How to Become a Web Host Provider?

[hoangvu]

Curiously, How to become a Web Host Provider?
what knowledge I need to know to sell/support/consult/manage hosting and customers?

Give me any tips k:

 

[prolimehost]

these days it is one of the most hard task, first you need to buy a server and you must learn to manage the server as if you hire a admin for management then it may cost alot, after than start doing basic seo for your domain and try getting reference from your friends about hosting requirement, alternatively you can try find clients in your local area.

 

[view]

It`s no need too much money

- Domain $10/y
- SSL certificate $5/y
- Managed WHM reseller $10 - $50 /monthly
- WHMCS $15 /monthly
- Website $~

That is basic what you need to start.

 

[Knightrider]

Reseller hosting services will gain you enough knowledge to get yourself started with web hosting businesses. You need lots of external knowledge and investment is very high.

 

[view]

Yes,but i know many people who started with reseller hosting with investment of $200-$300 for first 3 months and in that way after 2-3 years haved 500-1000 clients with 10-20 dedicated servers...After that,he selled their business for $30k-$40k

 

[JustinLane]

If you are starting a web hosting business, then you have to know following things:
@ COMPANY GOALS & MARKET SHARE.
@ WHAT SERVER TYPES YOU MAY NEED.
@ END CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS.
@ Client Feedback And Customer Retention.

 

[ChadTrejo]

For those who have your personal datacenter and equipment, by pass this question. Skip the questions since you possess won this game. For many you some other contestants, discover a good web host. Several factors have to used when shopping for any excellent web host service provider.

 

[hoangvu]

hoangvu

Can hire a server and making more resellers from there?
It's a simple way for low budget?

 

[Alex - A2Hosting]

It`s no need too much money

- Domain $10/y
- SSL certificate $5/y
- Managed WHM reseller $10 - $50 /monthly
- WHMCS $15 /monthly
- Website $~

That is basic what you need to start.

Or by checking out [URLnf="http://www.arvixe.com/reseller-discount-hosting"]our offer[/URLnf] that becomes:

-Domain: Free
-SSL Certificate: Free
-WHM Reseller Account: $18.75 on a monthly billing cycle
-WHMCS: Free
-> Total: $18.75 per month to launch a business .

Can hire a server and making more resellers from there?
It's a simple way for low budget?

It is generally recommended to opt for a reseller account first. In some cases such as the example above, you get absolutely everything you need to launch your hosting business for under $20 per month. If you were to opt for a server to offer reseller hosting yourself, you will find lots of extra added costs for the server itself, licenses and for server management unless you know how to do this yourself.

 

[ChadTrejo]

In this day and age, most clients are expecting 24 hour support. Are you able to be on call 24 hours a day to handle all the technical and sales requests that will be coming in once you start your company? Prompt support is a very key aspect of having a successful hosting business, so this is one of the first questions you should ask yourself before starting your company. Am I able to offer the support my clients will need?

 

[whsd]

Its no that difficult to make your own host company just you need to apply for reseller program of any big giant web host company and open your own one.

 

[HowardKistler]

Before becoming a web hosting provider you have to focus on following things:
About company shares and market need.
What type of server you may need.
End client communications.
Client feedback and customer retention.
Closing thoughts.

 

[bestellenonline]

Yes i 100% agree with you, its really very hard to get starting with hosting, as we to had bad times when we started with a1domainhosting. You really need high patience. Their are thousands of fishes in this hosting see, so you should know how to swin above the water.

 

[buzybee-kevin]

To start I would recommend a white label reseller plan that offers a free WHMCS license. You wont need a large plan to start so go small and you can grow from there.

Don't worry about 24/7 support yet if you are just selling shared web hosting as long as your server is configured for most typical hosting environments and you selling to US customers then your late night support tickets will be either very low to none.

Make your hosting plans competitive no matter what your reseller account looks like you can grow as you gain customers.

Then advertise advertise or you will be wasting your time.

 

[hoangvu]

hoangvu

Thanks @buzybee-kevin
So, I should go with reseller plan with a free WHMCS license.But about web hosting manager page or website homepage (cms) for selling my web hosting plans on it, which ones would you suggest me?

 

[KingServers01]

You can purchase a Reseller Web hosting account with a hosting company and can become web host provider. Few things like quality of company, reviews needs to be taken care of. Most important is that company should provide you with Turnkey Reseller Hosting solutions along with free end user support.

 

[Euservr]

You need to do is, Buy a vps with cPanel/WHM, A WHMCS License And a domain .

 

[ElixantTechnology]

ElixantTechnology

Sure, buying a VPS right off the bat is an option, but unless you've got the sysadmin experience to maintain/manage everything on your own, you're going to drop some heavy bucks up front to get things going, whether or not your succeed in your venture. For example, averaging out here would be your costs getting a VPS to start out.

VPS w/ 4GB Ram / 2-4 Cores - $40+/month
cPanel/WHM License - $15/month
WHMCS License - $15/month
SSL Certificate - $14.99/year
Domain - $11/year

Upfront Cost - $95.99+ then $70/month

Pretty expensive just to dip your toes into the water, and that's if you know what you're doing, prices go even higher if you want a managed solution. However, if you poke around, you can actually find a provider that provides an all-in-one solution (Reseller). For example, from us you can pickup a Reseller account that includes a free domain name and free WHMCS license. We even throw in a free Enom reseller account so you can offer domains to your customers.. That's a $995 value alone! Even better, the provider takes care of all the intense technical stuff so you don't quite have to.. So, instead of paying $95 up front you can pay:

Reseller Account - $29.99/month
cPanel/WHM License - $00.00
WHMCS License - $00.00
SSL Certificate - $14.99/year
Domain Registration - $00.00
Enom Reseller Acct + - $00.00 ($995 Value)

Total Upfront Cost - $44.98 then $29.99/month

A lot of hosts that jump into the game right away and purchase a VPS or Dedicated Server, unless they've got a client base already secured, they're looking to set themselves up for failure. You've gotta expect that you're not going to turn a profit for at least 6 months, so for that first 6 months you're paying for the service and advertising the hell out of it. As your business grows, you can either upgrade your reseller account or upgrade to a dedicated platform (as it is affordable), and go from there.

The hosting industry is pretty cut throat, and if you get in at the right time, and do things the right way, you just might line yourself up for success.

 

[Euservr]

We provide 8GB RAM, 5 Core cpu, 1Gbps Port Speed, 400GB Space, this config vps for only $45/month. And cpanel for free for a limited time.
It is not necessary to have a ssl certificate.
So it will be cost like 70 USD with cpanel+whmcs+vps.

 

[ElixantTechnology]

Alright, the question is how oversold is the VPS node? What kind of network is backing it? Are you providing complete management? At $45/month with cPanel for free that $30 in revenue you're generating for 4 cores and 8GB of RAM. Considering your system probably has 12 physical cores, and another 12 hyperthreaded (typical VPS setup), if assigned 32GB of RAM you're looking at 5 VPS nodes if you're overselling the server. Cost of an average server with the above specifications is pushing $120-199. The only way, as a provider, that you'd be generating revenue is if you were overselling the server quite badly. So I'm guessing you're using OpenVZ for virtualization, because I know Xen wouldn't allow for overselling like that. Even the space too, 400GB * 8 = 3TB so I'm guessing a Raid-10 configuration? Brings up hardware costs right there as well.

It all comes down to this, if you're paying cheap for a hosting provider, you're going to get really cheap service, and if you plan on selling space on really cheap service that you purchased from a really cheap provider, your customers are going to see this as well when they notice that they aren't being provided with the quality that they do deserve.

Picking a decent provider that offers reseller cPanel hosting is not only going to lower your initial costs, but you are buying into a service that is taken care of. Start off by purchasing a basic shared hosting account with the provider, most of them will even give you a 30 day trial if you ask for it. Run some benchmarks, test things out, make sure that it's fast and can handle traffic accurately. Remember, these are all things that your customers are going to notice as well when you sell them services. If you are satisfied, as most providers provide a 30 day money back guarantee (minimum), ask them to apply that toward an upgrade to a reseller account. They will love the idea, not only are they going to be generating more revenue from you, but as you are getting involved with the industry you provide them with stability as a customer.

Start of small, there's no reason that you should be jumping in head first. The industry is very competetive so it is going to be very difficult for you to get your first few customers, but don't go the shifty route, don't offer under-priced hosting. If you offer hosting at a decent price, provide quality service to your customers, you are going to have more quality customers sign up for your services.

Elixant Technology started off as a budget hosting provider, initially offering $1.99 hosting, $49 dedicated servers and $15 VPS (1 Core/512MB Ram), and it was probably one of the stupidest decisions we ever made. Not only were we flooded with spammers, fraudsters and hackers, none of our customers stayed for more than a month as they were looking for that quick discount hosting until they could find something even cheaper. These are not the kinds of customers that you want to attract. We raised our prices, even now our Shared Hosting is pretty cheap at $4.99 a month, but at that price we've started to attract more reliable and professional customers.

In the end, it's not about finding or giving the cheapest deal out there, it's about the quality of service that you provide to your customers. Remember, 90% of the customers that sign up for your services in the future will be due to word of mouth advertising.

 

[Euservr]

Euservr

You are just trying to say that your service is good and other not good?
We have a lot of clients, we are providing vps and dedicated server since last one year.
Our customers are fully satisfied by our service.

 

[ElixantTechnology]

ElixantTechnology

Don't worry I'm not trying to say any service is better than the other, we don't actually offer VPS anymore so we're always looking for other places to direct customers who look for them (as we don't plan on offering VPS ourselves until Feb/March). I am just trying to understand the way you have things mapped out, it just doesn't make any sense, that pricing structure at least. At $45 you're only charging $4.50 per CPU core $2.81 per GB of RAM. The average is $10 per GB/Core from reputable providers, trying to help out here because maybe you're under-pricing your services, who knows.

 

[Euservr]

WE sell KVM virtualization vps, No overselling.
I said cPanel/WHM free for a Limited time.
We provide Raid 10 Storage.
Our node server has 16 Core.
We use Leaseweb Server. It is 1Gbps full duplex Port. 100 Mega Byte/sec speed guaranteed.

It is not Managed VPS, But we provide support if there is any issue with the vps. Like installing cpanel to migrate, etc.

 

[ElixantTechnology]

Even with 16 cores that is only 3 VPS per node (taking into consideration Dom0). How is it possible to generate a profit at all at that level? At $135 generated from 3 nodes that puts you possibly at par with your monthly expense for the server.

 

[Euservr]

Euservr

Most probably you have wrong ideas about vps. Thats why you dont sell vps.

 

[ElixantTechnology]

ElixantTechnology

Actually, the only reason why we aren't currently selling VPS is because we've been more focused on our current product offerings. We're in the process of implementing the infrastructure for VPS offerings, we just want to make sure that we have all the necessary equipment racked and ready to go for when we do decide to. I know that KVM is hardware virtualized so it makes it very difficult to oversell your hardware so I'm not playing that blame game anymore. I've been in the industry now for 10 years, first got intoduced into virtualization 5 years ago, and ran a reputable budget VPS business before gettting into the Managed Hosting industry.

Don't take my questions as threatening, more or less seeing if I can shove some suggestions your way. It's always good to get input from a veteran of the industry.

 

[Euservr]

I sell cheap price because i dont need much profit. From a node server i make 50 usd profit. If you want to know how i do it then add me on skype. I cant tell here.

 

[brentpresley]

brentpresley

$50 profit per server full of shared hosting client? You need to re-think your business plan. $50 is not worth it to deal with the support tickets of a server full of shared clients.

 

[ElixantTechnology]

ElixantTechnology

I agree with you 100% here. @euservr lets say that you have 16 cores and 32GB of RAM assigned to your node, if you were to split it up in a pricing structure, as follows:

$10/CPU Core
$10/2GB Ram

You would not only generate a lot more money for the resources, but you would come across as a more reliable provider and grab attention of those customers that actually avoid budget providers like the plague.

 

[Euservr]

Euservr

You sell dedicated server, that is why you are asking this question, if you are a vps provider then you will not ask this question.

I can provide a Fully Managed Dedicated server, 1Gbps full duplex, Less cost than you are providing.
You are providing 100mbps server, it costs like 30-40 usd, and you are taking from client 100 USD +.

I know my math and i dont want to share what i do with node and cpu.

You managed hosting providers are just become angry when you see someone providing servers at less cost than you.
Check online.net, it is better hosting provider than you and managed server cost less than your price and configuration is higher than your servers.