The web industry is crammed full of competition. There are very few barriers to entry, in that there are hundreds of web hosting companies out there wanting you to resell their services. In fact, the majority of "web hosting companies" are in fact resellers. Working with a reseller can be a challenge, as it means that they do not fully control the environment where your website is hosted. It's the kind of thing that won't matter until it matters.
As I've said many times in this blog, Site Street is not a reseller. We have our own data center in Austin, TX. This means that we control the entire web hosting environment, making it easier to provide top-notch service to our clients.
Today was the perfect example. One of our clients, Pinnacle Business Systems, wanted to have some direct, short links to some specific pages. These direct links work well in advertisements, as it eliminates the ".html" or other items for people to type. They requested one URL alias early in the week and we got it setup in minutes. Then today they wanted two more... again, no problem. Within minutes we had setup the aliases for their advertising campaign. This seems like a simple thing... but if we were a reseller, this would have been much more of a headache. In fact, we didn't charge Pinnacle for this, as it was such a simple change. But in a reselling situation, we would have likely charged upwards of $100-$150 to implement.
This is just one example of how Site Street provides customer service. Our number one goal is to make the client happy... and while any (and every) web company will say this, is it even possible for them to do so? If they're reselling hosting, there are just some inherent limitations to what they can do in a timely and cost-effective manor.
I don't want to sound like a commerical here, but I feel very strongly about this. By providing our own hosting, we are creating a clear benefit over many of our competition. Not only that, but we provide this hosting without all the overhead and headaches of those large, corporate data centers. This is just something I feel very passionate about as it makes a big difference to the customer.