I am considering starting my own webhosting company and I wanted to get some input from other great users here at WHT.

1. Would you sign up on a plan such as the following?

BASIC PLAN:

Domains: 10
Subdomains: Unlimited!
Space: 500mbs
Bandwidth: 15gbs
Control Panel: HPSHERE
MySQL Databases: 10
POP E-Mails: Unlimited!
FTP Accounts: 10
Dedicated IP: Included

Monthly Price: $09.99

ADVANCED PLAN:

Domains: 20
Subdomains: Unlimited!
Space: 1000mbs
Bandwidth: 30gbs
Control Panel: HPSHERE
MySQL Databases: 20
POP E-Mails: Unlimited!
FTP Accounts: 20
Dedicated IP: Included

Monthly Price: $19.99

ENTERPRISE PLAN:

Domains: 30
Subdomains: Unlimited!
Space: 1500mbs
Bandwidth: 45gbs
Control Panel: HPSHERE
MySQL Databases: 30
POP E-Mails: Unlimited!
FTP Accounts: 30
Dedicated IP: Included

Monthly Price: $29.99

ADDITIONAL BANDWIDTH:
$1.00 per gigabyte of additional bandwidth.

2. Where can I actually buy the rack fitting server cases? I can find all other parts for the servers except for the cases themselves.

3. Would you recommend starting a hosting company with higher prices and a guaranteed 100% uptime or much lower prices and a 99.5% uptime?

4. Is this good enough technical support?

Our technical support options will include:

1. An easy to use support ticket form which will be monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Responces are guaranteed within and hour and all problems are guaranteed to be solved within six hours or we will reward you with free service!

2. Support forums will also be available where the community of UltimaHost users can help each other out with basic questions and it may also be used for simple discussion as well.

3. Direct e-mail to one of our three administrators at one of the following addresses:

[taken out due to request]

5. Do people generally like the HSPHERE control panel over something like PLESK and should I use HSPHERE over PLESK?

6. Are these servers fast enough?

Our servers will be built using the following standards:

Two Intel Xeon's 2800mhz Processors totalling to 5600mhz!

100gb 7200rpm Hard Drive (if you need extra space, it will be available!)

1024mbs of DDR-RAM (which means double the speeds of other hosts which use SD-RAM)

Red Hat Linux 7.3 (that will be updated as the operating system is updated, unlike other hosts which keep you out of date)

HSPHERE UNLIMITED control panel for each of our clients to control the way their webspace acts and feels

PHP, MySQL, Python, CGI, SSI, and support for other features as well.

Please remember that the servers will never hold more than 100 clients, and that is if they are on the smallest plan!

If there are more clients with larger plans, we will have even less than this number as we want to keep our servers running their maximum speeds. Our servers will not need to be rebooted for months at a time!

7. Any other tips for a starting webhost?

Originally posted by Seph

7. Any other tips for a starting webhost?

Sure, posts like this should be made in the advertising section of WHT ;)

-Steven

How is it advertising if I never gave out a single URL or even started the host yet?

Your plans are fine if your costs are that low.

The rack mount cases can be ordered at any large PC supplier, you might consider leasing a rack or 1/2 rack from a host.

99.5 is good enough for most websites, you need to decide what kind of clients you want. Many people that visit this forum only care about the price until they get burned enough.

Support:
6 hours is enough for most problems, but you might want to exclude problems out of your control.
CPanel is popular here on WHT, H-SPHERE has a little higher learning curve.

Two Intel Xeon's 2800mhz is over kill for most web servers, but if you can make the pricing work out for you fine. If you are using this high end of processors I would also use SCSI RAID drives.

(1024mbs of DDR-RAM) 2GB of Registered EEC Ram would be better.

The lasted is not always the best when it comes to server OS’s. Yes you want all of the lasted security updates but not always the latest version. To many times new bugs and holes are introduced into the latest versions. Wait to hear if anyone else is having problems.

You do not mention backing up the servers, backing up to Tape or a different server is the best way. If you use a second drive and the server is hacked all of your data is at risk.

help! i need somebody
help! not just anybody
help! oh, you know i need somebody..

helllllp!

when i was younger, so much younger than... [UhhMm].. oh, sorry.. the title of this thread got me started singing ;-) Next time, i'll try and control myself ;-)

General Tips for you

Read as much as you can
Learn as much as you can
Read more
Learn More
Be propared for 18 hour days and no free time

take a look at
www.hostrocket.com
and
www.willowwebhosting.com
Not telling you to rip them ;)
Just to give you some ideas.

bump...

Doesn't really help much to bump a thread in a forum where threads are sorted by creation date. :rolleyes:

That's a good point... I'm just unfamiliar with this forum, as it was not created in this forum, but was moved to this forum.