Meeting Requirement
1. Already have a website
- It not compulsory that you host your website with us to qualify for a startup loan or equity investments from us. If you are hosting your website with another web hosting provider then you are required to signup for a paid membership to this platform and verify your website before you can apply from the client area.
- If you already have a website, and you want to buy hosting with us and move your hosting files to our servers to enable you qualify for free membership to this platform see here. Kindly note that, you may only be needed to point the nameservers of your domain name to that of ours ( details below ) for your membership login details to be activated, before you can even start any loan application process. We offer free migration services if you need help.
Approved nameservers:
You can only point your nameservers to any of the following (in order to be automatically added to our database to enable you proceed with your loan application) -
1. ns1.ghanastartups.org
2. ns2.ghanastartups.org
Customised/Private nameservers in your domain name or any format can still be setup for you free-of-charge, after the initial setup on our default nameservers.
2. Don't have a website
If you do not already have a website kindly setup one here.
Transferring Your Domain Name(s)
Since all business websites, act as part of security of the borrowing business against which all loans are secured, you are required to transfer all domain names to our custody within 24 hrs of receiving our first tranche of loan disbursement.
Why use our our servers
1. Earlier implementation of this requirement, which initially did not restrict use of our partners only, saw fraudsters, setup webhosting accounts with other hosting providers, with stolen debit/credit cards to satisfy our requirement, only for their websites to be suspended for chargbacks on those stolen cards they used --- hence a restriction on using only our hosting servers.
2. All prospective business borrowers who have gotten loans from us are expected to maintain an active website for their businesses at all times for the entire duration of the loan repayment period.
3. It makes it easy for us to confiscate your assets (including both your website and any physical collateral any loan was secured against), if your default on your loan repayment (post- repayment-assistance)
4. It makes it feasible and workable to monitor web analytics of business borrowers.
5. It makes business sense to keep your webhosting business with us, if we are going to part with resources to do due diligence on your application, as well as processing and subsequent funding.
Note:
- Our choice of a webhosting account is an admission of the difficulties new or startup businesses have in accessing capital. Owning a website is far cheaper than having to build long periods of deposit/transaction history with a traditional bank in the hope of securing a small business loan, if you get lucky.
- We make it mandatory for startup businesses looking to borrow from us, to have a website hosted with us. Proverbially, using 'one stone to kill so many birds'.
- There are no upfront loan application fees when borrowing from GHStartups, but there are webhosting account setup fees to cover server space costs that we charge before setting up your webhosting account, just like what any webhosting company like Hosting24 or Hostgator will charge you for hosting account setup.
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