Some advice for providers

geekalot

One of my providers here asked me for some feedback, I decided to post my suggestions for everyone's benefit.

My qualifications? A few decades in IT (including hosting, consulting, coding, etc). As it turns out, it appears I have domain names older than some LET members.

And since joining LET a couple of years ago I have had up to almost 40 VPS's simultaneously.

I don't like "shaming" providers (check my post history), though I may name/tag some specifically, it is constructive feedback/criticism, not shaming.

Anyway, here goes; I hope this is received in the spirit intended: to help!

• Don't get sucked in to the "race to the bottom" - charge more for *quality* services if *your* market will sustain it
• Make sure you have the CAPACITY to DEPLOY and SUPPORT in a TIMELY fashion, the offers you make!
• Treat your existing customers just as well as you treat new/prospective customers.
• Keep your services SECURE (Control Panel, Billing System, Data, etc):
• Stay on top of the remedies to vulnerabilities and exploits for the systems you use
• Treat your customers' data as securely as you treat your own
• Don't ask for photocopies of credit cards
• Encrypt data in transit AND data at rest
• Utilize two factor authentication wherever possible
• Utilize lengthy keys or passphrases when possible
• Utilize one-time use/temporary keys when possible
• Don't send login credentials via email
• IPMI should only be available via VPN or control panel, not the general internet
• Have a Business Continuity Plan:
• Make routine, SECURE, offsite backups of your data
• Have redundant sites (diverse providers, networks, geographies)
• Consider whether it is really a good idea to host your own website on your own network
• Have hot spares that aren't normally exposed to the internet that you can fire up within minutes
• Fix existing problems before posting new offers!
• As you go about acquiring and absorbing other hosts, fix existing problems before posting new offers!
• When things go wrong the only posting you should be doing in online forums is communication, status updates, ETA regarding the existing problem
• rDNS self-service is a double edged sword: Customers *love* this; and so do spammers
• Focus on monetizing what you do well:
• BlueVM: Feathur
• ChicagoVPS: Your acquistion kung fu is quite good; make your services after the sale (support, uptime) match
• Kihi: KVM in a unique location at a competitive price. Perfect it, market it.
• etc.
• It is OK to be a "one man band," just make sure you have coverage when you go on vacation.
• Read, listen to, and incorporate feedback you receive
• Be patient: Have a plan. If you are a new business, plan to have enough for 6 to 12 months without any profit. If things aren't working, adjust your strategy within a timely fashion, test, analyze, repeat.
• Be nice: Not everyone is an expert, some need more help than others; you decided to offer services to the market. If you don't like your clientele, change your offering ....... and your attitude. Also, don't tell everyone to take a hike, declare you are done with LET, and then come back posting offers.
• If you are going to end the business, plan ahead: give your customers 30, 60, 90 days notice. Do it with class. Your customers deserve at least that.
• Always, always, always remember in this industry, what goes around comes around; don't burn bridges

Any others?

geekalot

GoodHosting

Very good advice, hopefully people take it.

jar

Great advice and glad to see it posted on the tail end of summer. When I read this one part, I wanted to add advice for customers, based on my time at Catalyst

said: Don't ask for photocopies of credit cards

While I never asked for this exact piece of data, it's one of many pieces of data often requested by companies to satisfy a party foul made by a customer that justifies this piece of advice to customers:

• Don't sign up for our service using a homemade VPN out of a datacenter extremely well known for hosting seedboxes (therefore most known to kids and skids) and second in my fail2ban reports only to China Net, while giving me a street that I know doesn't exist in the city you listed, which also doesn't exist in the state you listed, and by the way US postal codes don't have letters in them, then get angry at me when I ask for you to inconvenience yourself by showing me a little evidence that you're not going to steal dollars out of my pocket like the last 15 people who failed to make an order without raising every flag possible.

This intended to provide a laugh, but some good advice tucked in there

Some more:

• Respect that you are a tenant. It means you have rights and you deserve them, but it doesn't mean you can bulldoze the building and replace it. You are a tenant, not the property owner.

• When asking for support, explain what you have tried and what the results were. Describe the problem and any errors received. Thank them for their time, especially when going out of their way to help you solve a problem that you know goes beyond their support guarantee.

• Keep your host informed. If your service with the host is important to you and you can't pay the bill, talk to them, don't just not pay and then go rant on a forum about how they didn't give you a 60 day grace period that you never even requested.

• Read what the host gives you. Opening a ticket requesting information that was listed in your welcome e-mail because opening the ticket was faster than reading it...major foul.