Interview: ProHosting - Competing Against The Industry Giants

PH: ProHosting actually started as an ISP called Shadowlink, here in Utah. The reason we got into hosting was because some of our clients wanted us to start hosting their web sites. We started back in July of 1997, so it was a natural progression to go into hosting. We set up a separate company (ProHosting) to offer shared hosting services.

What happened over time is ProHosting bought out the small ISP and now we have expanded to national markets. We are going to be bundling our shared hosting experience with our five or six years of ISP experience, combining those two main services in the same call center. We will be able to offer our hosting customers a discounted rate on the ISP side as well.

TH: Is there any possibility of moving into managed, co-location or dedicated hosting?

PH: We are pretty much looking at staying in the virtual/shared market. We are looking at other offerings such as reselling. As far as our resellers are going, we are going to implement a new ProHosting Partner Program called “ProPen” that will be targeted towards graphic design companies. We want them to know that they can use our services and that they are better than the ones they are currently using. We will be releasing this program at the start of the second quarter.

Generally, we are going to focus more on resellers and try to build a reseller chain and let them make a little bit more money off our services. We want to see if we can grow in those types of arenas. But our main focus is what we’ve always done, shared hosting.

TH: Tell me about your partnership with icommerce solutions.

PH: We hooked up with icommerce when they broke through three years ago. They’ve got an easy template with a “shopping zone” and “shopping cart.” It has been very successful for us and we’ve done pretty well with it.

We’re always looking for new partners, but so far, their product works well for us.

TH: Has it been easy to integrate the e-commerce service offerings from icommerce?

PH: Big time. In five minutes we can have someone up and running with a template, offering e-commerce online. The only thing people have to do is figure out their merchant accounts with their banks; get that set up. It’s got a nice easy interface. As soon as they type in all those numbers, vendors can start right away deducting money online and taking credit cards. As long as you can get your web pages up, you could be selling anything online in less than five minutes!

TH: How has the reception to your e-commerce offerings been from your customer base?

PH: Pretty good. The only negative is that the system slows down if you exceed 2000 products. For people selling less than 100 products, it seems to be just perfect. You can really “just get up and be selling by tomorrow.”

TH: So its perfect for your customer base of small and medium sized enterprises?

PH: Exactly.

TH: Are your e-commerce offerings also tied in with your aggressive customer service program?

PH: Yes.

The software is simple and easy to use. If you are still having problems, our customer service people are well trained. We can hold your hand and walk you through the process of setting up your e-commerce storefront.
That’s how we differentiate ourselves from the other people: we care. We’ll help you to make sure it all works. We want you and the visitors to your web site to have a positive experience out on the Web.

TH: What kind of other initiatives are you considering to upgrade your services in the next year?

PH: We have been slow coming to market with NT, just because we are pretty security minded. We’ve been burned in the past before, leaving some things open?x2026;so we’ve worked really hard on our security. With NT, we’ve been in beta mode for some time now, but we are hopefully going to be releasing our NT solution for ProHosting here in the first quarter of 2002 and are really excited about it. Right now, we’ve just been offering on the UNIX side. We feel that this will be the best NT hosting solution with the greatest amount of security you could ask for.

TH: Speaking of security, how are you doing in that area?

PH: Very well. Our last hack was back in 1997 when we first opened up the doors. We ”t been attacked since. We’ve even brought in outside consultants to come in and do penetration tests on our systems. As we’ve grown, we’ve continually monitored our systems closely. So far, we’re feeling pretty secure about our systems.

TH: How is ProHosting faring through the downturn in the technology sector? What have been your biggest challenges in the past year and how have you overcome them?

PH: We continue to grow.

Marketing has been a big challenge. Our marketing efforts are done largely by word of mouth. We don’t put a lot of money into the advertising world.
We do have some free hosting offerings. We currently have about 50,000 customers using our free services in which we are able to promote our banners. We have a banner exchange program as well, called PROBE (ProHosting Banner Exchange Program). We have close to 10,000 people on that. So close to every day we’ve got over 1.5 million banners being displayed on our servers. This is a way that we generate and promote our own paid services.

We are in about 250 countries with our freebies. We sign up close to 600-1000 people a day on our free services. We send them our e-mails and marketing material telling them hey, look what you get for free is not anywhere close to what you would get if you were subscribing to our paid services.

The idea is to get people familiar with our paid services.

As some companies have stopped signing up subscribers, we continue to have success. We are still growing and still making a lot of money.

TH: What kinds of challenges face ProHosting in the coming year?

PH: Our challenges are to continue to work on our advertising, trying to get the word out more. If we had millions and millions of dollars to take out a Super Bowl ad, we would be the largest shared hosting advertiser out there! But, we don’t focus a lot of our resources out in those areas. What we are doing is focusing on creating new things, such as CGI scripting and other new enhancements. We are also always listening to our customers come up with new ideas.

For us it seems clear. We continue to focus on what we do best and that’s shared hosting. Our biggest challenge will be to continue to double our growth and go from there.

TH: I hear that ProHosting purchased an ISP. Tell me about that.

PH: ProHosting actually started as an ISP called Shadowlink, here in Utah. The reason we got into hosting was because some of our clients wanted us to start hosting their web sites. We started back in July of 1997, so it was a natural progression to go into hosting. We set up a separate company (ProHosting) to offer shared hosting services.

What happened over time is ProHosting bought out the small ISP and now we have expanded to national markets. We are going to be bundling our shared hosting experience with our five or six years of ISP experience, combining those two main services in the same call center. We will be able to offer our hosting customers a discounted rate on the ISP side as well.

TH: Is there any possibility of moving into managed, co-location or dedicated hosting?

PH: We are pretty much looking at staying in the virtual/shared market. We are looking at other offerings such as reselling. As far as our resellers are going, we are going to implement a new ProHosting Partner Program called “ProPen” that will be targeted towards graphic design companies. We want them to know that they can use our services and that they are better than the ones they are currently using. We will be releasing this program at the start of the second quarter.

Generally, we are going to focus more on resellers and try to build a reseller chain and let them make a little bit more money off our services. We want to see if we can grow in those types of arenas. But our main focus is what we’ve always done, shared hosting.

TH: Tell me about your partnership with icommerce solutions.

PH: We hooked up with icommerce when they broke through three years ago. They’ve got an easy template with a “shopping zone” and “shopping cart.” It has been very successful for us and we’ve done pretty well with it.

We’re always looking for new partners, but so far, their product works well for us.

TH: Has it been easy to integrate the e-commerce service offerings from icommerce?

PH: Big time. In five minutes we can have someone up and running with a template, offering e-commerce online. The only thing people have to do is figure out their merchant accounts with their banks; get that set up. It’s got a nice easy interface. As soon as they type in all those numbers, vendors can start right away deducting money online and taking credit cards. As long as you can get your web pages up, you could be selling anything online in less than five minutes!

TH: How has the reception to your e-commerce offerings been from your customer base?

PH: Pretty good. The only negative is that the system slows down if you exceed 2000 products. For people selling less than 100 products, it seems to be just perfect. You can really “just get up and be selling by tomorrow.”

TH: So its perfect for your customer base of small and medium sized enterprises?

PH: Exactly.

TH: Are your e-commerce offerings also tied in with your aggressive customer service program?

PH: Yes.

The software is simple and easy to use. If you are still having problems, our customer service people are well trained. We can hold your hand and walk you through the process of setting up your e-commerce storefront.
That’s how we differentiate ourselves from the other people: we care. We’ll help you to make sure it all works. We want you and the visitors to your web site to have a positive experience out on the Web.

TH: What kind of other initiatives are you considering to upgrade your services in the next year?

PH: We have been slow coming to market with NT, just because we are pretty security minded. We’ve been burned in the past before, leaving some things open?x2026;so we’ve worked really hard on our security. With NT, we’ve been in beta mode for some time now, but we are hopefully going to be releasing our NT solution for ProHosting here in the first quarter of 2002 and are really excited about it. Right now, we’ve just been offering on the UNIX side. We feel that this will be the best NT hosting solution with the greatest amount of security you could ask for.

TH: Speaking of security, how are you doing in that area?

PH: Very well. Our last hack was back in 1997 when we first opened up the doors. We ”t been attacked since. We’ve even brought in outside consultants to come in and do penetration tests on our systems. As we’ve grown, we’ve continually monitored our systems closely. So far, we’re feeling pretty secure about our systems.

TH: How is ProHosting faring through the downturn in the technology sector? What have been your biggest challenges in the past year and how have you overcome them?

PH: We continue to grow.

Marketing has been a big challenge. Our marketing efforts are done largely by word of mouth. We don’t put a lot of money into the advertising world.
We do have some free hosting offerings. We currently have about 50,000 customers using our free services in which we are able to promote our banners. We have a banner exchange program as well, called PROBE (ProHosting Banner Exchange Program). We have close to 10,000 people on that. So close to every day we’ve got over 1.5 million banners being displayed on our servers. This is a way that we generate and promote our own paid services.

We are in about 250 countries with our freebies. We sign up close to 600-1000 people a day on our free services. We send them our e-mails and marketing material telling them hey, look what you get for free is not anywhere close to what you would get if you were subscribing to our paid services.

The idea is to get people familiar with our paid services.

As some companies have stopped signing up subscribers, we continue to have success. We are still growing and still making a lot of money.

TH: What kinds of challenges face ProHosting in the coming year?

PH: Our challenges are to continue to work on our advertising, trying to get the word out more. If we had millions and millions of dollars to take out a Super Bowl ad, we would be the largest shared hosting advertiser out there! But, we don’t focus a lot of our resources out in those areas. What we are doing is focusing on creating new things, such as CGI scripting and other new enhancements. We are also always listening to our customers come up with new ideas.