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How to re-enter web hosting industry?
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How to re-enter web hosting industry?

vielendankvielendank Member
edited June 2022 in Help

Hi all,

This is my first post of lowendtalk. I was owning a web hosting business from 2008 to 2017. Initially I was under whitelabel reseller program then moved to cpanel reseller and then VPS. What I experienced back then was a time when "shared" web hosting trend was slightly diminishing. I had experience of PHP development and used to develop joomla (2008-2011), wordpress based websites of local customers. WHT and local area specific SEO was the primary source for shared hosting marketing. The profits were never injected in online paid marketing/advertising because of personal reasons. In 2015, I got a better job pay and left the web hosting industry. I could not sell any customer but humbly I called them and said we are shutting down with a sweet note.

Fast forward today - I have gained the experience of angular, python, aws and worked with corporates as a team leader. I am trying to analyze the future trend of the market and jotted down below points where there can be a room-

  1. Hosting Panel - cpanel being a leader with team of human resources (developers/support staff) it has become very difficult to penetrate this line. Because of cpanel's robustness, everyody prefers this CP. However from last few years, the hike in licenses has started people to think about an alternative i.e. directadmin. Other than these two, there are more CPs but I think very few people intend to switch.

  2. Billing Solution- whmcs is the default choice for ERP+CRM however sometime I feel the license cost is at higher side. But as people are more habitual, it has difficult to migrate to any other billing platform. I read about a SaaS which serves the same but it is hardly known to anyone and still service providers hesitate to host their customer data on SaaS platforms.

  3. Specialty hosting - Over the period of time, CMS dedicated hosting has started to gain pace in specific to wordpress. I can list 10 service providers who have a dedicated managed wordpress platform with their own home built control panel and not cpanel.

  4. Facilitators - Service providers under this category basically are facilitators between cloud platforms and end user for specialty hosting such as infrawp or spinupwp. Personally I feel it is a good option as for end users, the picture of what-you-get-is-what-you-pay-for (WYGIWYPF) is clear. (No overselling sh**)

If I analyze all above points, hosting panel and billing solution are hard to penetrate. Although cpanel and whmcs have some sort of monopoly, no big players have penetrated - idk for what reason.

Specialty hosting and facilitators are upcoming trends I feel but there is another shout that says wordpress will get rules by SSG - static site generator, with already many plugins in place, I believer many people would start using it and publish their site to s3 bucket etc.

Still personally I am interested in #3 and #4. As you being a reader of this post possibly have good experience and may suggest whether it is worth spending time money and efforts on them. If there are other lines of growth in this industry, please help me to understand it as well. Thank you

Comments

  • d2411d2411 Member

    Hmm i think this is a bit difficult - there are many providers on the market. in my opinion theres no much profit on the hosting market since the big player ( ovh, hetzner ... ) sell their products to prices they are < 10 $ per month. I thought to enter this business in the past but this is very time intense.You may resell servers from different providers again to start ?

  • Focus on #3 and #4 if you have good will. I believed you had done good amount of research. You may also want to check how that #3 and #4 work with modern cloud technologies today.

    Please think of the way to focus for real this time. Don't leave your customers just because you got another better job. That will create a lot of trust issue whenever your name popup in the industry no matter how good you are.

    But again well done on your long journey.

    Thanked by 1vielendank
  • check out blesta for billing and use one of its supported hosting panels to connect to. how you market yourself is up to you

  • What are the ways now days people use to advertise and marketing?
    I used WHT and SEO, never tried social media marketing.

    Today, other than Twitter, FB, YouTube are there any other ways to advertise?

  • @vielendank said:
    What are the ways now days people use to advertise and marketing?
    I used WHT and SEO, never tried social media marketing.

    Today, other than Twitter, FB, YouTube are there any other ways to advertise?

    Youtube Ads & FB Ads are prince.

    If the first touch point isn't grabbing an email you're failing because email is king.

  • emghemgh Member

    @vielendank said:
    What are the ways now days people use to advertise and marketing?
    I used WHT and SEO, never tried social media marketing.

    Today, other than Twitter, FB, YouTube are there any other ways to advertise?

    Do some creative SEO with "Managed x Hosting" where x is every CMS you could possibly think of, and use Softaculous to make that promise actually true.

  • Youtube Ads & FB Ads are prince.

    If the first touch point isn't grabbing an email you're failing because email is king.

    How people find emails of the targeted audience? I have read too that email is the king but most of the time, cold mails are automatically sent to junk.

  • FatGrizzlyFatGrizzly Member, Host Rep

    @emgh said:

    @vielendank said:
    What are the ways now days people use to advertise and marketing?
    I used WHT and SEO, never tried social media marketing.

    Today, other than Twitter, FB, YouTube are there any other ways to advertise?

    Do some creative SEO with "Managed x Hosting" where x is every CMS you could possibly think of, and use Softaculous to make that promise actually true.

    Managed 382* scripts hosting!

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • emghemgh Member

    @FatGrizzly said:

    @emgh said:

    @vielendank said:
    What are the ways now days people use to advertise and marketing?
    I used WHT and SEO, never tried social media marketing.

    Today, other than Twitter, FB, YouTube are there any other ways to advertise?

    Do some creative SEO with "Managed x Hosting" where x is every CMS you could possibly think of, and use Softaculous to make that promise actually true.

    Managed 382* scripts hosting!

    Yes, I think I actually gave away a good idea.

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