More hosting customers

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SonWebHost

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Ten customers per day at even bargain rate would build a hosting company in 30 days. Makes you wonder why it takes years to get 30 customers. How do you about you what is your average per day customer signup during a 30 day period.
 
I don't want to get into too many specifics on this, but 300 clients for a startup company would be a nightmare - some established companies can hardly handle the influx of clients and requests at that rate. I'm talking mainly regarding "bargain basement" shoppers. They seem to create more headaches and cause more problems on themselves than anything else.

sure, 10 clients x 30 days = 300 clients, but if you have loss of 75% within the first 6 months, the signup numbers do nothing for you. It's much easier to upsell existing customers than it is to market for new customers. Afterall, they already like the service you're providing - most of them will buy complimentary services (domain registration, ssl certificates, backup systems, VPS, Dedicated Servers, web design, SEO, etc), and they'll also remember where to purchase when they're launching their second or third site.

We're definitely not considered a "bargain basement" host. We generally hover around the 7-10 new hosting accounts (shared, vps or dedicated) each business day, and normally 3-5 on the weekends. But even with a solid staff that have been with us for several years, we have our days where things are hectic. You need to have the right infrastructure to handle the growth at those rates.

A one man startup shop with 300 clients in a month would go out of business pretty quickly.
 
as a one man host, if i started to get 300 new clients each month i think i would have a heart attack. :sad: i think i would cope though, but would need to employ some staff and to run smoothly each month you would need a new server
 
300 customers would be alot to handle, but, if the complete system could be automated from the admin end, i think this would be possible, i would never say no, it would be hard work dont get me wrong, but with an automated system it would make it alot easier to handle.
 
Yeah, you cannot handle 300 customers on your own. Its recipe for disaster. How would you be able to handle support?
 
Sorry but I have to 'beg' to differ to some things here, from experience.

1) It does not take 'years' to get 300 clients, I had that in the first year, probably more.

2) One man can manage 300 clients, trust me.

It is not as hard as you think, providing you work hard and keep up with the game!
Your average out of about 1000 clients, not even 100 would regularly send tickets, if you are not advertising for the 'newbs' of the web.

But 300 new clients a month, might be hard, but still, they all have to be sending tickets to make it hard.
So providing most know what they are doing, and most do, you will have not so many issues.

The main issue is cash flow, if you cannot handle expansion of servers and the network, then you will not get anywhere.

Now this is when it gets hard.

A friend of mine runs a company, and had 3,000 clients in less than two years, he is a bit more skilled than me LOL!

Either way, he advertised to the newbs of the web, and offered a type of hosting which comes with issues.
He struggled, outsourced support which never did work hardly.

Desk full of 200-400 tickets a day, 10-50 phone calls a day and plenty of chats.
Now the difference is, most of his clients did not know much about hosting and just wanted a 'website like youtube' which was what they did.

Pure example of when you get it wrong.

The money was very high but still, not high enough.
 
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I have just over 300 clients and dont get that many tickets/chats because i would say 90% know what they are doing, but we have an extensive knowledgebase and give regular announcements.
i have seen many webhosts using WHMCS and have 0 knowledgebase and 0 announcements, which to me are really the 2 most important clientarea features and should be utilised to say you on explaining everything in tickets or chats.
 
John-GH said:
Super cheap prices usually attract the wrong crowd that cause issues.
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That's true.

You're more likely to get a higher percentage of web hosting virgins who require more support than the average user. Once they get burned by a cheapo outfit they will then move on (with some hosting experience) to a host that has realistic pricing to sustain a reliable service.
 
Sorry but i still have to disagree on this. 300 Clients managed by only 1 man is IMHO overselling. You are overselling support. Just by saying they wont always submit tickets doesnt mean that they cant.
 
VLStream said:
300 Clients managed by only 1 man is IMHO overselling.
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hows this then, if you have clients over several servers then its not overselling

VLStream said:
You are overselling support. Just by saying they wont always submit tickets doesnt mean that they cant.
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not really as you may have a large written KB that you could direct clients too.

so the way you have stated is even if you have a small retail outlet and you get over 300 customers a day you are overselling
 
easyhostmedia said:
hows this then, if you have clients over several servers then its not overselling


not really as you may have a large written KB that you could direct clients too.

so the way you have stated is even if you have a small retail outlet and you get over 300 customers a day you are overselling
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The way it was put; someone who manages 300 clients on several servers is overselling support simply because they gamble that their clients are experienced. IMO its exactly the same as gambling your clients wont use all the allotted bandwidth. It has nothing to do with retail outlets.
 
VLStream said:
The way it was put; someone who manages 300 clients on several servers is overselling support simply because they gamble that their clients are experienced. IMO its exactly the same as gambling your clients wont use all the allotted bandwidth. It has nothing to do with retail outlets.
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its the same principle as a retail store. if the store had 300 customers instore then you still have to manage these customers.

management of clients/customers needs are the same in retail and the service industry
 
We handled 300 clients fairly easy (2 of us), they came in a period of 6 months though, but everything went smooth and everyone seems to be happy, think we where lucky :)

We do however have more staff now.. :)
 
SafeSrv said:
We handled 300 clients fairly easy (2 of us), they came in a period of 6 months though, but everything went smooth and everyone seems to be happy, think we where lucky :)

We do however have more staff now.. :)
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i think what VLStream is saying is that if you are a 1 man business then you are overselling support if you have 300 clients
 
If all 300 where to submit a ticket in a short period of time you would have problems yes, guaranteed. 1 extra member of staff helps heaps.
 
SafeSrv said:
If all 300 where to submit a ticket in a short period of time you would have problems yes, guaranteed. 1 extra member of staff helps heaps.
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yes 300 tickets in a short period would be a struggle if a one man business, but not impossible to cope with.

yes extra staff is a help.

I have had staff, but non seem to work out although i did have 1 that was a trainee from a government scheme that shows great potential to a point i let her manage one of my online stores, but one day i have to go elsewhere and asked her to man the phones etc. until i got back, but when i got back she had gone.

it turned out that when i was aware a hosting clients (now ex) phones up with an issue and become verbally abusive towards her as she could not fix his problem ( which actually was a problem he caused). she left in tears and refused to return.
 
300 Clients

I would consider having 300 clients per month a very good start. I just acquired a hosting company, but don't have many clients for now. However, I already have an extensive knowledgebase to help my clients with most basic problems, and besides I also work online for up to 14 hours a day, so I wouldn’t have much problems replying to as many that would still go ahead to open a ticket. But, since I also offer a paid hosting service, if new clients continue to signup at that rate, then I wouldn't hesitate to hire new workers. Also, if you have good hosting software, you wouldn't have much problems managing them alone, at least for the first one month.
 
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