WebFusion

Part of the Pipex group, which has datacentres in London, Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham, WebFusion offers a huge range of services. If you opt for its reseller package, you get a custom control panel; otherwise, you get the excellent third-party Plex package. Fortunately, the custom control panel is superb, showing any extra charges you might incur as you select services.

WebFusion allows the storage of MP3 and RealPlayer files on its servers. As always, though, ensure you understand the terms and conditions - they may have restrictions that will stop you implementing your clients' solutions. Having a website "pulled" would be particularly embarrassing.

WebFusion has recently invested in a range of virtual server technologies, which have dynamically adjustable RAM to help deal with sudden increases in traffic, so your website should be able to cope at all times. Although we didn't notice any difference in tests, it should help alleviate the "Digg effect", when a server gets sudden, massive demand.

No backup system is provided, so the customer needs to provide their own, perhaps by simply downloading via FTP. But we'd have liked to see an easy way of backing up all the configuration settings and the databases of one or multiple websites. It's much quicker to back up within an ISP's internal network rather than trying to download all the data via ADSL to your local machine.

WebFusion offers 24/7 UK-based support, with a ticketing system, whereby you can log and track the status of any issues. Keeping the customer informed of what's happening is vital, and many small ISPs can often fall short on this issue because of a lack of resources. If you have a customer wanting to know why their website isn't working, it's vital to have all the facts to hand.

With everything from hosting to dial-up accounts on offer, plus the inclusion of virtual server hosting later this year, WebFusion will soon provide a complete list of services for the virtual ISP. Being part of the Pipex network also means it has the infrastructure to ensure that connectivity isn't an issue, as is shown by our test results, with the minimum number of dropped pings of any of the ISPs on test. WebFusion could be a great partner in your new venture as a virtual ISP.

Author: Mark Newton