Knowing if there is market share and how you will develop customers is vital to how you grow your web hosting business.
You may already have many potential clients lined up, say for instance if you are a web developer, and the clients you've built sites for come to you for updates.
You bill them for the updates, why not bundle that service with web hosting that you provide, make more money from your existing clients and keep the business closer to you. This would be my example of a smaller hosting company. Kaumil: And for smaller hosting company goals our agency hosting is a great option.
It's easy to use and easy to setup and if you need help migrating hosting clients over we can help you do so for free. You will get access to web host manager WHM which is a very popular control panel where you'll be able to create and manage your clients web hosting accounts.
Your web hosting clients will have their own cPanel control panel, which is the most widely used and most stable control panel in the hosting industry. You'll be able to set packages and limit features and sell your own unique web hosting packages. The best thing about our reseller hosting is that you do not have to worry about the technical stuff such as how to setup and manage a server, or dealing with system administrative responsibilities.
GreenGeeks takes care of that for you. You will get 50GB of disk space and GB of transfer to use to offer your clients and grow from there with our scalable, easy to upgrade reseller hosting plans. When you have time you can see our web hosting plans for agencies.
Trey: Now if you're not a web developer and say you want to own a particular part of the market, what part of the market will you go after? After all, there are many types of ways to go to market to acquire new customers. So, let's take customers that use WordPress as a type of market to go after and let's take a geographic location like Dayton OH. Say you know a lot about WordPress and you want to build a web hosting company catered just to those customers.
After all, we're talking about jumping in a hyper-competitive and complex market. Before we even start, understand that to succeed you must be willing to learn new skills but not at the expense of customers. For instance, if you are familiar with Plesk, don't use cPanel just for the sake of it.
Don't try to sell services you don't know how to manage yet. Besides that, focus on providing services that actually sell especially when you are still learning the basics. Don't make the mistake of adding too many products just because you want to show something new on your website. If you don't do that, the only effect this would have is to demoralize customers tied to unreliable services you are unable to provide.
You also have to stay close to your roots. I've been a hosting providers myself in the far and I recall making some costly mistakes. Here are a few. One day I started using a backup solution for my website that was overkill and expensive. Back in the days, it was used by NATO before cloud was invented.
Months later I decided to expand my hosting company in other countries so I started taking dedicated servers in:. I was also thinking of Japan but when I saw ideograms on Windows Servers I realized it was excessive. At the end of the day I had to shutdown two locations. At least I had a good taste at choosing providers. Back to the topic, most importantly keep you feet on the ground.
You can't compete with providers like GoDaddy with deep pockets so don't even try to be competitive with price. Focus on building your brand in the niche you love.
Obviously one also needs a business plan and a budget but I'm not in a position to give business advices to anyone. There are plenty of books and professionals that can help you with that.
Here I want to focus on technical details. Nowadays, there is no secret ingredient in starting a hosting business. Basically you need to choose partners and tools from a list depending on your specific needs. This guide is not intended for those with big budgets and infrastructures.
The target are small and medium-sized enterprises with little or no experience in the hosting industry. The first thing you need is a control panel to ease the processes behind running a hosting service and that covers the following aspects:. Even if right now you are not interested in all types of services, you never know how it's going to end. For instance I started from game hosting followed by VoIP, web hosting and software development.
I've been using it since and today I'm still running the same installation updates permitting. This software is provider-centric and comes with a lot of must-have features like:. Personally I think that automation alone is worth the asking price which by the way is The panel incorporates all your servers, registrars, payments, renewals almost flawlessly.
WHMCS is not perfect but offers an all-around platform that is highly extensible thanks to hundreds of third-party modules. It can accomodate any custom need. I've seen it used for radio stations, streaming, internet connections, consulting, webinars and IT support. Probably I'm the responsible of one of the weirdest use of this software. I used it as an e-commerce website to sell physical products. In recent years I adapted it to remotely monitor and manage mining rigs, masternodes, wallets for cryptocurrencies and trading but I digress.
WHMCS stands out with the best quality-price ratio and the largest community which is ideal for beginners. Before you ask, yes, there are alternatives both cheaper and more expensive but I don't think they offer the same value for money. If you want to learn more, I wrote an extensive article that explains in-depth what is WHMCS and another one to help you avoid common mistakes many providers are making. Now that you have your hosting battleship, we need to think about web servers.
Websites won't host themselves. We need another control panel to manage web hosting, emails, FTP and so on. Let me get this straight.
We are in and you are a provider. The typical customer expects instant setup. You can't run a one man show via console every time you need to create a virtual host. Not to mention service suspensions, reactivations and terminations. Similarly you can't expect customers to send you an email whenever they need a new address, database or FTP account. You are moving the first steps into this business and you can't go online carrying a deadweight. The simplest method for managing servers is to use a web-based control panel.
There are many options available for all tastes and this could be confusing. Let me make it simple for you. This way you can enjoy automation and even support resellers. It is worth to say that these panels help both you and your customers. Simply put, they offer user-level interface customers can use to manage their websites.
Learn More. Beatles or Rolling Stones? Everybody has his or her own opinion. I would recommend them in this order. Ultimately, your decision to start your own hosting business should depend on your motivations, technical know-how and the workload you can handle.
For example, people have many motivations for starting a business. Some want financial freedom, others want a source of passive income and others do it for the challenge of meeting a problem head-on.
Your motivations for starting a hosting business must be focused and clear. At the bare minimum, extensive knowledge of web design is required to operate a hosting business. Starting a hosting business also requires a significant time commitment.
Initially, you will spend many hours designing, testing and marketing your website. You will also spend time on a daily basis maintaining your website, providing customer support and processing payments. You should be willing to spend a couple hours a day working on your business at first. Eventually, if everything goes right, your business will grow to become a full-time job with great pay. Bit of Trivia: The blogging niche has seen consistent growth.
Web hosting has traditionally been a wide-ranging and very competitive industry. Niche markets in the industry are few and widespread, and we have found that the vast majority of companies compete on price and customer service. Some of the largest web hosting companies have revenues in the millions of dollars. A small startup like your future business will find it extremely difficult to compete with these goliaths. Next are the huge set of small- to medium-size hosting companies.
Here the word small is used with caution, because the average company in this category may have hundreds of servers and dedicated support staff. It is more difficult for these companies to stand out, mainly because of the number of competitors in this category. The last category will inevitably be the category you find your future business in. Many of these businesses will fail to attract any customers at all and even more will stagnate after a few customers try their services.
The rule of thumb is to have a business that offers something unique to your customers, coupled with extensive marketing, so that potential customers know about your name. The perfect example is the niche market. By positioning yourself as being directly associated with a niche, you are able to present yourself as an expert in that field in a way no mass market company ever could.
This is incredibly appealing to customers within that niche. There are many benefits to choosing a niche market: 1.
You can cut costs in things not related to the niche. You can focus your marketing efforts only on customers within the niche.
You can sell affiliate products, such as Wordpress plugins and website themes in your niche. For example, niche sales grow faster than general hosting sales and there is no need for constant investments in branding and extra features.
You have a greater chance of success when competing with relatively few competitors in a niche market. There are also a few downsides to the niche market, such as a naturally smaller revenue pool and limited room for growth. Take a few days to think about your ideal hosting niche and be thorough in your research. A spreadsheet is recommended for this purpose—you can use the one below as a quick guide. There are three types of web hosting businesses: 1.
Reseller hosting 2. At-home server 3. Customer service and support is optional in theory, but in reality, it's so important that it's practically a necessity. Consider handling customer service and support as part of your hosting business.
In the web hosting business, part of your appeal to potential clients is that they don't need to worry about the technical concerns. Even for hardware engineers, these tidbits can get frustrating, so you can imagine the anxiety it causes laypeople.
Clients rely on you to keep their websites and services up and running without a hitch. If you aren't able to provide this level of customer satisfaction, clients may choose to host their websites somewhere else.
Customer service should be a top priority for your new hosting business. Our customer support is what endears us to our clients and keeps them loyal. When you are hosting your infrastructure with us, your clients gain the benefits of our support programs, and it can take some of the load off your back in the process!
Now that you know the 5 steps for forming your own hosting company, you can get started today! You have found your niche and researched competition, selected servers, and defined pricing plans, and understand the need for customer service, so you can start reselling web hosting. Todd Terwillegar is the Digital Content Marketing Manager and Editor-in-Chief for the Liquid Web Blog , helping growing web businesses and enterprises thrive with the latest trends and technologies.
You can follow Todd on LinkedIn. Join our mailing list to receive news, tips, strategies, and inspiration you need to grow your business. Additional Revenue. Great Upsell for Digital Firms. Find Your Niche. Research Competitors. Choose Your Server Type. Dedicated Server. Dedicated Cloud Server.
Cloud Server. Create a Business Model. Pricing Plan. Website Design. Launch Customer Service and Support.
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