Twenty years ago, a business opened a storefront, put ads in the local paper, joined a regional networking organization and hoped the customers in their area needed what they had to offer. All that changed with the arrival of the Internet. The massive reach of the internet changed the very fabric of doing business. Now, for instance, a business ‘X’ designs and sells custom cakes. A potential customer is having an impromptu family get-together or a celebration and needs a pre-thought out & peculiar cake. The customer uses a smartphone to search for ‘custom made cake’. X’s website is listed in the search results. After browsing X’s website, the customer is satisfied with the superior finishing and places an order for the required designer cake. ‘X’ just earned another customer!

Growth of an Ecosystem of Top Notch Brands
Over the years since its inception in 1997, The Endurance International Group has grown into a global family of brands that helps small businesses get such a web presence. In India, Endurance caters to small business owners and web professionals through brands such as ResellerClub, HostGator, Bluehost, and BigRock. These brands provide the tools and resources needed to build and establish a web presence, be found in online searches, email marketing and more. Established as BizLand, the company set the pace with the highs and lows of the internet bubble before the bubble burst. Struggling for recognition in the market, the company re-emerged as Endurance in 2001 with just 14 employees. From there, Endurance grew to acquire multiple brands such as HostGator, BigRock, ResellerClub, Bluehost and more. These brands contribute individually to build a reputation for the company and gather customers who were a perfect fit with the other Endurance brands. All the brands combined, Endurance, as an organization, has been able to expand the product portfolio while focusing on both, small businesses & web professionals. Web professionals’ segment includes web designers, web developers, digital agencies, IT service providers and more; basically any business that helps other businesses get their online presence. Focusing on the business needs of web professionals is the key to understanding the backbone of the online world. This segment of professionals has been a tremendous source of innovation & support to take the internet to the masses. Customers are not always tech savvy and need hand holding during their online journey, which is where web professionals come in. “We want to provide a platform for them to get their customers online easily. Our suite of products is a perfect fit for such a mission”, says Manish Dalal, SVP & General Manager, Endurance International Group.
While the primary aim of all Endurance brands is to get small and medium businesses online, the objective is far more outreaching. Each brand helps in enabling businesses from the grassroots - starting from creating an online identity with a domain name to hosting that domain name on a server. More so, Endurance not only helps businesses get online, but also helps them grow. By providing digital certificates, Endurance ensures secure transactions, safeguards data transfers and protects personal information so that websites are more secure.

Additionally, Endurance also helps businesses reach out to their customers and establish the company’s professional image with company branded business email, through products like Business Email, G Suite and Enterprise Email. Further, Endurance educates and equips its customers through videos, blogs, whitepapers, press releases and events, to maximize the potential of the internet.
Brands that Deliver Excellence
More like ‘partners’, Endurance maintains a dynamic relationship with its clients. The company’s account management teams are in constant touch with the partners, understanding their business requirements and providing solutions that strictly align with their business goals. Endurance also has other feedback mechanisms like regular surveys and a feedback tool in their order management system. This partnership is further made concrete with face-to-face interactions at events like the
ResellerClub VIP retreat, WordCamps with Bluehost, Ctrl+F5 by ResellerClub and Endurance’s flagship event, Cloudbazaar.

Cloudbazaar, the annual Endurance event showcasing many Endurance brands, is visited by more than 2000 attendees every year and is one of the largest events in the cloud and hosting industry in India. The idea behind the event is to provide a platform for sharing knowledge, ideas and expertise. This is a useful platform for all brands in the cloud industry to be recognized, to network and to enhance learning in the community. Endurance also conducts in-depth interviews with many of its partners to better assess their requirements. The ResellerClub Mobile App, the all-new WebPro Panel and the mobile experience project are an outcome of such interviews. The Mobile App enables on-the-spot domain booking, keeping track of domain renewals, adding funds to a reseller account and more. The ResellerClub WebPro panel has a contemporary design, a seamless purchase experience, a new invoicing tool, new order management features and the tools to help partners manage their customers with ease. After months of research and countless interviews with customers, the Endurance team designed this new panel. Thus, the Endurance family of brands caters to the needs of all web professionals and small businesses. For example, Bluehost caters to the WordPress audience, the HostGator brand stands for quality hosting and support, BigRock provides affordable web services that suit a range of budgets. WordPress is a brand that resonates strongly with web professionals and those who use WordPress to create websites. Bluehost is arguably the largest Wordpress hosting brand in the world and Endurance’s strategic partnership with WordPress’ parent company- Automattic, dates more than a decade and still continues to grow.

Endurance is constantly upgrading its technology stack to not only serve customers better, but also to provide the best value to them

Constant Headway in Technology and Customer Experience
Endurance is constantly upgrading its technology stack to not only serve customers better, but also to provide the best value to them. The company is slowly moving towards a completely virtual environment for its Shared Hosting product line. In the near future, the group will revamp its entire webmail experience to make it faster and more feature rich. Its dedicated and VPS products already run on the latest version of OpenStack. “We have a lot more performance enhancements coming up in the next year”, confirms Manish.

Endurance is also investing in improving the mobile experience of its key brands. This will make registering domains, buying hosting and other web services on a mobile device simpler, thereby saving businesses valuable time. Endurance is a people-first and customer-first organization, which ensures strong emphasis on hiring & retaining the best talent, while creating experiences those customers appreciate. The group has also been improving its customer experience and its product infrastructure. Meanwhile, Endurance is excited about its flagship event, Cloudbazaar, in December. In its 8th edition this year, Cloudbazaar is poised to be bigger and better than ever. Intended to be a thoughtleadership platform for community, Cloudbazaar’s mission is to help web professionals ‘advance, up-skill and win’. Moreover, the company is aggressively pursuing international expansion to drive growth for its key brands. Markets in APAC and LATAM continue to drive growth for the group.

Today, at the heart of Endurance’s technology is a commitment to ensure online success of small businesses and web professionals. This is what has been driving the company’s 3,800+ employees every day. And this is what ultimately changes the lives of close to more than a million customers.