Trellix website publishing technology is now within reach of small ISPs as Topline Ventures rolls out a service offering designed for independent service providers. For Topline ventures, growing your top line is their business.

by Patricia Fusco Managing Editor ISP-Planet [October 30, 2001]

If you've been looking for an easier way to provide Web services for small-business clients, then you've probably taken a look at Trellix Corp., one of the market leaders in private label website publishing technology.

After you recover from sticker shock and start breathing regularly again, chances are you know the Trellix website development program could make life at your ISP business much easier. But who could afford it?

Reality bites.

There's no way your small ISP operation could sign up for the same website creation service that AT&T Broadband, SBC, and Bell Canada provide for their small-business clients.

Or is there?

Check out Topline Ventures Inc. Based in Canada, Topline provides private-labeled application services to small and mid-sized ISPs and webhosts. That's right—Topline is sort of an ASP for independent ISPs. Only Topline doesn't provide the actual applications, it provides the technology partner.

Small biz designs

For the first time ever, Trellix is making a standardized version of its private label Web publishing platform available to smaller-sized ISPs and hosting companies through an agreement with Topline Ventures.

Robert Bray, Topline Ventures chief executive officer, is building the business on providing best-of-breed applications for small ISPs. If your business could not otherwise afford a technology partner like Trellix, then your ISP is just what Topline is looking for.

Bray said both Trellix and Topline recognize what smaller hosting companies and ISPs need and together, the two companies are delivering top-notch hosted solutions at a price that makes sense.

"Trellix has the best website publishing technology on the market, and based on my experience, I know that these capabilities will be well received by both our customers and their end users," Bray said.

Topline can do this because Trellix founder Dan Bricklin believes in the multi-level distribution business model. Bricklin loves it when Trellix can work with companies that can help solidify its position as a leading Web development service for the small-business marketplace. As a result, Trellix was pleased to open a new distribution path, and gave Topline Ventures the green light to start serving up its top-flight Web applications to small ISPs and webhosts.

Don Bulens, Trellix chief executive officer, said, "Topline's offering meets the needs of smaller hosting companies and ISPs that have been requesting our capabilities for some time. By combining the Trellix platform with Topline's strong and targeted reach, we are now enabling these providers to offer premiere website building services in a scalable, cost-effective manner."

The deal extends Trellix's reach into yet another highly important ISP and hosting market segment and enables a range of smaller ISPs and webhosts providing services for 10, 20, or 100 clients to in turn offer these customers a sophisticated, easy to use Web publishing tool—at a fraction of the cost.

The Topline solution is priced to include a low, one-time set up fee of $5,000. ISPs offering the Web building service to webhosting clients pay only $5 a month per user—regardless of fees charged. This creative pricing and distribution partnership nearly eliminates the set up fees and monthly minimums traditionally charged to larger providers, empowering small ISPs and hosting companies with industry leading site building capabilities.

Topline selected the Trellix publishing platform based on its extensive customization features and flexibility, including the ability to easily provision users from varying hosting companies and ISPs, regardless of authentication system.

Trellix's Web Express is the cornerstone of its website publishing platform. The platform is a full-featured, browser-based Web builder that enables even the most novice users to create rich websites. Trellix Web Express features include click-in-context editing, automatic page linking and graphical navigation, e-commerce capabilities, site promotion, custom forms and maps and comprehensive integrated support. The Trellix platform also offers advanced tools for users who prefer to work directly in HTML or PC-based web design tools.

Au contraire
But research from IDC has found that most small businesses want to establish a basic Web presence, not dive right into building an online store or e-commerce website. IDC says most small-businesses want an e-commerce option—down the road. These so-called "Mom 'n Pop" shops are more interested in establishing a Web presence as a form of electronic yellow pages, while continuing to do business by traditional offline means such as telephone ordering, making appointments, or going directly to a local outlet.

Local shops are bread and butter accounts for local ISPs. Local business owners like to work with local businesses. This localized relationship allows small businesses to take their name online and provides local recurring revenues in the form of hosting fees for independent ISPs.

Three little words often make or break these relationships—file transfer protocol. If you've ever had to walk a newbie though establishing or maintaining a FTP connection to update their website, you know exactly what I mean. For 10 or 20 bucks a month, it's not worth the torture.

But what if you would only have to pay $5 a month—after a one-time startup fee, of course—to make the FTP process invisible and updating websites idiot proof? I bet you'd have your sales team go after every small business on Main Street to get local businesses connected today.

Your ISP could be the driving force behind capturing a segment of this growing market of online small business owners.

According to IDC, the number of small businesses establishing websites does not automatically equate to the number establishing e-commerce activity. Last year, more than 700,000 small businesses added Internet capabilities to their repertoire, bringing about 5 million small firms online (See Table 1). Over 400,000 small businesses added just a home page. In contrast, only 185,000 small businesses created e-commerce websites—just 4.3 percent of the online total.

According to the Small Business Administration, there were about 25.5 million small businesses operating in the U.S. alone last year.

This leaves a lot of prospects open for enterprising ISP businesses, like IronWeb.net. The Michigan-based ISP offers hosting and dialup services from the middle of the mitten in Clare. Jim Hatch, IronWeb.net president, said Topline's Web development offering was just the ticket for his ISP business.

"Our dialup coverage area includes more than 5,800 numbers in North America, but we are really physically small as far as the number of people in our organization," Hatch said. "We're five people. As long as the network is up and trouble-free, webhosting is just another revenue stream for us."

Hatch has been in the ISP business since 1997 when IronWeb.net just started hosting a few websites and dabbling in e-commerce. But Hatch has no intention of just playing about with Topline's Web development offering.

"Although we're just starting to integrate it into our site today, I would like to say that by the end of next year we will have10,000 to 25,000 customers the program," Hatch said. "Customers may start with a basic hosting plan today, but a lot of them will become e-commerce sites down the road."

IronWeb.net's basic hosting service costs just less than $17 a month for 10 Mbps throughput and a single e-mail address. At this rate, IronWeb.net's 295th customer demarks the breakeven on Topline's start up fee. Anything after that—less the $5 per customer monthly fee—is gravy. Considering Hatch's goals for the program, that's $169,500 to $423,750 a month in recurring revenues by October 2002. All without having to explain FTP to a single webhosting client.

Hatch said that IronWeb.net has two key strengths: low overhead a lot of capacity. If Hatch meets his goals on customer acquisition, IronWeb.net is going to have a lot of gravy, too.

— End