advice for starting a hosting company

C

CorneliusW

New member
Please do not link me to articles because I have been to some and did not find the information they provided useful. If you have expiernce running a hosting company then you can help me out greatly. I have been in contact with a couple of people who run a hosting company and they told me to either study Unix System Administration & Network Management or just learn from forums.

I would like to know if you guys have anymore advice for me, like if I should take a class in college or tech school and etc.

I want to start off offering free web hosting, subdomains like hypermart, angelfire, maxpages, and expages did. Then once the website gets a lot of users I will start to offer domain name hosting. But I figured you can make more money and become more successful running free web hosting. Plus it will be easier for me to market that with the sites I own already and the people I know.

I will have my own dedicated servers and all. So just let me know what kind of topics I should read up on or class or whatever else.
 

Well, no one else has replied so I guess I better do. :)

Ok - Regarding to finding any information, you can do so by reading articles, books, forums, and also seeing a consultancy companies whom specializes in that. There are many resources out there, both free and paid, which'll help you in the hosting industry.



Yes, you'll need to learn Unix/Linux server administration to actually be able to manage the servers you own, otherwise you can purchase a dedicated server from a company that offers managed servers or even hire a remote tech man to manage the server.
With these servers, you'll also need cPanel or Plesk or something like that, basically a control panel.
The main problems with having people advise you and not going to a consultancy company, is most have experience in paid hosting and not free.
 
Tips: Make sure that you have your server secured because free users do have an tendency to abuse services. You will also need some mean of support for them forums are good but if you have scripts such as live help scripts they will make quite good use of it for you and you will find your self having to much to do because they need support or have questions. I will be glad to assist you with any questions that you may have
 
Well I am going to start off with free subdomains because thats where I started off at on the internet. It is easy to get free web hostings websites out there so the popularity will increase much faster then it would with paid domain name hosting. Once I get to a certain popular level I will then offer paid domain name hosting. Free hosting makes A LOT of money if you run it correctly. Much easier for me to make it with free hosting then domain hosting.

Thanks for the advice
 
I will be glad to share more information about management of free users with you as I am an free webhost. If you need me of have an problem just post it.
 
I would just like to offer a bit of advice:

Don't just start and run away after 1 month. It takes a while to promote a business, so stick around and keep advertising.

I think it's a good idea to offer a free hosting solution, that way you can make money from adverts until you offer domain hosting. Also when you do offer professional packages you will be able to advertise your services on all the freebie sites :)

Good luck to you!
 
"I think it's a good idea to offer a free hosting solution, that way you can make money from adverts until you offer domain hosting. Also when you do offer professional packages you will be able to advertise your services on all the freebie sites " Something Similar was done here.
 
I would suggest to work for a hosting company first. It much better to learn the business on someone elses money.
 
Thank's for advice and keep them coming in!

When I do start the hosting company, I will not run away if it does not succeed instantly. I do not quit on anything, regardless of what it is.

I was told to have about 2 servers so that my servers do not get overload and the pages load very slow.
 
You need lots of things to start.
Firstly you need to buy a server. One dededicated server would be goood for a fist time. Where to buy ? This strongly depends on your customer location. I use http://www.servepath.com with "busines path" plan. They run Secondary DNS for my domains and their support is fast enough.

Next thing you need is an account on payment processor. I can recomend http://worldpay.com (great, but expensive) and http://2checkout.com (good prices).

Then you need your own web site. This is very important part of your business.
You can find design you like at http://templatemosters.com. Good site engine you can get from http://astellar.com

A couple of days to customize web-site and you are ready to sell hosting service ;-)
 
do you think guys that it is better to start just in your own or partening with someone else??
Also, apart knowledge of Unix administration, which other fields you should be good at??

Thanks a lot in advance :shout:
 
Having a partner can be good providing you trust them implicitly, and that they bring something to the table that you can't.
For instance, if you are strong in customer support, try to have a partner that is strong in technical issues.

Having a reseller account is a good way to start out. You can start slowly without too much initial investment. You will learn more and more as you go. Watch your host's forum and see how issues are dealt with, and learn from that.
 
Whats the biggest tip?

Have a few thousand dolars backing you. Do not expect to break even in the first month. It always starts slow. Have at least enough money to pay for 6 months on top of say 400 dollars for scripts etc.
 
Khazun said:
Whats the biggest tip?

Have a few thousand dolars backing you. Do not expect to break even in the first month. It always starts slow. Have at least enough money to pay for 6 months on top of say 400 dollars for scripts etc.
Click to expand...
Ok - Regarding to finding any information, you can do so by reading articles, books, forums, and also seeing a consultancy companies whom specializes in that. There are many resources out there, both free and paid, which'll help you in the hosting industry.

Yes, you'll need to learn Unix/Linux server administration to actually be able to manage the servers you own, otherwise you can purchase a dedicated server from a company that offers managed servers or even hire a remote tech man to manage the server.
With these servers, you'll also need cPanel or Plesk or something like that, basically a control panel.

The main problems with having people advise you and not going to a consultancy company, is most have experience in paid hosting and not free.

Secondly, make sure that you have your server secured because free users do have an tendency to abuse services.
 
Ok - Regarding to finding any information, you can do so by reading articles, books, forums, and also seeing a consultancy companies whom specializes in that. There are many resources out there, both free and paid, which'll help you in the hosting industry.

Yes, you'll need to learn Unix/Linux server administration to actually be able to manage the servers you own, otherwise you can purchase a dedicated server from a company that offers managed servers or even hire a remote tech man to manage the server.
With these servers, you'll also need cPanel or Plesk or something like that, basically a control panel.

The main problems with having people advise you and not going to a consultancy company, is most have experience in paid hosting and not free.

Secondly, make sure that you have your server secured because free users do have an tendency to abuse services.
 
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