Why iBegin?
Our Data isn't Hidden
You can view all of our data online, right now! Browse our complete USA directory or our Canada directory. What you see is exactly what you get - no surprises. You can also read about how we get our data.
Flat fee Pricing
iBegin Source is the only company with a flat-fee model. You don't need to call a sales person. You don't need to divulge private details about your company. You don't have to pay us extra depending on how big you are. You don't have to pay extra because your website is getting more popular.
Our competitors require you to call them (if you do want to talk, just contact us). They require you tell them all about your company, including revenue and employees. Most of them even make you pay extra depending on how popular your site is.
We know that none of that is our business. So we have a pricing model that is simple and easy.
Efficiency and Efficacy
Once you order data from us, you can get updates whenever you want. Other companies charge you extra for monthly or even quarterly updates. This makes zero sense to us. So you get daily updates. And if that is too often for you - we also have weekly and monthly updates. Download the data whenever you want, not when the data company decides.
You also don't need to worry about making sure the data is ready. Our automated system automatically builds and creates the data-updates for you. No need for FTP - you can download directly from our servers. We make the process as easy as possible.
User Power
Nobody knows about new and dead businesses before the local community. So we allow our users to submit, update, and delete businesses. We manually verify them all, but by empowering our users, we get fresh data before anyone else.
Two way Communication
iBegin Source is the only data provider that lets our customers feed us updates directly. With the other data providers - you have to balance their data with corrections and updates you've made. With us - no need. We allow you to submit updates directly to us - no manual work involved. We verify all submissions/updates/deletions, and they get reflected in your data. You don't need to worry about balancing conflicting data - we make it all easy. Our trackback system takes care of it for you.
The iBegin Story
iBegin has an interesting history that underlines why we are the right company to work with.
iBegin's parent company is Enthropia Inc, a technology-focused corporation created in early 2003.
In early 2005 Enthropia Inc created its first purely-local website. A hyperlocal experiment in Yorkville (Toronto's upscale neighborhood), the results were very eye-opening. Even just covering two blocks, the site had considerable traffic. Furthermore, business owners and locals were emailing us with the littlest inaccuracies in our data. With this early success, we created the iBegin brand.
The initial launch was in Toronto. We incorporated tags, pictures, reviews, and favorites while building a sense of community. We learned a lot from this - with some major takeaways:
- People like to contribute in their local community.
- Pictures, reviews, and tags add relevancy to the core business data. This relevancy can be driven by users.
- Data companies expect you to pay more as your site gets more popular. They expect 'their cut.'
As we looked into expanding into other cities, the prices that data companies (due to our success in Toronto) were exorbitant. Those high prices also provided us with our moment of clarity.
Due to our work with database companies, and the user submissions we had received for Toronto (over 40,000 - with < 0.1% incorrect) we decided to investigate building our own business data source.
Having worked in many local-oriented situations with a variety of businesses, we were quickly able to put together a strong list of sources that allowed us to create iBegin Source.
Along the way, we ran into another issue - geocoding. Going through other companies was not an economical idea - they wanted too much for how little we got. Being a technology company, we did what we needed to do - we built our own geocoding system (something no other data company can claim). Not only did we build our own, but we extended its applications. Our geocoder is the only commercial geocoder that (when given a set of GPS coordinates) can also tell you the closest major street intersection. While seemingly a small feature, it provides great context to local users.
And so it all came together. Data sources. Geocoding. An open system that allowed users to be part of the solution. Simplified sales process. Easy downloading. All in one cohesive package.
iBegin Source is the simple & easy solution to business data.
Ready to order? Head on over to our purchase page.
Want to learn more about iBegin? Find out about our data collection.
