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How did you start your hosting business?
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you start with a shared, then reseller, then a vps with cpanel, then dedicated, then you spend more until you go crazy and start talking to yourself.
It would be great if you could be the first to share your experience and explain how you started your business so that the rest of us can follow your example. It's a great topic that many of us can learn from.
My experience is far from textbook
Basic points
How about you ?
I would be interested to hear from @tentor @Hosteroid @RIYAD @Zappie @ManishPant @onidel @NDTN @xTom - definitely the ones I look up to the most
My personal story involves a period when I was young and always loved computers. From a very young age, I created websites for businesses. I remember that before 2006-2010, I was part of a group of friends who played the game MuOnline; I was practically a fan and spent hours playing. Later, I created servers and had thousands of users playing at that time, with a community based on vBulletin. I had to leave it for a short time because I was studying; I was living in Barcelona at the time. I continued to watch how it was evolving. I remember that during that period, OVH was very popular for its game servers; I contracted their services so our friends could have their own game servers.
Then, from 2010-2013, I was a business designer, creating online stores. At one point, I was in charge of technical support at a computer maintenance school, handling antivirus installation, optimization, etc. Later, in 2015, I decided to come to the United States. Dallas, TX was a bit difficult. I remember I had a new Supermicro server that I had bought for testing, and since I had limited time at the data center in Spain, we reached an agreement that they would keep it. I continued working, but it had always been my dream to have my own business and dedicate myself to what I loved. Then the opportunity arose in 2019. We bought our first server in the USA for testing, and then we launched NohaVPS. Before the official launch, we conducted many tests, and they all exceeded our expectations. We officially launched our services. Initially, it was difficult, but we were always persevering and faithful to our principles.
In 2022, we purchased our own servers and secured rack space in Dallas through Hivelocity. Due to some limitations, we migrated our servers.
In 2023, we became an ARIN member.
In 2023, we migrated our servers to Utah through Fiberstate, where we continue to work with great confidence and experience daily growth, thanks to God.
In 2024, we launched new locations in Europe.
In 2025, we changed the name of NohaVPS to reflect a broader focus and offer more services to our clients.
In 2026, we are a team of 5 people, where we all contribute and learn every day to offer the best to our clients.
It was difficult at the beginning, but we always believed in what we loved. We may make mistakes and not be perfect, but we will always be grateful to our clients who continue to choose us today.
First time to think about this.. i read some of provider comments specially after ozonti comment back in (2010) wow that 16Years old, and we can kidding together think that they are like 25year old or something close to that,
i think i should watch my tone again, i feel sad if someone think i'm disrespect for him
This all started back in 2010 when I was 15. I was using Nimbuzz (chat app) and running servers for my chat rooms. I got into servers and hosting just to run a Quiz Bot and a Welcome Bot in my chat room
. My interest into web hosting was so I could run my own “anime site” 
. Also I was running forum with 15K-20k users.
Around that time, I met my business partner on Nimbuzz. We use to be rival sort of~ and somehow we end up being friend and use to help each other with server related stuff for personal use (chat rooms). He was already involved in domains and shared hosting. At first, we sold servers to local clients, and by the end of 2010, we launched our first venture selling shared hosting and servers to clients around Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
After that, I took a break for about 1.5 years and I was on a ship for nearly two years, where satellite internet access was extremely slow. I was still helping my business partner from time to time.
Fast forward to the end of 2014 we launched Host4Fun by merging my clients with my business partner’s. In 2015, we officially registered the company.
Me and my business partner both invested money in to the business. In 2016 , we got scammed by a group (two ex-QuadraNet staff), had paid money to purchase hardware and colocation in Los Angeles. Did bank transfer so no "charge back yesterday" or refound
In 2022, I met my business partner in real life for the first time in Nepal. He’s from India, and I’m from Bangladesh.
I also have other business other than hosting. I own a cafeteria/restaurant and also into real estate . My business partner also have few other business (car & bus rental and tour business).
I was born in 1994 and I'll be turning 32 in May
I will be turning 31 in May !
How did you got in hosting as kid, if for example, here u can't start business before 18?
My business partner is older than me, so it was easier to register the business and open a bank account back then.
i just hit 18 Days ago 🙂
Not really something related to businesses, but my brother do all kyc for me for some $$
I bought @VeloxMedia
I really love the passion that this community has. AI or even other forums still have some idea of doing it for money or not so much but passion. But this atleast providers from this I felt a sense of true passion of people doing what they genuinely like.
I genuinely hope that all of your provider's businesses are stable and you all have a great business (even with the messed up ramflation and everything), wishing the best to each and everyone of y'all.
It's great to see this forum still thriving (yes it has its issues) but its still niche and well human with people doing it for the love of the game/passion.
Ozonti I have a quick question but you mention that you have 5 employees. Sorry if I could get it side tracked but how do I work for companies like you and xhost and others who are genuinely passionate. Do you guys accept remote jobs or what are the procedures generally.
I am asking because personally (hopefully it makes sense) I am much more interested in doing work with people who have passion and are fair. Not massive rent seeking companies or companies who are scummy. I had thought about working for such company but didn't find any good path. I'd be interested to know how to work & if you guys look for some degree too or some passion itself as well (if so how do I qualify it in anything other than I guess just chats/being active in here)
I have had thoughts about opening up my own providers as well but I feel like putting the idea in back burner given the massive hardware increases etc. I am just curious if possible we can also have a discussion regarding this as well including the original extremely interesting question by xhosts!
Hello,
we are not currently hiring, but perhaps we will be in the future
We are always looking for people from the same city we are located in, which is Dallas, TX.
I acquired a few hosts a long time ago and managed these as a very badly paid systems administrator also responsible for support.
After this, I invested in datacenters through gaining equity and or providing equipment through lease and or hire purchase options where I was the individual assuming the risk - on behalf of datacenters looking to grow.
My business in regards to the direct niche of hosting is no longer active.
Thanks for sharing your stories @xHosts @ozonti @RIYAD .
All are very interesting and truly inspirational
My journey in this world started back in 2016, while I was interning at a Microsoft Partner company. We shared an office with a hosting provider, and instead of taking breaks or lunch, I used that time to watch and learn how that business worked. I was so interested that we ended up making a deal: he offered me a 50% commission for every client I brought him. Without knowing it, the seed for what came next was planted right there.
By 2020, I decided to take the next step and rented my first reseller account. Demand grew quickly—the second, third, and many more followed. eventually, I started reselling VPS, but that’s when the real challenges began. Manual deployment and initial configuration were eating me alive; I was getting orders in the middle of the night and had to wake up extra early to get everything ready before heading to my day job.
Looking for a way out of that operational burden, I arrived at this forum. I needed automation with WHMCS to scale. Among several offers, I chose one from a member here. I started with a 64GB RAM node and, over time, migrated to many more powerful machines.
2025 was a pivotal year. A colleague from the forum decided to close his company and offered me several of his servers. I didn't hesitate: I used my credit card and bought them, ensuring continuity for several of my clients already hosted there. Shortly after, I made my biggest investment: a high-power server intended for a massive project. However, the world of entrepreneurship has its twists; the client left, and now I have this hardware "beast" ready to be filled again.
In November 2025, I decided to quit my job to dedicate myself fully to this venture, as I also build websites, I am a Microsoft Partner, and I offer services and IT consulting in my country. These past few months have been incredibly tough; when you are used to a monthly salary plus side income, and suddenly you are living only on the side income, the financial hit is substantial. I’m hoping these are just slow months because people are tapped out from the holidays, which is common in my country.
Currently, it’s just me running the show, but I hope to grow enough to offer opportunities to others in the future.
FroHost
In 2017, I had some friends who had started a game hosting provider, mainly geared toward serving their friends. It was mostly just free hosting, nothing serious, but ultimately, it didn't work out because they didn't have the financial stability to continue.
Motivated by their experience, I started a game hosting service (FroHost) with them in 2018, using some of the excess capacity on a VPS. It wasn't very professional at the beginning; it was mostly just free hosting for friends and friends of friends. It eventually grew to over 100 game servers, and around then, we switched to a paid model to afford dedicated servers, licenses, etc.
Eventually, I decided to sell the company. The reasons for this were as follows:
It is extremely difficult to grow in the game server hosting market because there are no communities like LET for game servers. It is mostly just an SEO and word-of-mouth game, both of which are difficult as a new provider.
Advin Servers
In 2020, I decided to start Advin Servers. For some reason, being in the hosting industry was really appealing to me and I was generally bored due to the pandemic. I decided to focus more on virtual private servers instead of game server hosting, since it was a much broader market.
The initial years (2020-2022) were interesting for sure. I only started the company with $100. I was unable to get any loans, and my family was 100% unsupportive of what I was doing. There were a lot of issues with my personal life (family-related) that distracted me from being able to work on the company. It was also a struggle to initially find a niche.
These days, Advin Servers is my full-time job and we have a team of 3 people (including me). In all of our VPS/dedicated server locations, we colocate servers and have a multi-homed network. The company has mostly been self-sufficient and grows slowly, we do not take on loans and intentionally do not expand aggressively.
If you are looking to get into the business, my opinion would be to avoid it unless you can do something truly unique. Advin Servers was unique in the price-to-performance value that was offered, and the locations it was offered in.
I wish you a lot of success and growth!
We definitely need more offers in South America as well.
Honestly I expected you (as advinservers) to be around for much longer. I consider you very prem provider by now, extremely reliable as well. Really interesting story and I have a lot of respect.
I mean, we are approaching 6 years at this point.
I have services with you and, while they are a little pricey compared to most of the other providers I go with, I absolutely consider it money well spent. The fact that you allow Tor exit nodes (with written permission) is something that few providers do, and I give you huge kudos for that!
I had nothing better to do.
https://lowendbox.com/blog/mass-deployment-of-ip-addresses-and-virtual-servers-interview-with-shakib-from-hostcram-llc/
Copy-pasted (old)
It all started back in December 2012, when I built a free mobile only website myself using templates and simple html codes from w3schools. I was a fast learner and ended up making some pretty nice looking and colorful websites in just a few months. Somehow I got connected with people on Facebook through some groups related to creating mobile sites. I was just showing off and found out that people actually liked my flashy colorful websites. People were willing to pay me if I built them similar sites with their name, photo, etc on it.
I was just a teenager back then and couldn’t refuse the opportunity to make some extra pocket money. I started designing websites for whomever was paying. I started advertising on the footer of all the sites that I designed. I was using Facebook as my primary sales point. During that time I meet some people who wanted to know my company name, and I didn’t get to work with them as I didn’t have an actual company.
I got some idea about what should be my next step with what I was doing and started my first IT/Hosting company in 2014. I also started investing in short, meaningful and valuable domains. I ended up having a few domain hosting related businesses just in a year as I couldn’t decide on one name as my permanent business name. I was in search for the one true name that has the potential of becoming everything that I want it to be.
In December 2015, I found that one true name, rebranded all my businesses and redirected all my existing hosting websites to HostCram.com and never looked back.
Fast forwarding to Year 2022, a lot has changed in the past 6 years. I become a full grown man and HostCram has become a company that manages hundreds of IP ranges from all over the world though multiple entity and partner companies. For better understanding, we have managed and announced over 100,000 IPv4 addresses in year 2021. We specialize in providing proxy, email and VPN servers to other companies. We are up on dozens of ISP, Business & Hosting networks. We provide all kinds of complex custom solutions that usually you won’t be able to get from other hosting companies.
Now it's 2026. Trying to improve what I have.
Best of luck with your journey ahead!
I'm old as shit so I've actually had several ventures into the hosting industry, but my first one was kind of not even voluntary.
Somewhere in the mid 90's I was approached by a company that was running a medium sized ISP providing dialup, mail and web to its customers. This was in the 90's, so competition was pretty much non existent and they had a pretty good grip on the market in the entire region. They needed help with running the tech, they had the business side down but had no clue how to run servers or modem pools (yes, it was all dialup over pstn back then) and I had a reputation for being the local IT magician. I don't remember the exact terms of the deal, but I ended up running their Sun Netra boxes and a friend of mine handled the pstn stuff and we were basically left alone to run everything as we saw fit, which allowed us to host our own stuff on the infrastructure which was just awesome.
All was running just fine for a few years until suddenly the bills were not paid anymore. When we inquired about it we found out that the owners had more or less just disappeared, and the company was left running on momentum.
Me and my friend sat down and tried to figure out what to do. This company was the only provider in this community, if it shut down thousands of people would be without internet and small local companies would lose their websites. Both of us and a lot of our friends were running BBS's and irc servers, and we understood what a devastating blow this would be for all of us.
We were technicians, not businessmen, and we had no intention of ever changing that, but the next day we contacted the bank and got a loan and bought the entire business, complete with inventory, hardware, customers and everything. My friends dad had to sign all the papers since we were not old enough to legally run a business or take out that kind of a loan, but eventually we got trough all the paperwork and ended up running the entire thing. I think that was the most nerve wrecking thing I've ever done in my life, I was completely convinced that I would be in debt for life before I had even turned 18.
We struggled like hell for the first year or two, but we got trough it and managed to actually turn that company around big time. I left after about 10 years I think, but my friend stayed and is still there today but only as an employee, he sold the company many years ago. The company now has something like 80 employees, it has pivoted more to being an infrastructure provider with lots of local fiber connections and metro networks but it still has the same name and they still provide ISP services to the local community.
It kind of makes me smile when providers here sometimes try to push "5+ years in business" and stuff like that. No disrespect, in this industry that is actually not bad at all, but my first company is 40+.