Hi,
I have been hosting a few websites for a little over a year now on a dedicated server I have from rackspace. In the past, I have only hosted sites that I have designed so overall it has been a pretty simple, and pleasent experiance. One time I allowed someone to run a gaming site from my server and before i knew it i was paying a $2000 bandwidth bill. :bawling:

Anyway........ I am looking to start a small webhosting business and would like to hear any tips you all have to offer. I have been reading over this site for some time now, and there is alot of great info here. Hopefully some of you can comment on my particular situation.

I have filed a fictitious name form with the state of Missouri, but should I go as far as to trademark my business name?

What about the signup process? Should I look into an automated solution or do it all by hand? If by hand, how do you all have your systems setup to send you the data? Via e-mail? If automated, what is a good script to use that is fairly affordable?

As far as the billing process goes, I have found alot of info on these forums on the subject, so now i just need to make a choice lol.

And how about the administration process? I have only seen 2 control panels that I think look user friendly for my customers. 1 is the control panel at http://www.pronicsolutions.com/ (looks homegrown) and the other is the suite by alabanza. What are your thoughts on these and how well do you think these control panel setups would interface with a dedi from rackspace?

Also any other business ideas you could offer, would be much appreciated.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I have 10 million questions :)

Thanks in advance,
Chris Miller
http://www.glidetech.com
Web Hosting & Web Design

Greetings:

Talk with your lawyer and accountant about the various business legal forms, and follow their advice.

Talk with your insurance agent to determine the types and levels of insurance you need; get insured.

Talk with your local chamber of commerce as to what business licenses you need; verify with your county, state, and goverment, then follow through.

Of note, we have a managed services client that put there servers overseas and incorporated overseas due to U.S. on-line gambling and on-line gaming regulations. So do double check the law.

Do automate as much as possible. Do look at sound accounting and reporting models. You don't need to turn around several years from now and found out some employee emblezzled you.

Do harden any server you set up, do use firewalls, and intrusion detection systems along with 24x7x365 automated server monitoring that looks at more than is the server alive (database working? content delivery system working? ports working? disk space available? server load within parameters? etc).

Do pick a hosting provider that can grow with you (clustering, load balancing, back end databases, virutal local area network (VLAN), etc.). Do ensure they have customers grown to that level (don't just take their word they can do it when the time comes, and you are the first).

Do look at quality of service and make sure all of the partners and vendors you deal with provide you with a service level agreement (which is far different than terms of service).

Do make sure the data center provider or whomever is responsible for the actual equipment has a hardware service level agreement in addition to a network service level agreement.

Be prepared to add employees as necessary. Do your homework in advance in terms of employee handbooks, contracts (if you go that route), compensation plans, etc. Talk with your accountant and lawyer again on these issues.

Participate in local chamber events and stay alert for training and educational opportunities for you and the staff you grow.

Be prepared to reap what you sow. Sometimes there is a direct correlation of quality to price. If you go too cheap, be prepared to reap cheap.

Do your homework and stay vigalent. Times change, people change, stay on guard. You must be your primary advocate of your business.

May God bless you in your business growth and dreams.

Thank you.

P.S. Do look for truly managed hosting (it is very rare) in order to save a lot of money in the server management and database management arena.

We've been researching "managed hosting" providers since 1998 and we can count on one hand the ones that provide true managed services.

In a data center environment you have...

Infrastrucutre -> servers -> operating systems -> server software -> client applications.

Over 90% of the companies that state they provide managed hosting only manage the infrastructure and physical servers (i.e. deal with just the hardware).

A small, but growing number, will also manage the operating system (and then only doing patches; no kernel upgrades).

Only a handfull take it to the next level and will manage the server software. Less will work with you on managing the client applications.

Hello Chris,

Our control panel is not made in house. We use Cpanel from http://www.cpanel.com/

There are other control panels available, here are a few URLs:
http://www.ensim.com/
http://www.plesk.com/html/
http://www.sphera.com/
http://www.psoft.net/

You probably already know this, but the Alabanza panel is only available on Alabanza servers, therefore it cannot be installed on a server at Rackspace. All of the control panels above could be installed on your server. H-SPHERE, which is a product made by PSOFT (URL above) also has signup automation and billing, which will save you from having to look for these two applications separately.

Hope this helps :)