Dynadot

Discussion about startup web hosting business

Spaceship Spaceship
Watch
Impact
4
Many hosting providers starting their business from a simple, reseller account, as it gives a great management tool - WHM control panel, which is very useful to create separate cPanel accounts for your users or customers.
In most cases, while starting a reseller business with a good hosting provider, usually they take care about infrastructure - hardware & software maintenance, network uptime, backup solutions and so on, so resellers don't need to worry about those things and can be fully concentrated to their sales.
This is kind of great model for business startups in the hosting industry. However, when the business grows, you'd definitely think about expanding your environment, so it requires to move up to the next level - first of all upgrade your account to VPS or Dedicated server, I think VPS is most common and good solution for that, as you can get full server control, root access, etc. for much cheaper price then a dedicated one.

Running successful web hosting business directly depends on the quality traffic to your site, as well as on your hosting plans, offers, prices and professional customer support.

Anyone who's interested to start a web hosting business, who already runs one, or who's just curious about what is it a web hosting business :) please post your thoughts, questions, experiences and advises for novices here.

Thanks!
 
0
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Before start in hosting business it will be good if create a good business plan
its not easy to start hosting company most of the hosting company without knowing the work goes offline after one year and peoples who with them suffer
 
0
•••
That's why in many cases being business partner with reputable hosting company would help your startup to grow.
Good hosting company will help their resellers to manage technical aspects by taking care of the hardware as well as providing valuable steps in doing business correctly.
 
0
•••
Make sure you do your research and get involved in web hosting communities. A good site to look into besides NamePros for this is Web Hosting Talk. Lots of activity going on over there and is focused around hosting where as NamePros is focused around domains. I recommend visiting both frequently because domains & hosting go hand in hand!
 
0
•••
Web Hosting Talk is mainly focused on the US market. If you're in the UK, Web Host Chat might be a better place to start.
 
0
•••
Web Hosting is a dainty mistress! And as such, it needs constant love and attention :)

Starting up is never easy. Brand recognition is what you are aiming for and you have many tools to do so. Find a unique thing that you can embrace and associate with and advertize yourself with it. Make sure to put time and effort into SEO - build quality content, relevant backlinks, make sure to follow White Hat SEO methods or you risk your website penalized and reputation tarnished. Make use of hosting directories, but again with care - overusage can lead to negative effects.

Educate yourself every day and share your knowledge - participating in various blogs, articles, forums related to your service is a big plus - apart from the mentioned WebhostingTalk and NamePros, you can also try HostingDiscussion, some interesting topics there. As for article writing, guest blogging is becoming more and more popular so you might want to check it out. Build yourself a company blog and share your insights there too.

Use the social media channels as never before - Facebook, Twitter, Google+, some fresh newcomers like Pinterest. Make yourself seen as much as you can - if your service is good you can surely attract the customers and make them want to stay. :gl:
 
0
•••
Remember, good SEO is absolutely must for any hosting related website, as showing up on Google's 1-st page will significantly raise trust and generate more sales.
 
0
•••
The Hosting business can be tough especially at the start, but I would suggest that first of all you find a nice little niche that you can fill ( like say small business web hosting in your locality) then do your keyword research, add the necessary content to your pages and get all the anchor text links you can pointing at those pages.

Then go to your local business associations, and make sure you are listed in their directories (usually you can also place and ad for a small fee) make sure you are listing in Google maps and Google local search results.

When you start seeing results analyze what is working and what is not and what changes you need to make, and keep on going.
 
0
•••
Before start in hosting business it will be good if create a good business plan
its not easy to start hosting company most of the hosting company without knowing the work goes offline after one year and peoples who with them suffer

I am totally agree with you must have good business plan for start the business
 
0
•••
Referrals are very important as well for the success of your business , It can be used after your 1st month , just after you build up your content and offers.
 
0
•••
Innovative ideas with unique products/services included in the hosting offers might play important role to attract more customers.
This is because web is full of fake and real hosting providers offering almost the same services, making it difficult for the customer find a reliable one. Having something unique and valuable would also improve one's reputation.
 
0
•••
0
•••
0
•••
At the risk of stating the obvious, making money is an important part of any business. A hosting company needs to decide how it's going to make its money. Companies like GoDaddy host hundreds, even thousands of websites on a single server: this way, they can maximize their profits. Nevertheless, they cater to low-end customers. Their services are cheap, their infrastructure is cheap, and nobody hosting anything serious--who knows what they're doing--would even consider going with such a company. GoDaddy operates on sheer quantity, not quality.

If you're starting out, you may find that it's easier to make a few big customers than a lot of small customers, depending on how your approach things. In this case, a single server would be insufficient, especially if it's a dedicated server, since physical servers are less reliable/redundant than virtual servers. A reseller package with a shared hosting provider like GoDaddy would definitely be insufficient. However, you'd need the expertise and infrastructure to match your prices.

Another option is to team up with some web developers. I've seen a fair number of people have success with this: they offer both hosting and development, a sort of all-in-one solution. It works pretty well, and you can usually get away with things like cPanel, FTP, and shared hosting that might not work so well with customers who are looking for something big and fancy.
 
0
•••
I would add, that niche focused companies are much reliable then providers who offer everything and sharing their strategies between their products/services, so for instance, company who provides only one key-product or key-service accordingly cares about the quality.
 
0
•••
Another option is to team up with some web developers. I've seen a fair number of people have success with this: they offer both hosting and development, a sort of all-in-one solution. It works pretty well, and you can usually get away with things like cPanel, FTP, and shared hosting that might not work so well with customers who are looking for something big and fancy.

As good as that sounds, I've learned over the years that its best to keep hosting and development separate. A web developer is someone who can make or break things. And you certainly wouldn't want an angry developer in charge of your hosting too. There are countless cases when a pissed off website maker tries to gain control and destroy "his" work because you decided you no longer want to work with them. So in this case you are making it pretty easy for them :)

Another argument might be the diversification of services - someone providing a combination of services has got a harder case proving the quality of each service. Its all about what you're best at and lets face it - rarely in life we are best in 2 or more areas :)
 
0
•••
Back