Hey,

I was wondering how many of you do hosting part time and how do you manage things such as sales and support calls?

I do working OVER time for ServerVina. :stickout:

I'm of the opinion that if your running any business, even if your physical pressence is only part time, your mind/life will be 24-7 on your business.

I work 30 hours a week for a computer retailer in the UK, other times I run Sales and Support.

I also have good friends who help out when they can and I manage a rota to ensure Support is always active.

Hosting is not our core business (SEO and internet marketing is), as we don't have a lot of clients now I am able to handle it without problem while doing the main jobs. But would consider hiring someone for it later if it grows well.

There's no such thing as running your own hosting business on a part time schedule :P It's 24/7 or nothing :)

I think hosting require full time involvement unless you do reseller hosting.

Here is what I have learned over time. Web Hosting is a very competitive market and requires strategy in order to succeed. I don't think that in order to reach your full potential within this industry that you can do it on a part-time schedule. It is always going to be a lot of work to keep it running smoothly as well as coming up with new strategies to implement in your company. It's 24-7 for me or nothing. If I'm sleeping, I will think about what to do next and when I get up, I will work it out and get it rolling. Hosting is a very time-consuming job if you're going to succeed out there in this world.

Overtime for serverpoint. I don't know what but I love my current profession.
If you are going to start something you have to be ready spend as much as possible time on that.

In my case it is more of a hobby than a business. I limit the number of customers I have to ensure that I can provide them with good service. Being able to access SSH, WHM and my VPS panel from my HTC touch pocket PC helps too. :)

I agree you will need to provide 24/7 support but if you take on too many clients it will become a full time job. My day job is in Information Security and I love it so I have no intention on building a big hosting company. In fact the only reason I still have the hosting business is most of my clients have been with me for 3-5 years and I feel an obligation to them to continue.

I make enough to pay for the server and put a few dollars in my pocket every month. I am happy with that.

I started part-time but after getting allot of local business I realised it wasn't going to work unless I took on people and become a more professional outfit.

part-time is fine as long as your employer doesnt mind you being on the phone or sorting out support tickets or downed servers..

I walked away from the hosting company I was a partner in because I simply couldn't dedicate the time needed to keep customers happy all the time.. That and I got real fed up with stacks of phone calls when someone upstream did something stupid.. Cut fiber, turned off router, whatever, when the entire server room loses it's backbone for 2 hours the phone calls get nuts.. :)

We run a very stable setup which reduces clients needs for support. This enables us to do other things in our day without needing to be sat at a support desk 24/7.

There's no such thing as running your own hosting business on a part time schedule :P It's 24/7 or nothing :)

I agree with Shaw Networks. There is not really a Part Time option in the hosting business. You have servers which need to be up 24x7 and customers who may live in areas on a different time zone,etc.

Though it may seem like you can get a service to provide 24x7 support and administration, things can and do happen. Do yourself and your customers a favor and be ready and willing to work any time of the day.

I currently work 80+ hours a week for INX and love every minute of it. :D

Well i have 200+ clients but still run as a part time business .. becz i retrieve all the emails on my iphone and if needed to send support email to my provider i will do it through my iphone .. and 90% of my clientle uses hosting for emails so never had any major issue

I think we are describing full time in different ways. Does offering 24/7 support make it a full time job?

I define a full time job as 40 hours per week. Do I offer 24/7 support? Not really because I don't check my e-mail while I sleep and I have no wish to get big enough to require additional staffing. However since I do carry my e-mail and internet on my hip if I am awake then support is available.

Chistmas is a perfect example. I moved hosts before Christmas and had a nightmare experience. Then I moved again the following week which meant I spent Christmas and New Years weekends working. So I believe you can offer great customer service without true 24/7 support however this may not be acceptable to some clients. My clients appreciate the additional support I provide such as trouble shooting 3rd party apps like nuke and other PHP related sites so if they don't get an answer at 3:00am they are okay with it. I on the other hand expect my host to provide true 24/7 support to me.

Ultimately it depends on how serious you are about being successful and if you are serious, what then do you feel is the right amount of time for you to devote to your success.

Remember - for awhile - anyone can really run it part-time because you will go weeks without a customer and months before you will ever need to even consider doing it full-time. But remember - working full-time and being oncall all the time are 2 different things as mentioned.