A thriving family business

Aquacare is a website selling aquariums, spare parts and accessories. It was created by Barry Nicholls as an offshoot of Petcare, a pet shop run by his son, Jason. This high-street store is based in Thame, Oxfordshire.

The website is hosted on Donhost's web hosting platform. It uses an off-the-shelf ecommerce package to sell to clients around the country.

Selling online has enabled the company to reach a much wider range of customers. "It's a local shop," says Barry, "but the website helped us become national."

Aquacare has even used the website to attract customers for its aquariums in the USA. As Barry explains, this is no mean feat, because nobody will insure aquariums for international shipping.

The beginning

Barry picked a Donhost web hosting solution for Aquacare when the site launched around eight years ago. He taught himself how to build websites on free web space, but wanted to host Aquacare on "something more reliable and robust."

One of Donhost's earliest customers, he chose the company after doing some serious research. He examined the ratings of various web hosts in the (now-defunct) Internet Magazine.

"Donhost regularly had a good download speed and uptime," says Barry. "It was one of a group that was extremely reliable."

Years of reliability

As Barry says, these days "if you've got a business, you have a website". But Aquacare was online when running a company website was the exception, not the norm. Since then, Barry has been consistently impressed with the reliability of his hosting package. "We've had very few problems," he explains.

Only very rarely does he need contact Donhost because something has gone wrong: "I think in the early days I only had to ring once. I've had no problems with the service - that's why we've stayed with them."

If he does need support, Barry tends to request help through the Donhost website: "I use the online form to get an answer quickly."

He continues to stick with Donhost because he knows he can trust the company with his business website. "You can depend on Donhost," he says. "That's what it comes down to. Reliability is number one."