This latest installment in the “Meet the Resellers” series features Simon Pearce from simplewebhosting.co.uk, a web hosting provider based in the UK.

Simon Pearce, simplewebhosting.co.uk

James McNally (JM): How long has simplewebhosting.co.uk been doing business and what are all the services you offer to your customers?

Simon Pearce (SP): We’ve been working with the Internet since 1995 and have steadily built up our customer base to what it is now. We believe strongly in keeping our clients happy, no matter what. The part of our business we are most proud of is the number of new accounts that we create each month through word-of-mouth. Advertising on sites like Google or Yahoo is great; but you can’t beat real people telling real people how good you are!

We supply web hosting and domain name registration to the NHS (National Health Service) and HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs) as well as large worldwide companies, SMEs, non-profit organizations and individuals.

JM: Any interesting stories from your company’s history?

SP: We started reselling web hosting simply as a ‘back-up plan’ in case our main venture didn’t work out. Our main venture didn’t work out! Luckily, the web hosting took off well and very quickly we were able to take on our own servers and move away from the reseller model. Today we offer web hosting, web design, domain name registration, online storage and more; all a far cry from school holiday activities for kids (our failed main venture!)

JM: Where are you located and what makes it such a great place to do business?

SP: Our offices are in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a small town in the West Midlands (UK) and not to be confused with the other Newcastle “up north” where you can find Tucows’ UK offices. Because we’re away from the big cities, we can take advantage of the lower cost of living and pass this on to our customers. We often receive feedback from clients in London, for example, wondering how we can operate so cheaply!

Newcastle-under-Lyme, England

JM: How long have you been an OpenSRS Reseller and how has your partnership with OpenSRS helped your company succeed?

SP: We registered our first domain name with OpenSRS back in February 2003 and haven’t stopped since. We also use OpenSRS for SSL certificates and the (sadly now defunct) website builder tool. simplewebhosting.co.uk realized very early on that we needed a relationship with a company that knew what it was doing, and we quickly found that in OpenSRS. (Editor’s Note: While we no longer offer the website builder to new OpenSRS Resellers, we continue to support it for Resellers who currently offer it to their users.)

JM: What can we do to make the relationship stronger?

SP: We would like to see a larger domain portfolio (there are a lot more domains out there guys!); however, whilst our customers love the website builder tool, we think OpenSRS is best suited to domain names rather than the variety of ‘addon products’ which seemed to have fallen by the wayside. We also believe strongly in the human touch and value greatly our relationship with Mario and Luigi in the UK (and we also enjoying “twittering” with James in Toronto!)

JM: Any other suggestions or feedback for us?

SP: Keep working on the reseller support system. What keeps simplewebhosting.co.uk registering domains with OpenSRS (apart from the great pricing!) is the support we expect from our partners. Happy resellers make profitable resellers!

If you’re a reseller interested in sharing your story with our readers, get in touch with me (jamesmATopensrsDOTcom). We’d love to hear from you!

Special thanks to Flickr user Daniel Andrew for making his photo available under a Creative Commons license.

UPDATE: Simon has let me know that simplewebhosting.co.uk has recently, uh, borrowed our idea and is now posting “Meet Our Customers” features on their blog. Have a look! And thank you, Simon. As they say, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”