There are many pluses to Aplus.Net. Hosting is a major component of the portfolio offered by this San Diego, CA-based company.

Aplus.Net is a division of Abacus America, Inc., which was founded in 1992. It boasts more than 250,000 web hosting and Internet customers who can also access products and services offered by other divisions under the Abacus America, Inc. umbrella.

Since it was formed in 1995, Aplus.Net has provided complete solutions for ecommerce and scalable shared & dedicated hosting options. April 2001 saw the launch of a state of the art data center. This carrier class facility provides collocation for businesses who want to take advantage of economical and reliable outsourcing.

WebHostNews.com: Do you target a specific segment of the web hosting market?

Diane Brandis: We are not an enterprise-oriented Internet provider. We cater to the small and medium sized businesses - the SOHO and residential community.

WebHostNews.com: How were you able to avoid the fall out from the dot.com implosion?

Diane Brandis: The residential and B2C market really was not affected by the dot.com explosion and demise of so many wonderful businesses and so many terrific web sites. If we were catering more to enterprise customers, we might have been badly hurt.

Some of the companies we have known for years, some of our colleagues in the industry, were hit very hard when some of the other major sites went down and didn't pay two or three months worth of bills totaling over $250,000. But most of our clients are small to medium size businesses and residential individuals. They pay their bills every month on their credit cards. They are a wonderful, stable, block of business, and we have been extremely fortunate.

We are very customer focused. We have 24 hour customer service. We have grown extensively through referrals as well as a very well marketed advertising campaign. We value our customer relationships and provide excellent service. This company has been in the black since 1992 - since it's inception.

WebHostNews.com: How important are customer referrals and word-of-mouth advertising? How many of your new customers come that way?

Diane Brandis: In the last seven months, we have had over 2500 referrals, which have totaled over $500,000.

We've always been able to grow. We have grown extensively through our web hosting division. We've also grown being an ICANN accredited domain registrar (Aplus.Net.com is another division of Abacus America, Inc.) We're very good at synergistically taking advantage of offering different products to our customers so we keep them with us. They have no reason to leave! We're able to offer a lot of theses services to the ISP's who purchase Rodopi Software, the leading NT software for automatic provisioning and billing (another division of Abacus America, Inc.)

WebHostNews.com: So, your customers are able to get the whole package at one place?

Diane Brandis: Yes, Some of the largest hosting companies are our clients as well. In today's age, it is very important that everybody work together as opposed to a more old-fashioned, traditional approach of every company looking at each other as competitors. Today, companies are working together to help each other increase gross margins and provide a more competitive and effective package to the consumer.

There is a lot less of an "us vs. them" attitude than there was four or five years ago. If we can help one of our ISPs who purchased Rodopi Software be more successful by enabling them to take advantage of other products and services that we offer, then that is terrific. If they would prefer to do it independently, that is wonderful as well.

WebHostNews.com: What do you offer your customers that would make them decide to choose Aplus.Net over any one else?

Diane Brandis: We have a state of the art data center. We have very secure, robust hosting, and our prices are extraordinarily competitive. For domain hosting, we start at $9.99 and we provide a free domain registration with this plan as a bonus. We include complimentary web design tools in certain packages. We also have ecommerce hosting. We have dedicated and shared server hosting. You can come to us and open up a site for your children to sell Girl Scout cookies or you can come to Aplus.net and open up a multiple server farm with a robust ecommerce site, like eBay. And you grow from anywhere in between.

WebHostNews.com: What about resellers? How do you like that market, and how do they like you?

Diane Brandis: We have a lot of resellers. It is a wonderful market. We allow resellers a great deal of flexibility. They can buy bulk space and then resell it independently with their own billing systems, or they can resell our products and be paid a hefty commission. We have a very broad variety of options for resellers.

WebHostNews.com: What do you see in the future for web hosting?

Diane Brandis: Great growth margins. IDC and Forrester both predict the 'Hosting is one of the strongest growth segments in our market. It is extremely expensive for people to try to host themselves. There are connectivity and redundancy issues, and additional requirements which make hosting independently just too cost prohibitive.' It is much more economical and easier to choose a provider like Aplus.net.

Now, when every one is just trying to focus on improving their profitability, it is extremely important to outsource, and to pick a provider that is going to be very service oriented and very committed to the success of their clients.

WebHostNews.com: Thank you Diane for taking time to speak with us today.