I'm thinking of starting a small web hosting company but I have a few questions before I start:


How long did it take you to recoup your investment?
How much did you earn(gross, not net) in the first few months?
How much tech support staff should I hire?
How much did you initially spend in advertising?


Thanks in advance.

These days with servers being so cheap you dont need much to invest nor hire anyone at the begining, as for advertising you can start on this or any other forum without spending any money.

If you start small without any huge investments but invest a good amount of time into your business youll probably be ahead of your expences by the 2nd month.

What type of hosting infrastructure are you planning to start with? (reseller, VPS, Dedicated - managed, unmanged)

What type of billing/support software are you planning to buy?

Are you starting with your local market, or are you going to compete with all of the other budget hosts?

What type of customer are you going after? Are you going to be a budget host?

All of these will affect your costs and support needs.

Originally posted by hostingbiz4sale
as for advertising you can start on this or any other forum without spending any money.

Is advertising in forums really that effective?

What type of hosting infrastructure are you planning to start with? (reseller, VPS, Dedicated - managed, unmanged)

I plan to start with a reseller account.

What type of billing/support software are you planning to buy?

I'm going to use ClientExec which comes with the reseller package I'm looking at. I'm going to use 2Checkout as my proccessor.

Are you starting with your local market, or are you going to compete with all of the other budget hosts?

A little of both, I guess.


What type of customer are you going after? Are you going to be a budget host?


I'm going after customers with small-medium sized websites. Yes, I'm going to be a budget host.

Paolo, By starting with a small reseller account you should be able to turn a profit within the first 2-3 months. As a new host with no customers, I would recommend not hiring any support techs yet. If you need help, you might consider contracting someone or outsourcing your help tickets to a support company. In terms of how much $$ to spend on advertising, it all depends on your strategy and business plan. I would suggest not going into debt to advertise. Start small, then take your profits and invest them back into advertising. Do small tests and track your results closely. If you spend $20 and get 2 customers, then try $200 and see if it brings you 20, etc.

Start with a reseller account but ensure it is a quality one, if you can secure a quality reseller account your customers will be much happier and you haven't got the expense of the server and server management.

agreed. You should be able to turn a profit pretty quick with a reseller account. One thing though is don't put to little in to advertising, that may back fire and end up you spending money on nothing, unless its google adwords in which case it really dones't matter to much how you spend, seeing as one click can have a large range of prices and you won't nessisarly spend to much.