I am considering setting up a web hosting business, despite there already being tonnes out there, and the fact that not many people have faith that I will succede, I have decided to go ahead anyway.

I will be starting out by buying a reseller account, as I cannot afford dedicated servers.


Advice On Hosting Plans

I need some advice on the sorts of plans I could offer, I have come up with a few ideas

1) 50mb Disk/1gb monthly transfer - £25 a year

2) 100mb Disk/2gb monthly transfer - £30 a year

3) 200mb Disk/3gb monthly transfer - £35 a year

4) 300mb Disk/5gb monthly transfer - £40 a year

and perhaps some other custom plans with 10gb monthly transfer for £50 a year or something like that.

I would like your comments and suggestions on the above, are they feasable, would YOU buy? Would anyone buy? Could I restructure them, change them, too much for too little? Please tell me what you think.

Also, is pricing in £'s limiting my customers? Will I get more clients if I price in USD $$$??


Online Billing


Advice/Tips on this apreciated, I know there are many out there like modernbill, can you recomend any, are there any half decent FREE ones out there as my budget is quite low?


Getting The Money - Credit Cards

Ok now I need your opinions on good services for taking credit cards, as I live in the UK, (and have a small budget) I need a service that is quite cheap, reliable and will transfer the money to my bank account with no/little fees (or send a cheque).


Customer Support/Helpdesk

Again, just general tips/opinions on helpdesks and any good free ones.


Getting Clients! / Advertising

The all important bit, getting clients.

Tips/Tricks of the trade, tell me everything you know! :D

Advice would be apreciated.



Well I hope you can give me some advice, thanks in advance :)

anyone?

Please?

I need some opinions on the hosting plans!

This has been asked several times here or at least to some fashion. Do a search. This is all part of running a business!! The information is endless and it's there you just have to find it. Good luck with your business.

Originally posted by Craven
I am considering setting up a web hosting business, despite there already being tonnes out there, and the fact that not many people have faith that I will succede, I have decided to go ahead anyway.

--that's fine, the world is abundant.

I will be starting out by buying a reseller account, as I cannot afford dedicated servers.

--good choice. This will give you experience and is a logical first step (or sometimes the only step--many people like just staying resellers :) )

Advice On Hosting Plans

I need some advice on the sorts of plans I could offer, I have come up with a few ideas

1) 50mb Disk/1gb monthly transfer - £25 a year

2) 100mb Disk/2gb monthly transfer - £30 a year

3) 200mb Disk/3gb monthly transfer - £35 a year

4) 300mb Disk/5gb monthly transfer - £40 a year

and perhaps some other custom plans with 10gb monthly transfer for £50 a year or something like that.

I would like your comments and suggestions on the above, are they feasable, would YOU buy? Would anyone buy? Could I restructure them, change them, too much for too little? Please tell me what you think.

Also, is pricing in £'s limiting my customers? Will I get more clients if I price in USD $$$??

--Well, your plans are reasonable
but this depends on your target market, the benefits of hosting with you (reliabilty, support, features, etc.), and your expenses and desired profit margin.
Just remember, as your plans will give most shared hosting clients more than enough Space and Bandwidth--they do not always know how space and bandwidth they really need and will just go by comparisons--and the market is fierce right now(everyone is giving away space and bandwidth like it's going out of style).
You could always offer both prices (pounds and dollars)--again depends on your target market.
Look around, see what's being offered and give your customers a reason to want to go with you.


Online Billing


Advice/Tips on this apreciated, I know there are many out there like modernbill, can you recomend any, are there any half decent FREE ones out there as my budget is quite low?

--Modernbill is great. Ubersmith is nice. Perlbill is good too.
Go to the sites and try them out. Do some searches on this specifically.


Getting The Money - Credit Cards

Ok now I need your opinions on good services for taking credit cards, as I live in the UK, (and have a small budget) I need a service that is quite cheap, reliable and will transfer the money to my bank account with no/little fees (or send a cheque).

--if you are really strapped for cash, you could start with third party payment methods like paypal and 2checkout. If you have a little doe, I recommend getting a merchant account and gateway from someone like modernauthorize (modernbill's partner merchant service) or any authorize.net reseller.


Customer Support/Helpdesk

Again, just general tips/opinions on helpdesks and any good free ones.

--you will want a ticket system, or some type of system to keep track of your trouble tickets (you will get a bunch).
And you will definitely need to have a help desk/ support team to answer all the questions you're going to get--24x7 if you can.
(i.e; Can I change the color of my control panel?
Is the network down, my email isn't working?
What is mysql?)


Getting Clients! / Advertising

The all important bit, getting clients.

Tips/Tricks of the trade, tell me everything you know! :D

Advice would be apreciated.

--Do a search on this one, there is some great info floating around. This is just like any other business.



Well I hope you can give me some advice, thanks in advance :)

--just remember, this is a business like any other business--there is no magic pill to success. In fact, this is highly competitive service oriented business with a need for a high-level of technical expertise, making success in this industry maybe even harder than other industries. It's all possible though, but you will have to put in your dirt. Start small and grow. Decide what you want and figure out the best way for you to get it--otherwise you're just wasting time.

Later--:cool:

Hi there,

Well your hosting plans look fine, but seem a bit small to compete.

If you look at our plans (PLEASE. I'm not trying to spam here, just trying to show the guy a comparison) You'll see that our smallest plan is a little larger than your largest plan.

May customer want more for less. :( In any case, your plan ideas are not too bad actually, and the prices for them seem to be reasonable. It all comes down to the specification allowable under the reseller plan you purchase.

As for limiting yourself.....indeed you are limiting yourself by only offering your plans in £. However, this all depends on your target market. You are also limiting yourself, by only accepting annual payments. Many customers prefer monthly, over annual, because it allows them to host with you, without being tied to you for a year, if in fact they don't like your service.

Getting the money:
It may be a good idea for you to start with PayPal, and then upgrade as you grow. For example, we use PayPal, even now. Our business has grown to the extent that we are looking to ADD (not replace PayPal) a dedicated merchant account, and billing app., but PayPal offers what we need, without much headache.

PayPal Subscriptions can also handle your billing needs.

Customer Support/Help Desk:
Although there are many free ones out there, I have yet to find one that does the work that PerlDesk can do. I don't know if they still have their free version or not, but PerlDesk is definately worth looking into.

Marketing Tips:
This is a huge array of knowledge, that can only come with experience, and practice. You'll soon find what works in some areas, may not work in others. Some general tips though, would be to print up some quality letterhead, and business cards, and market to your local area first. These people are more likely to buy from you, mainly because you're in their area.

It also doesn't hurt to post some reasonable offers in the Hosting Request forum, here at WHT. That puts you directly in front of folks that are already looking for what you offer.

In any case, cahostnet is right. This topic has been discussed before, numerous times. Although I felt I could help get you started on your task, it would be better, and maybe more informative to do a search here on this topic. You will certainly gain more insight, than just my own. :)

Good luck on your search.

Advice on Hosting Plans:
My advice is to offer what you really can, dont oversale bandwidth, and dont sale something stupid like 500GB a month for $2. Be honest with your customers and offer them a real service at a real price, for those that dont like it, let them go with another company that will be closed down in a week and then you will have their business anyway.


Online Billing/Getting the money:
Do you need automation? If you must have automatica account sign-up, etc. then i would go with a Cpanel +Modernbill or a H-sphere solution. But automation is not always the best way to do things, i like to see manual transactions myself.. Your more in control and less chance of fraud.

Get a SSL and setup a secure order form that submits to a server or database separate from your other servers/customers. Use the info to charget he customer and send out a welcome e-mail while setting up their account and your done, who needs automation, blah...

Use a merchant account, they are more secure, more reliable, they will be around longer, and they are more likelly to protect your funds(dont forget the SSL).


Customer Support:
Maybe a ticket system, im not too happy with them. E-mail has worked excellent for us with no problems.. But a ticket system if you want it and at least one e-mail and one secondary e-mail on another network. If the network goes down and your customers cant communicate with you... well you get the idea.. Toll-free only for emergencies MAYBE after you get a good customer base and can justify the use of one.. try kall8.com for this..

Getting Clients:
Be professional of course and word of your company will spread.
Optimize your site for SEO, dont try to target 100 keywords.. try to use just one or two and not the most popular ones.. for example try maybe resellerhosting as opposed to reseller hosting.

Also stay away from any type of advertising thats not targeted, ex. dont buy 100,000 visitors for $49.99, why because most of them visitors will probably be looking for sexual toys for their farm animals and somehow get directed to your site, not only will they loose their focus but they wont buy:) Buy targeted traffic only..

Also post on boards and forums and buy some targeted ad banner space on computer sites, networking sites, etc.. etc.. (within your budget, maybe a $20 ad to start off with or something, but only within your budget and as your budget can support it)


Be sure to get in touch with your local revenue department and ask about a biz license, fee's, and taxes that apply. This will greatly effect you long term, plan ahead and you can save alot of money.. not saying to cheat the system, im just saying play smarter not harder and you will win.

Hope my jabber helps, in truth their is no true solution.. Its kind of like the get rick schemes.. "Want to know how to get rick, here's how" Well if the statement was true i assure you i would not be posting in this forum right now, i would be with some nice babes in my mansion not caring the least bit about reseller hosting.. So what im trying to say is that if one thing worked for everybody, everybody would be doing it... <---in fact thats one problem with becoming a host, everyone does the same thing.. be unique, offer something unique to a unique customer..

If you have the same thing as everyone else your screwed, you can be unique by offering a unique support level, unique pricing structure, add-on services(look for partnerships especially with companies just starting like yourself), and tie-in services.. In otherwords offer hosting for forums especially AND offer multiple forum designs, installation, troubleshooting,etc.. and get a name for yourself and most forum users may eventually come to you..

Hey, thats i good idea...

Again there are two sides of everything, i think paypal looks unprofessional unless offered as a means of convenience.. In other words offer standard C.C., but also paypal for people that prefer it.

Thats only my opinion though, its your business!

thanks for the advice everyone :)

if anyone else wants to comment, especially on the plans, please do :)

25 pounds is a lot to pay for 50 megabytes of space and a gigabyte of bandwidth. Compare that to any web host and you'll probably find it cheaper.

As for advertising (your prices are quite high ) word of mouth works best on an ultra tigth butdget . Offer referall incentives to cusotmers who are allready signed up (not neccessairly money but maybe free hosting).

I dont get it, he was posting prices per year, and I found them to be very cheap, on a annualy basis.. Maybe from a reseller point of view thats expensive, but from my operation of hosting in house, on servers we own and operate, it seems like your all giving accounts away..

His prices are good for the UK. It all depends who you're going to be targetting them at though.