Thanks for the feedback. I think I plan to cover all of the aspects you’ve mentioned, but let me go through each one and explain what I mean.

Plugin space. I plan to support a range of plugins. There are 60 plugins that show up in a search for flickr. Of that, we might support 3 or 4. So in effect we’d be recommending them. I think we could take that a little further though, and have a suite of recommended and supported plugins for various purposes, as you suggested.

Curious developer support. Part of my philosophy is to be, what I call, “grown up”. So if our customers like to tinker with their blog, and they break something, we’ll do our best to get things up and running. Part of that is the “one click backup”. So developers can easily create backup points before tinkering. I think we’ll be very tinker friendly.

Domain recommendation. Good point. I haven’t been able to find a great domain registrar out there. I’d welcome any suggestions if you have. I used DynDNS for my main domain, and GoDaddy for the alternate domains.

On your own server. Our pricing plans are split into two tiers, the first on your server, the second on “ours”. We won’t actually provide servers, we’ll resell VPSs (from SliceHost and Linode initially). So the idea is very much that our service is separate from the server, and can be provided on any box, so long as we have the required access (ssh, mysql binary logging, rsync, etc).

Thanks again for the feedback, much appreciated.

* consultancy on the available plugin space, e.g. what out of the box solutions exist for displaying my Flickr photos (or twitter or any random shareable service out there). Complete with installation and support for the chosen solution thereafter (technical, administrative, heads-up on new developments based on my formerly specified requirements)

* support for the “curious developer” – for tweak-happy bloggers would be nice to have someone more experienced (as you obviously are!) to make sure everything still works after playtime.

* domain name acquisition assistance / support (as in, probably not all domain resellers are equal? Heard some nasty stories around the interwebs of where NOT go…)

* Would there be possibility of getting similar kind of support for sites not hosted by your servers?

Real professionals at the end of an email or phone, to answer your questions. In today’s ever more outsourced, pre-packaged, system driven world, real human intelligent support is a rare thing. I think nowadays, that might actually make our business remarkable.

I know that when I signed up with rsync.net, it was because of the support. The idea that there was somebody at the other end, with more knowledge than me, who would help me solve problems. I felt reassured that there was an expert on hand if I had a problem.

I think that’s what we sell. I think that’s what will make us different.