Hey everyone, I currently have a web design, development, seo and web hosting company. It's been running for around 3/4 years now and everything's going fairly well. The main thing we focused on though was Web Design and SEO. Web Hosting was more like an added extra that we also supplied should any of our customers require it. But now, in December 2008, i launched a new website (under the same company name) focusing on Shared Web Hosting, Reseller Web Hosting, VPS Hosting and Dedicated Servers (basically everything to do with website hosting). I'm not no web hosting expert myself (although i obviously do have a fair all-round knowledge in the subject) but I have a small team of support technicians, server managers and maintenance guys, and so on currently working on the website to sort out any advanced technical issues that may come up. Now what i am wondering is: How can i make my web hosting company stand out from the other thousands of web hosting companies? What kind of features would you like to see in a good web hosting company? I have been wondering around many different webmaster forums and have realised there are loads of web hosting companies which people are complaining about. So i want to make sure my web hosting company is known for high quality, good support and value for money. I know you can't please everyone, but i want to at least try my best to. So anyway some ideas i had to make sure my business is successful was: Do regular weekly back-ups of all client websites. (yes a lot companies offer this but many still don't - i want to make sure our company does). Customer Support that goes the extra mile - providing people with support that most web hosting companies don't offer, such as script problems, coding issues, free site advice, etc. Competitive prices, features, etc but without overselling. Make it EASY for people who are not very hosting literate to use and understand. - which may help me tap into a new web hosting market/audience as well. Offer discounts web design, seo marketing, etc discounts with any one who orders web hosting. What do you think of these? Any other ideas or things i should know when launching and running a web hosting company? Your feedback, thoughts, ideas, anything would be much appreciatted.
All 5 of those ideas are a must... You might also consider a tech forum as well as an online tech support chat room for people who want immediate answers without having to pick up the phone.
In no particular order: 1. Accept all kind of payments. 2. Provide a decent "seo hosting" packages. 3. Reliability is a must. So is the good speed. No overselling. 4. Live support. 5. Bulk discounts. 6. Cpanel Well, that's what I need anyway
You should create a "term" in your hosting saying that you have the right to use occasional advertising on their site. This you can later use as an "extra", "we will advertise you on more famous sites driving traffic for the first week" (included with the already proposed SEO). If you perform that good you might have a buyer of a long term SEO relationship.
I personally believe competing with those hosting monsters is not possible , several of them own some datacenters and provide unlimited Space and BW ! how could anyone compete with them ?
Thanks for the suggestions and feedback so far they are great! FiFtHeLeMeNt: What i have noticed is that on many webmaster forums, especially WHT, a lot of the members do not like or even trusts a lot of the "monster web hosts" that offer unlimited bandwidth and unlimited space. Simply because this isn't possible. They no the majority of their clients wont use unlimited bandwidth/disk space and if you do starting using a lot of BW/diskspace they can simply suspend your website for "using too many server resources". Which in their TOS it probably states that this is a reason to suspend/terminate accounts.
Those types of web hosting companies have strict regulations and rarely allow 3rd party scripts and content. You could point out that fact.
I believe you should make sure to have truly stellar service, a good uptime guarantee, and if possible make sure you have Fantastico. I know a lot of people who aren't very internet literate who would never be able to run their businesses on a server without it.
having a nice interface for your hosting site will definitely help i mean look at media temple (wow) regards