Hello all,

I've been reading this forum as well as most of the other ones on this site for about a month and think that I'm about ready to take the big leap into creating and running my own web hosting company. This idea is in response to seeing some very poor customer service from several webhosts that I've been with as well as a want/need to go to managed servers for expanded capabilities with my own sites. I guess I've found that when you get more and more technical with more and more resource needs, dedicated servers are the only way to go provided that you know how to properly manage them.

I've also had experience in supporting web hosting products before, as I used to work in web hosting support for a large telecom (unnamed right now). I think I can beat them ;) I've also been running linux for years here and at various other locations.

I think I've narrowed the components down that I want to use:
1) dedicated server from nocster
2) cpanel for account administration (for the clients)
3) phpmanager for the billing, etc...
4) I was looking at 2checkout for billing purposes, but with the recent threads with it failing to bill people properly, I'm at a loss... :confused:
5) dotster for the domain reseller program

My plans are this - get the server and all of the backend systems setup and gradually **ease in** to reselling space on the server, etc.. My primary and first goal is to have the hosting become self sufficient (IE pays for itself) within a few months. I believe I can do that with the second part of my plan - web design. There's a serious lack of competition here in my part of the country, with only one other company that I could find that's even doing it and charging thousands for a simple three page site.

Eventually I hope to become profitable, of course :) But I was wondering - is there anything that you can see that I'm missing in this equation? Am I setting myself up for failure? What am I missing? I guess I just want the older, wiser ones in the forum here to chime in.

Thanks in advance
David

David,

If I were you, I'd go a different route with that.

1) Dedicated server from Rackshack.net (great customer service and fast response)
2) Ensim CP for account admin
3) PhpManager
4) Paypal (http://www.paypal.com) for billing. I haven't had a single problem and they ALWAYS bill correctly! :-)
5) GoDaddy.com for domain reseller program. They have a reseller program via WildDomains.com where you can customize everything so the domain registration fits seemslessly into your site.

If I can be of help, just email me at president@darksidehosting.com .

Cajun

Cpanel is a good choice - customers love it and you should be able to get to grips with WHM pretty easily too.

Make sure you have a solid business plan with financial targets and budgets set.

I would recommend getting a good specification server from a good provider. I have not used Nocster, and I see some good and bad threads about them - but SWR speaks highly of them which would be something to go on.
If you're looking for my recommendations, I would recommend Pwebtech - although a higher monthly fee it is most certainly worth it knowing you can sleep at night and not worry about lengthy downtimes or poor quality hardware.

Matt

Darkside,

1) Dedicated server from Rackshack.net (great customer service and fast response)

I was looking at Rackshack.net, and it kinda came down to a dead heat with nocster - what pushed me over the edge though was that I tried out cpanel as well as ensim, and just basically preferred cpanel. It looks 'spiffier' as well as more features, but I hear there's more bugs in cpanel.

What pushed me over the edge though was no setup fee on nocster's thanksgiving day sales. I went and ordered one, so we'll see how that works out :) I'm looking more towards totally unmanaged servers, so customer service isn't *as* important, and it appears as though nocster gets bandwidth from sprint, which has been reliable in my experience.

So far I've gotten a contact from nocster's billing team, verifying my address information, and I see that there's one less server for sale on the site, but other than that I've gotten no confirmation. So I guess I'm just kinda waiting for my 'welcome email' - this might factor in to the customer service thing that you mentioned earlier...

4) Paypal for billing. I haven't had a single problem and they ALWAYS bill correctly! :-)

I wasn't aware that paypal did anything but online auctions, but I've signed up for an account and will be looking a bit more closely into this as a payment option - thanks!

5) GoDaddy.com for domain reseller program. They have a reseller program via WildDomains.com where you can customize everything so the domain registration fits seemslessly into your site.

I've looked at godaddy after using them for my personal registrar for a while now, and it appears as though they have signup fees and the like. I think that'll be another one that I'll look at, but for now dotster is free :)

Thanks for the information
-David

Matt,

Cpanel is a good choice - customers love it and you should be able to get to grips with WHM pretty easily too.

Good, I'm glad to hear it - I just hope it's easily skinnable (don't want to look just like everyone else, after all)

Make sure you have a solid business plan with financial targets and budgets set.

Yeah, I've thought about it in a goal based manner - first goal is to break even. I'm just having issues right now with how I want to setup the plan structures... I think what I'll aim for first is a $2.95 plan (very limited), a $9.95 plan, and a $19.95 plan... I have a general idea as to what I want to offer for each, but I need to divide the costs that I pay with how many resources that I have to provide for accounts.

I guess I'm just going to have to wait for my account detail email and work from there.

Just remember to take into account transaction fees, etc on ur pricing.. for example if your merchant company was to take $1 a transaction that $2.95 account is now down to $1.95 in ur pocket...

I wouldn't rely on just Paypal for orders, but as a form of alternative payment. We are using Paysystems and they've been great! They pay weekely and it's only $1 per tranaction + a small percentage. Although Assuie Bob has reported some problems with reuccuring transactions so just watch and make sure they're going through ;)

ALright, Just telling you one thing.. Make sure the company you choose is one you can trust to have good uptime and fast response. As long as you do not have more than xhours of downtime a week, customers are happy and you're ok=]

Good 'luck

ssl
support ticket systems
forums <-- i like them
toll free number
register name/trademarks
bbb online
lawyer write up tos and guidelines

just a couple other things i would also do.

Originally posted by sHosts
ALright, Just telling you one thing.. Make sure the company you choose is one you can trust to have good uptime and fast response. As long as you do not have more than xhours of downtime a week, customers are happy and you're ok=]

Good 'luck

Well, just as an update here's my experience so far - I ordered my Nocster Thanksgiving sale server yesterday morning and no information has been sent as of yet. So I contacted support and found that everything should be done by Monday morning. Although this doesn't match their "GUARANTEED 24-HOUR SETUP!" as posted by Sean
R. from burstnet, the support answered my question within 5 minutes. While I'm not happy about waiting 72-96 hours for a dedicated server, their support reply in less than 5 minutes was good. I guess we'll see how things turn out.

-David

5) GoDaddy.com for domain reseller program. They have a reseller program via WildDomains.com where you can customize everything so the domain registration fits seemslessly into your site.


just as fyi, its: http://www.wildwestdomains.com

Originally posted by thedavid


Well, just as an update here's my experience so far - I ordered my Nocster Thanksgiving sale server yesterday morning and no information has been sent as of yet. So I contacted support and found that everything should be done by Monday morning. Although this doesn't match their "GUARANTEED 24-HOUR SETUP!" as posted by Sean
R. from burstnet, the support answered my question within 5 minutes. While I'm not happy about waiting 72-96 hours for a dedicated server, their support reply in less than 5 minutes was good. I guess we'll see how things turn out.

-David Cooke

Alright, I would be careful if they are not giving what they gaurantee. If I were you, I would pay 50$/mo extra to find a more respected dedicated server company. At first, the loss will be a little heavy on you..but it will pay off. Think of it this way. I believe 2checkout charges 29$ chargeback or it is being reduced. But if your server is down, some clients just chargeback and go to a new webhosting company which leaves you more under. If you decide to stay with nocster, just make sure you are watching a few other server companies to switch to if there is any problems.

Originally posted by sHosts


Alright, I would be careful if they are not giving what they gaurantee. If I were you, I would pay 50$/mo extra to find a more respected dedicated server company. At first, the loss will be a little heavy on you..but it will pay off. Think of it this way. I believe 2checkout charges 29$ chargeback or it is being reduced. But if your server is down, some clients just chargeback and go to a new webhosting company which leaves you more under. If you decide to stay with nocster, just make sure you are watching a few other server companies to switch to if there is any problems.

They're not so far, but I'm willing to let it go because of the no setup fee thing.. I'm willing to part with a few hundred in my search for a suitable server. Compared to brick-and-mortar type stores, these startup fees are just change.

I've been looking also at rackshack.net, but I don't believe they offer Cpanel, and fastservers doesn't appear to be taking new clients on at this time...

-David