer service.

Customer Service Focused

Flores explains that in Mexico, there is a cultural requirement for a personal relationship in business. “It’s not like in the United States where you can do business with someone over the phone, or email. It doesn’t work like that in Mexico.”

“Our customers look for a personal relationship, and that’s where our niche is,” he says. “For example, we provide a specialized account rep for all of our customers and the customer has their phone extension, cell phone number and email address and the rep knows the requirements and special needs of the customer.”

Flores says that the relationship he has with OpenSRS enables his company to react quickly and provide the kind of service and support that his wide range of customers require.

“We have a very successful and close relationship with OpenSRS and our account manager,” he says. “Honestly, it’s been the best customer experience that I’ve had with a wholesale registrar.”

A Very Bright Future

Within Mexico, technology is spreading and the population, especially the youth, are embracing the Internet. Flores says the future looks exceptionally bright for the company and for the country.

“The next 10 to 15 years are going to be quite a ride for us,” he says. “These young people, make no mistake, they are here to replace us and they will have a webhosting account with us. We’ll be a part of it!”

With a continued focus on meeting the needs of customers like Xpress Hosting, OpenSRS aims to be an important part of it as well.

Con sede en México, Xpress Hosting ha utilizado un enfoque centrado en el cliente para hacer negocios y convertirse en el servicio de alojamiento web líder en la región. Fue natural entonces, que Xpress Hosting buscara un Registrador de venta al mayoreo con el mismo enfoque en el cliente.

Xpress Hosting comenzó a trabajar con OpenSRS en 2009. Julián Flores, director general de Xpress Hosting, dice que la compañía fue en busca de un proveedor que “fuese más allá de, bien aquí está el API, esta es la forma de integrarlo … están listos. Y eso es todo.’”

Menciona que encontró precisamente eso en OpenSRS.

Retos y Oportunidades

La compañía comenzó como un tipo de alojamiento para aplicaciones especializadas en el 2001, pero cuando la demanda del cliente para alojamiento compartido creció, ellos escucharon. Esa fue una decisión que dio frutos con creces. Ahora la compañía ofrece servicios de alojamiento a empresas pequeñas y medianas en México y la región circundante.

Xpress Hosting ve una gran oportunidad en un país que está emergiendo rápidamente como una nación tecnológica. Sin embargo, Flores dice que estar en México significa que la compañía se enfrenta a algunos retos únicos.

“Hay un contraste muy interesante en México en relación con la tecnología”, explica Flores. “Tenemos tres grandes áreas metropolitanas – Ciudad de México, Guadalajara y Monterrey – y más del 60% de nuestros clientes vienen de estas ciudades”.

“Los clientes urbanos son informados y educados”, afirma Flores. “Ellos saben lo que quieren y tocan nuestras puertas pidiéndolo.”

Mientras tanto, los clientes en el resto del país, necesitan más ayuda desde una perspectiva de soporte al cliente y educación, algo que Xpress Hosting se complace en ofrecer. Han construido su negocio con esa clase de servicio al cliente “uno-a-uno”.

Enfocados al Servicio al Cliente

Flores explica que en México existe un requisito cultural de una relación personal en los negocios. “No es como en los Estados Unidos, donde usted puede hacer negocios con alguien por teléfono, o correo electrónico. No funciona así en México”.

“Nuestros clientes buscan una relación personal, y ahí es donde está nuestro nicho”, dice. “Por ejemplo, ofrecemos un representante de cuenta especializado para todos nuestros clientes y el cliente tiene su extensión de teléfono, número de teléfono celular y la dirección de correo electrónico y el representante conoce los requisitos y necesidades especiales de sus clientes”.

Flores dice que la relación que tiene con OpenSRS permite que su compañía reaccione con rapidez y proporcione el tipo de servicio y soporte que su amplia gama de clientes requieren.

“Tenemos una relación muy cercana y exitosa con OpenSRS y nuestro representante de cuenta”, dice. “Sinceramente, ha sido la mejor experiencia de cliente que he tenido con un Registrador de venta al por mayor.”

Un futuro muy brillante

En México, la tecnología se está extendiendo y la población, especialmente los jóvenes, están adoptando la Internet. Flores afirma que el futuro se ve excepcionalmente brillante para la compañía y para el país.

“Los próximos 10 a 15 años van a ser un paseo muy interesante para nosotros”, dice. “No se equivoquen, estas jóvenes generaciones, están aquí para reemplazarnos y ellos tendrán una cuenta de alojamiento web con nosotros”. Nosotros vamos a ser parte de este cambio! ”

Con un enfoque en la satisfacción de las necesidades de los clientes como Xpress Hosting, OpenSRS espera ser una parte importante de este cambio también.

Much thanks goes to OpenSRS Tech Support Analyst Carlos Barrientos for translating this post to Spanish. Muchas gracias!