Arnie Draiman has spent 30 years helping donors and foundations vet the nonprofits they give to, checking the finances and making site visits so every dollar is used well. He has what he cheerfully calls a horrible business model, a one-person practice, and a website that is his front door. He also helps around 15 other people run their sites. What he wants from a host is simple: to never have to think about it. On hosting.com, he mostly doesn't.
Website: draimanconsulting.com
Industry: Philanthropic advisory and nonprofit research
Headquarters: Jerusalem, Israel
Background
Arnie Draiman describes himself as an old guy who's very tech savvy. He became an internet programmer in 1995, when everything was coded by hand, and worked full-time in high tech until the crazy hours and the constant risk of a company folding pushed him toward something saner. That something was nonprofit research, which he'd started doing part-time for a friend: a writer, poet, and educator who spoke to groups about how to give wisely, and who found people handing him money to give away on their behalf.
Arnie's job was to find out, on the ground, whether the nonprofits were worth it. Thirty years later, that's still what he does, and he has done it for a few dozen clients over the years. Someone comes to him wanting to feed hungry people, or support children with disabilities, or fund clean water in Africa, and he tells them which organizations are doing the work efficiently, which are sitting on tens of millions they don't need, and which are paying executives salaries that would embarrass a corporation. He works for the donor. The nonprofit is never his client.
He knows the business model is difficult. Nobody wants to pay much to be told how to give money away. But he's made a living, raised four children, and built something more valuable than a big practice: a reputation people trust. A dozen or more strangers email him every week asking about a nonprofit, and he answers them.
Challenge & Requirements:
The Website Is the Reputation
Social media is a one-time hit. The website is the calling card: articles and opinion pieces he's written for newspapers around the world, interviews, resources, his consulting work. When someone wants to confirm he's who he says he is, that's where they go. It has to be up, and it has to represent him well.
Managing 15 Other People's Sites
Arnie still holds logins for around 15 other websites he helps run, for nonprofits, artists, speakers, and small businesses. On A2 Hosting, he couldn't save more than one set of credentials, so every time he needed to get into someone else's site he was digging through files for their username and password.
Not Wanting to Know the Host Exists
His standard for hosting is the same as for the person who fixes his washing machine: he doesn't want to know they exist. He hates customer service interactions because they take time, and because he has sometimes ended up with only part of a problem fixed. He wants 100% uptime, good analytics, and silence.
Arnie was looking for:
Reliability he never has to think about
Easy access to multiple accounts without re-entering credentials
Fair, transparent pricing he can recommend without hesitation
The Solution:
Arnie moved from GoDaddy to A2 Hosting some years ago and has stayed through the transition to hosting.com. His measure of a good host is that he never has to think about it, and by that measure, hosting.com mostly passes. He now hosts his site on a cPanel Shared Hosting plan.
What hosting.com provides for Draiman Consulting:
Uptime he can forget about, for a site that is his calling card and the place people go to confirm he is who he says he is
Multiple saved logins, so managing the roughly 15 other sites he helps run no longer means digging through files for each username and password, which A2 never solved
Domain registration at around $19 to $21 a year, roughly a third less than the $30 a friend was being charged by an unfamiliar overseas provider
A recommendation he can make without hesitation, because the service stays professional enough that his reputation isn't at risk when he points someone to it
The saved-logins fix sounds small, but for someone acting as webmaster to nonprofits, artists, speakers, and comedians, it removes a recurring irritation from every one of those relationships. The domain pricing matters for a different reason. To Arnie, a provider that charges less for a domain, while remaining professional, is signaling that its other prices are probably lower too. That's the logic he used the day of his interview, when a friend's designer had put her site on an overseas host he'd never heard of. It was, he says, easy to recommend hosting.com.
For someone who would rather never need support, the best thing a host can do is stay out of his way.
Impact:
Uptime That Lets Him Forget
The site stays up, which for a business built on trust is the whole point.
Fifteen Sites, Fewer Headaches
Multiple saved logins mean managing other people's sites no longer involves digging for credentials each time.
A Recommendation He Can Stake His Name On
Arnie trades entirely on reputation. He says it was easy to recommend hosting.com, and he wouldn't if it weren't professional.
Pricing That Signals the Rest
A domain price around a third lower than a competitor's, in his reading, suggests the company's other prices are probably lower too.
"I want a company that I can forget about."
-Arnie Draiman, Draiman Consulting
