"Web site templates have become a mini-category in their own right," says Franc Nemanic, Hostopia's president. "The problem is that high-quality templates come with significant cost, particularly for site designers who have to acquire dozens if not hundreds of them. Hostopia has bundled its templates into its managed hosting making these tools affordably accessible to any business or site designer."

Hostopia's templates were commissioned to a global network of reputable advertising agencies, creative houses and designers. Thousands of draft designs were eliminated to produce the highest quality finalists. Template sites were further coded to exacting standards, says the company, so any designer can use them as is or edit them as required.

Each template can be downloaded into any HTML-based editor and is compatible with technologies like as Macromedia's Flash and Dreamweaver products. The templates will be available to all hosting service providers among Hostopia's network of over 270 partners.