When Dynamic Webscapes first ventured down the superhighway, we set out to focus only on web design. Our philosophy - Concentrate on doing one thing very well and become known for quality.

That was 1994, we spoke to potential clients who became clients. We designed their home page and gave it to them on a 3.25" floppy disc... and they said "Now what?!"

We patiently explained that they would need to register a domain name and contact an ISP to "host" their website. Often we would tell them this when we began their website design hoping that they would have their hosting ready to receive our virtuoso.

As one would expect they asked us who to call. We recommended a local ISP that we had success with hosting our site. Later on we recommended them to another ISP and then to some national ISPs. However, our clients kept calling and asking us questions about hosting and domain registration. From their viewpoint who else would they call?

Then our website went down... and it went down again. Then we moved it to another ISP and had to spend hours on hold with tech support because, being designers, we had special needs.

The problem was that an ISP is where you went to provide dial-up Internet access. Internet access was their main function and hosting was just a "side thing" they did. In fact, they would be happy to tell you that they ensured no more than 30 users to a given modem. To them it made sense, they already have the Internet connection and they have the server space. Since they already offered their dial-up clients free personal webspace why not expand on that and provide local businesses with business webspace (at a charge of course).

So what to do? On the one hand we had clients who needed hosting and on the other we needed it ourselves. So we broke with our aforementioned philosophy and researched viable solutions. Enter iServer - a large company that provided server space and connectivity. Their philosophy? Concentrate on providing one thing and provide it well. iServer provided server space on a server farm where we could connect via FTP and upload our client's websites. We could purchase server space and allocate it to our clients and we could use it ourselves. iServer told us in their reseller agreement that they wouldn't step on our toes and offer design directly to our clients. Their logic was if they provided great service to us and helped to make us (the resellers) successful they would have an ongoing revenue stream.

It worked, we signed up and immediately started offering hosting to our new clients. Later, iServer began offering domain registration to their team as well. In fact, when we began in 1994 domain names could only be purchased for a minimum of two years at $50 per year and ONLY through one source. Now we can offer that same service for $15 per year.

Our old clients were thrilled not to have to worry about that "hosting stuff" and by providing it to them we came out on top smelling like roses.

iServer turned out to be one of the best things we ever did. If we did have to call them, their technical support was incredible. Server uptime was guaranteed to us at something like 99.99%, but more importantly the servers didn't ever seem to go down. iServer provided us with 24/7 support and since sometimes we work 24/7 that came in handy once or twice. Occasionally we received messages from the support team informing us that the server was down for a 5 minute stretch and they fixed the problem. They told us what the problem was too. We also got occasionally emails saying that the server was intentionally going to be down. It was always in the wee hours of the morning and only for 15-30 minutes... for new memory or a faster processor or more drive space.

With iServer we never had to worry about power outages, lightning storms, viruses, server upgrades or any of the other administrative hassles in server ownership. These were all taken care of. We could sell websites and offer to host clients and KNOW that we had a reliable webserver - the best in the industry.

iServer was aquired by Verio. Don't ask us the details, we don't remember and don't care. What we do care about is what that meant for the relationship that we had with iServer. Not all change is bad and thankfully this one was almost no change at all. iServer was apparently big enough that they kept all the staff and we still speak with some of the same people.

The only thing that changed from our previous reseller arrangement was that now we were a part of the NTT/Verio network. This meant faster connectivity to and from our webservers because of the telecommunications and financial backbone of the merged iServer.

We still focus only on web design, but to offer truly excellent service we also have to offer the best web hosting - that means viaVerio. We also offer this premium hosting to other designers who want to benefit from our in-depth knowledge.

We are authorized viaVerio Shared Hosting Resellers and proud of that status.

viaVerio Shared Hosting Reseller