Now the dial has turned full circle, and a procession of high-profile, big-name, free-service providers have thrown in the towel on the ad-funded model, including: BigStep.com, Driveway, iDrive, MyComputer.com, NetZero, and of course, Intranets.com.

Next Generation Arrives
One company that never did accept the mantra of free-of-charge services was NetObjects. "It works for content, but with services there are too many costs," CEO Samir Arora told ASPnews last week. The former IBM subsidiary is coming to market with immaculate timing, unveiling a platform service that enables ISPs and hosting providers to generate revenues from their small business customer base.

NetObjects is best known as the maker of Fusion, the first graphical Web site page designer aimed at businesses. But over the past three years it has been developing an ASP strategy that has now come to fruition with the production launch of the NetObjects Matrix platform.

Matrix is a hosted offering for ISPs serving the small business market that enables them to offer online sitebuilding as a complementary service to their existing offerings of email accounts, domain registration and site hosting. But this is no ordinary online sitebuilder. This one blows away anything else in the market.

Most online sitebuilders give small business site owners the benefit of cheap, fast and easy-to-use sitebuilding. In that respect, Matrix is no different, providing templates and wizards that enable a nontechnical user to set up a professional-looking, functional site in as little as 10 minutes.

Where Matrix starts to break from the rest of the field is that it adds flexibility. Once the site has been set up, the user can edit the design using a graphical, WYSIWYG editor that is delivered to the browser with no need to download any extra software. This really is a state-of-the-art online application; except that it doesn't even rest on its laurels there.

Where Matrix really pulls away from the pack is that it allows users to add functionality delivered from other online providers within the same design screen. An ingenious application programming interface (API) means that services such as a visitor counter from MyComputer.com or an ecommerce shopping basket from Miva can be set up using a custom wizard, automatically inheriting the look and feel of the existing Web site design. The embedding of online Web services in Matrix is one of the most advanced implementations of online services that I have ever seen and incidentally makes a great illustration of the concept of the master ASP that I outlined in a recent ASPnews column.

A year ago, some dot-com numbskull, grossly overfunded with easy VC cash, would probably have taken the NetObjects service and attempted to offer it for free. Fortunately in today's saner business climate, services that offer real quality are allowed to charge a fee that reflects the value of what they provide. Businesses respect that. They know that, at the end of the day, you get what you pay for.