Help Me Start WebHosting Company

Hi, I've always wanted to provide web hosting as a job. I understand there's quite a bit involved in providing web hosting and was just wondering if anyone could share some insight. I don't know enough to be my own tech guy so I would probably have to hire a tech guy. Other than that and buying/renting servers, what would I need? Also how does one proceed in acquiring his own server for starting a web hosting company? What would the start up costs look like? Thanks in advance! =)

 

just suggestion for u, maybe firrst u must order as reseller, and if u get alot of client, u must try Virtual private server

 

Here's a rough checklist of what you'll need:

A dedicated server parked in a reliable data center.

BackUp - you'll need some kind of backup / emergency restoration system in place in case somebody hacks your site and knocks it offline.

CentOS - seems to be the industry standard for web hosting servers, but almost any OS can work

Firewall - hardware is better but software will do. CSF works very well.

Apache (or LiteSpeed) / MySQL / PHP / Perl / plus a ton of other software services to be setup and running on the server

Webmin - lets you monitor a lot of useful things on the server

Some sort of control panel for your customers to use, most companies use cPanel/WHM or Plesk

Some sort of billing/CRM system, ideally with a built-in support system

Beyond the technology, you also need the skills to use it all, which is a whole other bag of worms and requires a lot of different skills to do. You need to be able to diagnose a ton of problems ranging from resource usage, to zombie processes, to BIND failures, and a bunch of other problems that will make you want to pull your hair out.

Got all that? Good, you can provide the service. Now you need to tell the world about it...

Then you need a website, which requires a designer or buying a template and making it work with your billing system.

Once you have all that, you need the ability to market and advertise your site to try and draw customers in.

Got customers coming in now? Great. But now you have to break-even to cover your operating costs. You'll need several hundred (perhaps a few thousand) customers before you will break even and not have to sink hundreds or thousands of dollars every month into it.

Now you need another 10,000 customers to make it profitable...

That's just to get you started, best of luck

 

Thanks. I didn't know making a profit as a webhost could be so difficult.
The main difficulty for me would be the technical hardware,software stuff. Would you know how much it would cost to hire someone who knows a bit more about it all?

 

You'd want a System Administrator. They aren't cheap. $100/hour is considered a decent pay for them.

 

if u need managed for ur server u can try on another forum, many offer about service management

 

we are looking for a reseller of our email marketing system
url : jsender.com
can we cooperate?

 

I'm going to give you my honest opinion, based entirely on what you have said so far; don't start a web hosting company.

Its obvious you have no idea what your doing, the hosting industry is already full of web hosts with no idea what they are doing and providing awful service, just trying to make a quick $/£ - luckily none of them last more than a few months, many of them come to a nasty end, sometimes involving liability cases and threats to sue etc...

A web hosting company is not something you can set-up and make profitable in just a few months, it takes dedication, hard work and more importantly skill. People completely underestimate just how much hard work goes into operating a web hosting company and what you need to remember is that you will (at some stage) start hosting websites that generate revenue for the owner, who won't be best pleased when their site goes down and you have no idea how to fix it.

If you really want to do this, then as previously suggested, get yourself a reseller plan and a website, once you have that running; enrol in some Linux/Business management courses, learn cPanel, how to manage customers, even then you will probably need hire other staff so you can provide support (24/7/365 is the standard in this industry) and secure your servers properly, that’s not even the hardest part; you then need to convince people why they should choose you over the 750,000+ hosts already available...

- Good Luck

 

Christian Little provides a good outline of what you need to do.

It's not that difficult to make a profit but that depends upon your definition of "web host". You can start with a reseller account so that all the technical aspects are taken care of by the hosting company and you'll only need a few clients to recover your monthly costs. Making enough income to cover the time you spend managing it all and then making a profit is more difficult, but it is feasible. Although I wouldn't describe a reseller as (technically) being a web host, the vast majority of "hosting companies" that you find on the internet are actually resellers.

There's surprisingly few web hosts who actually run their own dedicated servers, and the number who operate their own networks and multiple servers (for instance, more than 20 servers) are even less.

Ufortunately, the area where you identify as the most difficult for you is also the most important part. Marketing and Sales are critical to attract customers and produce income, but if you don't have the technical skills to make it work, keep it working, and provide your customers with worry-free reliable hosting, then all the other parts don't matter. It might be easier to find a partner who has the technical skills rather than "buy them in".

Don't let the perceived difficulties put you off if you really want to do it. Anything worth having is never going to be easy. Be prepared for sleepless nights, lots of stress when things go wrong (and they will!!), worrying about whether you're making enough money to cover your bills, but it will be worth it in the end.

We started off with a reseller plan in 1999 with a hosting company selling Windows NT4 reseller plans. We eventually got our own server (just one) and panicked all the time about something going wrong. Eventually we could afford another, then another, and now 12 years later we're still a relatively small company in the great scheme of things, but we have our own racks of servers, our own networks, and a number of staff to look after it all. It's been hard. There have been times when we would have happily walked away from it and times when we worried if we had enough spare cash to order more servers or even pay the mortgage. But it is possible if you really want to do it and are determined enough to make it work.

If you really want to do it - go for it.

 

I assume that you should be experienced enough in web hosting business at all and how to promote your service.
If you are going to start reselling, be sure that the company you are going to deal with is trustworthy.

 

Thanks everyone! It seems that I will delay my starting of a webhosting company until I've obtained some more knowledge that I'm missing. Thanks for all the advice once again.

 

Actually you no need to know all those technical stuff.

You just outsourced it to third party,you concentrate on get sales.

 

How much would the outsourcing cost?

 

At least you should know what to outsource and how to measure "quality" of service provided. I don't think it is possible without understanding how everything works at least in general terms.

 

I would say if you ask how to start web-hosting business you are not ready to start it at all. Try to read couple of months webhostingtalk.com or digital point forum - just read everything about web-hosting to feel heartbeat of that industry. In parallel search and read things you don't know. After that you have 2 scenarios possible:
1. You will know everything you need without asking anybody. And you will have strong willing to proceed to next step OR
2. You will be tired of all that stuff and happy that you saved your money

I mean you should have your own way. It is pretty the same like all other ways but you should build it by your own. Only in that case you will have enough competence to address problems.