Side-Line Web Hosting Business

by Colleen Wilkinson

Everyone's Got Web Hosting

Some businesses have been looking at the option of providing web hosting as a service to their smaller clients. Question is, do they know what they're offering? In our area we have a printer who made a big splash of providing web hosting services. We thought we'd look into what web hosting they had to offer.

What we found was somewhat of a disappointment. Although they are very good printers - we can't say the same for their web hosting. They are a franchise printer belonging to a bigger group. Each franchise is allocated a certain amount of web space for their own use.

Side-Line Web Hosting

This particular printer decided that another way to supplement their income would be to offer this space, or portions of it, to their clients. Clever thought - this would provide a means of residual income - they supply the web hosting - which is charged for on a monthly basis, and in the meantime, continue with their regular business - not web hosting by the way, but printing!

This all sounded very good, until we enquired about what would be offered with this web hosting service. What benefits would we, the customer derive, from having this company providing our web hosting? The answer? Nothing! Not even our own name! Our url would be something arbitrary allocated by this 'web hosting' company. We would have to use a (very amateur) template from a (very amateur) site builder (you know those ones anyone can download for free from the internet...).

What about e-mail addresses? Huh? This 'web hosting service' hadn't considered that one as important. The answer was obviously no - no email address to go with the web hosting! And traffic? (After all, web hosting should be able to allow for traffic - that's why we're on the internet, isn't it? ) This kept our web hosting company silent as well - couldn't answer and would have to get back to us - at which point I gave up listening.

I sat and contemplated the gall of this 'web hosting' company for a while and concluded that, actually, maybe they weren't so bad if I was truly a small company who perhaps just wanted to be able to put a web address on my business card (everyone has to have a web address these days....) Having a mere presence on the internet was what this web hosting service would provide - at very low cost, on a monthly basis.

However, I still wonder at their audacity to proclaim themselves as a web hosting company! I guess they weren't lying, they would be providing the facility of web hosting. But in the true sense of the word - they could hardly call themselves a web hosting service! What service?

Web Hosting Takes the Slide

Well, a couple of months have passed since this exercise was carried out. I decided to follow up and see how their web hosting was doing. Would anyone be surprised to discover that they have decided to give up on the idea? Ironically enough, they found that there weren't too many people interested in their web hosting service! They've decided to stick with what they're good at and leave the web hosting to the professionals!