Hi, all DP members, this is my first post here on DP forum. I would like to know where to start a web hosting business. I mean, I have decent amount of money to start from, and some of my colleagues as prospective customer. But I still doubt to choose between reseller and VPS. I know that if I start from reseller, I can have "everything on the table". But if, someday I need to move to bigger server, I think it's not easy since I have to learn about manage everything from the beginning in the middle of my business (the root access, the software setup and maintenance, etc). please give me advise or even share some experience. Thanks
well to start a vps you don't need to know shell and root access, as most of the VPS are managed. only thing learn to know how to use CPanel and also MX records so you can give each of your customer to create email ids on their own.
you mean I just need to do the cPanel and WHM stuff like adding new domain and so on? how about the cPanel license?
yea Cpanel makes it very easy to switch servers on the fly almost. as long as your new server is cpanel your golden, for a dedicated server Cpanel licence your looking at approx USD 38.00/monthly (VPS licences ive seen go low as 13.00/month) resellers almost always have cpanel already for you, so you woulnt have to worry about the licence part yet. hope this helps
Belongs you find yourself a decent Reseller service where they fully manage the backed and don't oversell then that would be your best option to start with, this would give you the time to learn the inn's and out's of WHM/CPanel in a hosting perspective. Once you've reached the time you either wish to upgrade to a VPS or require the extra room to growth then you can purchase a VPS, most managed Cpanel VPS come with the License and will also transfer your account's for you, however as already said above C Panel makes it very easy to move the account's over using their inbuilt account transfer wizard.
Since you're beginner,you should try to buy using reseller for easy management. Not to mention the cost is lower than VPS
Find a partner highly experience in this stuff split the cost of bills and it'll make life easier on you both. 50% - 50% profits each everyone is happy!
I can suggest you to Start your own web hosting business here. They have cheap price plan so you can earn the best percentual with competitive price, they offers good service with a lot of product related (domain service with all tld, hosting plan like shared, Vps, dedicated server, ssl, privacy, seo service and more....) and the most important their staff made all the support issue for your future customers (very important for this kind of business) It need a minimum investement like 89$/year. But I suggest to buy the Pro Reseller plan, so you can buy and distribute at a best retails price. I did and really satisfied