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Easy Internet Services
Mark Esho’s track record of success speaks for itself, but his achievements are all the more impressive given the challenges he has faced along the way. Here, Mark talks about his career and work to inspire others.
Read time: 4 mins Added: 20/11/25
Overcoming adversity
As a self-taught internet innovator, serial entrepreneur, best-selling author, disability advocate and an MBE recipient for services to business, Mark Esho can look back on a career of amazing achievements. That he accomplished all this as a member of the disabled community is testament to his talent, strength of character and determination to succeed against the odds. Mark contracted polio at the age of five, which left him paralysed from the neck down, and though he subsequently made a partial recovery, he has been a part-time wheelchair user ever since.
Despite this, Mark earned an MBA in finance and was appointed Finance Manager for a charity, until enduring health issues linked to polio forced him to resign his role. But Mark’s ambition and entrepreneurial spirit endured and, after teaching himself web design, he invested all his savings to start his first business in 2000; an online estate agency called Houses-Online.com.
“I was looking for ways to promote the website, so I taught myself Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and I managed to get the site to the top of all the search engines, but Houses-Online.com ultimately proved to be ahead of its time and I didn’t have the resources to make it the success it could have been.”
So, Mark decided to commercialise his new-found SEO skills, founding Easy Internet Services, which worked on a ‘no results, no fee’ basis. Within a year, the business was already generating healthy revenues and within 18 months, Mark was taking on his first employees.
Pushing the limits
“It was a phenomenal success, but there were limits on how far I could take it because I was restricted by my disability. Then in 2004 I struck on the idea of offering free web hosting and I launched Easy Internet Solutions; the first company in the UK to offer completely free hosting. The deal was that we would host your website at no cost until it exceeded a particular number of visitors, at which point you had to upgrade to a paid service.”
Mark Esho Founder, Easy Internet ServicesEveryone said I was mad, and I was going to lose lots of money, but it worked brilliantly and scaled up very, very quickly indeed.
At its peak, the business hosted more than 100,000 websites, predominantly for SMEs and sole traders, and it still exists today, trading under the name NetNerds.com, though Mark largely exited the business in 2021, retaining a minority stake.
Access to finance
Mark credits Lloyds with backing his business ambitions, including providing credit for cash flow and support buying his first premises.
Mark Esho Founder, Easy Internet ServicesWhat Lloyds is doing right now is phenomenal, but traditionally there has been a lot of hurdles for disabled people like myself to access finance from high street banks. When I started out, I didn’t have any money, so I really had to think outside the box to launch a company. I faced many barriers, both financial and societal, so I fully understand the obstacles a lot of disabled people still encounter. That’s why I’ve worked to help more disabled people succeed in business.
While Mark continued to start businesses, largely in the tech and real estate sectors, he found he was increasingly motivated to advocate for the disabled community. He became involved in the Disability Confidence Campaign, the government initiative designed to support employers in recruiting disabled people, which led him to meet Prime Minister David Cameron. He wrote a best-selling book I Can, I Will, and in 2022 he received an MBE from Queen Elizabeth II for services to business, which Mark says remains his proudest moment.
Supporting others' success
Mark then devoted himself to founding a number of social enterprises designed to support the disabled community, including Access Rating - an app which allowed disabled people to submit accessibility reviews for public venues and provided disabled access audits for businesses, with all profits used to provide work experience placements for students in SEN schools. Another social enterprise, Ability Connect, delivered remote learning courses designed to give disabled people the core competencies they need to be successful in business.
Today, Mark is enjoying his well-deserved retirement, but he still hopes his story can inspire young people who have ambitions to follow in his footsteps. Mark said “When times look bleak, there's always a silver lining somewhere if you persevere, so never give up. You've got to really dig deep, work hard and you can achieve that dream.”