Liz England’s business goals for her web and graphic design company are simple: to work with the people she wants to work with, to make enough money to live on and to support charities, and to do it all in an eco-friendly and transparent way.
Coming from a background in corporate marketing, Liz was frustrated by the high prices, limited service options, and lack of transparency she kept encountering from web development companies.
“I didn’t really know what went on behind the scenes. They would quite often quote me for different bits and I’d think, ‘that’s really expensive.’”
Liz also found the companies were overcharging for things like switching hosting or getting out of contracts.
“I thought, ‘this is not on.’”
Wanting to tackle those issues from a more educated standpoint, Liz started taking online web development courses (by Eco Web Hosting’s own founder, Rob Percival!) in the evenings.
“I did see that a lot of what I was being charged or what the company I had worked for had been being charged was actually really out of order.”
While doing her web development course, Liz found she actually really enjoyed it. She started building websites for friends, and built up a part-time development business.
When she was made redundant sometime later, she took it as an opportunity to focus on her business, now called Rutland Online, full-time.
“My ethos is very much client control. So they have ownership of all their assets.”
“That’s the idea–a very much fully transparent web service. So they know what they’re getting and have control over their own accounts.”
Focusing on the environment
Being kind to the environment drives Liz in all aspects of her life, not just her business.
“For me, if we don’t save the planet first… all the other charities for everything else… there’s not really much point.”
Liz drives an electric car, tries to buy second hand as much as possible, and uses a 100% renewable energy company, for a start. She and her husband have also been doing work on a field they own to turn it into a conservation site.
They’ve planted trees (including about 270 with us!), dug two ponds, planted reeds, added a wildflower meadow, and just “let the area go to nature,” bringing with it lots of birds and other wildlife.
“We’ve made our own little natural conservation heaven there, in two acres.”
Joining forces with Eco Web Hosting
Rutland Online originally hosted with another company, but their service, which had started off great, began to decline.
In her research, Liz found Eco Web Hosting, and, excited by the prospect of working with a more local, eco-friendly company, decided to partner with us.
Only then did she discover that Rob was our founder.
“I’ve come full circle!”
Liz said our superior hosting and customer service are what make her stick around.
“The fact that Eco Web Hosting put the eco slant on it with the tree planting and everything… you’re the people I want to go with.”
“The WordPress hosting is what I use most of the time, because I build in WordPress, and it’s superb. Excellent. I can’t really fault it. The service is really good as well. You’ve got the online chat, which is great, and your service system’s really good. I don’t really have anything to fault.”
To read more about our experience planting trees with Liz, see our blog post from that day!
(Featured image by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash.)
