I have a question (personal curiosity) to pose to the web hosting community:
What are the biggest barriers to attracting clients in the web hosting field?
My own thoughts, having purchased web hosting in the past, are:
- Professionalism -- some web hosts come across as unprofessional
- Stability -- some web hosts do not seem very stable
Any other thoughts on what barriers may hurt prospects actually placing an order?
I'm hoping to restrict this thread to purely web hosting, and not VPS or Dedicated.
-mike

Any other thoughts on what barriers may hurt prospects actually placing an order?
Unreturned emails. I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every time a new client told me that they signed up with ReadyWire because the other hosts that they were interested in simply didn't respond to their pre-sales inquiries.
It's so simple that it's silly! Answer your emails. :)

Well limestonenetworks gained my business by easy communication. You guys always answered the phone and responded to emails within a hour at the most.
I would have to so that the biggest turn off to a potential client is communication, if you can't be reached to answer a few questions that potential client won't even feel like bothering to look at your company any further...

It seems the biggest barriers to attracting clients for most business of any kind, especially saturated markets like web hosting is differentiation. Why to choose you? This is where niche marketing is key in making it today.
Stability can fluctuate as a start up matures just as Professionalism can over the course of business grow and/or decline. There is a well-known host that comes to mind that portrays a child like image (no name mention) and for some customers adds a sense of ease.
You could have the best team and hardware but no matter how helpful or stable, unless your offering something nobody can do or something I need, Differentiation is all that matters. There are many servers down constantly but still maintain a loyal customer base.

Hi Mike,
I agree with all posted here, however an issue not mentioned that i believe plagues alot of hosts is the signup process. For example if a client is to start the signup and can't see an option/addon that is advertised on the site they listed or the overall price (with discount coupon) is incorrect quite often they will not complete the order form and move on to the next host.

Easy communication versus unreturned emails. Differentiation. The sign-up process.
Interesting thoughts. Any others?
-mike
P.S. Thanks for the kind words, mooseweb!

Be honest.
If you can't offer it, tell him so.

What some have posted are barriers to other companies, and this would be as well.
The english language (for english speaking country hosts)
I'm not talking about simple typo's, I'm talking about people who perpetuate the slaughter of the english language to save them from typing a few characters.
UR not :)? <- I've seen that, I asked for a translation into adult and was told to go F myself.
This was from a host I needed to contact to help out a customer of my own.
Other than laziness or lack of education, there is never a need to type like that unless you're 6 years old.

I would have to say word of mouth,Word of mouth is very Important,but to ensure that word of mouth spreads your business,you need to provide fantastic services to your clients.
This is generally the stepping stone for a debt free Business!

Unique.
We have many big overselling companies going around lately, and how many of them are actually capable of making themselves unique, offering services that others do not, or actually follow you instead!
For example of an unique company offering something that not many companies are offering, and in fact, having many followers, is InnoHosting. They had differentiate themselves from others by offering a truely unique service.
Other than that, the dollar sign is always the biggest barrier, and the factor that drove clients away.....

They had differentiate themselves from others by offering a truely unique service. It does have aspects that differentiate it from other providers, but they have their own competitors, or used to have them. The difference was their ability to find the right balance between what the customers want (more for less) and what it takes to do it while maintaining proper service levels. IMHO, and here I will disagree with some of the opinions given in this thread, differentiation only helps as long as the stability is there. If you don't retain the customers, you're fighting a losing battle.
So, IMHO, some level of differentiation is definitely a marketing plus and may be needed to counterbalance the lack of company history in the begining, but in the long run it is the stability (server and service wise) that truly builds the business, coupled with the ability to reveal that to potential customers (word of mouth, support forums, uptime records etc.).
It is easy to find a host, there are thousands of them, but it's not that as easy to find a known rock solid host.

It does have aspects that differentiate it from other providers, but they have their own competitors, or used to have them. The difference was their ability to find the right balance between what the customers want (more for less) and what it takes to do it while maintaining proper service levels. IMHO, and here I will disagree with some of the opinions given in this thread, differentiation only helps as long as the stability is there. If you don't retain the customers, you're fighting a losing battle.
So, IMHO, some level of differentiation is definitely a marketing plus and may be needed to counterbalance the lack of company history in the begining, but in the long run it is the stability (server and service wise) that truly builds the business, coupled with the ability to reveal that to potential customers (word of mouth, support forums, uptime records etc.).
It is easy to find a host, there are thousands of them, but it's not that as easy to find a known rock solid host.Yes, that is the very basic to start off, cause if you offer the same service as others while others has a whole chunk of decent history, while you have none, you will lose out.
After the first step, of course you have to maintain the customers, and try to make them feel like home.

I can tell what really turns me off a particular hosting company: lack of technical info on their servers. I'm kind of an interested person and I want to know just what the server hardware is. I mean, not just "Quad-core, 2 GB RAM" but really detailed information, including manufacturers etc.
It's also bad if I can't see a phpinfo() output on a host. I'm kinda demanding user, I need a GD library for example and I want to check if it's there before even contacting sales or something...

Unreturned emails. I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every time a new client told me that they signed up with ReadyWire because the other hosts that they were interested in simply didn't respond to their pre-sales inquiries.
It's so simple that it's silly! Answer your emails. :)
I'd highly agree with that. A lot of people want instant service just like fast-food service. If they can contact you NOW and sign up instantly. They are all for it.

Another important thing that can turn your customers away is your website - make sure your website design and content are updated , not broken links, copyright does not still read 2005 for example, phone number is easily found, etc..

I find that a lot of webhosts go on and on about their servers and network and what not but forget to include the answer to the most obvious question - what payment methods do you accept?
The thing that turns me off most webhosts is that they don't accept the payment method I can use. Believe it or not most people outside of the US or europe don't have credit cards or paypal. I would like to see more hosts supporting bank wire transfer or western union - both methods are as good as cash. Bank wire transfer is only possible once the client's identity has been verified by his financial institution so there is less chance of fraud.

Unreturned emails. I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every time a new client told me that they signed up with ReadyWire because the other hosts that they were interested in simply didn't respond to their pre-sales inquiries.
It's so simple that it's silly! Answer your emails. :)
I agree with that + the setup time, we got two new customer today from another company that takes 6 days (yes, six days) to setup a shared account!!!

I find that a lot of webhosts go on and on about their servers and network and what not but forget to include the answer to the most obvious question - what payment methods do you accept?
The thing that turns me off most webhosts is that they don't accept the payment method I can use. Believe it or not most people outside of the US or europe don't have credit cards or paypal. I would like to see more hosts supporting bank wire transfer or western union - both methods are as good as cash. Bank wire transfer is only possible once the client's identity has been verified by his financial institution so there is less chance of fraud.
I'd like to see that too. The only provider that I remember accepts western union is Sharktech but that is way back in 2005. Things may be different now.

I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every time a new client told me that they signed up with ReadyWire because the other hosts that they were interested in simply didn't respond to their pre-sales inquiries.
The logic to that implies you're a rich man then..:)

The logic to that implies you're a rich man then..:)
Haha...nice! :agree:

The logic to that implies you're a rich man then.. Unless his markup is really tiny, way smaller than the $1 he's dreaming of. :P