heavypredato
03-04-2007, 03:49 PM
I started my webhosting company in 2003. Here are my toughts about these 4 years, webhosting in whole and future.
The begining - how it started and how if went over 3 years.
I was like many of young people - confused about my future. Some day I found ev1servers website and their forums. I tought "hmm, why not make some cash?".
That was my first tought and I ordered my first dedicated server. It was celeron with 80gb ide hard drive and 512GB of ram. Nothing big, cheap and with Plesk control panel ( first mistake :D ). After 1 month of playing with it I knew I need to change to Cpanel wich was like 1000% better than plesk.
Ok now what, where will I get my clients? Answer was easy wht and friends. Back in times when there was forum for ppl to ask for hosting it was not hard to offer my services. After just few months time for server upgrade came. We (me and my biz partner) decided to upgrade our server and move to theplanet DC ( second mistake :) ).
After just few months we had to upgrade again and we did - bad luck hit us unfortunately - hard drive crash and first problem. Planet changed hard drive and os restore took few hours. But it was double problem just after restoring everything we saw server down again - it was not just hard drive but also motherboard wich second time crashed hard drive. It was the worst time for us - about 12 hours of downtime. But we managed to get past this and started planning. We could not afford anything like that in future. At that time we had 2 servers already.
About this time wht went for $. Well premium members etc. I became premium and all I can say it was mistake ( third :) ). Premium member = nothing.
After theplanet support got slow and overall bad we swiched back to ev1 - and with the swich we also upgraded our servers to dual xeons. ev1 was the paradise for a long time until THE MERGE with planet.
We saw what was happening and well we did not like it. We needed to move away wich was good move considering what ev1 became now.
Our choice... softlayer. So far only 1 word - great.
Lets talk bad experiences.
Every forum I visit I see people unhappy because of their choice. I also see people happy with their host. Problem is first group is bigger. As many times on this forum it was said - "you get what you pay for". If you want to believe in unbelieveable then it is your risk. You may get lucky but it is like gambling. Chose carefully. Some may say it is good that people are getting burned so they learn and next time know better. But it would be better if noone had to learn the hard way. I remember back there was something like no to unlimited hosts and hosting companies linked on their webpages to page explaining what clients should look out for when searching for host.
What about competition?
I see many hosts that offer insane load of space/transfer. Someone would say no chance to compete. My opinion is don't compete on the same level. Like with cars - there are cheap cars that you can drive and there are higher priced cars that you can DRIVE :). It is not about competing with others but making yourself better all the time.
Future.
Probably some new technology will be available every few years. But I believe that it is not first thing to be atracted to. It is with who you are dealing with is important. Technology will change - people will remain.
It is great biz and I don't regret going the way I went. Our clients are very nice and I want to thank them for not making us bold in our mid age. Personally I consider some of them as friends.
And don't buy hosting from us! As I suspect this thread may look like ad.
This is only something real I want to say to wht community. And I encourage other hosts to discussion in this thread.
Thx.
The begining - how it started and how if went over 3 years.
I was like many of young people - confused about my future. Some day I found ev1servers website and their forums. I tought "hmm, why not make some cash?".
That was my first tought and I ordered my first dedicated server. It was celeron with 80gb ide hard drive and 512GB of ram. Nothing big, cheap and with Plesk control panel ( first mistake :D ). After 1 month of playing with it I knew I need to change to Cpanel wich was like 1000% better than plesk.
Ok now what, where will I get my clients? Answer was easy wht and friends. Back in times when there was forum for ppl to ask for hosting it was not hard to offer my services. After just few months time for server upgrade came. We (me and my biz partner) decided to upgrade our server and move to theplanet DC ( second mistake :) ).
After just few months we had to upgrade again and we did - bad luck hit us unfortunately - hard drive crash and first problem. Planet changed hard drive and os restore took few hours. But it was double problem just after restoring everything we saw server down again - it was not just hard drive but also motherboard wich second time crashed hard drive. It was the worst time for us - about 12 hours of downtime. But we managed to get past this and started planning. We could not afford anything like that in future. At that time we had 2 servers already.
About this time wht went for $. Well premium members etc. I became premium and all I can say it was mistake ( third :) ). Premium member = nothing.
After theplanet support got slow and overall bad we swiched back to ev1 - and with the swich we also upgraded our servers to dual xeons. ev1 was the paradise for a long time until THE MERGE with planet.
We saw what was happening and well we did not like it. We needed to move away wich was good move considering what ev1 became now.
Our choice... softlayer. So far only 1 word - great.
Lets talk bad experiences.
Every forum I visit I see people unhappy because of their choice. I also see people happy with their host. Problem is first group is bigger. As many times on this forum it was said - "you get what you pay for". If you want to believe in unbelieveable then it is your risk. You may get lucky but it is like gambling. Chose carefully. Some may say it is good that people are getting burned so they learn and next time know better. But it would be better if noone had to learn the hard way. I remember back there was something like no to unlimited hosts and hosting companies linked on their webpages to page explaining what clients should look out for when searching for host.
What about competition?
I see many hosts that offer insane load of space/transfer. Someone would say no chance to compete. My opinion is don't compete on the same level. Like with cars - there are cheap cars that you can drive and there are higher priced cars that you can DRIVE :). It is not about competing with others but making yourself better all the time.
Future.
Probably some new technology will be available every few years. But I believe that it is not first thing to be atracted to. It is with who you are dealing with is important. Technology will change - people will remain.
It is great biz and I don't regret going the way I went. Our clients are very nice and I want to thank them for not making us bold in our mid age. Personally I consider some of them as friends.
And don't buy hosting from us! As I suspect this thread may look like ad.
This is only something real I want to say to wht community. And I encourage other hosts to discussion in this thread.
Thx.