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Server Requirements - Small Business Hosting
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Server Requirements - Small Business Hosting

JaxxJaxx Member
edited June 2019 in Help

Hello there!

My business partner and I have been designing websites for a while now and hosting some of the projects on a great VPS I snatched up from @HostRush (nothing but positive vibes for them!). While looking at ways to expanded our services, we've decided to step our toes into shared hosting; this is mainly for the clients we design for, however I seem to find "hosting" popping up into conversation a lot more often nowadays than a few years ago, and would like to be able to offer said hosting services independent of the design front.

In essence, this is both a request for information regarding the resources necessary to make this work, as well as a request for offers (which I hope is allowed in this sub-forum.) I'll try to point out our questions/requirements as I go along here:

As someone who's had experience in shared, reseller, and VPS hosting, I want to provide a service that uses cPanel/WHM, both for the ease in management from the administrative side, as well as for those who are less-aware of managing their websites from a central point. Whether this is offered directly by the host I choose or acquiring a license and installing on our own is of moot point, other than keeping within budget.

While there are multiple options for billing management, I am very familiar with WHMCS and like its flow, as well as the integration/modification availability. If we don't use it, our second choice is Blesta. Either will serve our needs, but we bring them up, as some hosts do offer discounted/included licenses for one and/or both.

Working with reseller accounts before, I know that the shared resources can easily be bogged down by a few traffic-heavy WordPress-powered websites. That being said, I do recall a few years back coming across what was billed as a "semi-dedicated reseller", offering the simplicity of reseller hosting, but with more resources (CPU, RAM, etc.) available in order to combat those intensive websites. I remember being put off by the price at the time, though having played around with VPS's for a few years, I now understand why the price tag was warranted. In looking for something similar, we haven't found a setup that was provisioned quite like the one I found, but perhaps we've been missing a keyword in the mix that could help sway the Google gods?

Our goal is to find a middle ground between a run-of-the-mill VPS and a dedicated server (I like to think of it as "premium VPS") before jumping headfirst into a dedicated server, something I don't foresee needing the resources of in the near future. I've come across many VPS (and dedicated) offers that are in our price point, but have yet to find a simple equation for what's needed (as far as the resources are concerned) in order to provide a pleasant cPanel-powered experience, while ensuring that 5-10 non-design customer eCommerce sites down the road doesn't bring the server to a standstill.

While obviously the less expensive the better, we've got a maximum budget of $100.00/month to dedicate to this - cPanel/WHM/WHMCS licensing included in that figure. An east coast server location would be ideal for our design clients, however as long as it's in the US or Canada, it's up for consideration. Backup services would be nice to have out-of-the-box, however this can be setup on our own time if not. Having seen a few cloud hosting providers, scalability would be nice to have as an on-demand option, but for the right host we would be willing to simply rent a second server when the time comes. NVMe drives would be wonderful to have, seconded by SSD. A traditional HDD setup would not be ideal, unless offered in addition to one of the other two. A month-to-month lease is all that we would be willing to comit to at this time, though having discounts available for annual payments is wonderful to hear for the future.

Any recommendations, be it for a hosting provider, server specs, deals, licenses - whatever the case may be - is greatly appreciated! If you have any questions that we can answer to help bring about those recommendations, please don't hesitate to ask and we'll do our best to answer them.

To help with any examples you may give, let's say that we're looking to host on one server:
20 eCommerce sites
5 Forum sites
25 Static sites
100 Non-eCommerce WordPress sites

Comments

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    Can I strongly suggest that if you plan to run your business for more than a few years and with any sort of scale at all you do not use WHMCS you use hostbill instead, while it is more expensive up front it is significantly better at scale.

  • JaxxJaxx Member
    edited June 2019

    @AnthonySmith, thanks for the recommendation! At this time, the pricing for HostBill is outside of a figure we would be comfortable diving into when compared to the pricing of WHMCS and Blesta. Should things go very well, we would be more than happy to consider it in the future, but for now it's not in our wheelhouse.

  • MichaelCeeMichaelCee Barred
    edited June 2019

    @Jaxx said:
    @AnthonySmith, thanks for the recommendation! At this time, the pricing for HostBill is outside of a figure we would be comfortable diving into when compared to the pricing of WHMCS and Blesta. Should things go very well, we would be more than happy to consider it in the future, but for now it's not in our wheelhouse.

    Sometimes it is not as easy as switching to it in the future, all sorts of circumstances can affect that. Whatever you pick, you need to be 100% that it's the best for your company, services and clients. You do not want to regret your choice of software years down the line when all of your user base are locked in and have certain user experience expectations.

    If you're serious about success, don't just consider the pricing.

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider
    edited June 2019

    Well just keep in mind that if you go for the cheap option now you will probably be in the same trap as the rest of us with no viable migration path outside of a significant expense for migration.

    The time to consider the future of your business is now.

    WHMCS is the second hand car that works, for some reason it pulls to the left, no one can fix that, the brakes are crap, the windscreen wipers are terrible and its impossible to upgrade in any meaningful way and you end up paying emissions charges, after the first 18 months you realize it has actually cost as much as hostbill anyway

    hostbill is a brand new volvo, they pretty much thought of everything and the software constantly evolves and saves you money in the long run.

    With that said this is lowendbox you are looking for advice on so I guess cheap+works will do.

    Thanked by 2dahartigan vimalware
  • JaxxJaxx Member

    Thank you both for the insights!

    While HostBill is a fantastic software that is a step-above, it's reaching too far out for us at this point and time. Understandably if we did opt to use it in the future, we will definitely run into migration issues; I personally consider this the speedbump that is inevitable. Be it driven over by a school bus or a brand new Volvo, it still takes effort to cross over. Even if this means manually transferring each bit of account data, it can be done and I have no issue doing so for our clients.

    I do want to emphasize that this server will primarily (≈80%) house websites that are being designed in-house, leaving the billing software to pick up very little slack that we're not already handling with a custom solution that I've developed for our current client base. In all reality, the need for billing software is very insignificant with our current setup in place, but we want to offer a more familiar interaction for customers who have ordered hosting before. This more-so caters to that 20% we're opening up our business to outside of our current client base, and as such doesn't yet warrant the need for a billing software that's not available as a monthly-lease, something I should have noted in the original post. My apologies for not being more clear on this at the start.

    Again, great input! We don't want anyone to feel like they're wasting their time in suggesting alternatives, as we are open and inviting of them, especially newer products that capture a smaller percentage of the hosting market.

  • akhfaakhfa Member

    @AnthonySmith said:
    Can I strongly suggest that if you plan to run your business for more than a few years and with any sort of scale at all you do not use WHMCS you use hostbill instead, while it is more expensive up front it is significantly better at scale.

    Can you explain more about scale part of hostbill?

  • BopieBopie Member

    Altough i host myself i would strongly recommend you take at look at KnownHost's offerings, they are well established in the hosting industry, fully managed and trust me go send them a few tickets you wont be waiting long for a reply. I aspire to be like them one day ;)

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