I have a dedicated RAQ3 server with a fairly well known provider. I have several customers that are requiring ASP and/or ColdFusion. I have searched around and come upon Hostopia.com. After looking at if fairly extensively, it looks too good to be true. Hybrid NT/*nix OS. ASP, Coldfusion, PHP, MySql.

I have searched this forum for feedback regarding this host, but there really isn't any. I guess I am surprised...I expected to see a lot of talk about this provider. What is the deal?...

Does anyone have any feedback regarding Hostopia.com? Good, Bad, indifferent?

Any info would be appreciated... :)

Thanks,
Scott

copyright 2000 wtfudge? last time i check it was the year 2001

copyright 2000 wtfudge? last time i check it was the year 2001

You need to brush up on copyright (Intellectual Property) law. There is nothing wrong with what they have. Plus it has nothing to do with the question asked.

While we have never used them, I have heard positive things. That is if you are willing to accept their reseller model, which is a 50/50 profit share. Just because you do not hear or see anything on this board, it does not make it a bad thing. I would rather never see our company here. It is usually a sign you are getting flamed and attacked by jackals or you are a respected member of the board and can beat back attacks if you see post about a company here. To this day I can not find a host who gets rave reviews here and who is not a member.

Also, you maybe able to talk the President of Hostopia, as he pops in every once and a while.

Actually iw as wondering the same thing, ive heard good things about hostopia, people must be turning away because they dont want to give up 50% of their revenue

I still don't get it...They have a "VM 20" server that allows you to have 20 domians for $65.00. Thats $3.25/domain. If you sell it for the going rate of...let's say...$19.95. Where is the 50/50? Not to mention that it is a suggested retail price.

I guess I will have to contact them to find out where the catch is...

As far as I understand it, VM Servers are for you to sell to your resellers. I am not sure you can use it for your needs. However, how can they really tell you are using it for your needs?

They are selling a partnership or a way to outsource your hosting ($375.00 price tag to be a partner). They do not sell individual sites or servers. They do refer you to another company if you just want a site or server www.bluegenesis.com. Kinda spendy if you ask me...

Well, if you want...you can ask the President of Hostopia questions directly. I believe his username on this board is geekwannabe.

Originally posted by webbcite
They are selling a partnership or a way to outsource your hosting ($375.00 price tag to be a partner). They do not sell individual sites or servers.

I apologize about the confusion with regards to our pricing. The "50/50" Plan was one of those crazy marketing ideas that developed a life of its own.

Our pricing model is really simple. We have prices for various packages that we offer on a wholesale basis, like the VMS 20, and then you can resell it for whatever price you think is reasonable. We have recommended price point ranges but it's up to you to decide what makes sense for your business and customer base.

We blend UNIX/Windows Services so that there is no separation between them. Customers can have a web page running, front-page, MS ASP, MSACCESS, PHP, etc., on the same page all at the same time.

Customers don't have to choose between UNIX and NT they simply choose the hosting package of their choice.

I hope this helps.

Franc

Just finished checking out Hostopa's website.

The whole business concept is great considering that minimal effort is required on the reseller's part. And their feutures and control panel look great.

From a web developer's point of view it's great to know that I can host my customers' sites without shelling out major bucks for each new customer for hardware & bandwidth upgrades and also make some money at the same time. Our office is starting to look like a small data center and we invest a lot of our resources to maintain it. We could probably host most of our customers on one of their VM servers.

Has anyone here had any experience with them?

Originally posted by brav0
Just finished checking out Hostopa's website.
Has anyone here had any experience with them?


Our partners like to keep their identities a secret. :)

If you would like to speak with some of our customers please feel free to email, and I will be happy to provide you with some customer references.

Franc

But if im not mistaken, you have to pay $750 set up fee and then afyer 3 months if you dont reach sales of $450 a month then your not for them? Am i right im not sure? If so then this really isnt for people with small business. Overall, hostopia seem to be a pretty sound company. Although with the services they have to offer i.e. the NT/Unix combination could be a world leader with general reselllers. But as i see it hostopia are doing well and seem to be sound.

Ben

But if im not mistaken, you have to pay $750 set up fee

Don't think so. Their pricing page does not indicate this and elsewhere in the site they state:

"We do not require any financial investments from our Hostopian partners. Our revenue sharing approach lowers our partner's risk."

Neither do they mention anything about the $450 sales level.

You are both correct.

However, we obviously need to clarify a few things in our approach to presenting our partnership program. You are both correct in that our current pricing approach doesn't meet everyone's requirements.

The initial reason customers want our service is for the private label capabilities, which allows them to brand the service as their own.

Our customers are typically ISP's, Cableco's, Domain Registrars, ILEC's, and Web Hosting Companies.

We generally attract two types of Hostopian partners:

Customers with existing businesses (usually 50 websites or more) that are looking to cut costs, improve automation, add features (mostly Windows services), increase reliability through clustering, eliminate scalability worries, etc., by outsourcing to us;

The second type of customer is the customer who has never had a Web hosting offering and wants to get into the business without spending the millions in capital and the years of development required to build a solution. These tend to be the larger companies.

We have a $750 customization and orientation fee which gives you the following:

Up to 3 months of free hosting for any customers put onto the service;
Full branding;
Training;
Technical Manuals and WebsiteOS support docs;
Free support for most website migrations;
Free Tier 2 tech support;
etc.

After the initial period we expect Hostopians to be able to generate enough profits from our services to meet our partnership requirements.

For the $450/mth you can get up to 85 websites with control panels for end-users which means that you should be able to generate about $2,000/mth in billings.

It's like buying a server, in that if you don't use it you still have to pay. But unlike a server, once you reach capacity on it you don't have to pay the full price of a new server just so you can satisfy one new customer. When this happens this obviously hurts your profitability until you can fill up the server. With us you pay for your customers as you add them which I believe is a much lower cost approach.

You own your customers and if it any time you are unhappy you are free to move them with no questions asked. Our contracts are open-ended and do not require any short or long-term commitment.

I'm not sure if this violates posting guidelines, my apologies if it does.

Franc

I'm not sure if this violates posting guidelines, my apologies if it does.

I don't think so...that is the information I was looking for.

Thanks for the explanation Franc...that helps a lot!

Scott

We are proud sellers of the Hostopia product line and I must tell you that we are very pleased with the support and service we have received to date!

I won't call them perfect (because I don't think anything is perfect :) ) but we really are pleased with our relationship to date.

Let me give you an example: We had considered Alabanza but voice messages and emails requesting sales info went unanswered. If that's how they handle sales, we could only imagine how they handled their technical support issues! By contrast, Hostopia often emails and telephones us asking if everything is okay. How's that for support?!?!!!

Hostopia has first class support/staff, imho. Kudos go out to Franc and his team for a solid overall business model. For the most part our customers are happy and seldomly report problems. What more can I say but to give Hostopia a "thumbs up" recommendation.

If you have any specific questions I would be happy to answer them as best as I can.

Marc

Originally posted by geekwannabe
You are both correct.

However, we obviously need to clarify a few things in our approach to presenting our partnership program. You are both correct in that our current pricing approach doesn't meet everyone's requirements.

The initial reason customers want our service is for the private label capabilities, which allows them to brand the service as their own.

Our customers are typically ISP's, Cableco's, Domain Registrars, ILEC's, and Web Hosting Companies.

We generally attract two types of Hostopian partners:

Customers with existing businesses (usually 50 websites or more) that are looking to cut costs, improve automation, add features (mostly Windows services), increase reliability through clustering, eliminate scalability worries, etc., by outsourcing to us;

The second type of customer is the customer who has never had a Web hosting offering and wants to get into the business without spending the millions in capital and the years of development required to build a solution. These tend to be the larger companies.

We have a $750 customization and orientation fee which gives you the following:

Up to 3 months of free hosting for any customers put onto the service;
Full branding;
Training;
Technical Manuals and WebsiteOS support docs;
Free support for most website migrations;
Free Tier 2 tech support;
etc.

After the initial period we expect Hostopians to be able to generate enough profits from our services to meet our partnership requirements.

For the $450/mth you can get up to 85 websites with control panels for end-users which means that you should be able to generate about $2,000/mth in billings.

It's like buying a server, in that if you don't use it you still have to pay. But unlike a server, once you reach capacity on it you don't have to pay the full price of a new server just so you can satisfy one new customer. When this happens this obviously hurts your profitability until you can fill up the server. With us you pay for your customers as you add them which I believe is a much lower cost approach.

You own your customers and if it any time you are unhappy you are free to move them with no questions asked. Our contracts are open-ended and do not require any short or long-term commitment.

I'm not sure if this violates posting guidelines, my apologies if it does.

Franc

Is this still the case?
Why doesn't it mention the $750 customization and orientation fee on your website.
And then after 3 months you have to pay $450/mth ontop of your other prices on your site ( vm servers, EMAILPLUS , WEBLITE, BRONZE , SILVER , GOLD ,PLATINUM )?
Is that what you are saying?

Originally posted by Desperate


Is this still the case?
Why doesn't it mention the $750 customization and orientation fee on your website.
And then after 3 months you have to pay $450/mth ontop of your other prices on your site ( vm servers, EMAILPLUS , WEBLITE, BRONZE , SILVER , GOLD ,PLATINUM )?
Is that what you are saying?

Dear Desperate,

The above still holds true. We don't mention it because we want you to call :) to find out more details!

You do not pay $450 on top of the other prices. You simply pay your actual billings or $450 whichever is higher.

I hope that answers the question.

Regards,
Franc

Is the WebsiteOS product something a small webhost can purchase and use as their frontend (ctrl panel)? Very sexy s/w

If yes, anyone have an URL I can visit?

If no, is it safe to assume that any 'host' offering the WebsiteOS is reselling services from Hostopia?

TIA,
FirstLast

FirstLast,

Thank you for the positive comments. At this time we do not offer a licensed version of our WebsiteOS control panel.

The answer to your question is yes.

Thank you for your interest.

Franc

Hostopia offers very stable servers and networks for basic web hosting requirements. When you start using their ASP, MS SQL, Access and Cold Fusion services their level of stability and our clients satisfaction drops.

Like any other company they offer benefits and downsides for their Hostopians.

You must constantly consider all of these factors on a monthly basis when doing business with them. We have lost customers because of their shortfalls but have also gained customers do to the expanse of their services offered. So it really is a catch 22.

Where they do fall short is, with their (1)Private Label Branding and (2)Tech Support Responses and the fact that they operate their own Shared Hosting Company that (3)competes with its Resellers.

Here is why:

(1) Private Label
---------------------
You can always tell a host who uses Hostopia as all "Hostopians" use the exact same url's for pre-propagation access to their servers.
-> megaftpservers.com for FTP access
->http://previewmysite.com/domainname to preview the site
->mssql.megasqlservers.com for MS SQL
->http://www.domainname.previewmysite.com to preview ASP sites.

making all hosts use the exact same generic domains (previewmysite.com, megasqlservers.com and megaftpservers.com) renders any Private Label Branding mute.

(2) Tech Support
----------------------
The biggest problem with Hostopia support is their response time and the fact that they do not use a ticket system for level 2 incidents.

Most incidents/requests put in to Hostopia do not generate a ticket, this results in numerous repeated requests and re-explaining everything multiple times to get a problem resolved.

Tickets do get issued for Tier 3 support requests which go to their Sys Admin. The only problem here is that these request can take 1 week on average to complete as they do not have 24/7 Sys. Admin. I am not sure if they only have 1 Sys Admin or if they just have to much volume.

(3) They are competing against you!
---------------------------------------------
Hostopia also owns and operates "Bluegenesis.com" in direct competition with its wholesale customers.

The main problem here is that Bluegensis sells the exact same products Hostopia offers to its resellers at the minimum or below the "Suggested Monthly Retail Fee Range" of Hostopia, when the plans are purchased annually.

"http://bluegenesis.com/"
"http://hostopia.com/pricing_email_and_webhosting_bundle_index.html"

This is akin to a Tommy Hilfiger Outlet opening a store in your local mall next to Macy's.

In conclusion, we still do business with Hostopia, because in the end we do make more money using their services. But we are always weighing both sides of the equation on a monthly basis.

Hostopia may be the right fit for you or not, but at least you have a few more stats upon which to make decision upon.

I have been reading/lurking on these forums for quite a while, waiting for the day when I could "give back", I hope my post helps if you are on the fence.

Thats a damn good first post. Fair and honest. :D

I think #3 would erk me the most. As a company that offers reseller options AND competitive retail, we always make sure we sell our retail higher then what our resellers will. It is only fair.

We deal with hostopia and I must admit they are getting better but there is still tons of work to do.

BlueGenesis.com -
The whole bluegenesis.com thing disturbs me as we have come across it many times. Its really hard to compete:

On one hand they have created competition for every client that hostopia has. Not to mention the "websiteOS" label on every control panel makes it easy for customers to figure out that they are a hostopia reseller. Hostopia should shut down bluegenesis and refer out the business to their resellers. Not only would they be keeping the business within the company but they would be assisting their reseller which will in turn help hostopia in the long run.

Hostopia Tech Support -
their support is good and bad.... some days good,... some days bad. ALWAYS INCONSISTENT. They definitely need a ticketing system.

Hostopia Private Label -
Hostopia private label is hardly private label. Here's why:
- URL's megaftpservers.com etc. all the same, all generic
- the name websiteOS on every single control panel
- odd plan allocations, making them unique and obvious that it is run on the hostopia system ie. most VM servers (we have actually been asked, "how come your plans are the exact same as bluegenesis.com?" - not an easy question to answer
- the DNS records for megaftpservers.com lists hostopia

Overall they are not a bad company. They still have some work to do and some bugs to work out. This post is not meant to keep you away from hostopia, but more to make you aware of their shortfalls in hopes that hostopia will fix them. The more people asking about it the better they will listen.

If I had it my way they would shut down bluegenesis.com, work on their private label offerings and deal with their tech support.

To leave you with a positive note I will say, hostopia's system does work, it is unique and it a great addition to your overall offerings but ensure that you know what your getting into when signing up with them.

This is a copy of part of an email that I just recieved from hostopia:

3. MIVA pricing
As of June 3rd 2002, the set-up fee for MIVA Merchant will be $250.00 USD / $375 CDN. As of August 1st 2002, the monthly fees for MIVA Merchant will be $10 USD / $15 CDN.:bawling:


This is an email that I recieved from my acct. rep. a while back. it shows their current prices for Miva:

Miva has a US wholesale price of $50 and a monthly $5 surcharge. So CDN I think is $75 and $7.50. Our sug. retail is to double those for your clients. ALso, Miva accounts must be Silver or greater.




WOW - what are they expecting us to charge? $500.00 US setup... are they serious? What kind of an increase is that? 400%?? I'm interested to know what they are thinking on this one?:confused:

Thank you for your positive comments on our product

On the issue of Miva this is simply a reaction to the competitive environment as well as an acknowledgement of the true cost of running this solution.

The MIVA product like most things during the dot-com blow-out was given away in the name of market share - sell it and then worry about making money. So now they want to make money and as a result the licensing costs of their product have gone up dramatically. On their website they are selling licenses for $500 and up and as a result we are forced to increase our prices to reflect this change. In addition users with old versions of Miva that want to upgrade now have to pay $250 to do so it is clear that now that they have market share they want to milk it for all its worth. The good news is that existing customers with MIVA websites do not have their prices changed - they remain the same.

Our price increase also reflects our experience with the product which has turned out to be a lot more maintenance and capital intensive than we were lead to believe when we signed up with the product. If you do a comparison matrix, as we have, you will find that the average MIVA package on a hosting account sells for at least $75 mth not including licensing costs.

This means that our partners can buy this product from us with hosting for $23.50/mth which provides plenty of margin for our partners both on the monthly hosting and on the up-front license. The net effect should be more money in the pocket for us and our partners.


I will include the complete announcement for those that are interested because we also provide a tremendous number of enhancements and improvements to our technology usually on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis that we rarely get credit for. These are services and items that other wholesalers can and would charge extra for and we provide at no additional cost.



Dear Hostopia partner,

We are writing to inform you of the following product updates:

1. Free domain pointing services.

Effective June 6, 2002, we will be including domain pointing free of charge for all new email-only hosting packages. Please note that existing email-only customers will not receive the free domain pointing services, and that stand-alone domain pointing will still be available as a separate, chargeable service.

2. Securemail now available.

SSL, a security protocol used in browsers for transferring sensitive information online, is now available through Hostopia for email accounts. To enable securemail on email clients, end-users should follow these directions in Microsoft Outlook XP:


3. MIVA pricing

As of June 3rd 2002, the set-up fee for MIVA Merchant will be $250.00 USD / $375 CDN. As of August 1st 2002, the monthly fees for MIVA Merchant will be $10 USD / $15 CDN.

4. Website Wizard upgrade

On June 6th 2002, we will release a flash-based upgrade to the HTML and image editors for Website Wizard. These new editors will feature a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) interface. Please note the new flash-based editors can be disabled in the WebsiteOS Preferences if desired.

If you have any questions regarding these changes, please contact your project manager.

Yours truly,

Your partners at Hostopia.

Thanks for your honest answer sir.

Yes, huh? Well I don't consider that 'private label' at all...I consider that 'different label'. A little misdirection, perhaps? Yikes.

-FL




Originally posted by geekwannabe
FirstLast,

Thank you for the positive comments. At this time we do not offer a licensed version of our WebsiteOS control panel.

The answer to your question is yes.

Thank you for your interest.

Franc

"(3) They are competing against you!
---------------------------------------------
Hostopia also owns and operates "Bluegenesis.com" in direct competition with its wholesale customers.

The main problem here is that Bluegensis sells the exact same products Hostopia offers to its resellers at the minimum or below the "Suggested Monthly Retail Fee Range" of Hostopia, when the plans are purchased annually.

"http://bluegenesis.com/"
"http://hostopia.com/pricing_email_and_webhosting_bundle_index.html"

This is akin to a Tommy Hilfiger Outlet opening a store in your local mall next to Macy's. "

Frank,

I saw your reply to the Miva post and was wondering why does Hostopia continue to operate Bluegenesis as a loss leader?

Why where Bluegenesis.com Miva prices not also increased?

Bluegensis.com offers Miva with any Silver and above Plan for $15.00 USD more per month with only a $100.00 setup fee.

Will Hostopia offer any othe shopping cart programs? Mercantec?

Frank, do consider Hostopia owning and operating Bluegenesis.com fair business practice for Hostopia resellers?

Why does Hostopia not openly disclose the fact that it operates its own discount host company.

I know Opensrs also owns and operates domaindirect.com but at least they charge the maximum prices they can to be fair to their reseller customers.

Wow!

Talk about a conversation getting out of hand.

For the record, this thread is also active on the following:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52270&highlight=hostopia

I hesitated to respond originally to "pc0l" because I generally do not respond to anonymous posters. Although he claimed to be my customer, he could just as easily be a competitor up to mischief so I was afraid to give credence to what could be a questionable source.

However, as usual I am compelled to offer a response. My goal is not to hurt anyone's feelings or put a spin on anything as that goes against our corporate and my ethical standards.

First off, being called a liar is not the ideal starting point for a civil conversation, however, I accept that perhaps emotions are running high on my customer's end. I ask a simple question: If you are so unhappy with the situation, why not pick up the phone and call me?

For the record, if anyone does want to speak with me they can call me directly at 416.234.7608.

Now on to the business at hand.

For those that don't care, there is no need to read beyond this point, however, if you are a customer or potential customer this info is for you.

First off, most if not all of our Hostopians know about BG before they sign on-board with our services and once they understand the reasons behind why it exists they usually set aside all their reservations about it.

Why does BlueGenesis exist?

BG is our live Research and Development Laboratory and has been responsible for developing and testing all of our phenomenal technical innovations as well as providing us with a live marketing and business practise to help our customers to learn the techniques to sell more websites.

BG is the guinea pig for all new product innovations and as a consequence it has to deal with all of the potential problems that arise from releasing a new software or technical application for the first time in a live environment. This means that before we ever release a solution to our wholesale partners they can be confident in knowing that the solution is virtually bullet-proof, and consequently, they won't get bombarded with technical support calls for an issue beyond their control. This is why about 99% of our Hostopian product launches are bug free.

As far as the business end is concerned, BG has enabled us to build out our Success Business Practise which provides customers with proven marketing tools and concepts to help them sell more business. For example, we know from experience both ours and our partners that approximately 15% of parked domains will eventually buy hosting services and up to 40% will buy some form of web service (email, forwarding, etc). So therefore we recommend that everyone of our partners sell domains to build inventory. This is just one of many ideas we share with our partners that come from the invaluable experience of running a company.

Who would you rather work with: a doctor who has performed 100 brain surgeries or the doctor fresh out of college who has only read about it?

On the issue of materiality of the BG business, aside from the fact that most people have never heard of it, it represents a very small portion of our hosted domains. Less than 3500 out of over 150,000 or about 2.5%. When I started the company this percentage was in excess of 90% so clearly we have held true to our vision of becoming the world's premier wholesale hosting company. Based upon current projections this will fall to less than 1% during our current fiscal period.

The real competition out there isn't BG it's Verio, Interland, XO, and everyone else. BG is a small fish in huge pond.

As far as competing with partners, as others have correctly noted we do not undercut our partners, rather we have found that some of our partners sell for a lot more than BG does and others for a lot less. It all depends upon their brand strength and their positioning in the market.

Most of our customers sell access services and BG does not and never will while it is a part of Hostopia. This is the more important issue to our partners and frankly is the reason we say we don't compete, unlike all the other so-called wholesalers like Verio, XO, Interland, etc.

In fact, we have a stated policy that says we will withdraw our advertising from any venue in which a Hostopian wants to do their own advertising and marketing. To date we have done this on numerous occasions and will continue to do so.

I hope that addresses everyone's concerns.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to share this with you.

Regards,
Franc