Firm Offers Short-Term Hosting for Marketing Microsites

Advertising agencies looking to launch short-term campaign microsites have a new option from managed hosting company Rackspace. To meet the needs of customers that would prefer not to sign multi-year hosting agreements for sites only slated to last several months, the company is now offering three month contracts.

Rackspace’s Short-term Hosting product is primarily aimed at marketing, advertising and graphic design agencies looking to launch campaign-specific and seasonal Web sites, according to Scott White, director of channel and vertical sales for Rackspace. The service also offers a choice of three preconfigured server options to allow for a shortened launch time.

“A real requirement for marketing and advertising agencies is a quick solution to host campaigns and solutions for their customers,” White said. “We have standard software and hardware solutions, so the build time and implementation time is reduced and we can pass the savings on to our customers. Because it’s a standard configuration, the deployment time is one to three business days for these customers.”

Because many online campaigns do not require a long-term hosted presence, Rackspace realized a lot of potential customers were forced to rely on their own in-house staff to set up and manage a campaign, which pulled their attention away from the more important task of creating the campaigns in the first place, White said.

“The most important and critical piece of service support that we offer to our customers is we are an extension of their business. We are the IT staff of many marketing agencies,” he said. “By allowing us to deliver the content and technology, they have the ability to focus on their customers and building new campaigns and projects that they otherwise might be able to.”