On a lot of hosting companies i see them offering like 300-500 megs of disk space with like 7 gigs of trasnfer for around 7 bucks a month. Im not worried about the bw but more about the limitations on my hard drives. I know a lot of ppl buy those cheap 100 and some gig harddrive for like 120 bucks. Well...... Since i only have a 9 gig + 36 gig 10k scsi hds im worried about the how many customers i can host. Now to my question. If i offer 200 megs + 5-6 gigs of bw at 9.99 a month do u think ppl will go for that, or do i need to offer something crazy like 500 megs of space?

Thanks for your time. - Dbbrock1

It depends what kind of customers you're trying to to target, if you're looking to offer really cheap deals, then people usually look for high storage spaces and high bandwidth for their cash. But if you're using SCSI hard disks, then offering less space should be okay aslong as you tell people on your website that you're using SCSI disks and also why you're using them (increase in speed and reliability). The number of customers you can host on the server is also limited to the processing power (CPU and RAM), so you can't just fill your hard disks, you also need to take into consideration the load on the server after so many customers are added to it.

Alan

You need to sit down and write a business plan....or your business will most likely fail.

Figuring out what to charge has nothing to do with "how much will people pay"...it has to do with "how much does my business cost me to run each year...and how much do I need to charge each customer...and how many customers do I need to attract each year...to survive, long-term". Also, figure in growth and future expenses (like support staff, as you grow).

Failure to look at the big picture is why ALOT of hosting companies are failing.

--Tina

Originally posted by AffordableHost
You need to sit down and write a business plan....or your business will most likely fail.

Figuring out what to charge has nothing to do with "how much will people pay"...it has to do with "how much does my business cost me to run each year...and how much do I need to charge each customer...and how many customers do I need to attract each year...to survive, long-term". Also, figure in growth and future expenses (like support staff, as you grow).

Failure to look at the big picture is why ALOT of hosting companies are failing.

--Tina Tina, I fully agree with you on that... there are a LOT of hosts that just get a cheap server and stick clients on, not looking at the long term situation.

Alan

Originally posted by dbbrock1
On a lot of hosting companies i see them offering like 300-500 megs of disk space with like 7 gigs of trasnfer for around 7 bucks a month. Im not worried about the bw but more about the limitations on my hard drives. I know a lot of ppl buy those cheap 100 and some gig harddrive for like 120 bucks. Well...... Since i only have a 9 gig + 36 gig 10k scsi hds im worried about the how many customers i can host. Now to my question. If i offer 200 megs + 5-6 gigs of bw at 9.99 a month do u think ppl will go for that, or do i need to offer something crazy like 500 megs of space?

Thanks for your time. - Dbbrock1

Not all users will use 100% of their allocated web space. It's like a driving with a sport's car - you know you can drive fast when you need it. Web host customers think the same way "the more they get for the price = the better deal".... well, the majority does, sorry!

Exactly.

Everyone is driven by big numbers. On average, my clients use 10mb of the 100mb they are given. They also use only about 200mb/month of the 5gb of bandwidth. It's the fact that the people see a large number, and think 'oh thats going to be so much better'. its like a home user. how many are actually going to fill a 120gb hard drive to capacity during the lifttime of their system. probaly not many.

I think they will go for that if you tell them you are using quality scsi drives instead of the half-ass ide drives. :D