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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Kansas City
    Posts
    198

    Starting a Hosting Business

    Hello Folks,

    A team and my self have been spending the last 2 weeks developing a Web Hosting Business. We want the best for the clients so we have put a lot of finances into the company. We are supported by 3 Multi Million Dollar Companies in the area, So their is no way we are going to shut this down. We have put to much effort and money into it. Listed below are what we have for the company, But we need your help letting us know what we can use to improve the company and make it better for our clients. Please leave all the comments and recommendations that you would like. This will be a great help to the team and company.

    What we have;
    - 2 Intel Core2Quad Q9650 Servers with 8 GB Ram, 750 GB HD, And 100mbit Unmetered Bandwidth.
    - Custom Website Valid XHTML/CSS
    - WHMCS Billing System
    - Kayako Support
    - cPanel/WHM + WHM Master v3.0
    - Live Zilla
    - Certified Paypal (Next Month we plan to get a Credit Card Processor)
    - 24/7 Support Team of 5 Tier 2/3 Techs
    - cPanel Addons (Fantastico, RV Site Builder, Etc...)
    - Free Billing Software + Templates (For Resellers)

    If you can Recommend anything else for our company to succeed greatly, Please Send us a PM or Respond to the Thread.

    Thank you very much,

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    3,878
    Something for basic backups, cpanel has an easy backup to FTP or second drive as a minimal solution.
    Make sure to keep your billing system on a seperate locked down system from your clients.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Kansas City
    Posts
    198
    Quote Originally Posted by MikeTrike View Post
    Something for basic backups, cpanel has an easy backup to FTP or second drive as a minimal solution.
    Make sure to keep your billing system on a seperate locked down system from your clients.
    Hello Mike,

    Thanks for the help. Can you recommend any Companies that provide backup solutions. If not, That is perfectly understandable.

    For our website and Billing System, We have purchased a VPS for that from a very reliable company.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    3,878
    VPS should be fine for the billing system.

    There are companies that offer backup, if you can afford dedicated hardware you can license your own servers. http://www.r1soft.com/

    If not, many dedicated providers and data centers offer R1 or similar backup solutions. But definitely check out R1 for its cPanel integration. If you want to start basic, there are even rsync backup providers. Though I cant think of them off the top of my head. I've seen them sneaking around the forums, check out the offers section. Though R1 also has MySQL module for db backups.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Kansas City
    Posts
    198
    Thank you very much Mike, I will bring this up and show the guys at the office tomorrow. You have been a good help. Thank you

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Posts
    5
    Just make your website very user friendly, take the time to redo / fix up the entire design and user interface. That way you present it is damn near everything.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by DevGuy View Post
    We are supported by 3 Multi Million Dollar Companies in the area, So their is no way we are going to shut this down.
    If this is true, you should have a very good starting budget. Why not have a custom billing script developed? You'll find that having in-house developers for your script is much better than paying for an all-in-one solution since you will be able to customize the script to your needs and your clients' needs.

    Also, if you are really serious about this, have infrastructure setup for support (referring to phone support). You should have the finances to hire a full time support team for your clients.

    Definitely invest in some sort of backup system. For rsync/ftp, I recommend RsyncPalace.com. I have been using them for a while now and am quite satisfied with their pricing and services. I would recommend looking into r1soft though. It seems to be the new hot choice for backups. I haven't had personal experience with it so can't comment much there.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Posts
    212
    User interface,refund guarantee,uptime guarantee and the tech support department.Customer always pays more attention on these things.
    As you have Kayako,biuld up a support team would be recommended.And one more,get a phone support as Volt says.
    HostEase Hosting - Professional Web Hosting
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  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Kansas City
    Posts
    198
    Hello Guys,

    Thanks for all the Recommendations. We will be purchasing our backup solutions from R1Soft. I will be contacting them this afternoon to get that setup. At this time, I do not believe that a custom billing system is oh so necessary, But that will definitely take into consideration in the very near future. For Phone support, We are getting our 800 System Setup, But we have to wait because we have some custom features that we had, Which delayed the setup time.

  10. #10
    marketing, all of the above sounds great but if it isn't marketed right then two words spring to mind..... money....drain.....

    also offer multiple IP's, people who run multiple blogs etc seem to demand that these days.

    Good luck in your new venture.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by HostRisk View Post
    marketing, all of the above sounds great but if it isn't marketed right then two words spring to mind..... money....drain.....

    also offer multiple IP's, people who run multiple blogs etc seem to demand that these days.

    Good luck in your new venture.
    Exactly what I was thinking.

    Looking at your plan there, it seems you have an awful lot of expenses to cover especially when just starting out. A quick estimate is like $1000/m just on your hardware/software costs.

    Why do you have two servers with no clients? That doesn't make any bit of sense to me.

    Do you have people lined up waiting to use your service the day you launch? That's about the only reason I can see the need for two servers right off the bat.

    I like your determination - you definitely seem to have done your due diligence so I give you credit for that.
    Download my eBook + Videos: Starting your own successful web hosting company.
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