I'm curious as to how my rates are. Im just targeting the average client who wants a good host, not necessarily the best (if there is such a thing), but one who just wants a solid server and and a nice customer support who gets back to 'em within a few hours.

Anyhow, below are my plans they included the usual linux stuff but more db's than most hosts. I did this becuase tbh im on a resller acount that allows unlimited db's and i don't see why i shouldnt. Id make the greatest if i sold all of the smallest packages and it just decreases as the packages get bigger. Tell me what you think and what i should change. This, btw, is not an ad as i dont even have the site up yet! Im just getting this planned now to try and keep things smooth later.

Plan 1: (smallest) -- $2.99/mo

- Diskspace: 100 MB
- Xfer: 2 GB
- Subdomains: Unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 5
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 5
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 2: (small) -- $6.99/mo

- Diskspace: 225 MB
- Xfer: 6 GB
- Subdomains: Unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 10
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 10
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 3: (medium) -- $9.99/mo

- Diskspace: 450 MB
- Xfer: 10 GB
- Subdomains: unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 15
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 30
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 4: (Large) -- $15.99/mo

- Diskspace: 750 MB
- Xfer: 15 GB
- Subdomains: unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 20
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 50
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

BTW i was curious as to what size packages you guys sell the most, please!

They lack in space a little.

Hope this helps. :)

i guess they lack in space if you're comparing them to the other WHT type offers,

in the real world I think $3 for 100 MB, 5 MySQL etc aint bad. :)

with the right marketing, those rates could attract many clients.

Atheist, just make sure you're price works for you and you're business plan. It's very hard to raise your prices after they are set.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=130367

Heard some bad news :(

ankit, that thread is really not related to this thread, shouldnt post it.

Athesit, your rates are pretty good. Competitive if you ask me. Just be careful not to oversell your system.

I wont, thanks for the imput hosts works. I'm suprised so many people said low space, i thought i was being pretty generous with that. I always thought about dorpping the xfer ont he small acount, what do you guys think?

Also ankit im glad you posted that link, i hadnt seen that and now i can set my name right!

Your prices are only as good as your business plan dictates. I see tons of hosts try to compare pricing, etc. These are the same hosts that either go out of business or drastically increase prices on their current client base.
I hope these prices were worked into some sort of business plan, or fiscal model.

The plans and prices look very competitive to me. Comparing to WHT's offer, none of us has good offer.

I don't think the disk place is too small, I would say it fits into the plans.

Just to make sure your calculation works out for the monthly dedicated server charge, support, and other expences.

Originally posted by Atheist
Also ankit im glad you posted that link, i hadnt seen that and now i can set my name right!

Yep, it's not fair to only hear one side of the story :)

Yup, I've got that all planed out cyber. My current structure will leave me with excess diskspace even if i sell all my BW so i can sell more as needed. I'm leaving a few hundred MB, i thought that was best.

I'm starting out on a resller to get my feet wet and becuase its more cost practical. I've got all other figures worked out :)

Now that I've got my plans pretty much ironed out (i might make some adjustments to the space, extra 25 mb all around) i was curious, how specificly do you suggest i market this? Meaning, how best should i get my plans out. I dont want to jump into this price war, but aside from dropping tons into a advertising company online what is there? I have alloted money for this, just not sure where to put it :) Any suggestions gretly appreciated

Ok I am going to say this and I know many people will bitch me out about it but this is the way I see it...

Your prices are way to low... $2.99 a month for the smallest package, where is the money to be made after credit card fees (figure 30 cents), bandwidth (25 cents), and then time to support the client if they need help. I take it (not sure, didn't look it up) you are not using an 800 number, as that would take even more money away if the client calls for help. Is $2/mo really worth it, especially if the client needs support even if its only once a month?

Just my 2 cents, take it for what its worth
Ryan

Your prices seem a little low for the smallest plans. In fact, you seem to be riding it quite close to the bone all across the board.

Keeping in mind that I have no idea what your costs are: when doing overall calculations for pricing / profitability, have you baked in the cost of your own salary? A lot of independent businesspeople forget that one, not just web hosts.

The package that I sell the most of has:

125 MB disk space
11 GB bandwidth
10 subdomains / pointed domains
10 parked domains

Essentially, Scribehost's "Single" package.

Here's the way I see it, and this is partially opinion:

More people who sign up for the smallest accounts need a little bit more support, a little bit more attention. As they learn, they may often upgrade to plans that give them more bells and whistles. By this time, they submit fewer support tickets, because (if your site has good documentation) they know how to find answers for themselves, ask questions in the support forum, and so forth. The people who go for the largest accounts often need more attention not because they don't know what they're doing, but because they need more changes and are a little more likely to use the disk space and bandwidth. The folks in the middle are just as likely to use half of their plan resources as use all of them, and so have a little bit of breathing space from month to month. I can't forget that they're there - in fact I send them emails every so often asking how things are going, how their account is running, do they have any questions - but I generally hear from them less.

Wow. Okay, that rambled.

Here's another shot:

If I were to plot out the average support time spent related to the size of the hosting accounts, the two-line graph would kind of resemble the monument to the USS Arizona: slight upswing at ends, with a dip downward in the middle. Kind of like an upside-down speed bump. Does that help?

...and now that I've given away all my secrets except for my blood type and clothing size, I'm off to score a late breakfast :D

Thanks so much guys! I was just trying to make my prices close to some of the more popular webhosts that i see around here.

After hearing what you guys have said, I think that I'll bump my plans up 1 dollar or so and mess with disk space, just becuase of the fact that I'll be supporting more clients etc. I posted updated packages below, do they seem to be more on the ball? To me, they almost seem high just becuase there are a lot of other popular hosts doing it for less. BTW I dont plan on having more than 15 clients for a while so support should be minimal :)

Plan 1: (smallest) -- $3.99/mo

- Diskspace: 125 MB
- Xfer: 2 GB
- Subdomains: Unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 5
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 5
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 2: (small) -- $7.99/mo

- Diskspace: 250 MB
- Xfer: 6 GB
- Subdomains: Unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 10
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 10
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 3: (medium) -- $10.99/mo

- Diskspace: 500 MB
- Xfer: 10 GB
- Subdomains: unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 15
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 30
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 4: (Large) -- $16.99/mo

- Diskspace: 750 MB
- Xfer: 15 GB
- Subdomains: unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 20
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 50
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

I would make your cheapest plan $6.95/month

If someone isn`t even willing to spend a lousy 6 bucks per month for their site they aren`t even worth keeping as a customer in the first place.

I know i wouldn`t work for anyone whose only paying me 3 bucks, no matter how small a package they need. No way. :stickout:

Well the thing is though I want to catter to people of varrying sizes. I don't think $6 for 2 gb of xfer is a good rate and i do want a nice small plan like that. What do you others think about his idea?

If all you're doing is comparing your prices to hosts that you see on WHT, you may be shorting yourself a tad. WHT is a very small section of the web hosting world. There are probably more lurkers here than active posters.

Figure out what your costs are, figure your margin for profitability, and base your prices on that. You may use other hosts as a barometer to see if you're charging far more than the market will bear, but I wouldn't use active WHT posters as a representative sampling of the entire hosting industry.

In the end, though, if you decide that you can live with it, use whatever prices you deem appropriate. Just remember that you're not thinking only for next week, but next month, next quarter, next year.

That's the best advice (that living_media gave). And replying to the 6.95/month for the smallest plan - as a customer (I know right, I have no business here, but I like to look) - I think the pricing for that plan is right on target. I wouldn't pay mor than 5/month for those specs.

Who are you marketing too?
I market to local businesses and my smallest package is $14.95 for 50 MB space and 2 GB of bandwidth and not a single client has a problem paying it. The extra $10/mo is worth it to them since they know I can be reached 24/7 about any problems they have.

I am not sure you understand how much resources DB's can use. You would be better served in my opinion offering more bandwidth than Db's. You have to realize that if your database consumption starts overwhelming your server you are going to have problems that affect all your customers and your host customers. Should this become a problem, you will have to part with that customer or customers whose Databases are consumimg most of the server's resources. You host could also ask you to leave because of your and/or your clients consumption.

I think your bandwidth should increase and your prices should decrease. A good rule of thumb to follow would be the pricing of your host. Afterall you choose them for a reason . . .

Based on the way you priced plans I would imagine you dont have much diskspace or bandwidth in your reseller plan. Thats not good.

Based on the way you priced plans I would imagine you dont have much diskspace or bandwidth in your reseller plan. Thats not good.

I'm not sure how that is evident, I feel that i have adequet BW and disk space to tell you the truth. If i need more, I'll buy more. I will lower the DB #'s, though.

I think the pricing for that plan is right on target.

How about my other plans? Everything looking good?

Who are you marketing too?

The reason im starting this whole thing is to host the clients i do webdev for. Right now I've got them ona couple of hosts as some already had hosts etc and I'm sick and tired of the poor service. If i host 'em myself, i figure, that problem will be resolved.

I also hope to get other clients from the inet who need their site hosted for a decent price with good service. I'm not trying to get those clients who want a ton for next to nothing, and I'm also not trying to get clients who need the absolulet best out there. While i'll provide great service, I think that there are others for the very hard to take care of sites.

With updated DB's, it will look like

Plan 1: (smallest) -- $3.99/mo

- Diskspace: 125 MB
- Xfer: 2 GB
- Subdomains: Unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 1
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 5
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 2: (small) -- $7.99/mo

- Diskspace: 250 MB
- Xfer: 6 GB
- Subdomains: Unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 3
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 10
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 3: (medium) -- $10.99/mo

- Diskspace: 500 MB
- Xfer: 10 GB
- Subdomains: unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 5
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 30
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited

Plan 4: (Large) -- $16.99/mo

- Diskspace: 750 MB
- Xfer: 15 GB
- Subdomains: unlimited
- MySQL DB's: 7
- Email Aliases: unlimited
- Email Auto Responders: Unlimited
- Email Acounts: 50
- FTP Acounts: Unlimited


Any other problems/thigns i should change?

Atheist,

Good luck in your new venture. You are definitly targeting a specific market and for them your pricing might work. One thing to remember is the market you are going after only looks at price and this could be a problem if soemone decides to undercut you.

Instead of focusing so much on price why don't you try to make hosting with your company more of a value with good tech support and customer service? To do that you will have to charge more but you will find you have a more loyal costumer. I don't want to discourage you, I think you have done a good job thinking this out and have come here asking for advice.

Just my two cents worth.

Dapon,

I know that in some cases I'll be undercut, but i do plan to provide excellent customer service and support (already completed a my customer service scripts etc) and hopefully can get some WOM (word of mouth) advertising going :) I've always tried my best to do good work, and this will be no exception. The inet has many variables that i cant control but I will always do my best to manage the ones I can and for this reason I think my venture will do pretty well. As I've said before, I'm not trying to become massive. I'm not going to try and make this my livlyhood, if i were my rates would defiantly be higher as I'd need support staff etc. I hope that clears things up, thanks for the feedback!