Ingenyes offers free web hosting with a twist

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 30 November 2011 11:17

Business IT - Technology

Web hosting veteran Anoosh Manzoori is back with a new business model: provide free hosting, then 'clip the ticket' on ancillary services provided by partners such as SEO specialists, web designers, and ecommerce platforms.

Anoosh Manzoori is probably best known as the founder of SmartyHost, the web hosting service acquired by MYOB in 2008. Mr Manzoori focussed his efforts on Vigabyte, a venture that offered scalable virtual servers to enterprise customers. That company was sold to TLC in 2009.

Now he is back in the web hosting business with a new venture called Ingenyes (pronounced 'ingenious') and a different business model. Previously, free hosting services have generally relied on adding advertising to client sites, a practice that might work for personal pages but isn't very attractive to the small business market.

Ingenyes will instead provide a marketplace for service providers such as SEO specialists, web developers and ecommerce platforms, and will take a transaction fee when its customers engage those providers.

Mr Manzoori realises that some customers will just use the free hosting service without providing any revenue to the company. "That's perfectly fine for us," he said, as the cost of providing basic web hosting is much less than it was five years ago. He believes it is better to offer free hosting and rely on value-added services than to take part in the race to the bottom for hosting fees.

This may be attractive from a customer's perspective, as it will make it easy to pick and choose between various service providers without having to open an account with each one.

"I do believe there is value in this model," said Mr Manzooni.

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