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What are your expecations?
I'm not new to hosting in general, but mostly I've been a client, with some experiences helping providers along the way. Mostly, I'm an administrator. I've been running some personal websites for about a decade now (yikes... I'm getting older eh?) and I've been through many, many, many, many different hosts. Did I mention I've been through a couple?
Some have been terrible. Some have been incredible. Some have surprised me: both good and bad surprises. All I ever really wanted was communication and people to be reasonable. Some hosts promise the world and under-deliver.
To me, that's a tell-tale sign of a poor provider. If a provider has bad news, or no news, say about a downtime issue, I'd rather hear the honest situation than be fed lines.
As I said in my introduction post, I'm going to be launching a tiny startup, so I'd like to send some feelers out into the LET world and hear what you guys (and gals!) want from a host.
My goal for this startup is that I'd like it to be more community-based than the typical company/customer model. More of a co-op.
TL;DR: what are your top expectations/wish from a provider?
Comments
When this has been tried in the past, it's been abused. It's better to set fair prices and let people sign up as a business relationship, just like any other host, even if you are focused on the LET community. Market it to us but don't trust us :-)
Providing descent air cooling system.
Transparency in your operations. If you have problems, admit it. Why skate around the issue? It helps no one.
Honesty is another good one... I suppose it goes with the above, just don't lie to me...
Cheap, highly reliable, fast support
TBH, I'd never want to start hosting business.
Look at ramnode, lunanode,
ovh, DO,kimsufi...etcThey are all cheap, highly reliable and have fast support already and in business for years.
How can you possibly compete?
It's apparent on LET which providers are knowledgeable and understand the hardware/software and their market. That + being pleasant with reasonable support and competitive price is about all that's required really.
Like most services, I just want what I pay for and we can get on with our lives. Some of the hosts I've signed up to here are way too chummy and informal, which I don't like.
If they do their job and I stay within their ToS, then I'm sure both parties will be equally happy with the outcome. Esp. if you're lowend... it's only going to work if you can scale.
I would expect the following, in ratio to the amount paid for the service, of course:
Uptime
Quality, speedy response
Generally, a decent service for the price that I paid for.
Actually, not so much my expectations, but rather a list of stuff I would offer, were I thinking of starting such a business. In order of importance:
location, location, location! Different needs/expectations for different people, of course. LEB offers in Southeast Asia, India, Middle East, Africa, Latin America would give you a big competitive advantage.
competitive pricing.
good uptime and no surprises! And when there are surprises/problems, show initiative and promptly communicate them - without each client having to open a ticket first!
24/7, well trained, knowledgeable, reasonably prompt, helpful (within reason) tech support. Multiple language support.
floating IP's, private networking, taking snapshots, snapshot import/export… basically all the cool stuff Luna Node offers
white label reseller program with a well documented API.
low cost or free BYOIP/BGP announcement service like the Beta Vultr is rolling out (especially when offering interesting locations!).
unmanaged service, but with good knowledge base and tutorials akin to DO's.
Exactly, and that will please good customers and hopefully make bad ones go away.