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Hosting Your Small Biz Home

While magician David Neubauer strolls through the cars of Amtrak's Coast Starlight train entertaining passengers with card tricks, his Web site back home pulls in new clients. "When I steer people toward it," Neubauer says, "my Web site helps make the sale."

Neubauer hosts his site on EarthLink for the magical sum of $20 a month. And he loves his provider. "I don't plan on leaving EarthLink," he says. "I've had some problems, but they've been able to solve everything."

Most small-business people we polled express much the same affection for their ISP. Among our respondents who have their business on the Net, 40 percent rely on their ISP's Web hosting package. And three out of four businesses are satisfied with the hosting service their ISP offers.

Which ISP wins the hosting laurels? According to our survey, UUNet, Concentric, and MindSpring do best, with satisfaction rates of 95, 86, and 81 percent, respectively. "I've recommended MindSpring to everyone I know," says photographer Rick Heflin. "It's just painless. I travel a lot in my work, and I can access MindSpring from nearly everywhere."

For most small businesses, hosting makes all the sense in the world. Paying a service to host your Internet presence on its servers, maintained by its staff and connected to the Internet via its lines, means you spread out the hardware costs and avoid the need to hire tech help.