Hello Everyone,


I've been thinking lately, and I started to wonder.


What made you get into the web hosting business?

Now be honest, and let's hear what made everyone get into the industry. Dont be shy, let's hear it.

I went from one bad host to another. Figured I couldn't treat myself any worse.

It started because I could never find a decent host to do exactly what I wanted. Then I realized that I had enough technical expertise to run my own servers. It's been over 4 years, and I've never looked back.
Sam

Something about going through the wash etc etc just got fed up and been doing it ever since.

I got into it as a kid, and it was the only way for me to make any money at all. I surfed around, hosted with a few companies and I thought I could do better than them. I partnered up with a friend at 17 and bought a server ($25/m my half :)). After a few years we upgraded to the bigger better deal, and here I am today :)

i just couldnt afford to pay for all my websites ;)

20 x $15.95 a month!

ack!

Originally posted by G2-Hosting
What made you get into the web hosting business?
Saw a huge market for Multiple Domain Hosting, and set out to tap into that marketspace. I was my first client, with hosting about 20+ domains, under the 1 account, and saving a heap of dollars/mth. :)

Originally posted by LaurenStephens
i just couldnt afford to pay for all my websites ;)

20 x $15.95 a month!

ack!

Agreed. I suspect a lot of businesses do the web development thing and expand to hosting. In our case the expansion became bigger than the original service.

Greetings:

"What made you get into the web hosting business?"

We started business in June 1995 performing network consulting services for local businesses.

Our first Web site (really just a page) was up in October of 1995; and it was then that we found out the power of the Internet.

In November 1995 we were contracted by the largest manufacturer of gas chromatography columns to develop a program to allow the Unix servers connected to their manufacturing ovens to talk with the PC's connected to their local area network.

By August 1996 we developed a reputation locally about having a well rounded understanding of the Internet from a business as well as technology perspective.

A local, but well funded start up, bank contracted us to do some consulting for them in September of that year. They wanted to know whether having an on-line bank would be as good as or better than opening up additional physical branches.

To shorten the story, the bank ended up being our first hosting customer in November 1996.

While the hosting side of the business had a slow start (two customers by December 1996), by the end of 1997 we went pure Internet changing the company name from PMP Solutions to Dynamic Net, Inc. (January 1998).

Since then our revenues have been 100% Internet related.

Lastly, We Manage Servers was started in 2000 due to the demand from NTT/Verio (specially) and other data centers to be able to provide managed services but lacking the in-house staff to do it themselves.

Thank you.

My enterprise started as a social experiment of sorts.

I wanted more control over my hosting (not that my current host was bad, I just wanted to install some services and test some programs that wouldn't be reasonable with most hosts), but didn't have any sort of need for my own dedicated server or colocation. So, I hunted down some people to share the server with and we split things for a few months. Then, some additional people wanted to try things out, so I purchased my 2nd server. Things sort of snowballed from there on out.

My initial goal was just to provide minimal support, as I was just one man without the ability to provide 24/7 coverage. Well, eventually people started telling me how I was doing such an excellent job for non-24/7 coverage and that I should open up my own hosting business. I had grown to around 450 domains hosted at this point (mostly small personal sites), and everyone had been satisfied thus far, so I decided it was a worthwhile business opportunity to get into.

I had been looking to open up a company to develop software, and this sort of fit in with where I wanted to head with the company. It would provide a stable revenue basis to support my development efforts while giving me a good client base to "spread the good word" about the company. After hiring staff and bring things up to the level of a full, 24/7 web host, A Small Orange opened up in March of this year and things have been going great so far. I've received so many compliments from my customers so far and business couldn't be better. We've been growing steadily since open and now host 750 domains in just 5 weeks of being open. One of our servers had a rocky night last night, but other than that it's been clear sailing. We host everything from small personal sites up to large 150-members-at-a-time forums.

I believe the emphasis on customer experience has been our key to success. I've always designed things with the customer in mind so that working with our services is as easy as possible. I also take the stance that a host is a partner in the development of any site, not a tool. To that end, we work to grow with customerss, not against them. We've had a lot of customers come to us saying "Our current host is saying we're using too much resources". To me, that's rediculous. I believe our emphasis on the customer and their own success is the key to our success. WIth that attitude, who knows how far we can go :)

The whole webhosting business is nothing but a big front to give me the opportunity to play with servers for a living. What a scam! ;)



Oh, and because the hosting experiences I had had personally prior weren't that great. Figured I could do it better. Plus I really enjoy it, even the 'difficult' customers and such.

Well... It all started when i was playing on a CS game server... and it SUCKED... so i always wanted to make my own server company... so 2 months later.. i started up System Effectz Hosting Gaming Servers..

I did webhosting,game hosting,VoIP It was ok for a while.. then all these other game server companys where being made by little kids and they sold servers for Low Low price's but bad support/Service's uptime was horrible..


Now i just stick to webhosting :)

*moving to running a webhosting business*

Originally posted by SoftWareRevue
I went from one bad host to another. Figured I couldn't treat myself any worse.

Ditto, but im getting fed up with me calling me at 3am :D

Simple story really. Years ago had a site and was hosted with a entertainment network. They wanted to dedicate a division towards a certain genre and my company was born as a side project to my regular job with a big dot com. It was originally ad revenue based until all the ad companies started not paying anymore and the big dot com that I was working for went down the tubes.

Restructured the business model and went into the paid hosting arena. Been there ever since.

The business started in 1999 when I became self-employed with the hopes of providing PC and network services for small business. I got into software development later that year when customers started asking for software solutions - I had programmed before but never for a living. The pc and networking services never gained momentum but software development started paying the bills. I then got a reseller account to host my site and the site of a former employer.

In January 2001 I began doing backend and database development as a subcontractor for a growing web design firm. This turned out to be a great partnership as they take care of the client and UI and I do backend and hosting.

We (notice that I'm not alone anymore) have since started hosting more and more sites and now have several servers.

I work by day doing desktop support as a contractor. I rather dislike it and have been overqualified for it for years. Unfortunately between the bad job market and contracting firms who don't know what 90% of the stuff on my resume' is to know what I am qualified to do, it's hard to get out of this desktop support rut.

Then one day I realized "Hey, I've been paying for this server to play with... I could make some money with that plus provide a good resume' builder". So I started hosting. As is evident to anyone who might visit my site, I was not/am not in it for the money or to make it big, just something to do on the side to earn a couple extra bucks to help pay for the server and keep my skills sharp since I'm not using them at my day job.

I have recently become completely fed up with the job market and contracting though, and am preparing to take hosting more seriously. Working on providing better packages that will attract more customers, a little advertising, and of course a much more professional looking website is in the works (and will hopefully be up by the end of next week if not sooner).

I really, really liked computers. Then I got into web design, which led me to internet technologies, which led to me servers, which led me to web hosting. :)

Regards,
Waylon

Decided that i needed something to go withe the design services i offered at the time and i needed a host for myself.

Like everyone else is saying, I wasn't happy with the way my host was conducting their services and I knew I could do it better. At that time I was a Sr. Network Engineer with FOX TV with 17 years of LAN, WAN and server experience.

I was also intrigued by the residual income.

I left my job, bought my own Server and colo'd it with a friend who had just opened a small data center in LA. It was a slow start, but grew steadily. Once I started focusing our efforts toward colocation, thats when we really started doing well. That was almost 2 years ago. We have been expanding ever since and just opened a new, much larger data center in LA.

-R

I got started because I was also sick of looking for and dealing with other hosts. Starting in web-design, it also gives me the opportunity to keep all clients in-house. By doing that, whenever they want something else, or a change of the website, they are more abt to ask you since they are already activly dealing with you!

I had a rather large site using around 100GB's of bandwidth with a very active forum, and was going to split a dedicated server with some friends. Then I thought "Wait a minute, why dont I just start my own hosting company?". I had years of hosting experiece, and hated most hosts out there. It has been a long road, but worth it in the end. I have been inspired by Dot5 to do the exact opposite of everything they did! :D

At first it was only a project for fun but then I really enjoyed it. And I'm still running, it's been 6 months (soon 8) and it'll be running for a long time, that I can assure.

Thank you.