Here’s another reason why on demand, internet-centric service offerings have to adhere to web standards vs. what any single company is driving.

For the last five years or so, my bride has hosted her small business web site and online store at a company called Bigstep. We loved these guys since their system (written in Java) was fast, worked well, and was browser and platform agnostic (we could use our PC’s, Mac’s or Linux boxes to manage every aspect of the site). Most importantly all of the functionality of the site, catalog and online store was manageable through a web browser. No special software required.

After burning through something like $30M in venture capital during the dot com days and not becoming profitable, they were purchased two years ago by the fourth largest hosting company, Affinity Internet, Inc. I was delighted by this purchase since new investment and changes were sorely needed and I was certain they’d make them.

Nada. Zilch. Nothing material occurred (as far as I could tell) except a few brush strokes (i.e., screen graphics).

So I’ve been on the hunt for a replacement for Bigstep. We want to perform digital fulfillment of ebooks, have more storage space, email that isn’t outsourced and works (unlike Bigstep’s outsourcing of email to Critical Path) so I finally signed up for Web Hosting Services from Yahoo! Small Business even though they don’t do digital fulfillment. It sure looked as though they’d provide the power and features required to move to the next level and we could figure out that digital fulfillment angle later.

What was my experience like and why am I cancelling the service two days after signing up?

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