Even the smallest business needs to advertise
Big Business is for Big Business.
It is a fact that big business will not hire small business. This is fairly sensible because they know that only another big business will truly understand their needs. Small business suffers from the fact that so many of them do not survive in the long run, but part of the reason is that small business give their money to those big businesses that will never hire them in return.
Small Business is for Small Business.
ISP Ltd is a small business that understands the struggles you experience as a fellow entrepreneur. We have survived almost 30 years of ups and downs in the Internet and IT industry. We are here for you today and will be here tomorrow.
Free hosting?
There are countless Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that would like to offer you free or low-cost hosting. Free platforms are selling other services and may place ads on your pages. Low-cost platforms provide shared servers where the sites of others will impact and limit yours. Some large companies appear to be free, but have a surprise waiting down the road, once you have created your presence and have customers.
Why choose a managed service over a free or low-cost self-hosted service?
We all know there are plenty of places where you can create a business web site without layout out cash. But there is an expression, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Another one is, you get what you pay for. If you are just exploring a business that is not yet earning income, then perhaps a free hosting site makes sense, or perhaps not. Here are some things to consider.
When your business takes off, how will you transition the site?
At the start free is great. But those big companies who offer a period of free hosting or low-cost hosting come with limitations that may sting as your business grows.
Hosting giants like Microsoft Azure and Amazon will offer a free period, but after that you pay by the second for what you use. On a daily basis it may seem inexpensive, but as your usage grows the costs can end up being hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month.
In the beginning stages it may be affordable, but if you plan to move once it becomes expensive then think about what that means. You will need to move your domain management, DNS, web site, database, and e-mail. Once your business is attracting steading visitors, the last think you will want is for your web site to be down for hours or even days while you transition to a less expensive platform. This is exactly what those big providers are counting on.
Compare to ISP Ltd: We do not try to hook new customers by offering free services up front. Instead we reward loyalty. For every year you are with us we allow you to choose one month of free service, to help get through a slow period with one less bill to worry about. Our platforms have fixed costs, so you won’t have any bad surprises if your web site is suddenly very popular — just good surprises and all the help you need.
| Customer Care Approach | ISPLtd.net | Large ISPs |
|---|---|---|
| Help from real people? | ✔ 100% Canadian support, no robots | ✘ Support provided by AI robots |
| Perks/rewards for loyal, existing customers? | ✔ Discounts for length of service and volume | ✘ Incentives for new customers only |
| Assistance with web site issues, adding features, or changing content? | ✔ Yes, we take responsibility for correcting issues, adding features, or changing content. Whatever you need is just a phone call, e-mail, or text message away from happening. | ✘ Self-managed service, any changes or corrections are done by you and your staff |
| E-mail hosting included? | ✔ Yes. Management of an e-mail server is included in every plan. | ✘ No, e-mail is separate service with its own terms and costs. |
| Domain name registration and management included? | ✔ Yes. Up to four standard domains included at no cost for the life of your service. You can register your business domain as ca, com, net, org, biz, co, or info. Perhaps register a name with and without hyphen. | ✘ Some offer the first year. |
| Can domains can be transferred to another ISP? | ✔ Yes, at no extra cost. | ✘ Maybe. |
As your business grows, who will manage your Internet presence?
When you start your business and have no customers yet, you may have time to spend on developing your Internet presence. Imagine starting with an Internet giant like Amazon that gives you a year free. A year later, once your business is becoming successful, your web and e-mail hosting suddenly goes from free to costing tens or even hundreds of dollars per month, and now you need to make changes on your site but are busy serving customers.
At that point you will need to look for an employee, which is out of the question for most sole proprietorships, or hire a consultant. A custom web site from a professional development company may cost anywhere from $2000 for a very simple but nice-looking site to $50k or more for a sophisticated site. To transition a web site you created to a professional company that can carry its design forward might not be as easy as you think, and you may actually need to pay them to re-develop the site on their platform.
For example, if you make your web site on wix, the only place you can host it is on wix. It cannot be transferred anywhere else, so you will end up paying more and more per month as your business grows and needs more features, storage, and speed. Yet you will still be stuck with having to do all the work yourself.
| Management Services Included | ISPLtd.net | Large ISPs |
|---|---|---|
| Minor changes to web site text and graphics | ✔ Included. Major changes such as altering the page layout or organisation may have some extra cost. If that is the case we will discuss with you in advance. | ✘ You do all the work |
| Cloud portal provided for your business | ✔ Web-mail portal is included with every plan, personalised with your business name and logo. Larger plans have more features such as cloud storage, shared documents, chat, contacts (with mobile sync), calendar (with mobile sync), and tasks. | ✘ Not included, may not even be available |
| Mobile apps for portal? | ✔ Yes. You can take control of your data by replacing services like Google with your own server for contacts, calendar, etc. | ✘ No |
| Professional maintenance included? | ✔ We handle all hardware and software maintenance and upgrades. Server software is updated weekly. | ✘ Hardware maintenance only |
| Can your service be migrated to a larger or smaller server? | ✔ Yes, up to once per month at no cost. Charges will be fairly pro-rated for the days you are at each tier. | ✘ Maybe. |
What is the true cost?
Large hosting providers can be quite good at hiding true costs. When the truth is known, it can be astonishing how much hosting can cost. Small businesses have been paying hundreds of dollars per month for unmanaged servers since 2000. If you look at Microsoft’s offering for small business you will see some astonishing figures, such as this:
If a small business can save up to USD$150k, you can imagine what the monthly server rental fees must be like. Don’t think it’s not possible. They really do charge thousands of dollars per month for the rental of servers that you can get for a fraction of the cost at smaller providers like ISP Ltd.
Many US-based providers will quote costs in USD rather than Canadian dollars. In 2024 that can mean your actual cost is around 40% over the dollar figure.
Many large providers will also nickle-and-dime you to death by charging for every feature, every service, for every minute that you use them. With ISP Ltd your services are virtually unlimited at your fixed monthly cost. You can add as many pages to your web site as your server will hold, as many e-mail addresses as you want, store e-mails indefinitely without worrying about storage fees. If your business is extremely successful you may need to upgrade the server, but that’s all: we take care of all the work ─ it’s included in your Business Presence plan ─ to keep your services on-line all the time.
What happens when you need support? With ISP Ltd. you just pick up the phone, send an e-mail, or send an SMS text message and you will be immediately talking to the people you have come to know, who worked on your business presence and can respond to your concerns. With large providers only large companies get a dedicated contact, and quite often that person is very limited in what they are able to do for you.