Does anyone know why the big hosts dont offer design also?

Not part of the business model. Too much time and individual effort I would assume.

joephill,

It depends in the industry they operate. They try to concentrate on their main services and provide reliable solutions, other than diversify.

It's harder to find good web designers than it is to find good technicians - There are many large hosts who don't even have their own in-house design team for their own site.

because they dont like to do small things.

Because they're a hosting company, not a design company.

I think the same, they are a hosting company and not a Design company. Their main work is hosting and not design. Anyway, there are some hosts that also offer design :)

I have to admit - the overall plan for my business is to grow from a small hosting company, into eventually a complete multimedia company that can do a whole project for a company from start to finish.

Why don't other companies do this? I truthfully couldn't tell you. I imagine as the internet continues to mature we'll begin to see companies that only do hosting and companies that only do design merge into one large company. It's much like how the oil industry was in the early 1900's. There was a different company for every task, up until Standard Oil came along and made it considerbly more efficient to do the job as one company. It could also be compared to the automotive industry. You had the Dodge Brothers building transmissions & engines for Ford & Chrysler at the beginning. Another company building the bodies, and then it was decided by the larger companies (Ford & Chrysler) to stop outsourcing that and bring it inhouse.

I offer it, but i outsource to what I call my 'designers pool'. I give all the designers within that pool the project, then they bid for it.

It's better to concentrate on their scope. Better to answer support tickets than doing designs and miss the other part of the company. Also, their will be some miss understanding from both sides about the design which will lead to unwanted problems.

Originally posted by Morgant6911
Not part of the business model. Too much time and individual effort I would assume.

Yeah as Morgant said. It takes way too much time and a lot of hard work. Most big hosts do offer an online website builder.

I think that design and web hosting are at two ends of the online media spectrum... one is a service and the other is creative... while you can offer the creative as a service it can't be pre-packaged like hosting (unless you are talking about templates sites or variations there of) it all depends on the client and the designer/design team and what they create together...

It's because if the big hosts did design services they wouldn't have anyone to blame problems on. Seriously they always seem to pass the buck when they don't support a feature and say "you need to go talk to your designer". Kinda silly, it's so easy to take the client at that point and migrate them over.

I plan to do that at some point in time. Since I was a web designer by profession for about 4 years before I got into the hosting business, I think we could do a good job of it. But in order to do that I'd definately have to take on more staff, something Im not ready to do yet.