Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Have a niche, but is it a good idea?

[barry[CoffeeSprout]]

Hi,
As you can tell by my join date I've been here for a while.
I've been working as a Java developer for the past 8 years and while I really enjoy my job, I'd much rather push my business in a new direction.
I'd like to slow down the hours spent freelancing and move towards hosting the following:
-SVN / project hosting (all sorts really, not just Java)
-Hosting Java infrastructure
-Quality PHP/Ruby hosting
I generally like to do things right, as a perfectionist at times so I tend to rent good hardware / infrastructure where possible.
When it comes to the cost / benefit analyses I notice a few things:
The SVN hosting is pretty easy to get right with pricing
Is there a market for Quality PHP hosting?
The Java hosting is some of the hardest though.
I want to do this right and not unlike some of the offerings which either give shared VM's or put your JVM inside a 256mb Xen install (meaning you lose part of the memory to the OS)
When doing things right hardware wise, the bare (rented) hardware will cost around 40$ per GB of memory. Meaning that if I want to make any form of profit I'd have to charge at least 50-60$ per GB of heap space.
I'm going to assume that the 256 and 512 mb plans will be most popular (again, this is pure heap space)
I'd have to price them around 30-45$ per month each.
With all sorts of added extra's (I have lots of experience with Java deployments so I do know what extra's will make the customers very happy), but will it still be worth it?
Opinions, thoughts, support, flames?

[GixxerPC]

Your pricing is a bit off.
Your talking about putting 1 site on a single server. (for the $40 per GB of Ram).
Lets say you have 8 Sites who use java, and use 1GB of Ram a piece.
You can put those 8 sites on a server with 1 - 2 GB of ram due to load balancing, and other sorts of cool things.
Your idea is basically accounting for someone being on every single website at the same exact time. This does not happen.
Quality PHP hosting is basically a standard. Its included with apache, uses low resources, and is extremely stable. You COULD market it as "Quality PHP Hosting", but its a generic standard.

[barry[CoffeeSprout]]

Yes and no.. the difference between Java and PHP is that Java processes are persistant and while they don't stay at their maximum, they definitely hold on to lots of memory.
This is probably why Java didn't really break through into the mainstream like PHP has.
However, 1 GB is pretty much as much as you'd want to push it on a "shared" environment.
The PHP side of the equasion has given me less headache, except for finding a good way of keeping the files in sync between nodes.

[ASHCN]

I think this is a great idea but niche is the key word. I don't think the market is that large and you would need lots of marketing to make this happen due to the scale of your audience.

[smueller]

If you can do what Google's App Engine did to python, but for Java, that would be extremely valuable to many people. I'd imagine php and ruby would be just as valuable. Basically provide a scalable and reliable hosting environment for a particular platform. There's tremendous value in that and your customer will also pay much less than he would at a traditional hosting provider, even if you charge high rates, because they'd only be paying for what they use.
Of course, it's not easy to do this...

[barry[CoffeeSprout]]

That's in part what I'll be doing

;5366313']I've been working as a Java developer for the past 8 years
Hello from a fellow programmer - software engineer doing web development (asp.net mostly). And running a web hosting business. I developed a custom CMS for my customers - something that makes their website setup experience 'point and click.' As a developer, you might want to stick with what you know. The perks you offer might be programming based - something you install on each new site that's either helpful or cool. As they say, a leopard can't change its spots (or is it a tiger can't change its stripes? ;-)
Find a value-added extra you can come up with using your programming skills. Best of luck...

[barry[CoffeeSprout]]

Hi,
As you can tell by my join date I've been here for a while.
I've been working as a Java developer for the past 8 years and while I really enjoy my job, I'd much rather push my business in a new direction.
I'd like to slow down the hours spent freelancing and move towards hosting the following:
-SVN / project hosting (all sorts really, not just Java)
-Hosting Java infrastructure
-Quality PHP/Ruby hosting
I generally like to do things right, as a perfectionist at times so I tend to rent good hardware / infrastructure where possible.
When it comes to the cost / benefit analyses I notice a few things:
The SVN hosting is pretty easy to get right with pricing
Is there a market for Quality PHP hosting?
The Java hosting is some of the hardest though.
I want to do this right and not unlike some of the offerings which either give shared VM's or put your JVM inside a 256mb Xen install (meaning you lose part of the memory to the OS)
When doing things right hardware wise, the bare (rented) hardware will cost around 40$ per GB of memory. Meaning that if I want to make any form of profit I'd have to charge at least 50-60$ per GB of heap space.
I'm going to assume that the 256 and 512 mb plans will be most popular (again, this is pure heap space)
I'd have to price them around 30-45$ per month each.
With all sorts of added extra's (I have lots of experience with Java deployments so I do know what extra's will make the customers very happy), but will it still be worth it?
Opinions, thoughts, support, flames?

[GixxerPC]

Your pricing is a bit off.
Your talking about putting 1 site on a single server. (for the $40 per GB of Ram).
Lets say you have 8 Sites who use java, and use 1GB of Ram a piece.
You can put those 8 sites on a server with 1 - 2 GB of ram due to load balancing, and other sorts of cool things.
Your idea is basically accounting for someone being on every single website at the same exact time. This does not happen.
Quality PHP hosting is basically a standard. Its included with apache, uses low resources, and is extremely stable. You COULD market it as "Quality PHP Hosting", but its a generic standard.

[barry[CoffeeSprout]]

Yes and no.. the difference between Java and PHP is that Java processes are persistant and while they don't stay at their maximum, they definitely hold on to lots of memory.
This is probably why Java didn't really break through into the mainstream like PHP has.
However, 1 GB is pretty much as much as you'd want to push it on a "shared" environment.
The PHP side of the equasion has given me less headache, except for finding a good way of keeping the files in sync between nodes.

[ASHCN]

I think this is a great idea but niche is the key word. I don't think the market is that large and you would need lots of marketing to make this happen due to the scale of your audience.

[smueller]

If you can do what Google's App Engine did to python, but for Java, that would be extremely valuable to many people. I'd imagine php and ruby would be just as valuable. Basically provide a scalable and reliable hosting environment for a particular platform. There's tremendous value in that and your customer will also pay much less than he would at a traditional hosting provider, even if you charge high rates, because they'd only be paying for what they use.
Of course, it's not easy to do this...

[barry[CoffeeSprout]]

That's in part what I'll be doing

;5366313']I've been working as a Java developer for the past 8 years
Hello from a fellow programmer - software engineer doing web development (asp.net mostly). And running a web hosting business. I developed a custom CMS for my customers - something that makes their website setup experience 'point and click.' As a developer, you might want to stick with what you know. The perks you offer might be programming based - something you install on each new site that's either helpful or cool. As they say, a leopard can't change its spots (or is it a tiger can't change its stripes? ;-)
Find a value-added extra you can come up with using your programming skills. Best of luck...