I was thinking of starting a hosting company and use VO reseller plans to sell accounts.
I was wondering if any one is doing the same? IS it worth it?
What if I get 400+ customers and VO stops its reselling program?
Any info will help

With 400+ customers you could buy VO :D ;)

Seriously though unless you set your prices really low then with 400+ customers you would likely be more cost effective with a dedicated server or two:) so it wouldn't matter if VO stopped their reseller program.

There are a lot of reseller programs out there so I'm sure you would find a replacement:)

Well the problem is that I have no knowledge of linux or running servers in general. However I do well in business planing. I think 400+ customers is not that difficult. (during one year)

Considering that the minimum you pay for a VO resold account is $3.95 then you are talking $1580 minimum that you would be paying out for 400 clients on VO accounts which is more than enough to pay for a good Managed server or two which since they would be managed servers means you need little Linux/server admin capabilities :)

Paying for managed servers for all the space, software and bandwidth his 400+ costumers will demand will leave him very small profit tho.

Yeah iceBlaze has a point there.. not much left after that!

maybe he can consider a Cobalt rack or two! easy to use inexpensive etc...

Just a small thought...

Regards,

Assuming that he didn't spend more than the $1580 /month on the servers then his profit wouldn't be any different than when reselling the VO plans as that money is already part of his costs.:)

Originally posted by kickster
I think 400+ customers is not that difficult. (during one year)

Kickster, if you can get that many paying customers in one year, then I will make you a partner :D

Originally posted by CapitalWeb
With 400+ customers you could buy VO

Not really, I think they are not that small. ;)

All things being equal I would roughly calculate hosting to work like this:

Virtual Reseller = $2.50 to $5.00 per domain.
Dedicated Server Renter: = $1.00 to $2.50 per domain
Co-located Server Owner: = $1.00 to $2.00 per domain
Rack Collocated Renter: = $.10 to $1.50 per domain

These figures can vary, but hosting companies can locate their own servers on a server farm/data center for as little as $12 for a 1U server. ($500 for a 19" commercial rack) That is the ultimate goal for a very smart and ambitious hosting company.

These are raw hosting charges. In the real world there are other expenses that can vary the profit earned dramatically. In the real world hosting companies want to do it all themselves and invariably will spend much more than they have to. And in the real world you have to work very hard to prosper - lazy hosting companies don't get very far. :)

Scott Hirsch