Well,

I ran a webhosting business myself for about 7 or 8 months. I ran it carefully and think I could have gone real well on it in the end so I thought I would offer the advice that got _me_ a good hosting business - yes it was small but the clients I had were very good clients.

These are by no means the definitive rules but this is my opinion and I am sure others will not apreciate all the new startups either :P

1. Don't set really cheap prices! You will get the clients in the end so none of the $1/month 20gb bandwidth. It won't make you money (generally). Also this attracts the worst clients who will bombard you with tech support questions.

2. Find a reliable host- preferably someone who operates on a personal level. I became close in communications directly with my reseller host at the time. This helped if i had any problems.

3. Support your clients very quickly and concisely. Act professional and accuratly answer the questions.

That's all I can say at the moment and it worked well for me. I think finding good clients is as important to finding a good host. - I had hardly ever any support requests from my clients and they were all on a personal level.

Finally my advice - Don't treat WHT as your main client source, Try other forums (not hosting related). I found that a good source of knowledgable clients was the webdevelopers - I knew a few and they are generally quite good at knowing how things work rather than joe schmoe and his first website.

All the best :)

I live by very similar guidelines...

I mush prefer personal communication with clients, and when I am the client. I don't really like being a number. I mean sure, an account number for reference, but not just a number.

Originally posted by The Laughing Cow
Well,

I ran a webhosting business myself for about 7 or 8 months. I ran it carefully and think I could have gone real well on it in the end so I thought I would offer the advice that got _me_ a good hosting business - yes it was small but the clients I had were very good clients.

These are by no means the definitive rules but this is my opinion and I am sure others will not apreciate all the new startups either :P

1. Don't set really cheap prices! You will get the clients in the end so none of the $1/month 20gb bandwidth. It won't make you money (generally). Also this attracts the worst clients who will bombard you with tech support questions.

2. Find a reliable host- preferably someone who operates on a personal level. I became close in communications directly with my reseller host at the time. This helped if i had any problems.

3. Support your clients very quickly and concisely. Act professional and accuratly answer the questions.

That's all I can say at the moment and it worked well for me. I think finding good clients is as important to finding a good host. - I had hardly ever any support requests from my clients and they were all on a personal level.

Finally my advice - Don't treat WHT as your main client source, Try other forums (not hosting related). I found that a good source of knowledgable clients was the webdevelopers - I knew a few and they are generally quite good at knowing how things work rather than joe schmoe and his first website.

All the best :) GREAT advice, that should be take into consideration, by anyone who is starting a webhosting company.

Originally posted by TheException
I live by very similar guidelines...

I mush prefer personal communication with clients, and when I am the client. I don't really like being a number. I mean sure, an account number for reference, but not just a number.

Exactly and when on a more personal level they are more likely to respond to you and help you out imo.

useful advice to the newbies...!

helped me a lot..

thanks much

Cheers
:)

Good words from a pro, you have some good points:)

Good advice!!

especially the personal bit, i agree 100% i know all of my clients by first name and they all know me by first name, we chat and sort things out much more like friends than business owner and client. And as a result i dont get the nast emails some people get and i have relatively few support requests.

I also liked the bit about not just using wht, ive been using it for quite a while and most of my clients seem to come from here, but i will definitely try the web developers forums :)

Great piece of advice!

What other web developer forum is out there?

Peter

www.webdevforums.com is one ....there are lots of them hosting and developer forum if you look on www.dmoz.org

actually here is a good dmoz link to forums :
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Authoring/Webmaster_Resources/Chats_and_Forums/

One forum I am activly involved in is WMHUB.

http://wmhub.net

It progressed from what was the wireplay webmasters. If anyone knows wireplay they will probably know this.

But I would say please don't take this as an opportunity to spam the forums because they are a very sound resource and we all help eachother out a lot I would hate to see this ruined with hundreds of hosting offers.

Ones I hear of but don't visit are sitepointforums, and werehereforums but I don't know the URL's off hand.


On another note if anyone wants advice feel free to contact me (though I don't suggest that I am an expert) but advice on my experience.

Thanks for all the links, I will check them out.

Oh come on, Terry, you thought I was going to spam those forums? :mad: I am not even a hosting company. I am just looking for interesting places to visit.

Peter

The info is very useful.

Sorry Peter that part about spamming was not directed at you. It was more directed at the new hosting company begging for clients that post everywhere. Or in fact anyone who wants to spam :)

No hard feelings heh?

That's fine, Terry, no hard feelings.

I appreciate your info, your passion to share the informaiton with other people, and your concern about the well-being of your community.

Peter

Yes. Cheaper price means more support inquiries and complaints. This might be contrary from what we expect. But we are getting a LOT more complaints from customers with cheaper accounts than customers with more expensive accounts.

perhaps you treat the ones that pay you the most money the best.













( JOKE )