Softcom Technology Consulting Inc. may be the only company with more than 35,000 customers you never heard of. But, according to Tony Yustein, the company’s chairman, CEO and president, that is going to change.
The company is better known as myhosting.com. Established only five years ago, the
firm has managed to gain more than 100,000 registered users.
“We are Canada’s little secret,” Yustein said.
Softcom offers shared and dedicated Web hosting, application hosting and domain registration through myhosting.com. It also offers Web-based email application for a PC, PDA or mobile phone through mail2web.com. Softcom also has worldwide Internet access services to more than 40 countries with alloterra.net.
“We are available in 16 different languages, which is about 15 more than the next competitor,” Yustein said.
Softcom is extending is offering with email and file hosting plans for the consumer, small office home office market and the small business customer.
Softcom’s reseller strategy is based on the number of accounts a partner can bring in. Resellers need to bring in 10 or more accounts for hosting to receive discounts.
What Softcom wants to do with resellers is partner with them as a Web hosting provider, said Michael S. Carr, Softcom’s vice-president, sales and marketing.
The difference between Softcom’s offering and that of Yahoo or Hotmail, Carr said, is that Softcom’s email hosting from myhosting.com enables users to create their own email addresses on the Internet and attach it to a specific domain.
This new service will be marketed through mail2web.com, he said.
The file hosting offering will be targeted at users who need a remote file repository.
The new email hosting plan on myhosting.com is available for US$2.95 per month, while the file hosting plan will be available for US$4.95 per month.
This market is expected to grow close to $20 billion in the U.S. and Canada by 2006, he said.
Besides resellers, Softcom has partnered with Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Worldcom and Open SRS, a division of Tucows.