Hi Everyone, Basically I am from India and as the title says says I want to start up a small web hosting company. I am thinking of buying a reseller account at the start. But I am confused as from where will I bring customers, which reseller account to opt for, etc. So guys, please be my mentors and guide me. Waiting a response ASAP. Thank You, Amey.
Make sure where you buy your reseller account...do not go for cheap unlimited plans..no such thing exist..i can recommend resellerzoom for buying your reseller acc...marketing is your job..stay reliable and do not disappear in few months...
How do you plan to differenciate yourself from all the other hosting resellers? This is a very competitive market and you have to have a competitive edge. It is almost impossible to survive as a me-too provider.
Prefer one who don't do overselling (like unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth), and have live chat support.
How is bizzhost.com ?? I mean any one knows how is there techincal support ?? @colin104: I plan to start this web hosting as a side business along with a job. Also I plan to develop web sites and applications to clients. Can u suggest any tips or advices for starting a web hosting company and yet be little different from the others. Initially I plan to only sell linux accounts. Another question I wanted to ask is that if I purchase 20GB reseller account, how many accounts can I sell if each customer is going to get 1GB ??
I will prefer you must start this business carefully because it takes some time to stable! Sales of Web Hosting Accounts these days is not easy job to do so because of global big competition!
Well, there are literally thousands and thousands of hosting resellers, so you really can't effectively differentiate the product (or service). You can try and be creative in the way you package it, the way you sell it, or the way you present it to your potential customers. I think you should start by defining who will be your target customers. Then, try to figure out how they take purchase decisions and what are the main factors that they consider. Finally, do your best and be creative to stand out from the crowd on those factors (e.g. you decide to target owners of small online stores who have used until now free hosting, but have outgrown its limitations and want to move their stores to paid hosting for the first time. You talk to a couple of them and realize that they would base their decision on: 1-technical features that will help them easily transfer their existing site, 2-price, 3-referrals from fellow store owners. You then develop a good package to address primarily those needs).
My best advice is; Don't do it. Literally 99% of all hosts that startup notice it's too much for them, and/or never make it anywhere. Too much competition who spends millions advertising and has true support teams, vs. yourself.
Customers only need good uptime and support! And if your host is good more customers will come to you ! So, choose something like hostgator so that your customers would be happy with you ! - Digital -
You'll definitely need to find a niche. There's too much competition out there and nobody is going to choose you unless you give them a reason to. You'll also need to provide support and know what you're doing in the event something goes wrong. Customer service is a big deal for hosting companies and it might be difficult if you're a reseller because you'll have to play messenger back and forth between the reseller company and the client.
Actually there are many place can bring customer for example DP,webhostingtalk. Or you can even advertise at your local magazine to get client.
In my opinion if you don't know how to operate a linux server, know how to fix common problems, PHP etc, you shouldn't start and first educate yourself. Ofcourse I don't know if you already have.