Milan, 12 May 2020. As global coronavirus cases are close to crossing another milestone at 4 million, the world seems to have put everything on hold. Many global economies are predicting the biggest crisis of the decade, as businesses and workforce bracing themselves for what has yet to come.
Aside from the hurdles that were put forward by the COVID-19 crisis, many online industries found themselves in a good place during this period. One of such is a web hosting provider from Italy, Tophost.
We spoke with Antonio Baldassarra, Interim General Manager of Tophost in regards to how his company been doing in the first quarter of 2020. He also told us a bit about their plans for the upcoming months.
How did the Tophost perform during Q1 2020?
Antonio Baldassarra: “The first quarter of this year has treated Tophost very well. We achieved and outperformed the budget plan on every KPI, and in terms of bookings, we grew 12%; compared with the same period of last year, when the increase has reached 20%.
In Tophost, we are really happy about these results. All of us are still working hard to define and verify marketing processes in order to isolate and analyze the components of this success and to tune them up in a better and continuous way. During the last months, we’ve been busy with many different activities, and now we need to analyze every cause and effect relationship in a more scientific way.”
How was Tophost’s performance affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? What do you think can we expect to see as consequences of this outbreak for the web hosting market in the long-term?
Antonio Baldassarra: “We expect to be really resilient against COVID-19 crisis, considering some basic facts – Tophost sells really inexpensive services and, also, this is the kind of costs that are outside the typical “crisis hairs cut costs” activities.
Moreover, web hosting services and related email services are, in many cases, more important in these crisis moments (in Italy, we came from a deep lockdown). Besides, Tophost’s services are ideal for those who have some “sleeping ideas” that might require an inexpensive hosting service.”
Recently, you adopted the new brand position for Tophost. How is the transition process going so far?
Antonio Baldassarra: “We are working on the process, and now we have our “mascot”, which is a nice coloured parrot, help us with this. In addition, we have created a lot of content both on our site and in a blog section. Also, we’ve been posting in a variety of third-party online blogs and tech magazines.
Now, we start to see some effects of the transition and Tophost started becoming recognized as the “most convenient hosting service”, not only inexpensive but also and in a more important way: a really high-value service, especially if the price is taken into consideration.”
How was your new premium hosting plan “Topweb Ultra” performing during the last quarter?
Antonio Baldassarra: “We have postponed all the marketing activities on this product to June to be able to obtain better synergies together with the other activities planned. Actually, we are selling the new plan because it is present on the website and the results are encouraging.
Another mission assigned to this product is to “shift” the center of the Tophost’s offering from Topweb to Topweb Plus, and we see some measurable effects. If we will be on the right way (and actually there are good signals towards this), this will produce more revenues and more margins in a stable way.”
What can we expect from Tophost in the coming months?
Antonio Baldassarra: “As already discussed, we plan to be really resilient to the COVID-19 crisis, and we expect to be able to continue our roadmap mainly focused on marketing and promotion of the new Topweb Ultra.
We are also working on an important agreement with an e-commerce platform vendor regarding the Topweb Ultra.”
