Hello everyone. We have just purchased a new server and I am trying to figure out pricing. We are going to use the server for reseller and shared hosting accounts. I was just wondering if anyone could help me come up with a good pricing structure for this server so we can make a good profit without overselling and without being expensive for customers. The server has one 80GB Drive and 1400GB of bandwidth per month (2.4GHZ With 1024MB Ram). The price for the server is $188/month. I was trying to figure out what I should charge per GB of transfer and Per whatever amt. of Disk Space. I have been in the business for a while now but my partner usually comes up with the pricing structure. Unfortunately he is ill right now (he had a heart attack and has cancer) and he can not help me come up with good pricing for the server. I'm not the best when it comes to pricing. I am usually too generous. I was hoping that you guys could help me come up with realistic prices that are fair to the customers and fair to us at the same time. I want to offer the most affordable service possible while still making a decent profit from the server. If anyone could give any suggestions or give me an idea of what your pricing structures are like it would be greatly appreciated.

I plan on making 3 shared hosting plans and 3 different reseller plans for the server. I also plan on offering custom plans as well.

Any ideas/examples for plans is greatly appreciated as well.

Thanks in advance for any help!

James

First you need to decide who you want to target as a customer base....and dont just say "everybody" as thats not usually possible with just one brand.

What I try to do it to start of low.. I try to give the best prices avaliable for minimal costs. When you get to the point that you are evening out with your budget or actually recieving a postive income, then start to rise the prices a little bit, but allow your current costumers to keep their plans as they had bought them before. That's just my 2 cents

Originally posted by Haddy
First you need to decide who you want to target as a customer base....and dont just say "everybody" as thats not usually possible with just one brand.

We currently host mostly personal sites and small business. We do have resellers but we find that most of them don't even use the bandwidth they are paying for. So I would say our target market is personal sites to small business, and web designers who would like to offer hosting to their clients. We aren't going after medium to large corperate sites just yet.

Hi,
I would recommend that you take the focus off of your pricing structure and onto generating new clients. For the pricing structure take a look at other competitors prices.

In my opinion your focus should be on developing the extremely valuable relationships that you have already created with web designers and developers. Your best bet might be developing an affiliate system to exchange referrals for hosting.

-Peter Ferrigan

Originally posted by jtrageser
We currently host mostly personal sites and small business. We do have resellers but we find that most of them don't even use the bandwidth they are paying for. So I would say our target market is personal sites to small business, and web designers who would like to offer hosting to their clients. We aren't going after medium to large corperate sites just yet. Ok that will help you decide on the features too offer...

Now figure out your costs...

Im not a big fan of "starting low" as I personally prefer quality clients over quanity of clients.

100 clients paying $15/month = 300 clients paying $5/month

Which offers the better GM? Which allows you to build that customer relationship without straining your staff?

Which competitors would he look at? Ive seen some that have about a 1% GM and ones that have a 500% GM..Unless your costs are exactly the same as theirs then you have a problem. Im not saying dont be competitive but dont base everything on their prices...

100 clients paying $15/month = 300 clients paying $5/month


I agree with what you said about quality over quantity. I find it easier to manage the business with less clients, so that I can provide much better support than I would with a HUGE client base paying only $5 per month.