Best Way to Start a Website Hosting Service? 164
Kwirl writes "Lets say that I wanted to start a small business endeavor, namely reselling my server space and offering pre-built websites. What resources would I need to start something like this on my own? What hosting service would best suit those needs? What would be the best way to manage a subdomain-level service that provided a basic forum, registration, a web site and some controlled administrative access for my friends so they couldn't easily terrorize each other? I'm curious to know if I could start something like this on my own, and without much more than just my own server space, time, and creativity. I'm not looking to make a living out of this, its mostly just a way for me to more efficiently manage having several friends each wanting me to built or run a web site for them, and perhaps make some small residual income if a market exists. The Slashdot community represents such a broad swath of experience and expertise that I'd like to know how you would approach a project of this nature."
Plesk (Score:5, Informative)
But, if you insist..
Set up a simple box running Plesk. It automates most of the tasks of handling users, billing and maintenance. It also allows them to mange their own accounts.
Quick, simple
Re:Plesk (Score:5, Interesting)
It might simplify SOME things, but it sure as hell makes other things more difficult.
Re:Plesk (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the original comment of "dont", as far as setting up your own server at least.
Don't, because the market is full of bedroom hosts who don't know what they're doing.
Don't, because unless you're going into it seriously (and by that I mean investing time and money heavily, hiring enough staff to provide 24/7 support and decent SLAs, and charging appropriately serious money), the margins have to be so low to be competitive that you're losing money when the customer submits more than one ticket a year. Which they will do, because they've come to you, which means they don't know what they're doing.
But most of all, don't, because if you have to ask how to do it, you shouldn't be doing it. You really can't be going into this if you have so little understanding of the issues involved in running a server and the associated services that you need to ask. It's not fair on your paying customers, because when they have a problem, you won't be able to help.
If you want to resell space, do just that - go find a company dedicated to selling reseller accounts. They will give you a whitelabel reseller account and look after all the server issues themselves, leaving you free to pimp out the space.
If you do, just make sure you have an exit strategy, tied to some kind of dead mans switch (even if it's just leaving details with a friend) - I've heard of far too many resellers disappearing, leaving the customers unable to get access to their sites, and the resellers in a difficult position as they should have no direct contact with the end customers.
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Excellent point.
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Don't, because the market is full of bedroom hosts who don't know what they're doing.
Don't, because unless you're going into it seriously (and by that I mean investing time and money heavily, hiring enough staff to provide 24/7 support and decent SLAs, and charging appropriately serious money), the margins have to be so low to be competitive that you're losing money when the customer submits more than one ticket a year. Which they will do, because they've come to you, which means they don't know what they're doing.
Hosting is, in some ways (as you aptly describe), a "market for lemons":
http://www.welton.it/articles/webhosting_market_lemons.html [welton.it]
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1. Don't
I also clicked here just to say don't. Not unless you have: 1) Lots of experience administrating webservers. 2) A big fat pipe to the 'net. Both ways, not simply ADSL 3) Lots of hair on your head. Or none. Lots of hair will give you something to pull on. If you have none, then you won't loose anymore anyway. 4) Time and patience. Your users _will_ try to terrorize each other. And they will be attacked from outside. And their accounts _will_ be compromised. You will be to blame. Your best bet is to resell
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Transliterator 0.97:
[ START ]
"Lets say that I am too lazy to do any research, or figure out on my own what people want, but I want to start a small business endeavor, namely reselling my server space and offering pre-built websites, because I'm so into the '90s business model.
What resources would I need to start something like this on my own, and please remember, I don't know who my customers are going to be, or why they should deal with me. What hosting service would best suit those ill-defined nee
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Low-expectation motherfuckers and slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
A lot of these "Ask Slashdot" questions are from people who would be better off being told to just fucking google it [justfuckinggoogleit.com].
It's not "elitist" to say that they should do bit of basic research first; or are slashdot users mostly such low-expectation under-achieving slobs who crave any sort of interaction, even from someone who doesn't care enough about what they want to do to take the time to actually *learn* enough to ask smart questions? If they don't give enough of a shit to do some research first, I don't se
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Don't run a host yourself. Sign up for a referral program.
You can make well over $50 a signup if you shop around. That's a significant part of a year's hosting fees, and you don't have to do a thing other than get people to click on a link and sign up.
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My $0.02.
Re:Plesk (Score:4, Insightful)
You simply aren't going to be able to compete with a $4.00/month multi-gigabyte hosting plan of which there are several. So don't try. Might as well try to open an independant drug store next to walmart.
Go the other way, find a niche that's NOT served by those guys and go for that.
Go after the people who need something unique and specialize in it.
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You simply aren't going to be able to compete with a $4.00/month multi-gigabyte hosting plan of which there are several. So don't try. Might as well try to open an independant drug store next to walmart. Go the other way, find a niche that's NOT served by those guys and go for that. Go after the people who need something unique and specialize in it.
So true
Being a web developer, I pay more just to have the privilege to get a phone number.Most of these big hosting companies provide very poor technical support. If you label yourself as a hosting company, with personalized contact (name, phone number, email address, etc.) I'm your client.
Something else:
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Re:Plesk (Score:5, Funny)
Not so hard, ADSL + NAT(on router) + Linux + Apache + mod-security + static content
Now, managing users... that's hard!
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How many security holes do you think that black box firmware is going to have? (I'm assuming you're talking little home routers, given the ADSL thing...)
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I think you missed the point. That's a home based setup, it's not a web server farm. The point is KISS and you can be reasonably safe (the original comment). Minimize the surface attack (leave open only needed ports (ej. http & smnt), and do the router management only from the inner side of the router).
About holes in firmware, that's exactly my opinion when I hear colleagues talk a bout expensive firewalls routinelly being replaced. Holes in firmware are identical to hole in software, just keep thing
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My website is hosted in exactly that configuration, so I can't really talk, but then it's only public insofar as you don't get 403s on most of it - I run soley for my own benefit. But I still don't like being behind that unknown Netgear firmware - I'm replacing my router with a Soekris [soekris.com] running Debian as soon as I have enough spare cash to buy one.
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No, no. It was just an answer to the assertion that to have a web server on wild bad internet was something difficult. If you stay at the private-modest level is not that hard.
My solution to the router 'problem' is to have two. Different brands/hardware, but the fact is that I only needed once in more than five years online 24/7 ( well 23.9/7 thanks to the ADSL thing.. :) ).
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Come on, the guys' got to "pay his dues" - better he gives up in frustration than that we have YAFMSMREPD (Yet Another Failed Make Some Money Really Easily Pipe Dream).
CPanel (Score:1)
Re:CPanel (Score:5, Informative)
I work at a web hosting company and I find InterWorx to be the best at doing a little automation without making a mess of everything.
That said, if you know how to use Linux, don't use a control panel. You'll find it easier to manage things yourself. Short of the MTA, these things are really rather easy to configure.
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I've never seen a wep application with such a horribly contorted, uncomfortable, unwieldy and annoying interface. It's an abomination thrown in the face of UI and usability desingers and knowledgeable admins forced to use it to manage shared hosting accounts under their administration. It lacks any kind of consistency and logic and even encourages making the things worse by not enfocing any of those on the plugins written by the companies that use this bastard child of
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Not perfect, but a lot better than 10 was.
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How to succeed in 10 easy steps (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Get some matches/lighter/firestarters
3) Burn down all competing datacentres in your city
4) Set up a webserver company
Seriously though, it's an incredibly overcrowded market - if you have an idea on something new or innovative to offer, then by all means go for it. But as they say, there's nothing new under the sun, and you'd have much better luck trying to compete within a market that isn't so overcrowded. Professional encryption/sensitive data management perhaps?
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1) Line up a patsy
2) Get some matches/lighter/firestarters
3) Burn down all competing datacentres in your city
4) Set up a webserver company
Seriously though, it's an incredibly overcrowded market - if you have an idea on something new or innovative to offer, then by all means go for it. But as they say, there's nothing new under the sun, and you'd have much better luck trying to compete within a market that isn't so overcrowded. Professional encryption/sensitive data management perhaps?
Professional encryption/sensitive data management perhaps?
Yeah, because that's a great field if you don't know what you're doing.
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Seriously though, it's an incredibly overcrowded market - if you have an idea on something new or innovative to offer, then by all means go for it. But as they say, there's nothing new under the sun, and you'd have much better luck trying to compete within a market that isn't so overcrowded.
Very true. There exists about a gazillion different website hosting services, some even offer to do it for free if the site is static. I've seen some offer like 15e per year with full SSH access, PHP and such. So I just wonder what does the OP think he can offer that someone else doesn't already, and for a cheaper price?
Re:How to succeed in 10 easy steps (Score:4, Insightful)
I would recommend that this guy volunteer or intern with a hosting company to see what it's like and what the real challenges wind up being.
What I would be inclined to do is something a little different. I would set about getting people to buy their own gear and help them set it up at their own location. Perhaps it's ultimately as unworkable as building your own hosting facility, but at least in this case, the risk is distributed among the subscribers and since they would actually own and control their own boxes, they would feel less risk for themselves as well.
So what you end up with is they buy their own server hardware, power management and internet connection, you set up the software and remote access and management stuff, collect fees for getting it set up and arrange for maintenance fees monthly. The risk is all on the client, then, but as long as you are very open with them, you will retain them with a comfortable trust relationship because they know if they think they are getting screwed, they can get someone else to take over... and when they realize they weren't, they can come back to you at will. Meanwhile, your overhead is VERY very low, and when things go wrong at THEIR site (you know, like power or internet link), you aren't quite at responsible.
For small operations, business class broadband makes this a very workable possibility. Further, if an operation feels like they need a little more, then arrange to set up some hosts that, once again the client pays for, at a co-location facility. You take the lead as the technical contact, but the owner is the owner taking all of the risk and responsibility.
The one thing an operator like this can offer that the big, market-saturating hosting companies can't is a personal trust relationship allowing the client to be in as much control as they feel comfortable accepting. And if they won't accept enough control, you probably don't want them as a client anyway since they are probably looking to abuse you and point fingers at you when things go wrong.
Re:How to succeed in 10 easy steps (Score:4, Informative)
That's a great idea.
I originally setup xen-hosting [xen-hosting.org] selfishly because I wanted a decent root access level of hosting for myself, but didn't want to pay for a big machine.
Within a week I'd found enough users to bring the cost down to an acceptable level, primarily because a few people know me and trust me, but the intention was always there to document it fully and have people setting up similar things.
Two years on I'm not aware of anybody who's replicated the setup which is a real shame, I think there's a lot of space for a kind of "cooperative" hosting setup, each one with maybe 10 users.
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5) ????
6) Profit
Someone was bound to do it, figured I'd just get it out of the way...
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3) Burn down all competing datacentres in your city
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So, you'll need an accomplice to make the best of it.
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1. Set up Windows 2000 Server with no service pack.
2. Ensure IIS is installed and running.
3. Turn off all automatic updating.
4. Before you know it, you'll be hosting "chEEp 50ftw@rez!!"
5. ???????
6. Profit!!!
Why? (Score:1)
A small player is going to have a hard time competing in the hosting market unless you already have a customer base you can turn to.
The average person can get hosting space very cheap, and even professionals can find decently priced plans that will cover sites with higher traffic levels. Remember, even Google is offering hosting these days!
Do you really have anything to offer customers that the others don't? If not, wait until you find a
just don't (Score:4, Insightful)
Think *very* hard before you do this (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds easy at first. How hard is it to just whack up a couple of simple web pages for a couple of buddies? Lots of us have one of our own and it takes almost no maintenance.
But what happens when your buddy starts to attract some undesirable attention? For example, maybe you buddy has a car dealership and just wants a quick and dirty website. But he pisses a script kiddie who then spends the next year trying to pull down your server.
Or what happens if the site goes down at 3 am and your buddy just *has* to have it up and running?
Or what happens if your buddy decides he just *has* to send emails from his website when someone clicks on something, and you discover that the package you are using has about a million vulnerabilities and you are now the biggest spam king in the US?
Honestly, it just sucks. Buddies who can't set up their own website are almost always unreasonable. And they will expect "professional service" even if you don't charge them. And they will bug you continuously for completely boneheaded things having to do with their site.
Unless you really don't like sleeping, I recommend backing away from this idea.
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Every friend who has ever asked me for help setting up a website has been even more of a pain in the arse than friends who want their warezed windows machines sorting out. At least you can tell the broken PC people to go to fucking PC World and give them 20 quid to fix it. Once you build a small site for someone, you're stuck with a constant stream of improvements and problems, and there aren't many good ways of getting them to go somewhere else without damaging your relationship with them. Even
Re:Think *very* hard before you do this (Score:4, Insightful)
Their pages don't generate much traffic, so I said I'll host it for them and never discussed ongoing maintenance and changes. It's really been terrible. I get emailed (even phoned) all the time (esp. the guy that paid $70). Every week he'll wants something changed, or something modified.
I ended up drawing the line when he decided he wanted fancy roll-over menus instead of the current very functional one. I gave him a (large) quote just cause I was sick of it. We never spoke much after that.
With another, the business (who the site was for) was sold - so when I got in contact with the new owners. I told them, I'd continue to host it and charge a straight amount if he contacted me about the site and plus an hourly rate.
He thought it was very reasonable (after all, isn't it?) and actually has never bugged me once about anything.
The lesson is if you're going to setup a website, make sure you arrange the terms of ongoing maintenance. There's going to be a lot of it (esp. if you're doing it for free).
The other lesson would be don't do deals with friends. You'll both have completely different expectations of each other - and very well might ruin your friendship over it (unless you're a better person than me, and enjoy helping more than I do).
These days, if people want me to do any work - I tell them I don't know how. It really isn't worth it.
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However, not all people are like that. I suggest writing a good disclaimer/ToS and choosing the people who you're going to allow to use the service carefully.
Here's what I do (Score:4, Interesting)
If I make one webpage for a few hundred dollars, it pays my hosting for the year. Until I use 1/2 my resources, I have no need to upgrade so far.
Here's a tip... (Score:2, Insightful)
get management software & people (Score:2)
Control panels + advice (Score:5, Informative)
It's more annoying than you might think. I've done it, all my friends have done it, my cousin's done it and our dog will be doing it soon.
Don't don't don't. It's a VASTLY under subscribed and overly competitive market. Once you think you're the best, and you're successful, you become too reliant on a core group of customers who won't last for ever.
There are reseller accounts available with lots of ISPs, but few are on a commission basis (ie: you're the one who has to cover your client's costs and invoice them). Flat fees are usually available to dedicated servers licensors @ £50/m+ - but the market is changing and I'm not at all surprised if they're cheaper.
Plesk [plesk.com] - possibly the worst thing I've ever used. Convoluted backend I couldn't hack on to extend pop-before-smtp the way I wanted.
CPanel [cpanel.com] - the original but very costly 6 years ago when I last used it. Has some impressive addons
Ensim [ensim.com]DirectAdmin - Not one I've used personally, but I hear its ok.
VHCS [vhcs.net] - Freeware. Never used it personally. But there are many OS projects and forks [isp-control.net] out there if you look [freshmeat.net] hard [sourceforge.net] enough [digg.com] ]
Cubepanel and BlueQuartz worth a mention.
Most of these project offer "lite" versions which are free for restricted personal use. The only major difference between the free and paid versions is that the latter has multi-user and reseller capabilities.
I'd recommending taking up a decent Linux or BSD distro with a proven track record of security fixes. "apt-get update" is sufficient for the home user, but realistically, you want to track purely security updates. Consider an enterprise OS (CentOS?!)
Matt
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Re:Control panels + advice (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.webmin.com/virtualmin.html [webmin.com] (free/gpl)
and its commercial 'pro' version..
http://www.virtualmin.com/ [virtualmin.com]
Here you go (Score:5, Funny)
If it were me (Score:2)
Step one is write up a business plan and price out your hosting costs and try and pay yourself something even if it is a hobby.
Amazon instances have no SLA, so your backup will have to be rock solid (it was going to be anyways, right? so that's not an issue
The advantage of using Amazon is no unused inventory; scale up as you need; and about a seventy dollar a month minimum.
If Google looks like they
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Like everybody else says (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to play with a server environment, get a mainstream linux distro and install it with all the web capabilities from the beginning. Then learn how to administrate it, install and modify php, learn apache control mechanisms, learn about chroot jails, even consider virtual servers (as in VMWare type of virtual).
Then if you're still up for it, rent a virtual solution from somebody else, and play with it a bit more. The costs to entry are very low, but there is almost no return.
Build your friends website by all means, but you're better off hosting it on a third parties hardware, and let them take the strain of running the hosting business. You still get admin access, but all the tools will already be in place.
I've been doing this for years (8+) and I get more hassle from the users than from the sites. You need a call centre just to explain to people that there is nothing wrong with the site, maybe their net connection is down. Or they're not getting their email, because their isp is blocking it, or the page doesn't look right because their browser is still caching it from last month etc etc etc.
I have someone who questioned why their site costs money each month to run. "To pay for the server" I replied. "Oh, I thought that once you had uploaded it, it was out there, on the internet" he replied. *Smacks hand to forehead*
Oh, and if they want to offer downloads, then make it clear that they will be charged for bandwidth, over and above any monthly fee. Do not give shell access out like candy, and don't allow anonymous ftp.
All in all, don't bother, unless you really are a masochist. By all means build sites for friends, but set them up with a host somewhere, and let them get on with it. 90% of people don't keep up with updates to sites anyway, and you get left with crap lying around on your server(s). I have 1 guy who bought a domain name through me around 6 years ago. He has never had a website for that domain. Every year I hit him for the renewal fees and he pays up, but it will never be a real functioning site. He is the best kind of customer. Beware of people who want stuff, especially those who think they know what they want.
Overall, realise that this is a huge subject with many many intricacies that you find as you go along. Do you really want to go down that road, or would it be much better to take the blue pill now and forget about it ?
Good Point (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Try these services (Score:1)
1and1 hell (Score:1)
Hosting as a bonus (Score:3, Interesting)
I have used both Plesk and Cpanel, they both suck, but they also serve their purpose.
Ran my own hosting company...Now i'm in catering! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. No money in simply hosting sites on a small scale
2. If you offer hosting, over sell your server capacity by at least a 1000% or you will never attract customers. They hardly ever use more than 1% of what they sign up for and won't sign up unless your storage/bandwidth offer is as ridiculous as everybody else.
3. Convert your hosting clients to higher value customers by offering web/graphic design opt-in email marketing services etc.
4. Either write your own services/management systems, keep your free software updated religiously or plan for the day when your free software is exploited and your server is owned by a couple of kids. When this happens your server will get null routed your customers will be angry and you will spend a couple of days at least recovering (damn OpenWebmail!)
5. Be prepared to answer support calls any time any place, no matter what crisis your life is in. Imagine troubleshooting a technical problem whilst on a stag weekend in Dublin!
If you can't do all this yourself, you need a pot of money to get a good team who can, but don't expect to make a good profit unless your added value is exceptional.
I got out of pure IT all together, I've found that it's far easier to get a traditional business off the ground and with the skills I've got my new company is light years ahead of the competition. How many small catering businesses do you know of that have 1TB File Server, there own dedicated web/mail server, asterisk PBX with VOIP/POTS lines etc, and a dedicated 24/7 tech support person with excellent dish washing skills?
Re:Ran my own hosting company...Now i'm in caterin (Score:2)
I don't know of any small catering company with that level of IT infrastructure. OTO
Reseller packages (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, they might be expensive and yes you might not have total control over many things but you:
1) don't have the hassle for security and uptime (if it goes down you complain to the host).
2) many reseller packages have software that automate billing and registration.
3) are usually "unlimited" so you can host many sites for your friends at little to no cost (depending on volume of sites registered.
I do it and I find it to be a pretty good way of hosting for friends and family for less than $50 a month.
GoDaddy Premium Hosting Account (Score:4, Interesting)
Depending on how many friends, charge them $3 to $5 per month...
Did this for myself last year, to give myself a big web sandbox to play around in...
Money well spent...
Disclosure: No, I don't own GoDaddy, but I am a satisfied customer.
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All my websites run PHP5..
Some even take XML feeds on demand, parse them out and display the data in dynamically generated tables...
Never seen a throttling problem..
My biggest problem with them is too many passwords to remember...
Sure, go ahead. Here's how. (Score:4, Informative)
You'll need Ubuntu Server, Drupal, Webmin and Virtualmin. All are F/OSS and usable out-of-the-box with large and friendly support communities. Good luck, have fun.
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But seriously, from his question it doesn't sound like that's the kind of customers he'll be having, he just wants to let some friends setup simple websites on his otherwise idle server. That's more or less how I started out, and nine years and 50+ customers later, no one has still needed more than the basic LAMP stack. Hell, I still have a few with static HTML sites.
DONT start a hosting service unless (Score:3, Interesting)
by going local you can still do good business. many people need reliable and cheap all in one bundles of web design, domain registration and hosting.
get a linux box, apache, php, mysql, get cPanel on top of it. that is the most widespread used setup. when we take on a new customer its very high chance that they already know how to use a cPanel site control panel. DONT ever think of getting plesk, it has a very shitty and confusing user interface.
Not worth it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't. (Score:2)
First, set up a bare-bones Linux/BSD box with only the processes you'll need. Rent a dedicated server or a VPS so you can avoid splurging on bandwidth for now.
Iptables, Apache, MySQL/Postgre, Denyhosts (Don't set that to email you. Just don't.), BIND9 and vsftpd are a good start. Chroot users and force SSL when configuring vsftpd, use mpm-itk when setting up Apache (vhosts run as a specific user and users don't have to w
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Go through an affiliate program instead... (Score:2)
It is a stressful endeavor that has a tiny return. Hosting is so competitive, you'll make almost nothing from each customer. If you know people who want hosting, it is more profitable to signup for an affiliate account with an existing hosting company and refer the customer to them (a lot will pay around $100, which for me at least, was a year of profit).
Your customers will only remember who you are when there
Re: phone calls from people who hadn't paid ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Got it!
Make the support # 1-900!
If they don't bother to pay but then they call to whine, you get your money back. It gets charged to their phone bill, and they probably don't look at that either.
If they can handle themselves silently, they "stay cheap".
If they call knowing it's a charged call but they're screwed and need help, then it's an even-handed deal.
Human Element (Score:1)
I had a client who was having ongoing connectivity issues with a local wisp. We tried to get them to be done with the problems (all wireless related) and switch to comcast (rock solid in our area) and they would not simply due to the current standings with the local ch
Make it a community thing (Score:2)
A couple friends and I are running three dedicated machines, one at a mass hoster, two at the local ISP round the corner. We're all working in the industry, so in general, everbody knows what they're doing. Everybody has root (via sudo) and all important config files are in a CVS repository with commit mails, so everone knows when someone changes something. We all want the control over the main services we use (email, web pages, some VPN stuff), and this way, we can all save a bit of money by sharing the co
Into Masochism? (Score:2)
Most of these responses are from losers and fools (Score:5, Interesting)
I will say I am 75 years old, never took a course in any computer program, use Frontpage (oh the humanity! - but it does the job) most of the time, Photoshop, a good text editor (I like Alleycode) plus some Joomla, WordPress and a very good little shopping cart. I seek out and intently use various forums. I have one modest sized dedicated managed server based at a resource that gives great tech support, and another shared server account (likewise). I charge $240 per year prepaid (refund of unused portion anytime) and reasonable prices for site building.
I have clients in 7 countries. I'm not getting rich but it sure beats Social Security. I have a very satisfying retention rate; some clients are with me now for more than ten years.
How do I do this in the face of all the negatives, real and imagined above?
I give very serious personal service. My home phone is on my business cards.
I regularly study and monitor every client's web sites (some have as many as five sites) very carefully and am proactive in alerting them to issues that affect performance and value. I watch their traffic and the email flow and take action when I see a problem.
I deal only with the owner of the business or the top executive of the organization (I have a number of NGOs, some of them famous).
I avoid making presentations to potential clients whom I recognize early on as people who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. You can tell who they are because they only want to know the price, not discuss what their needs are or how my services will fulfill them. Let the discounters have them.
Based on years of experience, I never accept creative people of any kind as clients. That means, no writers, painters, performers, photographers, etc. - they are unteachable and surprisingly close-minded. Give me an inquiring, curious and engaqed business person any day.
When I screw up, I make sincere amends that build trust and loyalty. For example, when I failed to prevent an unintended domain expiration, I worked hard at recovery, got back the name for my client and gave him a free year of registration and hosting. He's been with me now for 6 years.
I never speak with anyone without giving them a business card. During a visit to any store or business or any casual encounter, I hand out a card. I give a free year of hosting to any existing client who sends me a new client.
In other words, bottom line, I work at getting customers and I work even harder at keeping them.
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Re:Most of these responses are from losers and foo (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine you are one of your potential customers, and then provide whatever it is you would want.
My current hosting company is not quite the cheapest (although they are very competitive), but their support is first rate. I have the IM address for the owner, and if anything goes wrong he is there ready to fix it. They had a few instances of downtime in the first couple of years I was with them, and for each instance they gave me a month's free s
He's not trying to make a living out of this (Score:2)
Anyway, I'd start by installing your favorite distro on your server, installing ISPConfig [ispconfig.org] and going from there. cPanel and the like ar
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2 Words - Reseller Hosting (Score:2)
I started off doing website design and development for local small businesses. When a couple of them got tired of dealing with their hosting companies, I set up a reseller account over at Hostgator, and offered the hosting as well.
I started a service called "Hands Off Hosting". My customers contract with me to design, develop and host their sites, and if they have any issues, I am the only person they have to deal with. I make small changes for them gratis, and I make a hefty profit on the hosting.
IOW -
google apps (Score:1)
Try leasing a server (Score:1)
Bluehost.com (Score:1)
Web hosting is not a differentiator... (Score:1)
Seriously, Don't (Score:2)
On the flip side, you can set them up with free hosting accounts...
You will not make money in this endeavor, you might as well give up and go with one of the free hosting sites.
Something else, too (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not your lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but you really should seek some out.
Be careful about load (Score:1)
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$15 per month buys you a shake-and-bake web host (Score:5, Informative)
$15/month got me a reseller account with a very very nice host. When I was just their customer they treated me like royalty, I love their service. The $15 bought me space, bandwidth and access to WHM, the admin side of Cpanel. I was free to slice it up any way I wanted, and each of my customers would have their own cpanel.
The smart ones knew how to install whatever they wanted without the cpanel automation.
The rest were self reliant enough so cpanel was actually useful.
One of two idiots just couldn't pay attention if their lives depended on it, so it wouldn't matter which method they chose.
The second problem was domain names. Almost everyone was sick of the Netsol prices, but most got burned buying discounted domains elsewhere. Almost by accident I ran into a small domain wholesaler based in India, the reseller account was free so I decided to give them a try.
They are fantastic, four years later and hundreds of domain names purchased and NEVER a problem that could be blamed on them. Every single problem we have had could be traced back to a bad discount registrar trying to screw a customer out of transferring out.
The main problem with doing this is that customer support does take time. I made a point of always being available to anyone that used my services. I was always willing to IM or talk on the phone regardless of how stupid the issue was. Because of it my attrition rate is literally nonexistent.
By "accident" my previous boss overheard that I had my own domain registrar, and that my domains were less than $10 instead of the $35 he was paying.
Overnight I had nailed a 30+ domain customer.
The funny thing is that my hosting provider kept increasing the quotas for my plan, but kept the price frozen. That means I still pay my $15, but now I have 10x the disk space and at least 100x the bandwidth I started with 4 years ago. This allows me to be generous when a customer runs over bandwidth and I let it go "just this time."
They feel like I did them a favor, when all I did was use up a tiny bit of the extra capacity that was not drawing revenue.
Do I make money out of this? It pays itself, and I get some extra cash left. Many times friends ask me about cheap hosting for a family member, so I usually sell them the domain name and give them a small hosting account for free. If I botch something, I give them extra hosting, if it was a BIG screw up I give them a free domain (I don't remember giving away more than 2-3 domains in the past 4 years).
I also play with the allowances just to see how people react to it. For example, I may set a basic account so it has up to 5 parked domains (these point to the root of the account), 5 add-on domains (these are stand-alone within the account), etc. This costs me nothing but when they ask nice I say "just because you are a good customer
Then there are the miscreants. I had one customer overseas, I have no idea where he came from but he immediately bought the biggest plan I had, which was expensive and ate 25% of my resources (and I was not overselling, he DID get 25%). A week later his site auto-shut down due to bandwidth use.
He came back to complain, I explained to him what he had done. He asked how much. I honestly wanted him to go away, so I offered him to temporarily bump him by 1GB for the rest of the month for $100.
He said yes, and paid on the spot.
Less than a week later he was back. Same deal. Another $100.
$300 later he moved his site elsewhere and I never heard from him.
Another customer, also overseas, was good for about 5 domains per year and maybe $200/year worth of websites. The problem is that she IM'ed constantly, and for stupid crap. Every week she would reinstall what
I think maybe I didn't ask the right question (Score:3, Interesting)
My apologies, let me attempt to restate my question.
Let's say I get www.myname.com. That site then becomes a basic directory of sites and games within a given genre. One of the sites that I list then comes to me and says, I would like to sign up and use customer1.myname.com as my site.
If i wanted to give them a basic index page with a subdirectory, provide a forum, photo gallery, their own updatable news/info page, etc.
I'm not talking so much about web hosting as pre-built packages to allow them their own site within my existing one.
hard, quite hard to deal with a hosting biz (Score:3, Informative)
however it is not easy to:
1- wake up at 2AM because a customer in Spain (we are in latin america) screwed the whole system
because of some sort of rabbit process or 2- same.. with databases going wild and crashing
3- customer calling EVERY day with problems with their emails.. emails that are for sure sent but never arrive... you check the logs and mails are there..just that they somehow never readed it. This is the biggest problem.. mails not arriving, customers unable to check themselves or to read what: quota exceeded, or error dest@domain.com> unbalanced >, or user unknown.. it is a royal pain.
4- resellers? A royal pain, we are getting rid of them and hosting or direct customers.. resellers pays little, demands huge and move to another service as soon as they find the other place gives them 50c/mo disscount.
5- invoicing customers? getting payments from them? IT IS HARD. We have a motto: if the customer does not want to pay on time, then he does not consider our job and must be suspended.
We warn the customer 4 times 30,1 5,7 days before expiration and the day of expiration.. We suspend them 1-3 days after the expiry date... hardly any one can pay before the expiry date.
The funny thing comes later: "you are trying to blackmail me because you suspended my site", "I never got the mail (we keep copies of the warning mails)", etc... in any case, most of them pays.. quite upset because of "the blackmail".. and I wonder myself.. did they call the telco and say the same things when they forget to pay for the phone bills? And the electricity company? We have detected that some of the customers ask you "reactivate me and then I will pay" this is the usual phrase(ok, in several flavours) to say you: "I wont pay you, I just want to take my site off you and ran away" it is a pain, actually.
6- spam: oh god.. this is hard... "why Im receiving spam?" "Im getting like 5 spam mails/day, this is unbeareable", etc, etc, etc.. then setup an antispam service (let's say greylisting): "why are my mails delayed for days?" (days, not minutes... they always exagerate the issues).
7- lack of evidence: NONE of the emails accounts from NOBODY of my company works: This is the most useless phrase I have ever seen.. like if exagerating the problem is the right way to solve it.. at the end, when they explain the problem it is something related to point 3 in one account not in every. We then tend to ignore other claims from the same customer as we know it is a false positive.
They never call, except for complaining.. your server could be working 24x7 for, let's say 10 months.. then your server hiccup because of a bastard running an unoptimized sql query... be ready, calls will rain... specially the "Im running a 10000usd/hour business, you do not have idea of how much I have been affected by this 5 minutes of downtime" we wonder, in front of them "why if you are having such a profitable business will you run your website on a 48usd/year shared hosting"? why dont you rent us a dedicated or vps? Some of them have rented it.. other immediatly start whinning: oh, money is so scarce, we actually are almost broke, etc, etc.
profits are nice, in our case... dealing with the technical details are quite nice... we learn a lot, we get in touch with a lot of interesting customers and situations... but dealing with support is a pain in the ass.
sorry for such a long post... but I was actually needing to let all this shit come out...
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Reference Websites (Score:2)
It can be done, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have done this for about 10 years now, and the *only* reasons I got into it and stayed with it are;
1) I was already doing websites for friends and a couple of clients. I had already had a job being responsible for maintaining someone else's servers. ie there was not a huge learning curve.
2) The company I worked for made the decision to change hardware and software platforms, and sold me their existing gear for pennies. ie no big upfront costs.
3) I now wor
Thanks (Score:2)
I think what the majority of posters fail to realize is that I am not looking to do this as a full time business. I want to learn to do this, because I believe that learning new things is fun and rewarding. I want to do this because I DO have a niche market, as well as people that are already willing to pay me to learn this and do it for
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For what your looking to do I would recommend a Virtual Machine. Find a good provider and make sure your "clients" pay you enough to cover most or all of the cost depending on your needs. I think this is much more cost effective then having a racked server in a colocation facility. (unless you really need the power of a dedicated server)
plesk or cpanel (Score:2)
Both cpanel and plesk allow you to allow automatic account creation, meaning people can sign up on your site and have accounts created for them, auto billing, etc. You can setup different packages i.e. more bandwidth, disk space, domain names and so on.
Also with these systems it makes it very simple to manage your server. I only host my own sites and use plesk because of how e
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