Rise of the web-based application provider

[yesthattom]

I’m starting to get into application providers. I used to be in the “grow it your own” camp, but lately I’ve had a lot of good results with:

• www.salesforce.com
  • “sales force management”
  • better than GoldMine or ACT
• 123signup.com
  • membership management
  • moving my non-profits to it; suddenly we get on-line registration and membership management; and backups and stuff
• (various web hosting services)
  • web hosting
  • $10-$20/month and I can’t believe what a relief it is to not be doing it myself
• capwiz.com
  • letters to congress and other features
  • they maintain the database and my tiny non-profit looks like a huge lobbying firm
• yahoogroups.com
  • mailing list, file repository

Now I just need someone else to do the following:

• Capacity monitoring (like Cricket)
• Trouble ticketing (like RT)
• Up/down monitoring (like Nagios/Bigbrother/something better)
• Shared document (like Twiki)
• Spam fighting

and I can put myself out of business.

Comments

even cheaper web hosting

[grendelgongon.livejournal.com]

With respect to web-hosting for groups with low bandwidth requirements and on a serious shoestring, I've had good experiences with www.e-rice.net for hosting my simple, flat pages with links home page, They have $10-30/year plans and even cheaper static storage space only.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

For outsourced spam fighting, there are a lot of providers that provide tunable scrubbing and then transparent forwarding to your servers. I've noticed clients having the best luck with MessageLabs.

[origamislayer.livejournal.com]

Anyone have a recommendation for blog/CMS system? I have 18 or so magazine/newsletter sites I'd love to automate.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

As a hosted solution? I haven't heard of any that are specifically in that business. Though, I think http://www.livingdot.com will host MovableType or WordPress. I think WordPress is what they use at http://www.thinkprogress.org/.

I only used LivingDot for a few days before the project got cancelled, but I was very impressed with what I saw and I would use it for my next project.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I don't know if anyone does hosted Bricolage but that's the open source CMS that was written specifically for publications. The author has a consulting business around it, and most of his customers are newspapers, so you'll find the workflow is what editors are used to. I seem to recall him saying that the NY Post was one of his customers, but I may be misremembering.

I don't know if it has a blog component, but that's why he has a consulting business. He can add that.

I've worked with systems that his consulting company set up. He did a good job of figuring out what the workflow was, how we wanted out A-heads, B-heads, and all that stuff, and put it all together into nearly a turn-key system.

It would be a wise investment if you have 18 publications.

[airshipjones.livejournal.com]

For your anti-spam solution, you might check and see what Brightmail can offer. They work primarily with ISPs and ASPs, but they may have a solution that will work for you. I used to work there, and they are decent folks.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

For your anti-spam solution, you might check and see what Brightmail can offer. They work primarily with ISPs and ASPs, but they may have a solution that will work for you. I used to work there, and they are decent folks.

After man phone calls it seems that Symantec has ruined this product. I couldn't find anyone that would talk to me about anything other than software I would put on a windows server.

I think Brightmail is now an ISP-only product that their normal salesforce doesn't know about.

Tom