This is to the people who are running webhosting businesses on there own.
I just want to know, how do you cope. Do you have a lot of clients (how many?) if so, they must keep on contacting you for support, so it can be more than just a full time job.

So I want to know, if you run it on your own, do you get any time to do other stuff. I'm not talking about just going out with friends, cause you can do that anytime, but i'm talking about HOLIDAYS. What do you do when you want to go on holiday? Do you just abandon you biz, leaving a message with your clients, or do you get a temp to cover for you while your away. Or do you alternatively just never go on holiday:(

Again, this is to people who are running webhosting businesses on there own, but i would like to hear from people who work with partners (how it is, past experiences etc) ....

I am not familiar with this word 'holiday' ? ;)

Seriously if you're out to do it on your own you have to accept that its a huge responsibility.

Basically, unless you don't give a stuff about your customers, or you're very lucky to have a trusted and technically adept friend, you need to accept that it will rule your life until you get to the point where you can take on staff to cover you.

Anyone that sets up in business without this mindset is setting themselves up for a lot of irate customers.

A hosting company's not just for christmas . . . . .

When you run your own service business and you have customers that need you... Well.. There is no such thing as a 'holiday'. You take the responsibility when you run a business that there is no free time for a life, let alone a vacation.

You primary role is 100% for your customers. You come second.

Having a holiday when you are a sole proprietor isn't unfeasible. As long as you have a laptop and mobile, you can still offer the same level of tech support when you're lazing around on waikiki beach :D

Originally posted by Locutus
Having a holiday when you are a sole proprietor isn't unfeasible. As long as you have a laptop and mobile, you can still offer the same level of tech support when you're lazing around on waikiki beach :D

Murphys Law clearly states that your servers will crash during the 5+ hour flight to waikiki ! ;)

Damn, never thought of that. Better cancel my holiday then :D

Originally posted by flatron
A hosting company's not just for christmas . . . . .

Excellent point. It saddens me how many people start their own "hosting company" without any planning at all. Some don't even register as a proper business, pay taxes, pay for an accountant, etc..

There are too many cowboy's in the hosting industry at the moment, selling at dumping prices. Almost every other day I see a new host offering unlimited everything for 20 bucks a year. Obviously these "hosts" aren't going to be able to provide a viable service, or even stay in business for very long.

I run it on my own, and I do not have huge problems. My servers didnt crash during my 2 hour flight last weekend, granted its not 5 hours. Acually my servers are past the two months uptime. I have taken 2 trips, one to michigan and one two New York which was last weekend. I cope pretty fine, it is all how you cover yourself. A laptop is very important, you can work where ever you need to. Then with daily checking of email, and a pager system for when your servers go down your are pretty much set. Of course is it a vacation when you work? Also a good datacenter is important. They must beable to be there 24/7 so if you cant reach your server phisically, you can have them go to it and fix the problem.

lol, if I was to fly to Hawaii, it would take me 15+ hours!! Don't think I can stay away from my computer for that long :)

If you are just starting out, then reselling would be the best option. You don't have the hassle of monitoring/fixing your server all the time. In the end, it gives you more time to dedicate to providing support for your customers - one of the advantages of being a reseller over owning your own server.

As a reseller, all that's required is a sound business plan, a wealth of knowledge in this field (debatable), a decent connection and a lot of munchies :D

Originally posted by remarkable
When you run your own service business and you have customers that need you... Well.. There is no such thing as a 'holiday'. You take the responsibility when you run a business that there is no free time for a life, let alone a vacation.

You primary role is 100% for your customers. You come second.

And now I can agree with you. :D

Also a laptop and a nice little cell phone that gives it internet anywhere you go is very nice. They're coming out with cell phones that can give you 56K too, not the 8500bps-12000bps stuff that's out right now.

Originally posted by Get-Hosted.com


And now I can agree with you. :D

Doh.. your to funny! :laugh:

p.s. if you don't get this see.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=187450

I agree with Locutus. I've never had a problem getting away for a week or two, I just keep my laptop and mobile phone handy. My pager is always on as well, which gets used more than the mobile. If my servers are playing up I can remote administer them without much effort, I've not had any occasions where the server needed physical intervention... Linux rules!!

Carting around a laptop, mobile and pager doesn't strike me as much of a holiday !

"Daddy, daddy can we go on the big dipper !"
"Yep, hang on just got to answer this mail, contact the datacenter and get a security guard to look after me laptop and I'm all yours love"

Not quite the same is it ;)

When the guy said holiday I took it at face value - a total break from your responsibilities for a week or two, when you're a one man band thats just not feasible.

/me tootles off to google to do some research on cloning . . . .

yeah, I see your point as well ;)

As a one man show, you simply can't do this, unless you're lucky enough to have clients who don't email you for support.

Suppose you could always setup LOTS of message rules to deal with every enquiry you can think of and just make sure the client enters the correct subject header :D

Originally posted by Locutus
lol, if I was to fly to Hawaii, it would take me 15+ hours!! Don't think I can stay away from my computer for that long

It's a nice thing to have more than one person you trust looking out for tech support. A friend of mine went to Lima, Peru and left me in charge of all the tech support. I took a month-long vacation in September and so we just flip-flop when we go on vacation.

The problem is finding someone knowlegeable enough to do it. Quite hard for new starts :)

I actually started that way. Basically just handling software support while getting familiar with the Webhosting end of it gave me a lot of knowledge of everything. If you can find some teenagers with enough commitment and responsibility to do the job (they're rare, I'll admit), then you've got free help.

Oh my gawd..... No, you missunderstood me. My day is spent out with the family enjoying the holiday, the mobile is used in emergencies (rarely in my case) and the laptop stays in the villa under the bed. At night I'll login for half an hour to check my mail and fix any problems. I'm a computer geek anyway, so I'd do this either way :-)

If you run a tight ship and know your system well, you can normaly leave it well alone without any worries for a few weeks or more. Especialy Linux!

Lee.

Originally posted by flatron
Carting around a laptop, mobile and pager doesn't strike me as much of a holiday !

"Daddy, daddy can we go on the big dipper !"
"Yep, hang on just got to answer this mail, contact the datacenter and get a security guard to look after me laptop and I'm all yours love"

Not quite the same is it ;)

When the guy said holiday I took it at face value - a total break from your responsibilities for a week or two, when you're a one man band thats just not feasible.

/me tootles off to google to do some research on cloning . . . .

Yup what you say sounds pretty workable - my problem is that along with hosthing I design/develop sites too. It's THESE people that are constantly on the phone rather than the hosting only customers.

I recently moved house and was out of touch for 2 days - you'd think I shipped off to the moon ! For the next couple of weeks I kept getting calls " We thought you'd gone out of business " and this was after mailing each of them telling them what was gonna happen.

Hosts have it easy ;)

I agree with your design issue. We stoppd doing design work for a while as it was not profitable, when you took into consideration the calls we got. We tried to charge for the call support but our clients just weren't having it, so we disconnected our business phone and issued a mobile phone number instead - this works very well btw ;-) When they know they are paying mobile rates , they keep it quick and to the point.

We are going to move back into web design again, in fact we are pushing this side of the business in Croydon on Sunday. So erm' did you have any luck finding information on cloning ? :-)



Originally posted by flatron
Yup what you say sounds pretty workable - my problem is that along with hosthing I design/develop sites too. It's THESE people that are constantly on the phone rather than the hosting only customers.

I recently moved house and was out of touch for 2 days - you'd think I shipped off to the moon ! For the next couple of weeks I kept getting calls " We thought you'd gone out of business " and this was after mailing each of them telling them what was gonna happen.

Hosts have it easy ;)

Maybe we could start a holiday support group. I'll watch yours if you watch mine kind of thing.

Feasible? I doubt it.

But I dream nevertheless.....

Yup - sounds good to me, if all my competitors could please give me their admin passwords whilst they're away I'm SURE nothing will happen to your systems :bomb:

The only person I'd trust to leave in charge would be my missus - unfortunately she insists on coming on holiday with me for some reason . . . . .

Yeah, I hear ya -- I'm somehow a little reluctant to give admin passwords, client information, etc etc etc to anyone, but ESPECIALLY my fellow competitors!! :eek2:

Hence my statement that I "dream."

:smokin:

I was wondering about what if i do if I was to go on vacation. the support part will be handle by friends but the sign up part.. Hmmm Also I been wanting to ask this. How do you access the net with the laptop when you're out of country? With the mobile phone or something? Let me know Thanks!

a funny thing happened to me a while ago...

I received from an email from one of my hosts and his signiture said:

His Name: CEO
Hostingcompanyname.com


Later on when I emailed the tech support department...

and I got an email from the same guy and the signiture said:

His Name: Tech Support
Hostingcompanyname.com


So if you run a company on your own - try to make the departments look real :)

Originally posted by MadCool
I was wondering about what if i do if I was to go on vacation. the support part will be handle by friends but the sign up part.. Hmmm Also I been wanting to ask this. How do you access the net with the laptop when you're out of country? With the mobile phone or something? Let me know Thanks!

I just got myself the Compaq iPAQ 3630 with the GSM module and running Windows Pocket OS :D
This makes it possible to me to do ANYTHING, ANYTIME and ANYWHERE in case of signups and server maintenance. The good thing is that i am ALWAYS online without paying a penny. It just costs me money in case of transfers like email, messenger, etc.
I wonder if there's any version of SSH for these type of PDA's? :confused:

I've thought about using my sister, but she talks WAY too much and thinks computers can only be used for Web surfing and IM. :)

And besides, she insists on coming with us during the holidays.

(This is my 100th post.)

OT, I know, but is windows pocket OS a new name for wince, or is it a different OS?

Anyway, hope you never have to leave the GSM network.

Here in the US, I used to have an iPAQ with the sierra aircard. Got supposedly 19.6kbps (only 14.4kbps actually), on the cdpd network here. It didn't work well through buildings (not as well as my cdma phone), and the coverage isn't that great. But it was neat to be able to surf the web while out. Goamerica only charges $59.99 a month for unlimited access.

My roommate claimed that he would get a headache when the aircard was active and in the same room as him.

Unfortunately I had to turn the unit back in to the R&D company I was working for, as I just had it for a distributed crew interface that I was working on.

Originally posted by bitserve
OT, I know, but is windows pocket OS a new name for wince, or is it a different OS?

In the eyes of many people, Windiows CE was a failure, and it never really got off the ground. The pocket PC is a totally new concept, written from the ground up.

Originally posted by bitserve
OT, I know, but is windows pocket OS a new name for wince, or is it a different OS?

Anyway, hope you never have to leave the GSM network.

Here in the US, I used to have an iPAQ with the sierra aircard. Got supposedly 19.6kbps (only 14.4kbps actually), on the cdpd network here. It didn't work well through buildings (not as well as my cdma phone), and the coverage isn't that great. But it was neat to be able to surf the web while out. Goamerica only charges $59.99 a month for unlimited access.

My roommate claimed that he would get a headache when the aircard was active and in the same room as him.

Unfortunately I had to turn the unit back in to the R&D company I was working for, as I just had it for a distributed crew interface that I was working on.

I have this little lovely thingy with the GSM-900 module which only supports up to 9600bps, V42, MNP4, MNP5 and RLP, Fax (I and II) and V100. :mad:
I wish i could buy a GSM card which supports GSPR and is much faster but i am afraid of the price. I paid around $250 only for the bloody GSM card. :angry: :angry:

Originally posted by microsol


I just got myself the Compaq iPAQ 3630 with the GSM module and running Windows Pocket OS :D
This makes it possible to me to do ANYTHING, ANYTIME and ANYWHERE in case of signups and server maintenance. The good thing is that i am ALWAYS online without paying a penny. It just costs me money in case of transfers like email, messenger, etc.
I wonder if there's any version of SSH for these type of PDA's? :confused:

Is the compaq ipaq 3630 able to surf the web? If it can't how would you process signups? How much is the monthly fee? I was looking for a good PDA that could check emails. And also would it work out of country? Thanks for the info.

Originally posted by MadCool


Is the compaq ipaq 3630 able to surf the web? If it can't how would you process signups? How much is the monthly fee? I was looking for a good PDA that could check emails. And also would it work out of country? Thanks for the info.

Be prepared to spend $1000 for this thingy (at least that's what i paid). :D
It comes with Excel, Word, Outlook, IE, Windows Media and other stuff. Just as your normal PC or Laptop, but supports handwriting recognition. Check it here. (http://www.smb.compaq.com/dstore/html/demo.html) The only problem is that i can't find SSH for this OS.
Monthly fee? Depends on your country and volume of the transfer.

Originally posted by microsol


Be prepared to spend $1000 for this thingy (at least that's what i paid). :D
It comes with Excel, Word, Outlook, IE, Windows Media and other stuff. Just as your normal PC or Laptop, but supports handwriting recognition. Check it here. (http://www.smb.compaq.com/dstore/html/demo.html) The only problem is that i can't find SSH for this OS.
Monthly fee? Depends on your country and volume of the transfer.

Seems like it's around $600 for the newest model. I'm just curious about the web surfing part. will it be able to surf any website? Like say Webhostingtalk? :) I live in the US so what's the avg monthly fee? Thanks

madcool,

go to goamerica.com, and hope you're in a service area.

It's $59.99/month for unlimited access last i checked.

Originally posted by MadCool


Seems like it's around $600 for the newest model. I'm just curious about the web surfing part. will it be able to surf any website? Like say Webhostingtalk? :) I live in the US so what's the avg monthly fee? Thanks

It's $600 for the iPaq with the expansion pack ONLY!
Then go to shop for a GSM module which fits into this expansion slot. I am not talking about a 56k modem, i am talking about a REAL GSM phone/modem. This will cost you another $250-400.

Yeah, in the US of A, you should get the PCMCIA expansion pack for the iPAQ, which costs extra, but it has a built in battery that will help to power the pccard without draining your main battery. Get over 8 hours of battery life even with the pccard active. The expansion pack costs $150, and doubles the size of the iPAQ.

The iPAQ "pocket pc" costs anywhere from $399-$649 here depending on how much memory you want.

The one I had only had 32MB of memory, and at the time the 64MB were continuously out of stock. Also, I could have swore that the one I had was running WINCE, and not Pocket PC 2002.

You can also get the Sierra Aircard (the CDPD modem) from iPAQ, but I'd recommend purchasing it from your service provider (goamerica in the US). The CDPD modem does cost $300.

It really comes in handy if you need to be online ALL the time. Not that I do, but it was neat when I had it available to me. Could check your email at a stop light. Or if lost, could pull over and pull up mapquest. I guess if you got the two pccard expansion pack, you could put a GPS card in the second slot. And to imagine some people are worried about people using cell phones and driving, imagine surfing the web while driving. But I guess you can surf the web on most cell phones now adays too. :)

Dang at 1000 I think i rather get a laptop instead... How do i connect the laptop to a mobile phone? I know i should get a lan card and a 56k modem. anything else? Thanks for any info.

Originally posted by MadCool
Dang at 1000 I think i rather get a laptop instead... How do i connect the laptop to a mobile phone? I know i should get a lan card and a 56k modem. anything else? Thanks for any info.

The easiest way would be to get a phone which has a IrDA port if your laptop has one.
But i am not shure if i would carry a laptop around. That's where PDA's come into the game, or can you carry around your laptop in your pocket? :D

Well the sierra aircard is just a pcmcia card. You can plug it into your laptop too, if you want.

But like microsol said, the laptop isn't quite as portable and the battery doesn't last as long.

Get the new iBook. It doesn't cost much more than a grand, it has built in fast ethernet and 56k modem on all models, it's extremely light (4.x pounds), has 5 hour batter life, allows you to burn cds and watch dvd movies, and a whole lot more. Hell you can even plug in your new Sony DV digital camcorder and make movies.

http://www.apple.com/ibook/

Has anyone had any luck with an SSH program? Has anyone tried Mocha CE Telnet 1.0? It claims to support SSH1 and runs on WinCE (which is in the same category as Pocket PC on CNet, not sure what compatibility issues there are between the two OSes).

http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10139-100-6979561.html

I'm looking to purchase the 3760 w/ 2-card expansion and the Aircard 510 (comes as a bundle) for $1,080.00 (plus shipping).

What's the difference in the Aircard 300 and 510? Maybe I can get the 300 for less if it's not a big difference.

Has anyone used Sprint as their wireless PDA carrier? I'm with them now for my phone and I'd like to use it for the PDA if they are worth it. GoAmerica's unlimited plan still looks might tempting, but Sprint covers a heck of a lot of the US's major (and not-so-major) areas.

You guys might want to check out a product
by Toshiba called the Libretto. They had
like 500mhz, 32-128 mb ram, 9.0 gig hd and
any form of windows. You could probably find
one on Ebay for like 500 and they are pretty
good little machines! They are about 1/2 of a
regular size laptop...little smaller.

--Brad

allera, I checked out the sprint cdma modem before I ordered the sierra aircard. With the sprint cdma modem, you might as well just buy one of their motorola phones that supports the data connectiviy kit (which turns your cdma phone into a serial modem for a computer). It really no different than using a modem to place a call to earthlink or something over the sprint network.

Although their modem combines the phone and the data connectivity kit into one unit, it also can not function as a regular phone.

It wasn't hard for me to convince our project manager to pick the cdpd service of goamerica over the regular sprint package where you use your air minutes to call an ISP.

Also, there was a benefit of buying your sierra aircard and service directly from goamerica instead of through compaq. If you get it with your iPAQ, compaq won't include the software for installing it on a windows laptop, only onto your iPAQ. Also, they won't be likely to support using it on a laptop. If you get it from goamerica, they include the software for installing it on wince (pocket pc too, i imagine) as well as regular windows.

Of course I haven't tried sprints modem, so you might try it out for 14 days to see if you like it. The difference between the two aircards is that the 300 is the cdpd modem for goamerica and the 510 is the cdma card made for sprint.

The rule is that if your server runs 24 hours a day then you are expected to look after your clients 24hours a day. Would like to go to a webhost where the server is up 16 hours a day. I'm sure no. The same applies to support, billing etc....
You have to be there at all times. Never keep a customer waiting.


Have a great day :)

regards
Amar

1 hour response time :)

Also, people if you want a laptop there is only one obvious choice, DELL :)

Any reason why you said DELL? I was tempted by Circuit City's support: "If we can't fix your computer, we'll give you one for free!"