Starting and running a business in 2024 is impossible without some sort of online presence. Customers expect a business to have a website and a contact email with a professional domain (no offense gmail/hotmail/aol). In addition, there are all manner of tools for customer relationship management, internal knowledgebases, project management, time tracking, and more that allow businesses to grow at light speed.

Business Platform as a Service (BPlaaS) is a revolutionary new way for businesses to begin or transition operations. It is a full collection of business online infrastructure and information systems. Within minutes a company can have everything that it needs to be technically operational in today’s business world. Don’t try to run your business with a free consumer email account and a spreadsheet and look unprofessional. Gain trust of your customers the right way today.

Problems

Did you know the average company spends $2,623 per employee every year on SaaS products, with an average of 8.3 different apps¹?

The current method of starting a businesses online presence is complicated and confusing. Find and register a domain name with a domain registrar. Create a business logo. Find an email hosting provider. Create MX DNS records that point to the email hosting provider. Create SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records so your emails aren’t sent straight to spam. Setup DNSSEC so no one can spoof your domain. Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with a cloud provider. Install a database service and configure necessary firewall rules. Create another VPS. Install a CMS/website software and create more firewall rules. Create more DNS records, this time A and AAAA records pointing at the VPS hosting the website. Create CNAME records that point to the A/AAAA records for easier maintenance down the road. Get and install an SSL certificate. All this from possibly 5 different providers to create the bare minimum of security for these services and you haven’t even begun to set up the website or any business services that you need.

If you aren’t technical, prepare to spend hours on hold with “24/7” support to get all of that set up. An MSP will most likely be able to achieve all of this properly and securely, but is an expensive solution as they spend the man-hours doing the setup.

Current Platforms

Platform Types

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) allows you to run your services and infrastructure in the cloud. Providers include AWS, GCP, and Azure. These are very technical platforms and run under the shared responsibility model, where the user is expected to securely configure all services. This absolutely necessitates a highly technical team, or at least FTE, to use properly, despite what some one-click installers would have you believe.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a model that eases the use of IaaS. It allows customers to combine IaaS services that are commonly used together into a modular bundle. These platforms make it easier but still require technical knowledge necessitating an IT employee or MSP to effectively use in a business environment. PaaS has allowed many technology companies to start, operate efficiently, and grow. If your business is not creating software, however, this model is not of much help.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a model where the software is hosted online for a fee, usually on a per user basis. Providers include Slack, Jira, and Zoom. Most small businesses use this, because until now this has been the most cost effective way. The hosting company is responsible for security and backups of data, and usually requires no technical knowledge by the business owner. With few exceptions, each provider only offers their own software, so subscriptions must be made with multiple providers. Many of these providers have open-sourced their software, and allow you to run it as a personal instance. Additionally, these providers are a much higher-value attack target for hackers than running a personal instance.

Hosted vs Self-hosting

There is a trade-off for software between self-hosting and a cloud solution.

Some software has had significant contributions made to it by the programming community, and is able to be self-hosted according to license restrictions. Many of these projects have turned into successful SaaS companies. Self-hosting can usually be done with the only initial customer costs being a VPS. This however requires technical knowledge to securely configure settings, DNS, SSL, and ensure backups are being properly taken. The total cost of ownership is too high for many companies that don’t have a dedicated IT professional or MSP service.

Cloud solutions are usually priced per employee. This makes it almost impossible to predict the final bill for your SaaS products throughout the year and even worse, the only way to reduce these costs is terminating employees or violating service agreements. There can be problems of company confidential data being leaked to outside attackers, or even bored or malicious insider employees².

New Platform Needed

Many hosting providers have made it easier for businesses to start. Many involve a “free” domain and email (with renewal prices in fine print), WordPress website hosting, and sometimes an ecommerce web store. It usually includes many options that aren’t necessary (up to 300 websites and 10 databases??) and still requires some technical knowledge or a call to support to ensure everything is configured correctly. And your business still needs other services (time keeping, project management, internal knowledgebase, etc.) to fully manage it from top to bottom.

Solution

BPlaaS is an encompassing category, removing the complexities of choosing providers and configuring services and giving an entire suite of products to run a business from a single place, at a single price per service. BPlaaS bridges these previous gaps, allowing businesses to run this software without paying exorbitant subscription fees and keeping ownership of all the company’s data within. All the technical setup and security stuff is handled by us.

From sign up to set up in minutes. After purchasing a package, the domain you selected will be set up automatically. All software will be set up and configured securely with SSL for no extra costs.

Business emails wont end up in client’s spam folders and will come from a personalized email address with your businesses domain. You can have special addresses, like support@example.com that will go to your support employee’s email. Your employees can have single sign on and 2FA accounts that are managed by your. Maintain an internal knowledgebase so on-boarding new employees is a breeze. Show your potential and current clients and employees that you’re a professionally run business.

Conclusion

There is a definitive hole in the market for non-technical business founders to go from start to fully functioning business. The same holds true for one-personal operations expanding to multiple employees. Hiring an MSP or IT professional is expensive and might be more than what your business needs. BPlaaS seeks to give a solution to everything a newborn or small, growing business needs.