Hi.

If you have a >5000 customers hosting business, I would like to know how much time it took you to grow your business.

It would be very nice if you could say how many customers you have now and what methods proved to work best in bringing new customers.

Thank you very much. Can't wait to read your replies!

Well, you might have more luck in receiving a response if you posted this in the "Running a Web Hosting Biz" forum.

The best way to start out is to list in every known hosting directory. If you provide a good service, word will get out and that is another factor that will help you in obtaining customers.

Yep, exactly. The key is to get yourself known and to provide good service. Good customer support, quick problem resolution, etc., will earn you a good reputation.

Disclaimer: I do not run a web hosting business, but I work for one (and I'm pretty good friends w/the owner).

Aussie Bob,
Now its a good time to point out to "hostingplex" which gathered their 5000+ clients in 1.5 months :)

lol

I was just thinking the same thing, heh

Now its a good time to point out to "hostingplex" which gathered their 5000+ clients in 1.5 months Using their methods, it is possible to do it in a few seconds...just the time it takes you to type it and submit it in WHT.

What were their methods?

Originally posted by Sina
Aussie Bob,
Now its a good time to point out to "hostingplex" which gathered their 5000+ clients in 1.5 months :)
That was the furtherest thing from my mind.....;) :laugh:

shooting fish out of a barrel is no fun :D

Hmmm, I'm interested in this story now. What's the deal with these folks and the quick base?

:confused:

It's important to note that success isn't based on the number of customers, but rather, the quality of service you provide. You can have a lot of customers had still provide (to put it bluntly) crappy service - or you can have 10 of the happiest, most loyal customers.

What were their methods? They just came here and typed in that they had acquired over 5000 clients.

If I type it here, it must be true.

Originally posted by Incognito
They just came here and typed in that they had acquired over 5000 clients.

If I type it here, it must be true.

Yeah , I got 10,000 myself :stickout: *ends sarcaism*

Originally posted by ZiCmaN
Hmmm, I'm interested in this story now. What's the deal with these folks and the quick base?

:confused:
All the action was - http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=81882 :D

Just to let you know. Hostingplex.com was only created a short while ago. We've been in this business for over 2 years operating locally. We have decided to go International.

Which is why you are only beginning to know about us.

I hope this clears things up.

Originally posted by hostingplex
Just to let you know. Hostingplex.com was only created a short while ago. We've been in this business for over 2 years operating locally. We have decided to go International.

Which is why you are only beginning to know about us.

I hope this clears things up.

I give your 100% uptime guarantee a two month life span. How do you expect to guarantee this and stay in business? No one can guarantee 100% anything. I don't care what you say. If it is just an SLA that you are going to reimberse money for anything under 100%, you will be broke soon enough too. Unless of course everything is "planned outages" or "hacks" or "DOS attacks". ;)

No one can guarantee 100% anything.

I can guarantee 100% bull**** (sorry for the bluntness again)

But eh...let's not make this another hostingplex thread ;)

people always hate those they envy most.

First of all worldcom guarantees 100% network uptime as do many providers of networks. If your data center is good you can keep pretty much keep 100% uptime. Remember uptime does NOT have to include scheduled maintaince. If your not familar with bank vaxs or other systems they have to guarantee 100%.

If you have redundant machines for customer banks that instantly switch over and several network providers the only time you should ever be down is for planned maintance.

Why does it bother you if someone offers 100% uptime? The clients are well aware that they get refunded a certain amount per downtime. If your down for even an entire day (theory) on a 9.00/month hosting account you are only going to refund the customer pennies.

Those of you who guarantee 99% do the exact same thing, because you yourself can't GUARANTEE *hit. Nothing in this world can be 100% guaranteed, including all the billions of products on store shelves that give you "100% money back guarantee"

guaranting 99% instead of 100% is no different, People just get jealous when another host offers something they feel they can't compete with. I worked in 2 specialized managed areas and they have been running machines for 5 years without 1 second of downtime (lots of redundant systems)

This is like the thing with unlimited bandwidth that so many hosts got upset about simply because they couldn't compete. You "with reason" can infact offer unlimited bandwidth because common sense applies to everything. Even MCI, Level3 are starting to run "unlimited" packages.


sure a few companies who pulled these "stunts" have had no business model and *ucked their customer base into the ground. But there are companies with real business models and plans that allow for them to stay in business (and they have for years) offering 100% uptime or "unlimited" hosting.


If your not familar with burlee.com their "unlimited" plans have been a smashing success for both their business and customers

people always hate those they envy most.

You are a genius. I wish I could type 100% instead of 99.9%. Maybe I will learn.

Also, learn the difference between a 100% SLA vs. 100% uptime guarantee. Also, networks are easier to keep at 100% then a server that host hundreds of domains. This is why you do not see host offering 100% uptime on shared servers. These guys were the second ones I have ever seen.

This sums up what type of business person you are, so your opinion doesn't mean much to me:

If your down for even an entire day (theory) on a 9.00/month hosting account you are only going to refund the customer pennies.

You "with reason" can infact offer unlimited bandwidth because common sense applies to everything. Even MCI, Level3 are starting to run "unlimited" packages.

Show me one.

First you'll notice I said "network providers" I realize that MCI, Level3 have different areas of services versus a web host. I was stating that to show you it's not far off for someone to have 100% uptime at a web hosting.

I currently don't have a hosting company, because I'm involved in other projects. I worked with one company that did offer 100% uptime and the customers were nothing but thrilled with the service and support level as well as the 100% uptime they have provided.

Attacking my business ethics was in poor taste since you know none of mine. I simply am tired of people jumping on the HATE everyone and ridicule any company who offers 100% without ever doing any research into that company or it's uptime.

Originally posted by inkhead
people always hate those they envy most.

First of all worldcom guarantees 100% network uptime as do many providers of networks. If your data center is good you can keep pretty much keep 100% uptime. Remember uptime does NOT have to include scheduled maintaince. If your not familar with bank vaxs or other systems they have to guarantee 100%.



I'm perfectly familiar with bank vaxes and their vastly superior replacement in the form of AlphaServers because I head the OpenVMS infrastructure team for a major global investment bank.

No, it is not possible to achieve 100% uptime even with this highly robust infrastructure. We aim for 99.9% (and often achieve it) but even in a clustered environment you're going to get unscheduled downtime. We just keep that to a minimum.

Now, no webhosting company is going to run their services on OpenVMS - it's just not cost effective enough and like webhosting services, you pay for what you get. So we're talking Linux or Windows 2000 and there's no way you're going to get that magical 100% figure.

I worked with one company that did offer 100% uptime and the customers were nothing but thrilled with the service and support level as well as the 100% uptime they have provided.

I am very well versed in this industry. I have NEVER seen a successful host with 100% uptime at the server level. I would love for you to valadate this host you just posted about.



Attacking my business ethics was in poor taste since you know none of mine. I simply am tired of people jumping on the HATE everyone and ridicule any company who offers 100% without ever doing any research into that company or it's uptime.

My experience comes from more then "working at" a host. I assure you, my research and knowledge in 100% uptime at the server level is right on. Simply put. It is not possible. That is not saying someone can't offer that as an SLA, but they would be paying out there ass.

My point about your business ethics stems from two points that you, yourself posted.

1) "If your down for even an entire day (theory) on a 9.00/month hosting account you are only going to refund the customer pennies. "

I do not consider offering an impossible guarantee and then compensating customers "pennies" for a failed promise good business. How would you feel if your backbone provider did this. "Oh, you were down for 2 hours? Here is $.25 for your trouble." To me there is little concern for meeting the 100% guarantee when you have nothing to fear or lose if it is not meet. It is a hollow guarantee.

2) You "with reason" can infact offer unlimited bandwidth because common sense applies to everything. Even MCI, Level3 are starting to run "unlimited" packages.

No, there is no "with reason'. You either offer unlimited or you don't. How can you "limit" the "unlimited"? Is there a limit to space? Anyone who thinks offering unlimited is ok, in my book is wrong. Including Burlee. There maybe other ways to get your idea across, but calling it unlimited is not correct and is a lie.


Also, you still haven't showed me one of their plans:

Even MCI, Level3 are starting to run "unlimited" packages.

Note there is a differnce in 100% network uptime and 100% server uptime..

If your server reboots, apache has to be restarted, qmail has to be restarted, then you don't have 100% server uptime for that month :D

Some companies will offer you a 100% guarantee, and give you only a small % of the monthly portion back. How ever, there are a few butts.

The biggest one bieng that you have to personally report the down time to them. They start coutning from the moment you report it. If you never report it, you never get any refund. Its' not like they have a counter somewhere that counts this thing globally.

Originally posted by inkhead
First of all worldcom guarantees 100% network uptime
Yea, but you haven't read the fine print on on those 100% guarantees. WorldCom is one of the reasons why no one can guarantee 100% uptime. I can assure the the glitch they had a few weeks ago that impacted large segments of the internet is one of many. The truth of the matter was it was hoped they could keep it quiet like the others. The cost of providing a 100% guranantee anymore is outrageous because of the cost of being attached to so many direct connects to the back bone is of course high and that still gives you no guarantee that you will be able to maintain 100% uptime. The reality is that 1% downtime isn't as expensive to 99% of business as they wish to believe.

unless you happen to be Visa...:D or any of the credit card companies. I assure you a single percentage downtime on their systems will lose them multi-millions.

how many of you who offer 99% uptime magically monitor for any little downtime and send out checks to your clients? I'm sure you too wait for them to report a problem.

My free web host has about 200 now, and its been around for about 2 months, with about 2 weeks downtime.

Hello
We are considering offering 100% uptime guarantee for sites on special load balanced server clusters.
The file swould be on one server, databases on other servers with mutliple web and FTP servers doing the delivery.
It will be expensive to provide and will cost a lot of money , but it is possible to get close to 100%, look at Yahoo.

Anyway on the hosting clients, it depends who you count.

We actively host 8841 web sites and have another 2000 or so parked domains.
This has taken just over 2 years and we add 3 to 5 (net of cancellations) per day.

Gordon

The file swould be on one server, databases on other servers with mutliple web and FTP servers doing the delivery.

This is a simpler form of what Hostopia does. They go one step further and global load balance between two DCs. They have had a few outages.

but it is possible to get close to 100%, look at Yahoo.

They also lost millions when the DDOS attack knocked them doen for ~3 hours.

Close to 100% is not 100%. ;)

Close to 100% is not 100%.

Irrelevant because what we would be offering would be an Insurance Policy against down time underwritten by an insurer.
i.e. we could have down time but customers would recieve substantial compensation.
Just like all those "my MLM site has been down for 5 minutes and I have lost $20,000 in sales" customers want.

of course thats exactly the sort of customer who wont be prepared to pay for such a service but we may end up offering it.

Gordon

ANYONE can offer 100% uptime. Server uptime, network uptime, whatever uptime. YOU can offer GUARANTEED 100% uptime -- simply spell out what the remedy is if you fail to meet that guarantee.

If someone is paying you $24.95 for shared hosting, and you're down an hour during the month, that's a whopping 4 cent refund.

It would depend on what the terms of the contratc were but we are talking $100 per month price range and payouts in the $1000's if necessary properly underwritten by an insurer.

Gordon

Sounds promising.

we now offer 1000000% uptime guarantee*














*Please note: in the event of server downtime, all uptime guarantee's are null and void.