Slashdot Mirror
Best Way to Start a Website Hosting Service?
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."
Run far, far away from Plesk.
It might simplify SOME things, but it sure as hell makes other things more difficult.
I run a gridserver account at Media Temple, $20/mo or $200/yr. Set up websites with 1-click apps like Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress or any other easy to use free PHP CMS. Wordpress is easy to modify and has a very large range of plugins and templates to work from. You can set up webmail access on MT servers as well as FTP and SSH and permissions for additional user access to your main server account if need be. Many other Hosting Companies have similar systems available or more. I have over 10 webpages on my server account and am barely scratching the resources so far.
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.
The part of web hosting that people think they have down is not the relevant part. Making a server run smoothly and securely on the big bad internet is an arduous task. Yes, you can probably do it, but it's so much work that nobody can afford it, unless you automate the heck out of it and distribute the cost over many identical servers, and that would require going big-scale. A small shop can never amortize the work that has to go into a single server. The necessity to scale up is what makes web hosting complicated: With more customers you're bound to get all kinds of problems which have nothing at all to do with having an internet connected computer running Apache somewhere. You can't break-even with just your friends, unless they themselves know what they're doing and are willing to pay more than an established company would ask, so you're going to have strangers as customers. Sometimes strangers don't pay. Sometimes strangers get you blacklisted. Sometimes strangers want support in the middle of the night. All of them want five-nines reliability for cents a day.
How about avoiding the mess that is hosting your own server and using one of the many reseller packages that are out there.
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.
Cost to you, about $15 per month.
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.
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
you do it local, and bring it bundled with website design and development. the web hosting field is rather overcrowded, and big companies are offering ridiculous (and unrealistic) amounts of resources to catch clients. and they succeed. dont count on adwords. adwords's roi is sucking tit since 2004. big corps are paying ridiculous bids for web hosting keywords and its impossible to compete with them. its google's bad game. in order to make more money they increased the weight of bid in ad placement and decreased weight of ad quality, clickthrough rate. result has been disaster for small businesses that have high competition in their field.
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.
Read radical news here
I am not going to tell you any details about how I've done it or with whom, etc.
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.