hi

We want to start hosting business but dont know where to find the plans like godaddy or aplus are giving . that too @ 25% .


as we need 50% for marketing and support .


Sites offering reseller accounts gives 30-100 GB of space for $25 to 70 ... how can we make a package like godaddy have of 100 GB in a single account>


how can we compete them.. i know they are overselling .. but still there is no competetion.


How to start a hosting business and run the same.

Sam

You said one of the magic words and thats overselling. Its not a bad thing to see the big picture but they own all their servers which saves money. Most of the hosting companies on WHT are not looking at godaddy or companies like that to choose the way their business plans should be made. I would first suggest before going any further to draw up a plan. It would of course be valuable to invest money into support but at the same time will you have the money/budget to hire someone to answer a few tickets a month? Most hosting companies will not see a profit for a few months and every little penny will count. I would suggest getting a reliable reseller account with good uptime and support. If you need to upgrade your space and bandwidth down the road then do so. I wish you the best of luck in your search and if you have any questions just let me know.

hi


i have read a lot and confused. here in India people are giving 6 GB for $35 a year with no hidden cost and full package.. no limit on account.. like emails or database or whatever.

We have to compete them

out of 35... 15 will go in market.

10 in support..

so our price for a single account should not be more than $10 per year for 6 GB with no hidden cost and good server too.

Is that available?

Sam

you shouldnt compete on price in a services industry - it is bad business - period...

Having said this, if you insist on doing this - then use clustered technologies (hsphere, plesk, helm), buy your own equipment, write a TOS which will restrict the heck out of what end users can actually use - then deal with the customer satisfaction disasters that will surely come your way....

Thats a great way to summarize it Andrew. :P

I agree with Andrew you can't compare in services industry ,, every one have different costs .. however i will recommend to buy a hosting account which have overselling capabilities and provides white label enduser support ..

To compete the market if you want to .. start overselling and when your package is about to fully used by your clients move to bigger account .. however there is always a risk that some clients will use for different purpose . create your TOS in that way so that your client can't use Web Hosting as a file storage network etc

Or check the reseller site of GoDaddy...
http://www.wildwestdomains.com/gdshop/default.asp

In that way you may compete on price...

I have read a thread here in wht .. that if you want to leave godaddy they won't allow you to transfer customers ... due to some policies as they say its their customer .. reseller are just getting the commissions etc

hi
i have read a lot and confused. here in India people are giving 6 GB for $35 a year with no hidden cost and full package.. no limit on account.. like emails or database or whatever.

We have to compete them

out of 35... 15 will go in market.

10 in support..

so our price for a single account should not be more than $10 per year for 6 GB with no hidden cost and good server too.

Is that available?

Sam

Sam, one thing you should consider most of the Indian hosting companies are having servers from USA itself, so the server pricing/specifications are almost same for whether its an Indian company or non Indian.

Now said that, I also noticed that many Indian companies are going the way of incredible overselling, but then do we face any competition with them? My answer is, its upto your business plans and practice.

I have been in this business since 1999, seen many companies coming and disappearing. We have always believed in quality of service, not the quantity. If you think you have to compete with these lot for nothing companies, you will have to go their way, get a server of your own or a big reseller account and do huge over selling.

Or concentrate on quality and sell it at a premium rate, will you believe that we are selling $550, $750, $1250 accounts here in India, yes we are, and since the beginning none of our client left us for price, because we are not competing on price. We do have budget hosting too but there also no maddening overselling, since quality is utmost.

So make a good business plan for yourself, decide on what kind of market segment you are looking for, there is market for all kind of services.

compete on niche hosting, for exemple I took a year old domain and created a web hosting company with it, then optimized it for ffmpeg hosting, and at the moment after 2 months it is already on google first page for cheap ffmpeg hosting, it means 1 or 2 customers a week, it is not much, but this is the system, dont go for hosting, or web hosting, but find niche keywords,
e-gold hosting
real estate website hosting
ffmpeg hosting,
blog hosting, actually better: cheap blog hosting

Hope it helps.

hmm my advice with competing would be to offer the same kind of plans...but as a special promo incentive add that you will give them a Free Ticket To The Moon :) or even a free laptop.

OK everyone knows that they won't get a ticket to the moon or even a free laptop, but if they did the maths and used their grey matter, they'd realise that they won't get the space or BW in such oversold accounts either.

Seriously though, you should be looking at providing quality space and great support over quantity space on paper but kidology in real life.

I wonder how long it will be before someone offers "Own your own datacentre for under $10" and I bet there are still people gullable to sign up.

owm

I suggest you to go for a reseller plan with a 'good' host. When I say good host, you will need to consider the uptime statistics, technical support and response times server specs etc. You cannot just compare the prices as you can reduce the prices by selecting a low end server with low memory.
That way, you can reduce the cost, but it will give your customers a very low performance., and I won't think they will be happy. If you have a potential client, he might be more concerned about teh loading speed, server eprformance etc.

well said vinsar ...

there is market for all kind of services .