Running a web hosting business

If you’re a provider, stuff like performance management, wealth management and business growth needs to be addressed. Paraphrased, Kay Erb (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayerb/) says this equates to opportunities to run your business more effectively, efficiently and profitably.

In the web hosting industry, networks need to monitored, tweaked and upgraded as necessary to keep up with the competition. It wasn’t that long ago that 10Mbps uplink ports were common. Now 100Mbps ports are rapidly being replaced with 1Gbps (and 10Gbps) ports and prospects are noticing.

Resource usage has to be addressed, routing has to be optimized and technicians need to keep up with new technologies. Throw in marketing, advertising, search engine optimization, branding, HR, accounting and all the other stuff that needs to be addressed to remain successful, and you see where I’m going. Web hosting is real business, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

Looking for YOUR tips for running a successful web hosting business.

- Don't base your business plan solely on trying to offer the cheapest, unless you know you can do it and pay the bills, yourself, and employees.

- Know the difference between overselling and overloading. One is smart business one is not.

- Monitor everything and know what it all means. Set alerts that alert you before the kaka hits the fan.... not after.

- Know your stack like the back of your hand!

- Know that way more fail than succeed, it is a tough industry but if you can carve out a spot your golden.

- rm -rf ~ is bad.

Woops edit time is up, a few more..

- Start small as possible and be prepared to pay the bills out of pocket for at least 6-8 months. I have seen many companies start thinking go big and fold after 3-4 months as they only had a handful of customers when they needed 100s to cover costs.

- Are you the master of disaster? You had better master it. I have seen companies who on paper had awesome disaster recovery. But when the time came and the pressure hit they were like deer in the headlights, deer in headlights usually make the wrong decisions.
Make a plan and practice it every 3-4 months with as much realism as you can.

Top 3 things I advise in any business;

• Monitor your competition, don't follow them
• You are better than your competition - show the world why
• Set attainable goals
• Not everything is an emergency. Learn to set priorities
• Know your strengths, delegate (or hire) when necessary

Here is my suggestion to run a successful Web hosting business

• Learn more feature about hosting software/script like CPanel / WHMCS
• If you’re going to start small scale then choose the right VPS / Reseller hosting company
• Reviews are an important factor to run any business
• Always concentrate on the support system, Support should be very quick
• Offer different and secure payment gateway

As for web hosting tips I have, I have questions for many of you. I use Hepsia Control Panel and I notice many of you use C-Panel. I use Resellers Panel. I started my account which is free and began to study it well.

[1] I learn to set my prices and didn't have to worry about cost while I studied it for 4 months before I bought my Web Hosting DNS cluster ( $31 a year) and my Web Hosting URL ($12.50 a year).

[2] My web hosting domain is a long URL but it I hope one day will be the first thought to mind when people think Cloud Hosting. That is an angle you must have. The URL for Web Hosting company must stick in the mind of your visitors and those that hear your URL name.

My question to all of you is; Have you heard of Hepsia? I like it. My customers can host on over thirty Web Applications like WordPress and Joomla. I also would like to know if any of you have heard of Reseller's Panel hosting?

I had never heard of Hepsia, but it seems like they've been around a long time. I checked the forums here and there were advertising posts going back to 2012 where someone offered cPanel, DirectAdmin and Hepsia. I just never heard of it I guess.