I have noticed that some hosts on this board are offering dial up access as resellers through one of the major ISP's. Has this affected your conversion rates at all? I know a lot of people will not get hosting accounts with an ISP because of the poor support and the higher prices. The perception has always seemed to be that an ISP is a bad place to go for web hosting. I am wondering if that same perception crosses over to web hosting companies that offer dial up access as a secondary service. Any feedback on this would be appreciated.

Originally posted by Strider
I know a lot of people will not get hosting accounts with an ISP because of the poor support and the higher prices. The perception has always seemed to be that an ISP is a bad place to go for web hosting.

not true, at least here in the Netherlands, a lot of not-knowing-better people go to those isp's. Even the big biz's do. Stupid enuf they pay 10 times more for 10 times less service. It's really amazing how they do it, asking $100.00/month for 5gb traffic and 5mb webspace without any options like php, perl, mysql etc...

Probably it looks more stabel if you offer more, and biz's like to get a totalpackage for everything...and the big isp's offer it.

i guess only the some what more advanced internet users wouldn't go to isp like that, but then again, those users almost always search for the most cheapass hoster. Those cheapass users always want the best service for just a few bucks... And to be honest with you, i don't like those users... Users i like are the newbies and the advanced users who know that nothing is free...

Originally posted by Strider
I know a lot of people will not get hosting accounts with an ISP because of the poor support and the higher prices. The perception has always seemed to be that an ISP is a bad place to go for web hosting.

I'm not honestly sure that's true. I, too, have long believed that buying hosting accounts from dial-up ISPs was a bad idea, but people like you and I are definitely in the minority.

All you have to do is go out and buy one of the "general-interest" business/computer magazines (such as the now-defunct Home Office Computing or the still-published Small Business Computing). Most small business owners (who are, realistically, the biggest market segment for web hosts) know very little about the Internet. And it's not at all uncommon for them to look toward print publications such as those (and others) for suggestions.

Home Office Computing, before they shut down, was the absolute worst when talking about setting up web sites. They always recommended companies that did everything (their theory was that if you can buy your access, hosting, and design all from one place that's better than getting it separately). It wasn't uncommon for them to actually *recommend* AOHell! I was very, very happy when they stopped publishing - the amount of bad advice they gave out was astounding.

But, anyway (sorry I went off on a tangent), I think you'll find that many ISPs do a very, very good web hosting business (in terms of customers and revenue, I mean - not necessarily in terms of the quality of their offering).

Jason