Through its myhosting.com and mail2web.com brands, Softcom, an OpenSRS Reseller since 2000, has established itself as a leading provider of web hosting and business communication services to small business and small to mid-sized enterprises in 140 countries around the world.
In addition to web hosting, Softcom provides messaging and collaboration services to more than 25,000 businesses worldwide, consisting of well over 2 million mailboxes.
Founded in 1997, Softcom has offices in Toronto, New York and Turkey.
Enterprise Email, Competitive Pricing, Personal Service: The Market for SMEs
In the early days of web and email hosting, Softcom realized that small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) were underserved by existing offerings in the marketplace.
There were many no-frills email services designed for consumers and small business, but rapidly growing businesses with 50-100 employees or more, looking for advanced mail solutions with enterprise features were either forced to build and manage their own mail infrastructure, or shoehorn themselves into a service that was not right for them.
Softcom knew why this market was under-served: SMEs have similar demands to large enterprises, but without the big IT -spend budgets, and they can be a difficult niche to support because of their unique requirements. To be successful in this niche, Softcom had to accommodate the uniqueness of each customer and do so as efficiently as possible.
Leveraging Trusted Partners
To keep its razor sharp focus, Softcom leverages the expertise of key partners such as OpenSRS.
“You can build a hosting provider yourself from the ground up, but you’ll have a very difficult time staying ahead in a game like that.” says Celal Ulgen, Softcom’s chief marketing officer. “We’ve partnered with the best vendors in the world when it comes to spam and anti-virus, data retention, control panel automation and domain registration management. When you have relationships with best-in-breed vendors, you don’t have to make excuses.”
Mr. Ulgen is proud of what his company has built. “By partnering with vendors like OpenSRS, we can focus on all the little details that are important to the small enterprise. For example: organizations might not need certain premium features for every employee in the company. We went to great lengths in our service to let customers design their own service plans based on their own unique needs. They pay only for the features they need.”
OpenSRS Reseller Since 2000
Prior to 2000, Softcom didn’t have a long term strategy for domain name registrations. Business either brought their own domains with them, or new domains were registered manually by Softcom’s team.
When it came time to talk about domain names, Softcom had some hefty requirements. They needed a partner that was going to be around for a long time, with experience in private label wholesale services and the same focus on customer service in which Softcom prides itself. They also needed a platform that could integrate easily with their existing platform and had batch management features to handle the many thousands of domain names Softcom would be managing.
“I’ve been in this business for a long time. When ICANN opened up the Registry to other registrars, OpenSRS became the first wholesale-only domain name provider in the world. We did look at some other options in the market, but in the end OpenSRS was the obvious choice thanks to their API and the sheer focus they place on the needs of their resellers. More than ten years later, it is one of the strongest partnerships we have.”
