Two college friends. Two open-box computers. More than 25 years of keeping businesses online.
Enterhost is a Fort Worth website and hosting company founded by two longtime friends, Ben and Kevin. Since 2000, we’ve built, hosted, protected, and supported business websites while staying true to the customer-service idea that started the company.
The story starts before the servers.
Before there was a data center — or even a company — there were two friends with a slightly nerdy habit of asking how things could work better.
A nerdy shared interest
Ben and Kevin met while attending college in West Texas. Both studied International Business, and both became Customer Service Managers at Hastings Books, Music & Video. They bonded over a slightly nerdy shared interest: talking about new business ideas and imagining how a company — or an entire industry — could work better.
What if a hosting company cared as much about service as technology?
While Ben was working for a fast-growing hosting company, a troubled server migration disrupted thousands of customer websites. He heard from business owners who were desperate for answers and unable to get meaningful help. The experience gave Ben and Kevin a clear idea of the company they wanted to build: one that treated dependable service and customer support as seriously as the technology itself.
Two open-box computers and one decisive thunderstorm.
The company grew one practical step at a time.
Everything themselves — including secondary DNS from San Antonio.
Ben and Kevin launched Enterhost and did everything themselves: designing websites, building networks, configuring servers, supporting customers, and handling every other part of the young company.
The first hosting setup used two computers from Best Buy’s open-box shelf. Customer websites ran from the Fort Worth office, while a server in San Antonio provided secondary DNS.
That arrangement ended during a customer website preview in San Antonio. The site would not load, a storm had knocked out power in Fort Worth, and the available “remote hands” were Ben’s girlfriend—now his wife. The lesson was clear: it was time for real servers in a real data center.
Real servers, in a real data center.
Enterhost purchased three purpose-built servers and moved them into colocation space at the Infomart in Dallas. The facility’s 45 Mbps DS3 connection felt enormous at the time—and marked a substantial step beyond hosting customer websites from an office connection.
Hosting built around how developers actually worked.
Instead of offering a confusing list of generic packages, Enterhost created distinct Dreamweaver, ASP, and ColdFusion hosting plans. Developers could quickly identify the environment their websites needed, and the plans made Enterhost visibly different from competitors selling largely interchangeable hosting.
Hosting organized around the tools developers were using.
Things got considerably bigger.
After outgrowing several colocation spaces, Enterhost took over a vacant 20,000-square-foot data center in Burnett Plaza in downtown Fort Worth. Originally built as part of a national data-center network, the purpose-built facility had sat unused for several years but remained remarkably well preserved.
The move gave Enterhost room to grow and control over the entire hosting environment. We operated the facility, managed our own network and internet connections, and could deploy new servers the same day. For a company that had started with two open-box computers, it was a defining step.
We had come a long way from calling home during a thunderstorm.
The Burnett Plaza facility around move-in — and after Enterhost’s server operation expanded.
The work kept widening — well beyond a single data center.
Experience expands beyond the data center
The team behind Enterhost launched a full-service IT company serving organizations across Texas. That work broadened the team’s experience beyond the data center into business networks, devices, security, support, and the day-to-day technology customers rely on.
Deeper expertise, broader capabilities
Enterhost maintained Microsoft Gold competencies and worked with Microsoft and Dell to build a virtualized hosting platform. During this period, the company expanded beyond traditional hosting into cloud services, disaster recovery, business communications, managed security, Office 365, and other business technology.
A cleaner network and a new data-center home
Enterhost moved its servers into a Fort Worth colocation facility operated by Cogent. Rather than simply recreating the old environment, the team rearchitected the network, installed new firewalls and switches, and built a cleaner platform that is easier to operate and maintain.
The work has grown. The principle hasn’t changed.
Ben and Kevin still lead Enterhost, working alongside an experienced team.
Today, Enterhost brings together modern website design, managed Windows hosting, infrastructure, security, and ongoing support. Ben and Kevin continue to lead the company, backed by an active team covering sales, marketing, billing, senior systems administration, day-to-day server administration, helpdesk management, and frontline technical support.
The team includes people who have worked with Enterhost customers for 10, 15, and even 20 years. Some customers have trusted Enterhost with their hosting and technology for more than 20 years.
From the beginning, Enterhost took ownership of customer problems—even when the immediate cause, such as faulty website code, did not begin with the hosting. The goal was to provide knowledgeable help, clear answers, and every reason for customers to feel they were in the right place. That same sense of responsibility now extends from the redesigned website to the servers and network behind it.
Your website’s next chapter can start here.
See what Enterhost could do with your current website before deciding whether to move forward.