InsideWH - A Web Hosting Insider

Tags: Customer Support, Hosting, Hosting Industry, Reseller Hosting, Web Hosting, Web Hosting Business

If you are still planning or have already decided to start your own web hosting company, you should consider the points mentioned below. Most of you may quickly disagree with what’s mentioned but these are real facts that we have observed over years.

• Hosting business is not for everyone.
• It is not as easy as people think it to be.
• It is not an overnight-get-rich business.
• It’s a niche market and you will have to compete with several other companies.
• Offering cheap web hosting plans will not bring in lot of customers.
• Advertising on search engines will surely bring in visitors but not customers always.
• Over 40,000 companies worldwide are engaged in web hosting services. Where will you stand?

Do you think you can manage the hosting business?

Most of us are quite optimistic about ideas that we have and it is really good to be confident about what we want to do. It is only time which will prove if your idea was worth what you thought it to be. This section will help you familiarize yourself with some of the most commonly asked questions in the hosting industry. We are sure you must have already given some thought to the points mentioned below but for those who are yet to know the inside-out of this business, it might really help.

What does a customer expect from a webhosting company?

Most of the customers expect their hosting provider’s resources to be always available and also when they need support. This would mean that you as a hosting company is directly responsible for providing 24×7x365 support to your customers. If your clients are local (same city, state), they might even want to call you when they need your help. You may not have enough support personnel from the day one, which means you should expect yourself to be able answer their queries and in timely fashion too!

Are you financially strong enough to start a hosting company?

Starting a hosting business requires significant amount of investment. Money is required before you start the business to register your company, website and recruiting technically qualified staff, marketing staff, for brand building and getting a sales department in place. The amount of money required may differ if you want to get into the market offering all hosting packages that are most commonly offered in the industry or you may want to focus on specific offerings only. Software license are not cheap and if you are not technical, letting a service provide manage your servers might prove to be very costly to you in the early days of your business. If you plan to hire dedicated customer support personnel to support end users, then you may want to think about number of months that you will have pay them till you become profitable.

Do you have the latest technology?

End users always want to have the latest of innovations in their hands. This might require your dedicated time and efforts to lean and upgrade your technology at offering. There are so many patches that are released by various vendors and you will need to install to keep your servers and other softwares always upto date. For example, you are the owner of a hosting company which is specialized in reseller hosting solutions and you offer hosting on Linux platform only. Consider a security leak in one of the applications that you have installed in the server for which the application vendor releases a patch. If you are not aware of this security leak, it might pose a serious threat to your business. Staying current is a must!

How will you support your customers?

We would be happy to open a web based trouble ticket and receive a prompt reply with resolution. This may not be the case with every customer. Some would want to talk to a person to ensure that they have escalated the problem to a person and is being resolved. These type of customers would want to ensure that their problems are being addressed and someone is working on their critical issues. For not so critical issues, customers may find it more convenient to open a ticket in the web based ticketing system.

Yes, we agree, those were not all the factors but, as we told you, were the most common factors that will affect your business in both short and long term. If you run your own hosting company and needs suggestions, please feel free to contact us and we will help you do better in the business.

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