I would like to join the web hosting market, it's easy but i found it hard, so here is the idea, and i hope you will help me.
My idea, i started with:
A WEB HOSTING PROVIDER
I chose to go with a reseller account first, then it can be upgraded to a VPS or Dedicated server. (reseller up)
DOMAIN NAMES REGISTRATION
I joined eNom reseller, .com .net ...ect for only $8.95
BILLING SOFTWARE
I chose WHMCS, i could install it and it's working correctly, i miss something like customizing, i think this is not important right now, OR is it?
SUPPORT SOFTWARE
I don't know what to do here, because WHMCS comes with a support system, but seems to be poor, what do you advice me?
should i go to kayako ? is there a good, sheap or free support software ?
my choice, i will be happy to find a free and simple script, ticket system only, i found osTicket, it's great but the problem it's not in french, OR any body can help with this?
OR, if i go with Kayako, i will need an integration with WHMCS, right? how can i do that?
LIVE CHAT
Do i need a live chat, i have the time to be online and search clients, but do i need to pay $$$ for a live chat ? or can i find a free version ? what's about Trio, stoped the free version ?
MERCHANT ACCOUNT
I need to accept credit card, this is important, so what do you advice me, i'm not in US.
Here is the question, as a web hosting business, do i need something else ?
Thanks

Well first I'd like to give you two thumbs up for planning :agree: :agree: So many new (and soon to be new) hosts skip the most important step of any business (planning) because of the desire to jump in feet first (and often the pool is much deeper and colder than they anticipated).
Thumbs back in my pockets, it looks like you are really on the right track, but missing one major theme which is... a theme! Just once glance through the shared hosting offers area will show you a small excerpt of the hosts out there and how easy it is for a new host to get lost in the market. Now to be honest when reading your current plan you are following the cookie-cutter approach that it seems most every host is these days: "Reseller account for hosting and a domain name, grab a website and WHMCS, and hope for the best!"
If I was you I'd focus much more on finding a niche (or target market) that your services will be tailored to. Not only will this decrease advertising costs, generally increase sales (especially in the beginning), but it also makes all of your planning that much easier.
Let's say for example that you wanted to target your hosting services to web design professionals. That simple act of picking a target market just made all of your planning at least ten times easier. The name of your business should be something that design professionals can relate to (instead of FluffyPinkBunnyHosting.com or <something like cheap, budget, techy>Hosting.com).
The design of your site now becomes very important for this market as odds are they will look for standards compliance, layout, how cutting edge it is, etc... (much like a builder looks at houses with a different eye than a baker).
The choice between a reseller account or a VPS/Dedicated also would probably lean to VPS/Dedicated in order to tailor your actual server offerings better. On the contrary if you were selling to something like the elderly who wish to have a small family website a reseller account would suffice as they wouldn't want any additional features to their site (but again design and presentation would also be completely different).
Now that you have the platform you are going to offer, it's time to start thinking of ways to set your service apart from others. Maybe you commission a product similar to ActiveCollab to offer for free or maybe you partner with ConceptShare (both of which give you great roads for upsells as the designers grow). You may decide to roll out apache with a larger list of custom modules built in, setup php to enable things that would otherwise be disabled (such as the system command), and even offer SVN (and other services such as ROR that aren't as common).
So now you have a name planned, a design planned, and a server planned. It's time to think about support. Speak with people from your target market and get a feel for the method of support that they prefer. If you speak to a large number of them and none of them express an interest in live chat, it's probably going to be a waste of time and money.
Billing system would follow the same basic rules as support. You speak to your market and find out what billing systems they like (not speaking about WHMCS or CE, but rather do they prefer to be billed in advance, for actual usage at the end of each month, do they want paper invoices, etc...) and find the system that fits best.
Finally you work out advertising, and that's as easy as walking in the shoes of the ideal client for you. Ask your group where they spend their time during a day (both on the internet and off) and that's where you should put up your advertising. Sure a web designer may golf from time to time, but that would most likely be a much less fruitful advertising campaign than a popular design forum would be.
Hope that helps!

If your budget is low when you can start with a reseller hosting. You don't need a hosting billing softwares at starting. Using and customizing of them is very hard. You can accept orders by a form mailer script and can track accounts by a database or calendar software. You can accept payments by Paypal and Bank Transfer. And can give support via email.

The problem with giving email support is that your clients will come to expect it. 12 months down the line you may be using a ticketing system or employing other people to manage your support which, in turn, could lead to a less personal service. I made the mistake of offering email support when i started out and still have the 'die hards' that insist on emailing me rather than submitting a ticket despite the fact they are now told that email support is no longer offered (we stopped that about 4 years ago!).
Initially i used Excel to manage my clients and PayPal subscriptions to bill them. This worked fine until i got to about 50 clients then became increasingly harder to manage. I went through 3 different 'management' systems before settling on ClientExec - which was eventually changed to WHMCS. I was pretty green when i started and wish i'd read up on a lot of thigs. It would have saved me a lot of time and money.

You'll definitely need live chat, check out LiveZilla. It really helps when people can speak to you instantly instead of waiting for emails, support tickets etc. And even better - its free! LiveZilla is very easy to encode into your website, and also includes an offline messaging system. So when you are not chatting instantly or are not online, your clients can still send you a message that will forward to your email, kind of like a support ticket. Check it out @http://www.livezilla.net/home/

I would suggest, Go with DMEhosting , primehost or hostgator reseller pakages because they are offering resellers with FREE Billing System that is WHMCS which you liked as you mentioned above.
And for live chat livezilla is a best software for you because it is free and it suites to newbies.
Best Regards
MUAsolutions

Concerning Live Chat, you may try out www.jbTop.com. They have a free plan.

For Live Chat, yes you need it, and LiveZilla is the best free system in my opinion.