What are some realistic growth projections in terms of signups per day for a brand new host? Established?

Anyone care to share some numbers?

I think it would be a hard one to actually put any numbers on. It depends on too many factors like site design, advertising, brand awareness, pricing, other services offered and much much more.

New signups could range from 1 a month to 1 an hour or more or less.

Damn.... I want 1 an hour. Lol.

There are obviously lots of variables to consider. I was just wondering if anyone could post some numbers based on thier experience.

I used to work for a hosting provider that had queues on thier sales line. The sales people would register 30 sales a day sometimes.

It really depends on your business plan. How you advertise your business is very crucial. Well in our case, when we started out, we used ppc programs such as overture to generate sales. It worked fine, but it was expensive. We ended up spending around $100 for each new customer. We would get 2 or 3 sales per day, but we quickly exhausted our intial startup allocation for advertising.We also invested in seo. After 3 months we started to get a sale a week from seo. Growth was very slow for another 3 months, but we were lucky to achieve good rankings eventually and sales increase dramatically. As much as I like doing business online, I do believe that it's easier to see results when you go after your local market. They are willing to pay more and there is less competition. There are about 3 hosting companies in my town that only do business locally. Our hosting is strictly internet based, but the largest local host in my town only has about 200 customers. But they charge $200-$300/month for managing and hosting business web sites.

I agree with the overall vibe here, it really just depends on a lot of things. The best thing to watch out for though is make sure you don't grow so quickly that you're not ready to handle the workload. :)

silverfreak i think you should put it this way, make sure you grow quickly and to handle the workload you can employ people, servers and do the necessary expenditure to facilitate the growth.

It's not that easy though Yaser. I have seen many companies get big and fail on support and server issues. They just get to a point where everything starts to crumble. I could name a few companies but wont do right now.

Quick growth isnt as easy as just adding staff and servers and money.

I understand Stormhost, i agree as well but then thats what we are in for right? quick growth, we should have this in our business plan how we will deal with the growth and how not to deal with the growth, nothing is easy thats for sure :) but carefull planning and adapting to changes is name of the game :)

I think a poll should be started on if you prefer quick, slow or steady growth. Might be an interesting topic to discuss if it hasnt been already.

ohk ill start one :)

Originally posted by chadm
What are some realistic growth projections in terms of signups per day for a brand new host? Established?

Anyone care to share some numbers?

With that little information supplied it's impossible to give any accurate predictions.

It's hard enough when all variables are considered to predict the growth that will be experienced, so without any other information, it's even harder ;)

Originally posted by Stormhosts
New signups could range from 1 a month to 1 an hour or more or less.


Or a few dozen an hour ;)

Originally posted by HRTimothy
Or a few dozen an hour ;)

.....HostRocket..... It must be fun :) 24 (a few dozen?) x 24 (houres a day).... 576..... 576 x 30.....17,280......17,280 x 12....207,360.....:eek: There's some growth projection for ya.

few dozen an hour is nothing...There are companies that get several thousand signups every day...It all depends on how much you spend on marketing..You will need spend a lot of money to earn a lot of money...

Well some addition :P spend enough to get Optimum :D

Originally posted by BlueCapacity
.....HostRocket..... It must be fun :) 24 (a few dozen?) x 24 (houres a day).... 576..... 576 x 30.....17,280......17,280 x 12....207,360.....:eek: There's some growth projection for ya. Granted, HostRocket has been in existence for 4 years now, but even so, you do realize that their customer base is much, much closer to the monthly figure you calculated than the yearly one, don't you?

Originally posted by ForumsAddict
few dozen an hour is nothing...There are companies that get several thousand signups every day...It all depends on how much you spend on marketing..You will need spend a lot of money to earn a lot of money... Just out of curiosity, can you list at least one host you know of that receives several thousand signups a day? You're talking about literally a billion signups a year at that rate. Even CIHost, one of the industry "big boys" in terms of total customers, receives at most 3,000 signups per week if I remember correctly (I will see if I can locate the interview in which this figure was given). I do agree with your last point, ForumsAddict, that you will need to spend a lot of money if you expect to receive massive signups.

To answer the original posters question, a realistic growth projection for a brand new host could be anywhere from a handful of new clients a week to 100+, but this depends on many factors including financial backing, exposure, the price point of your packages, etc. You can't go into this industry with the mentality that you will become a major player overnight or you will be crushed by the competition in no time.

Hmm, I don't think so...

You say you get a few dozen per hour? Ok Let's say you get 2 dozen signups per hour (2x12=24 signups per hour).

24 signups (hr) x 24 hours x 365 days = 210,240 web hosting accounts.

IPowerweb is the top #3 biggest host in the world and they just recently reach that milestone. I think someone is exaggerating a bit ;)

Originally posted by HRTimothy
Or a few dozen an hour ;)


To the guy who said he knows hosts that get's thousands of signups per day. That's simply a lie.. unless he was talking about free hosting.

1000 signups per day x 365 days = 365,000 accounts per year.
The world's biggest HOST has around that many. You know how many web hosts they've had to acquire and how long they've been in business to have that much. If there is any truth that that statement, they would have by now... 365k x 4 years = 1.46 million web hosting accounts.

I've heard that 1&1 get 2500 signups per day but DO realize that they were GIVING away free web hosting accounts. There are many free hosts who get hundreds of signups daily... But then again its FREE>


Remember the figures stated above are not 100% accurate but they are meant to be used as an indication only.
:rolleyes:

and out of those freesignups they have to filter out spammers, fraudsters and people who perform illegal activities online. Its not easy when you are giving free hosting, but then they advertise on your website etc etc and recover their money. You will have to spend huge amounts of money if you want to get 100s of signups in weeks, or if you dont have sufficient funds you will have to select very carefully where you advertise, keep happy customers and grow slowly slowly. Different hosts have different budgets, selling propositions and different service not to mention different prices. So each host is kind of unique, they will have to present themselves very well through design and service for customers to buy their intangible service :)

Its not easy when you are giving free hosting

Yeah tell me about it.... :( Thats why now I only allow HTML and the standard pic files extentions to the free accounts :P Give too much you would have a lot of security breaches.

You run ads on these freehosting websites? how do you cover your costs?

Well from advertisers :)
Because to attract people to sign up for free is easy but to sign up for something commercial thats the hard part....

Rather than the advertisers running arund the place looking for people wanting to host it would be better if they came to GalacNet and target the people who are ALREADY wanting web hosting accounts but still don't know whether to pay or not to pay.

Thats what I call TARGETED advertising. Real targeted advertising..... ( not like those 100,000 clicks to web hosting interested people for $1,99 type of marketing )

What amount of effort is required to maintain your free hosts compared to your paid ones? What would you say is the ratio between your free hosts and paid ones? 3:1? 5:1? 10:1?

Oh i think you just got yourself some potential customers ;) thats great if its like that galacnet :)

Maintainence? Yeeks... I would say 1:1 for all the technical and hardware point of view... ( maybe even more as we have more accounts...)

As for support wise well it can't be too good right? because if it was I would be giving the commercial host a run for their money :P
If Commercial host have a service rating of 8/10 I would give myself maybe a 4 or 5.

dont they make probs like why so many ads on mysite? howmuch space do you give them? whats the highest account? No emails?

I would imagine with some good advertising, hard work, good sales skills, etc. a host would be lucky to do $10-15/day in sales. (A host that sells $5/month plans might make three sales per day while a host that sells $14.99/month plans might make one sale per day.) Estimates are based on a good website that encourages people to buy, good sales skills, small advertising budget, etc. A brand new host will be lucky to make 1-4 sales per week unless they start with a large advertising campaign.

Well Yaser them complaining is the reason why people are advertising on GalacNet :P
Those that feels they need more should sign up for a commercial hosting site which I am promoting for my advertisers :)

As for hosting its 10mb and emails are at 5mb
The former on GalacNet and the Latter on GalacMail.
If they still want a forum on their site they can also make a free one at GalacForums..... but keep in mind that free accounts have their limitations....

If you want more you have to pay for it :) and the best would be to the advertisers that sponsor our sites :P

Originally posted by universal2001


You say you get a few dozen per hour? Ok Let's say you get 2


Reread my post. I didn't say or imply that we were necessarily getting a few dozen signups per hour. Someone posted that it was possible to get anywhere from 1 per day to 1 per hour and I just said it was also possible to get a few dozen per hour.

We do extremely well as far as signups go.. If you were looking for a number specifc to HostRocket instead of a general number, a more accurate number would be a several dozen per day.

As far as I know 1&1 has more than 11 million customers... But they even do advertising on TV in some countries so its pretty normal.

1&1 goes kind of overboard with their advertising. They did I believe it was a 14 page spread in one business magazine I subscribe to. I thought 1 or 2 pages would have done the trick, but apparently someone at 1&1 thinks otherwise.

Yes, they make their own little advertising magazines and have them attached to internet magazines. I've seen that, too.

Some times when you have a little too much money you tend to over spend :P

But then 14 pages is a little too much... what the heck do they write in there?