I just want to get some proffesional opinions before I start charging my customers. I just bought a reseller with unlimited space and bw (yes, no such thing but the upgrade drives and such as needed) so I plan to open my host amd charge my clients yearly. Such as $20 a year for x plan and $40 a year for x2 plan. What I would like to know is what do you guys think I should charge.

Personally I was going to offer:

1,000mb Space
50,000mb Bandwidth
1,000 everything else

for $20yr

What do you guys think?

I think you're about to get flamed to a crisp.

--Tina

I once saw a hosting company offering more resources then me for $25 a year. They looked professional and not some kiddy host. That is what gave me the inspiration for this host. All I am asking is for you guys to put your self in my position and give your best honest recomendations.

My best honest recommendation is that you not proceed until you sit down and draw up a realistic business plan and learn more about hosting/servers/etc.

--Tina

give your best honest recomendations.
Don't compete on price. You will likely eventually fail because of this, as there are hundreds (if not more) just like you, and they will undercut your price to gain clients, even at a loss.

Well I just got out of a 2 year running business of free hosting. I dont want to do free hosting anymore. I ran the server for them for a 1 and a half so I know servers somwhat. I have seen other hosts do this yearly hosting feature and seems to work from what I see... I dont have the money to buy a dedicated server. So I would like to offer quality hosting with a good amount of resources at a good price.

honestly no one can tell you if what your charging is right other than yourself. You need to figure your costs of running the business. And i also suggest getting a different host. Just from research here, any host that offers unlimited space, unlimited bw, is probobly not what i'd want to trust for uptime, support, and quality.

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I would have to agree with the previous statement in that nobody can tell you what to charge. That is for your business plan to dictate. There are so many factors involved, and there is definitely no "set price" for what to charge.

Many people would gladly pay $10 a month for good service rather than $20/year for mediocre service. There is no single answer to your question. The way I did it was probably not the best way.... I never wrote up a business plan or ran the numbers, I just got a server and started.

Many things went wrong, and I only recently (Jan 2006, almost 2 years into the business) sat down, rebuilt the server (my own hardware now, colocated) and seriously laid out profit and loss.

There are TOO MANY COMPANIES that can undercut you. Focus on something other than PRICE, and get a few good customers. The best method of growth (that I have found and use, your results may vary) is word of mouth. Do not base your whole plan on the cost of packages, because you will fail. The huge ones that already to that offer packages for "unlimited domains", etc etc. There is no way to compete with that without a MASSIVE capital investment.

Develop a customer base and work closely with them. Honesty is the best policy, and I have gained countless new clients by working closely and personally, spending lots of time with current clients.

I just want to get some proffesional opinions before I start charging my customers. I just bought a reseller with unlimited space and bw (yes, no such thing but the upgrade drives and such as needed) so I plan to open my host amd charge my clients yearly. Such as $20 a year for x plan and $40 a year for x2 plan. What I would like to know is what do you guys think I should charge.

Personally I was going to offer:

1,000mb Space
50,000mb Bandwidth
1,000 everything else

for $20yr

What do you guys think?
I think you should charge about 1,600 USD for something that size.
Monthly.

Then just get one client and you're good to go.

I think you should charge about 1,600 USD for something that size.
Monthly.

Then just get one client and you're good to go.

Hmm, while this would be an indeal return on investment, I do not see it happening. Even caclulating in beginner's luck, I don't think it is very likely. :)

I think you should charge about 1,600 USD for something that size.
Monthly.

Then just get one client and you're good to go.


wow i dont know what gave you that idea. but even a beginner would talk to someone about their hosting or would see the ads that hosting companies put out there. a search would give a rough price for those who are looking for a small website hosting package

Thank you guys so much for all the replies. All of you guys statements have changed my state of mind.

That is good to hear and hopefully we won't have another host popping up offering 1GB of space and 50GB of data transfer for insanely low prices.

Make sure you can support your clients and develop your plan accordingly. The biggest thing I like to do when I get new service is test the support. Load them up with questions and see what's the attitude they take, how long it takes., etc.
Also I like to call ahead of time before I order a service to see what information they can provide me, etc. If they know what they are talking about, then, that's a major +!

In this industry that's a major +. I've done it to a few companies here, and sadly many do not have what it takes.

David K.

Hmm, while this would be an indeal return on investment, I do not see it happening. Even caclulating in beginner's luck, I don't think it is very likely. :)

Have you actually tried it?
I find it works quite well. ;)

wow i dont know what gave you that idea. but even a beginner would talk to someone about their hosting or would see the ads that hosting companies put out there. a search would give a rough price for those who are looking for a small website hosting package

Go after those who don't have time to browse the internet but instead are busy running their businesses.

I just want to get some proffesional opinions before I start charging my customers. I just bought a reseller with unlimited space and bw (yes, no such thing but the upgrade drives and such as needed) so I plan to open my host amd charge my clients yearly. Such as $20 a year for x plan and $40 a year for x2 plan. What I would like to know is what do you guys think I should charge.

Personally I was going to offer:

1,000mb Space
50,000mb Bandwidth
1,000 everything else

for $20yr

What do you guys think?

Do you like to eat real food, take vacations, and sleep with a roof over your head? Or do you plan on living in a cardboard box, using the free inet at your public library to support your customers, and doing some dumpster diving to feed yourself? You would need to sign up 1,000 customers just to clear $20K/yr gross.

Hello,

Just from experience and from running a hosting company for the past year. 1) the first year is rough. I cannot remember the last time I had a full nights rest or possibly a trip without a laptop, cell phone, and internet connection. 2) Its not about price its about customer service, and 3) I wish I could have a server with unlimited bandwidth. Wow! wouldn't that be nice.

Start out on a nice VPS or reseller account. Check several different hosting companies, analyze competitors, write a business plan, and know the industry. It can be a b****. If Tina tells you something listen.

Competing on price is dumb. You're not going to beat the Lunarpages, Dreamhosts, HostGators, etc. of the world. They're much bigger than you, they spend more on advertising each month than you are going to earn in an entire year, and because of the volume they do, they can sell cheap hosting and make money - you can't.

You need to find your niche and work it. Think big, but start small. Slow and steady growth is key.

Sell for more than anyone else, you pay for what you get, i do webdesign and my work is worth like 50$ but i charge $600 because time and profesional..

wow i dont know what gave you that idea. but even a beginner would talk to someone about their hosting or would see the ads that hosting companies put out there. a search would give a rough price for those who are looking for a small website hosting package

That's the problem with the WHT crowd, most assume people buy on price, businesses rarely buy on price alone. If they did we'd be stuffed, we've had customers paying £350/month (About $650) for virtual hosting with about 500MB space and 50GB transfer - Why? Because they were happy with the service and it was providing them with a good platform for their ecommerce business.

I think what you offer are seriously tempting but like people here said, competing on price alone is not enough.

Btw, are you sure you can deliver? Are the person you bought the reseller account from reliable?

I understand from what you said, your reseller account has unlimited space & unlimited bandwith? WoW.... where did you get that offer? :p

For me, I stick to a small group of happy customer. No fuss. I don't oversell.

They want cheap price, I give them cheap price. They want to be pampered I give them cheap price+babysitter charge... :) (if you get what I mean)

Anyway, just come over to the link in my sig to understand what I mean.

Go after those who don't have time to browse the internet but instead are busy running their businesses.
Banking on a lack of consumer familiarity with a product (and lack of central resources for acquiring this familiarity) is a great way to profit. The consumers most likely to pay alot are the ones who have the least time to learn what they are paying for so they pay alot with the expectation that $$ == 'quality' an expectation that may or may not be true but they generally end up overcharged.

I see this all the time in computer and internet related industries. I would gladly dive into the fray myself, but I wouldn't be able to keep from telling them that they could get a comparable or better deal elsewhere ($80 an hour to fix a borked windows install is a little on the funny side, and that is just one example).

As information about the product becomes more common knowledge, the profits to be had by conveying quality via high prices will dwindle. Unless.... Companies that are currently doing this put excess funds into research. This is fun to think about....

(You know, just to illustrate the lack of familiarity and information.... Unlimited space and bandwidth? Yeah. Right. And I have a hotel with unlimited rooms. Even if a server had unlimited bandwidth, most hardware has enough problems trying to max out a 100mb pipeline.)

Why is $80/hr on the high side? You're not paying just for the time they spend fixing the problem for you. You're also paying for the time they've given up on learning what they do plus any other overheads that they may have e.g. Utilities, advertising etc.

Why is $80/hr on the high side? You're not paying just for the time they spend fixing the problem for you. You're also paying for the time they've given up on learning what they do plus any other overheads that they may have e.g. Utilities, advertising etc.
Higher level techs in datacenters know and do more but get paid less hourly. Most of these people charging 80 bucks an hour get most of their business via word of mouth. Advertising consists of signs and flyers. Learning to backup and then reinstall windows does not take a great deal of time. If it was something more complicated then that then the overhead would be present. As it is, if you are people savvy, it is a great way to make money.

$80 an hour to fix a borked windows install is a little on the funny side, and that is just one example

Actually, no it's not. Depending on the experience of the tech, and the work that the tech actually has to do, $80 is low end.

Computer repair and techs are paid equivalent to what they actually know and how quickly things can be fixed. A tech charging $80/hr probably won't work more than a 1/2 hr on the problem then have it fixed, charging you $40.

What's "on the funny side" is the individuals trying to constantly devalue that individual who is worth every penny of $80/hr, simply because they don't want to pay it.

What still amazes me is that the hard drive and bandwidth costs are such an item of conversation re: price. The real costs are in support and business-side infrastructure. A "decent" tech costs about $3,000/mo to start. That same $3k will buy enough Hdd and bandwidth to support (in the infrastructure sense) thousands of average clients. I guess everyone are one-map shops, mostly?

Actually, no it's not. Depending on the experience of the tech, and the work that the tech actually has to do, $80 is low end.

Computer repair and techs are paid equivalent to what they actually know and how quickly things can be fixed. A tech charging $80/hr probably won't work more than a 1/2 hr on the problem then have it fixed, charging you $40.

What's "on the funny side" is the individuals trying to constantly devalue that individual who is worth every penny of $80/hr, simply because they don't want to pay it.

The job in case took quite a few hours. From my own experience with windows, it does not take that long and it is not that difficult. No hardware was replaced, the customer had to backup and restore their own data and I had to driver hunt (no, I was not the one being payed). It was just a simple install of windows, nothing more. No one should ever be charged over $400 for nothing more than a windows install. I can understand that some may disagree, but I hold a different opinion. I'm a frugal individual and it hurts my soul to see/hear of people paying ridiculous rates for things.

Of course, it could always be said that the buyer should do their research. The problem is that some people, especially people in academia and small/med business owners, just don't have the time to learn what is necessary in order to choose the best tool (or service) for the job. The other problem is that sometimes they don't know anyone that they can have point them in the right direction. They may not be familiar enough with the internet to do research on the topic. In this case, they often lose when dealing with technology and it leaves a bad impression on them. I try to do my part and make sure that the people around me know what is going on with the web, operating systems, and other such things in a way that they can understand and relate to, but every once in a while they still get burned and that makes me a little upset. So what can I do? Well, nothing, it will happen sooner or later regardless of what I do about it.

I would say that when you pay a lot, you usually get, in some direct or indirect form or another, a decent return on your investment. But, as a consumer, it is folly to believe that this rule always holds true. I disagree with the idea that whatever someone charges for something is inherently what it is worth. A few basic business classes or even some familiarity with the sales industry (or better yet, floor experience) will demonstrate why that is a false idea. (Actually, another grand, maybe even funny, example of this is the car repair industry.)

I agree with a lot of these posts. If you're going to provide your customers with little support, put them on overloaded servers, etc then charging the cheapest you feel like is just fine. However, if your offering customers more... than charge more, respectively. We're probably one of the most expensive hosts out there and our business is doing just fine. If people only judged purchases by price, there would be no cars over 10k. :-)

You guys say that this is an insanly low price. But how do you explain godaddy.com offering like 5gb space and 250gb bandwidth for 3.99 a month. Is this not an insanly price?

Have you ever used Godaddy.com hosting? Go ahead and try - then you can answer your own question.

I probably never will so I cant answer that question. I can imagine since they are such a huge company they dont overload their servers, maybe have redundent servers, and have excellent uptime and server speeds. But who knows, could be the opposite?

Target I checked out your prices and the only thing I can think of is that the only reason your doing fine is because you only need a few clients to cover your costs with those prices.

Could be the opposite? It is - from what I've read here. I figure I'll give full disclosure on that - I've never used them and don't plan on it. It also seems that anyone using the less expensive hosting options from the more reputable companies have things like 20 or 25 connection limits (that's a pretty tiny forum) to databases or, if they use any of their resources they get booted or forced to upgrade with the ol' "using too many resources" clause.

KGIII

They do have access to tools most of us could only dream of. I will say, however, that they have had their share of outages, although they were never too bad. All of this is based solely on what I've read in the media - I would never use them even for domain registration.

Ohh well I have had over 40 domains hosted with them at one time and they are pretty good for domains since that is what they specialize in. I never buy things from companys who do multiple services. I find that sticking to a company that specializes in one services ends up being better.

personnally, i would have opted for that plan... really appealing!!

Target I checked out your prices and the only thing I can think of is that the only reason your doing fine is because you only need a few clients to cover your costs with those prices.

Yes - that helps out for sure. We demand higher prices because we pay for top-dollar servers that we own, purchase and not steal software licenses, redundant firewalls, 3 levels of backup, redundant power supplies using their own power grid, etc. Plus we provide our clients programming support as needed. Many times at no cost for database configurations, scripts, etc.

But I understand a lot of people are in the business of just selling hosting and don't offer application support for .NET, Coldfusion, PHP, etc. but some companies feel good knowing if their programmer can't figure it out, we can.

Good luck to you and hollar if you need anything.

More company should be like shoe money media and their $5,000 a month web hosting deal...lol.

Nobody needs another kiddy host who has no idea whats going on and sells hosting from an unlimited reseller plan.

Egh.

I have been doing hosting at a paid host with another guy who owned it for over 3 years. That got boring after the owner started to not care about the host anymore. And in those three years of answering sales questions and talking to the clients one on one. I have learned alot of the clients dont care to much about the host but instead somthing that is cheap for them to start up their site. These are the beginners to the web. The webhost I am starting up may not hit the success of what I am looking for but it may boom right off and I may go rich (sarcastic). Anyways before you start trying to get a flame fest going dont just come into a thread and start bashing someone elses ideas. Anyways, I came here just to get some ideas of this host.