San Diego's Aplus.Net provides one-stop shopping for Web hosting customers.

Aplus.Net may be the first to tell you that they are not the largest Web host out there. In fact, Aplus.Net’s CEO, Ivan Vachovsky tips his hat to the world’s largest host, 1& 1 Internet, for their marketing strategy in a recent article in the San Diego Business Journal – the same publication that has voted the 13-year old company this year as the #2 Web Development and Design Firm in San Diego, the #4 ISP and one of the 100 Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies.

But if you ask who offers the most Web hosting services and has the most products under one roof, the answer may be a resounding “Yes”.

Think about it. If you wanted a Schick Quattro razor, a quart of Quaker State motor oil or U2’s Live From Chicago DVD all in one place, wouldn’t you choose Wal-Mart?

“We provide one-stop shopping. We can take care of all your online needs,” chimes Vachovsky at the company’s headquarters in San Diego.

Pen in hand in typical professorial style, Vachovsky drives home the point with a diagram as he explains: “You start with the basics, your domain name…your online identity, then you need a Web presence so you build a website - we have those tools. Then you host it…and you decide you want to sell products so you put in a shopping cart, and you are now making money so you need to handle that with a payment gateway and security systems. If you don’t have visitors we’ll give you traffic tools to attract the visitors and now that you’re selling and have customers you’ll need to take care of the customers with our CRM, LiveChat or our customer surveys.”

And you can have all of this at “everyday low prices”. Well, not the lowest but Vachovsky maintains, “We don’t compete on price. We’re not the cheapest but we’re the best value for the money.”

More than 200,000 customers have been served over the course of a decade in the Web hosting field but the veteran CEO wants more. So much so that he’s now willing to pay for that privilege.

“We are actively looking … not (extremely) interested in acquiring very small companies but those with thousands of accounts or a large customer base, and revenues in excess of $5 million dollars.”

Those who join the team can get ready for a rapid ride on the tech side. In 2005, Aplus.Net has unleashed dozens of new product offerings in its relentless quest to bring in the customers. Its most recent product is a content management system called TikiWiki preceded by a Media Wiki web-based design and editing tool released a few weeks earlier.

“We have other technologies in the pipeline and new products in testing. But it’s not our policy to pre-announce. The challenge for us (in 2006), is to make an equivalent effort to make our customers aware of these products and increase the adoption rate,” noted Vachovsky.

Maybe we’ll also see some online Aplus.Net greeters?