Ken Uchikura Newsletter Vol. 212 December 2022 Special PSPINC's Internet Business Beginnings: Part 3
Dec
21
December 2022 Special PSPINC's Internet Business Beginnings: Part 3
In my previous newsletter, I talked about how we started our hosting service in 1996 by building a T1 line and DNS, Web, and Mail servers. In 1997, we offered our services at the following prices:
• Web Site Hosting(10 MB max) .... $75.00 / Month
- additional 10MB to 100MB .... $7.50 / per 1MB / Month
- additional 100MB or More ... $4.00 /per 1MB / Month
• Web Server Hosting (Space Restricted by Server Hardware Only) .... Call
If you wish to have your own domain name, we can help you register with InterNIC or transfer an existing domain to our server. Remember, we allocate only 16 domains (IPs) per server to avoid traffic related slow downs.
• Domain Name Search .... Always Free
• Domain Name Registration and Server IP Setup .... $499.00
• Domain Name Transfer and Server IP Setup .... $399.00
Options to Customize Your Web Page
• HTML Based Online Order Receiving .... Add $50.00 / Month
• SSL Secure Online Transaction Support .... Add $50.00 / Month
• BBS Area (so people can post messages) .... Add $20.00 / Month
• Chat Area (for online discussions) .... Add $20.00 / Month
Email (Your Own Email Account)
• Email Account Setup Charge .... $10.00 / Account
• Monthly Account Use Fee .... $5.00 / Month
Bilingual Web Page Development
• Web page development (in English or Japanese) .... $45.00 / Hour
• Web page translation (both E-J and J-E) .... $0.25 - 0.45 / word
Web Page Marketing
• English Search Engine postings.... $49.00
• Japanese Search Engine postings.... $99.00
• Linking service (if applicable) .... $45.00/hr
Web Page Development Resources
• Check It Out .... FREE
Compared to now, the price might surprise you. But back then, if you wanted to do your own hosting, you needed to invest tens of thousands of dollars for lines and servers. Remember, the price of a T1 line used to be $6,000/month. So, while it may seem expensive here, the price was unbeatable to run a business with a web presence at the time.
Many of our customers had their Web sites under the MOSHIx2.net subdomain. But, "Mitsui & Co. (USA), Inc.", "Tully's Coffee", "Computer News", "Takarajimasha", "Sumitomo Electric", "Discount Golf Superstore" used PSPINC's hosting under their own domains. Of course, we either created the homepages for them or helped them do so.
At the time, web & email hosting services were very rare, and we also had the advantage of speaking both English and Japanese. So, many companies contacted us to ask about our services and got offers. This was in 1997. Of course, at this point, we were still battling unstable web and mail servers. So, we'd go to the office late at night to reboot the servers regularly. We didn't have a 24-hour operation, but, in the end, it was the manager or one of the staff members and I who stayed up all night every day. Of course, it also wasn't uncommon to get called in at three o'clock in the morning.
From there, we started developing our own server software and server monitoring tools to ensure a stable operation. And this continues to this day, a quarter of a century later. Anyway, I hope you can understand that PSPINC's hosting business, which started when there were no tools like today, wasn't operated by external software. Instead, it proceeded along its own unique path. We hope you enjoyed these three newsletters of PSPINC's internet business beginnings. PSPINC will continue to strive, not only as a hosting company, but also as a technology development company that supports the hosting business. Many of the technologies we developed here can also be used to make your site and business processes run more efficiently. If you are considering DX, please let us know. And we would be very happy if you continued supporting our company.
Kenichi Uchikura
President / CEO
Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
ken.uchikura＠pspinc.com
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