10 Things you should need before starting successful webhosting business

by Ruchira on December 7, 2010

Web hosting become nice business these days. I know people are saying this cloud computing age and shared and dedicated hosting are going to dead. I think 95% of people who has web sites doesn’t even know about the structure of cloud hosting. So shared hosting,vps and dedicated still rule the web hosting field!

Here are 10 facts that I think you should need before starting successful webhosting company.

1. Shared hosting is the best player to earn money

Specially if you are little bit new to linux and think “You cant oversell RAM on XEN” VPS hosting is definitely not for you! And do the math and see how much can you earn with a server with 12GB RAM making shared account vs VPS accounts on it!

2.Get an IP block with your company name on ip whois info

Nerds care about your whois information. when they do whois search on ex- whois.domaintools.com they can find out which data center that your server located in. So its 100% better to advertise your company name on ip whois. You dont need to purchase big IP block from ARIN for this. Even you have /29 ip block ask your datacenter that if they can do IP SWIP templates. Big players like softlayer does this for you ( Yes SWIP not SWAP)

3. Rent or colocate Server with at least 8GB of RAM and RAID10 from reputable data center like softlayer on USA.

Before buying server try googling about your data center reviews and specially uptime record. If you are using VPS go for XEN platform and watch for memory balooning (Overselling on XEN). RAID 10 is a must RAID1 will do the same but its slow on DISK I/O ! RAID10  will protect your users data. Its horrible if you ran in to disk failure that might be end of the company!

4.Do not use hacked cracked scripts on your site!

Some people tends to use hacked WHMCS and Cpanel license to reduce costs of running. But its absolutely not recommended because cracked software may contain malware and holes and didnt got access to important updates too. Do you like to expose your clients credit card details to hackers?

5.If Shared Hosting consider Litespeed

I have seen litespeed is becoming a trend in shared hosting and people likes a change. Also you can get more out of your shared server by using litespeed instead of regular apache. I’m not telling apache is crap!

6.Try WHMCS for customer management and theme it nice!

WHMCS is a nice option to manage clients and billing. I’m also using WHMCS but not for hosting billing still WHMCS plays better than Clientexec or any other because its easy to add plugins and theme it! These days most of companies use WHMCS but they didnt even bothered to change the default theme. So definitely hire someone and design a nice theme for match your main site!

7.Dont hesitate to spent $ for get unique template for your homepage

Get a web2.0 layout for your business homepage and be unique dont copy paste others or use free templates available on internet. These days you can get nice unique hosting theme for around $200 it really worth it!

8.Advertise on Webhosting talk and Digitalpoint

I didnt meant advertisements but post your hosting offers on digitalpoint and webhostingtalk’s hosting offers sections. Lots of webmasters on the internet choose there webhosts by looking that offers! If you already have an account on DP or webhostingtalk dont use it to advertise your new company forget about your old user name register new account and use it!

( Im telling this because if you have made some annoying posts on those forums such as posted newbie questions about servers or hosting using those old accounts you might get hurt on your reputation)

9. Keep everything open

Post downtime and other issues on twitter and a blog. Its good if you get a forum too. Dont try to hide downtimes and other problems keep everything open!

10. Hire someone to do ticket replies while you sleep 😛

It doesn’t matter even you are ready to response to support tickets 16 hours a day! You need to sleep so hire a experienced trustworthy guy to reply for support tickets!

11. (Bonus) Provide instant account setup

People doesnt like to wait to getin to their shiney new hosting instance! So enable instant account setups on your all hosting accounts!

I'm Ruchira Sahan and all posts on this blog are completely my thoughts and writings. I love DIY and Technology. So feel free to contact me for anything about this blog and don't forget to add a comment if this blog helped you! Thanks
Ruchira
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