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Overview
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We are offering 39 web hosting accounts up for sale. The accounts include both virtual sites and reseller plans, with customers in the US, Canada, and China. Our company has been in business for about three years, and we enjoy a stable clientele. The majority of our clients pay monthly, a few (7) pay quarterly, and 5 have prepaid for longer terms. Most are billed by credit card; some pay by PayPal, and the ones that pay quarterly send checks or money orders.

The sale also includes an option to take over 2 lease-to-own Cobalt RaQ 3s. Currently the cost is $99/month per server, which will go down to a simple colo fee of $50/month per server in about 8 months (the prices include 63 Gigs per server, and we're currently using about half of the allowed bandwidth). In about 8 months, you would own the two servers outright, and you are even free to ship them elsewhere. The servers are nicely filled with about 150 sites each (this is a rough estimate).

Finally, we are offering two AutoControlPro (http://www.directphp.com) licenses (a $600 value). This control panel allows, among other things, resellers to automatically set up their new resold accounts.

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Why we are selling
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We have two main reasons for selling:

(1) We wish to pursue other ventures (a brick-and-mortar computer store).

(2) During the summer one of the servers was hacked. Though we were able to clean up the problem, we realized that our security skills are not extensive enough at this time to responsibly administrate security concerns.

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Who we are
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We are not going to publish our company name in this thread, but will share this information with serious prospects (who must agree to respect this clause and not publish our name). We have no wish to conceal our identity, but announcing our company name might let the news of the sale to leak out and perhaps trigger some of our clients to leave. Please note that our identity is established at WHT, and this ID is only meant to protect the eventual buyer from loss of clientele.

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The client details
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Our gross annual income is currently $8,000 ($660/month). The income comes from both personal and reseller accounts.

We have 26 virtual/personal (non-reseller) accounts. Here's how they break down:

$6/month clients x 16 (10 pay monthly, 6 quarterly)
$9/month clients x 2 (1 pays monthly, 1 pays quarterly)
$14/month clients x 1 (pays monthly)
$20/month clients x 2 (all pay monthly)

In addition, there are 5 clients who have prepaid for more than three months (their terms are up for renewal between 5 and 16 months from now). None of these 5 clients use much resources, nor do they demand much (if any) attention in the way of support.

We also have 17 resellers who pay a base rate of $20/month plus $1/month for each resold account. All resellers pay monthly; all but 4 have credit cards on file with us (the other 4 pay by PayPal).

As of last month, the resellers paid a total of $493 (. We have one reseller paying $110, and another who paid $69 last month but is growing rapidly (one new signup approximately every two days) and will likely reach $100/month by December. The smallest accounts pay $23/month (two clients who are using the account for multiple domains rather than for reselling) and the average charge for a reseller is currently around $38/month.

We have been charging clients $5/month for MySQL support (for the reseller accounts, one monthly charge covers MySQL for any and all resold accounts) plus $5/month for custom nameservers. I've figured in these costs along with the above prices.

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The server details
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As mentioned, these clients are hosted on two RaQ 3s. Here are the basic specs:

AMD X86, Intel compatible microprocessor
about 500 MB RAM
20 GB HDD Storage
65 free IPs included per server (no justification required)

The cost for approximately eight more months is $99/month per server, which includes a dedicated-style service contract (in other words, the provider will assume liability for any hardware breakage that is not caused by you). After this period, the servers will be yours outright, and can be colo'd at the same center for $50/month each (includes the rackspace and 50 GB of bandwidth). We have found the provider to be responsive and helpful.

It's up to you whether you want to continue to use these servers, but we hope you will consider it for both stability and familiarity for the clients. The servers are a good deal, to boot, and they are nicely filled and profitable.

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What we're asking
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After some research, we've found that the most common way to figure the selling price for clients is this: (yearly gross profit for all clients) - (yearly cost of servers) = asking price.

By that model, our starting point is $5,500. This estimate does not even consider that we are also offering $600 worth of server software which we are going to include free in the sale price.

This number is only a figure to work from, and we welcome offers both above and below that price.

We care about our clients very much, and are looking for a stable and knowledgable firm to take them over. We consider this just as important as offer price, so please include information about your company along with any offers.

We are looking for a cash deal (full amount upfront).

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How to contact us
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Please feel free to post to this thread, e-mail us, or PM us. We will do our best to answer all queries as quickly as possible, but keep in mind we will be answering everyone individually. We are receiving e-mail at whthost4sale@hotmail.com.