Start a Web hosting Company
Web hosting is a business in which disk space is provided to other businesses or individuals who use the space to run their website and online services. Not only disk space but hosting includes other things such as providing 24/7 internet for making the website always online. Services ensuring the Security of the website. Services to develop the website or online apps, and the list is long.
The number of websites is increasing day by day and within a few years, every business moves online. It is known fact to all that every start these days has a website of its own. All these companies won’t make there are servers for hosting their website. They outsource the hosting providers and host their website on their services.
There are many web hosting companies already in the market and it is a profitable company. This business normally involves a lot of investment initially. Both in terms of manpower and in terms of servers and technical resources that are required. But you can reduce the costs of servers by using Reselling from other web hosting services.
In reselling business you just have to develop the website needed for the business and also the technical and nontechnical manpower required. You have to select a hosting provider that allows Reselling. You have to signup on their website and choose the Reselling the package that is suitable for your business. Design your own hosting packages and Select your own prices for different packages. Based on the service you are providing select the profit margin and decide the prices.
To club it up there are two different ways of starting a web hosting company.
- Developing own servers
- Reselling Webb hosting business.
In this article, we focus on discussing developing your own servers web hosting company. This involves a lot of backend development and a lot of technical features. If you are a beginner and less technical interested person we suggest you go to our guides to start a Reselling Webb hosting business.
The following are the main steps involved in starting a web hosting business with own servers.
- Pre-market analysis.
- Select the core hosting.
- Developing the website and payment interface.
- Select the required equipment and software.
- Designing different packages.
- Preparing the marketing strategy.
- Customer satisfaction and support team.
It is mentioned that hosting business is a profitable business because once a server is bright with the initial setup after the only cost will be the maintenance cost and manpower cost. If you have a good service then the customer who is hosting a website on that server will stay for years with renewing the service every year. This gives a returning payment. But you have to keep in mind that maintenance and constant upgrading the servers is important to provide optimized and security-focused servers to customers.
Pre Market Analysis
The market needs change continuously and based on the market scenario the business structure needs to be made. Pre Market analysis involves the process of understanding the market needs and also verifying the business feasibility. In this step, all the competitor’s business models need to be focused and analyzed. The demand for the market for different resources of web hosting and what is the probability of success of business considering the market competition. How much time is required for the break-even of investment? What will be there mech power requirement and investment requirement? Everything needs to be analyzed in detail. Prepare a proper strategy and report of analysis for better understanding.
Understand the market is what the word suitable for our market analysis. This is most important that your business needs to be designed and developed on the result of this analysis. The proper tool needs to be used to getting accurate results. Reliable data need to be gathered rather than just assumptions. Data best to be gathered from sources that are trustworthy and reliable.
The Most Important Market Analysis tool is SEMRUSH, this can help you in complete competitors’ analysis and probable target customers. Read our complete guide.
Select Core Hosting
If you have a look at different hosting providers you will understand that there many many different types of hosting that are available. The following are some of the types of hosting that are available in the market from leading providers.
- Shared hosting
- VPS hosting.
- Cloud hosting
- File Hosting
- WordPress hosting
- Podcast hosting.
- And many more.
Each type of the above hosting has different requirements for server configuration. You can have a different set of servers for of the above types and provide all the services. Or else you Cech discuss yourself in one type of hosting service provider. To quote an example please look at the following service providers.
These are the leading hosting providers. If you see their website and their plans that have different types of services available. They developed these services as their business grow. They have different sets of servers optimized for different hosting services and have they Cech provide optimized servers four for each application.
But if you are beginning with less investment, it will be difficult to provide all the services in the first instance. And also some times it is better to make your self established in providing the best service is a particular category targeted than just providing normal service is many categories. Look at the following hosting providers
If you observe the website of the above hosting providers and their plans you will understand that these are specialized in providing a particular Webb hosting service. They are known for providing the best service in that particular category. That is the reason the cost is above hosting providers is high when compared to hosting services mentioned in Previously who provide services in will categories. Because these services developed and optimized their servers only for that particular category and they are sure to provide the best service in that particular category.
So you have to decide based on your business model, market analysis and also investment available the core hosting if your business. Based on this you will be buying the servers and other software required for your business.
Select the required equipment manpower and software.
In starting your own web servers you need to buy servers from a reliable provider. The servers had to be the latest technology to provide the best service and optimize resources to the users. And also you best the best server you make use of resources efficient way and earn proper profits by spending less on maintenance costs.
You also need other software that is necessary to run web hosting. This software includes backend panel, backend optimization software, security software, payment interface, and many others. We will take care of the website and payment gateway in the next step as a sperate step. Below are the main important things you need to arrange to get started.
Servers disk space
Servers are the disk space you are offering to your customers these are most large spaced devices usually measured in TBs.
The following are a few things you have to get.
CPU
CPU is the known term. This is a place where all the operations happen. This is normally a disk space but with advanced speed. This is very costly compared to normal disk space.
Servers location with Airconditioning
You have to select a location for maintaining your server and office space near the server. You should have proper arrangements for the server like Airconditioning. As the server a lot of operations will be happening, they tend to become heat and hence air conditioning is necessary to make maintain the environment and also safeguard the servers.
A fire safeguard arrangement and many other necessary arrangements need to be developed and maintained to tackle unexpected outcomes.
INTERNET Connectivity
Internet connectivity with good space is necessary for making your website and services available to users online.
You have to ensure you always have two internet service providers so that even if one is down due to certain conditions you always have a backup. This is important because, if your service is down, based on the downtime there will be a huge impact on the customers to your business.
Manpower for the Company
Hosting a company requires a lot of technical and nontechnical manpower.
Technical manpower for backend management, website management, server management, and maintenance.
Nontech support for marketing, business development, customer service and many other roles normally existing in the business. Out of all these customer services is most important in hosting companies. And also most importantly you need to have the manpower available 24/7 because if any minor error happens you have to ensure that the downtime is very less. If the downtime is large then it has a huge impact on the business in the short run and long run.
Developing the website and payment interface.
If you have no idea how to develop a website. Please look at our guide for developing a website
As your servers and manpower are known to you. It’s time to bring your business live. Develop a website by your technical team for bringing the business online. The website design is the most important. It has to be attractive and easy to use by your users. User has to be able to find every information in detail and self-explained. And also make sure to highlight all your best services and make your website design unique.
A unique domain is the most important one and should be available easily for users to remember. Register a domain name now from GoDaddy or Bluehost to safeguard the domain from anyone else registering it.
Designing different packages.
At this stage, you have already decided on the core hosting features of your business. You have to very keen on highlighting the unique services you are providing. Normal hosting space is provided by all the services, but here you have to use your innovation and understand the target audience. You have to know what they need in detail and what will attract them. For example, if you see Bluehost most of its users are WordPress users and it provides improved and optimized speed for WordPress which highlights excellently on its website. And some websites provide free SEO tools and some provide free backup service and many others provide similar services. Look at the different packages of GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Bluehost and see how they are providing extra features in the different higher package. Decide on these carefully as it will be difficult to change the hosting packages at a later stage.
Preparing the marketing strategy.
Now you have all the tools to get started. But you won’t get the users like that. You have to attract and make users know about your uniques services of hosting.
Most of the hosting companies provide offers initially to attract users and make them comfortable with their hosting. So that if their website grows their needs frowns and with that they will be moving to higher resources package in your hosting and you have a valued more paying customer. This is the most famous strategy in hosting business. You get the customer initially by providing an offer on the small package. So if the requirements of that business increase he will pay more and upgrade the server and this way you develop a bunch of high paying business.
You have carefully organized and attract customers. Proper targetting is most important. We mean you have to target those people who need your category hosting. The following are some for the advertising services you can use to market your business. Read our complete guide on advertising your business. You can use the below different advertising agencies to advertise your business.
- Google Ads
- Microsoft ads
- Propeller ads
Customer satisfaction and support team.
This probably decides the retention rate of your customers. Retention rate means how many users actually renew the service from you after their first billing cycle is completed. It is an ideal case that all 100% of users will renew the service and continue with your service. They will continue only if they are very much satisfied with the features and services offered by you. For this reason, you have to maintain excellent customer satisfaction and feedback team.
Probably you need to maintain a 24/7 team for answering the queries. Initially, you can include a small team and later with the customer base, you can increase the team in shifts.
