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Any tips on starting a shared web host?
I've been running websites for myself and friends for many years now. I've gone from shared hosts to virtual servers to dedicated servers so I know a lot about running websites.
LEB/LET has inspired me to create my own web hosting company and I plan to start by offering simple shared web hosting plans. Since I don't have much experience with billing/hosting control panels I'd like suggestions on how to setup and run everything because I know quite a few of you have much more experience.
I'm also interested in knowing what you guys are interested in as far as plans go. I was thinking about offering a 1GB of storage/10GB of bandwidth plan that supports one domain for $1/month.
Thanks for the tips.
Comments
Have the patience to wait a while for customers. Shared hosting is the hardest thing to sell in the market, everyone does it and that's usually a bad thing...
Take it from the guy who sells shared hosting at $5 per year, it's crowded.
For a shared host, you're going to have to bring something unique to the table. There's thousands of shared hosts out there - you need to find a niche or offer something that not many other hosts offer.
My advice is to let someone hold your hand through it because performance configuration and proper security may not be as obvious as you think. Get a managed cPanel VPS from someone like KnownHost. Having someone to back you up when you don't know how to do something is great. I knew how to run my own servers just fine, but getting into providing it changed the game for me a bit. It wasn't a huge adjustment, but I appreciated having someone like LiquidWeb there for me to say "Hey, you could be doing this better."
at this point of time, starting a generic shared host is like shooting your feet IMHO. there are hundreds if not thousands of monsters, gators and hawks to swallow you.
BUT running a special hosted service like jira, redmine, whmcs etc., with HA, personalization and support has its market open. with special arrangements you might lower the license fees and you could pass that on the customer and yes your niche is that..
Shared hosting market is over saturated. You have big dcs and then you have 1$ unlimited. Unlike vps, it is hard to compete when it comes to resource/pricing.
If you really decide to open shared hosting shop, don't just open another cpanel host. Optimize your server for certain niehe. WordPress hosting is not the best one either. I would suggest you to target dev based scripts which are less popular among the hosts such as modx, joomla. Make sure to use lot of good buzzwords such as lite speed, MySQL on Ssd etc. Advertise where you have less competition. Make deals with devs/script providers. This should be enough to give you a head start.
Everyone is right about the market being saturated, but it's a great learning process and I'd suggest it to anyone wanting to inch into the hosting market in any way. You won't get rich, but you'll learn a lot that looks really good on a resume in the right situation
There still is a market for premium shared hosting, like eleven2/mediatemple. Otherwise, nope.
The market is saturated is true, but you can sell other services to help them make more money from the few that come to you, such personal attention. newsletter with updates. recalls that as a small business you can not be able to compete on price and quantity but in quality. good luck.
Start off as a reseller.
Some companies offer free billing solutions.
We started as a reseller 3 years ago, best way to do it as not to loose much money in the short term. There is still a market but its mainly a waiting game to build trust and get on the siphon from people making the choice not to go with fly-by-night due to cost.
Simply find your target. Don't be angry if there are a lot of customers who think that "I've paid, and now I'm the king and you are my servant". (If you know what I mean).
I wrote a book on free web hosting a few years ago, doesn't entirely pertain to what you're looking for but it might have some helpful info in it still: http://jmd.cc/FreeHostingGuide.zip
Reading... Thanks..
Any note worthy hosts that offer good reselling?
Hostgator does.
Hostgator is overpriced, but they're good in support and properly configure your stuff etc.
If there are, they're probably not running cpanel. Stay away from cpanel reseller hosting. We're finding it's a very crippled, cobbled-together implementation that doesn't really put the reseller in the focus.
Don't treat hosting as a global market, focus on your local area, small business, clubs that need a website and so on.
Lots and lots and lots of patience, you should try and target within your country etc, and with people you know, from my experience it's pretty hard so market and sell.
I'm still running my host and while it is making profit, it's no where near what you would want, usually the big guys take all of the customers, e.g. Hostgator etc.
TL;DR Shared hosting is dying, don't expect much out of it if you don't find other ways to market.
Best thing I can tell you is exploit the shared cloud market!
I'm selling hosting from a long time now, barely makes neough to cover it's licenses. It might not even get that much.
I cover the vps license of cpanel and the hybrid cloud vps but that pretty much about it.
Well, it barely covers the VPS itself and the licenses.
i had to fix mine.
Eleven 2 seems to offer pretty good reselling plans. 100GB of storage and 1000GB of bandwidth for $20/month.
Nope. A lot of people don't trust GoDaddy, and its the only company they know by name. Market yourself locally, face to face, you can build clients. Once you have enough, word of mouth can play its role. It's about how serious you are. It's only dying if you sit and expect them to come to you. Local business doesn't know about your 400,000 competitors either. I'm turning away simple design jobs with hosting attached, like basic template alteration.
Thanks... got an idea about how web hosting done...