I would like to know how many websites/clients can manage one person working for a web hosting company? I don't need accurate numbers because I know I can't get them because this depends on many factors, but...what's the average number of clients per person?
That really depends on how well versed your clients are. If they have a general understanding on how things work within their control panel, and how to run their websites, odds are you will not get many requests for support. This means that you could have 100's of clients, all supported by one person. If you are hosting customers with little to no knowledge, you will have to spend more time with them. To answer your question though, I don't think that you can come up with a average number of clients per person, as this depends greatly on the clientele you have. Other things you have to consider as well, if you are going with a VPS or dedicated server, some of your time will be required to ensure that the server is running correctly, and that it is able to handle your client load. Chris
As Chris says, it's impossible to say, but you can increase the odds in your favour so you need less support reps per X no. of customers. You can do this by having video tutorials on every aspect of your hosting and related matters that you can afford puchase (Demowolf is a good place to start), a well-provisioned searchable knowledgebase that is constantly updated, step-by-step troubleshooting guides to help people work through their problems, online guides on how to do stuff, regular newletters that remind people about some of the features and about the online systems you have, and a support team that is polite, helpful, but firm when it comes to people asking questions whose answers are available - and easy to find - in your online systems. Autmote things as much as possible. If you can sort-out automatic account provisioning and automatic recurring billing, then your support team don't even need to get involved in that either. After the general support it is dealing with emergencies that is the next critical factor. Keep clients informed. Don't lie about problems when they exist because they will find you out. Have a system, even something as simple as an "announcements" page, that is kept fully up-to-date with the latest happenings (server slow, server down, service not working etc etc) so they can refer to that first. We also put our live monitoring reports online so people can check them so see if a service is working properly (we monitor all services), and refer people to these if they have a question about a service. Even better, if you can invest in redundant systems, automatic failover, and other enterprise stuff, then server failures are little more than a minor nuisance as services keep running - automatically - on their failover clusters. After a while you'll find that your support requests are kept to an absoute minimum.
You'll need to get WHMCS first of all and probably about 3 staff members if you're going to have under 500 clients.
Thank You VERY VERY much for these answers! I am starting this company with my friend...our plan is to design websites for our future clients, host them on our servers, do SEM for these websites and offer computer equipment to clients,so...this is a lot of work to do and that's why I'm asking You this! If You have any ideas, advice or something like that, it would be nice if You share it with me! Thanks ALOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You need to be really fast at your support to maintain the hosting properly. I suggest you to manage it yourself for first 100 clients, then hire more staffs when you can't handle more of them. That way, you are flexible and ready to grow eyond comparison. Also remember to get a fast server, have backup plans for customer data, and get billing management script like WHMCS, WHM autopilot etc.
as stated above, there is no simple answer. you can have clients for years without 1 ticket. start off managing them yourself, and if it starts to be a hassle, hire some more staff; or possibly outsource your support
See if you are working with good support web hosting company and you can alone manage the business but when you are crap with bad company than you have to fight a lot to complete job..