Because there are only five of us and we've spent a lot of blood, sweat and tears getting the company to where it is, we really didn't want to give away part of our company.

Back in '99 that was unheard of. Your system administrators were the ones who did that kind of thing for the customer. You didn't allow your customers to create their own email box or their own FTP user because it was something that was done by the geeks in the big dark room out the back.