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Need Guidance for Starting a Hosting & VPS based company.
I have good experience in development field and have served as full stack developer over five years. Have good hands on experience for setting up basic things on vps or dedicated servers like LAMP/LEMP Stack and other things related to installations etc...
From last couple of years people around in my circle which are not very tech familiar usually needs websites etc... and i have to take care of everything from domain/hosting and development. So usually have to look for some host and domain providers to get things done. I have been thinking of setting up my own hosting/domain services that may help me to generate some revenue or keeping things in loop. People love to have their sites up and data secure so that is kind of the most tricky part i believe.
Have looked into some setups like cPanel/Plesk/ispConfig etc...
Have basic ideas that how things work around in these scripts but i am not sure what can be a good starting point to take things to next level.
Some guidance regarding the starting point in this business, Any Tools (Opensource/paid) to start and some expenses management advises will be helpful.
Thanks.
Comments
Summer is coming.
Dont.
Francisco
What will you offer me for $7 ?
It really depends on what you actually need.
Why is so?
Just take a reseller account from any reputed provider and sell hosting from it that's the best and easiest way, don't start your own setup as long as you cannot answer all the questions yourself that you asked in your post ...
It's a slippery slope.
If you're just hosting some websites for family/friends, etc, just get a small VPS from a provider that includes free DirectAdmin.
If you don't even want to manage that, there's plenty of friendly hosts that do very affordable resellers.
Unless you're ready for the stress/loss of sleep running a host brings, don't.
Francisco
That might be a good start i believe. thanks.
God, summer is really coming, ain't it.
Don't listen to the haters, I did it and I have 100+ customers now within a couple of months who are all very happy and I don't lose a minute of sleep. Ok tbh some of the tickets are just annoying but hey that's part of the deal, I'll help them out anyway.
Anyway I started of with renting dedi's and selling unmanaged VPS and storage to people but now I bought my own hardware. I want to run Openstack and go more managed / businesses.
Developing is something I suck at though, I have to hire freelancers all the time to get basic stuff done. If you're a really good dev and are interested maybe we can work together
Why not, come over to me. I'll design you a website making you look like one of the big guys. Than you can earn some good $ with LEB in 4-5 months while summer.
Give lifetime, yearly extreemly cheap offers. Deadpool after.
Jokes aside, if you really doing this becouse of a few sites such as friends/family, that doesn't mean the doors to success with hosting industry are opened to you within a few months/year. Do re-think this twice before doing, you might have months without a single income, so you must have saved some budget aside in any case. I would say at least 1 year without good income, just brand-building and marketing.
There are wolfes out there that will eat all the sheep, and they have been hunting sheep longer than you.
Not to mention, all this hosting industry.. bah... for me is such a stress. Especially when you have to deal with clients coming from LET/LEB. Paying 7$ waiting for a ferrari to come over as an extra with web hosting.
Good luck.
I agree you should start this as a side project with a regular job, it might take years before you make enough profit to live on or even make profit. But if you have a boring sysadmin job it's easy to work on it during job time as well and you don't have to worry about the financial part.
The wolves eating the sheep armandorg is talking about are mostly the providers here. Believe me this is the wrong site to post this. You will get nothing but negative comments here. This domain is owned by the likes of buyvm and if you set foot on their turf they will sent out their dogs.
It's really not that bad as they make it sound. Don't listen to them. I have enough LEB clients and 99% have just normal expectations and are very friendly and easy going, they are just regular people like you and me.
@marvel Thanks, Hating... it's just part of every field, nothing new. I usually see alot of good companies around here so thought it might be helpful to get some insights.
I am more likely interested in as a side project nothing special or bigger to advertise on platforms like LEB/LET or have any fancy website for now. It's just an idea about keeping the clients from development field at one place to manage hosting/domain/development things. Usually Domain/Hosting is on another sites and somehow have to manage the things from there during development so i just want to provide those services and management from one place.
That's why i was more interested in the hosting and domain part as development part is already including support tickets customization requests etc...
Thank you for the directions. Much appreciated. I will definitely consider you offer regarding working together. Currently just hung up in few things, will get back to you on it...
@armandorg haha no man i don't need a fancy website for fishing. I have my own circle from development side because that's what i do Freelancing/Websites & Web Apps Development... so just want to start from that circle.
The first thing is to get another heart and another colon, apart from that there is a book that you can find here, it is a bit outdated but it will help you
If you mean "your first 1000 customers in hosting" then it's a bit outdated the way 8-track tapes are a bit outdated.
You need hands on experience, like working for an existing successful company to see how they run.
I don't like when business owners learn on the job at the expense of customers. It's better when the employee has a few years experience and says, "fuck this, I know what I'm doing and I can do it better than the stupid owner" and then goes and does that.
I have to say, I rarely agree with you, but this is one case where I do. A hundred times this. Don't start a hosting company without prior experience in someone else's company.
Don't.
It would be better if you code a product/service and start selling license/subscription of it.
That's also a good idea. Might consider the reseller thing along this.
All you need target group based on your knowledge and experience
Otherwise go for resellers Account
Focus on your profession and expertise area. Don't mix the two. You wouldn't save but rather spend more of your time and $$$.
Use what is more logical and efficient to deploy your code. Plenty of LET providers as well as budget friendly cloud providers (DO, Vultr, etc). Your customers should be spending for long run and you need somebody else to take care of such matter not by yourself.
Or you know, get a reseller hosting and let @Francisco do the heavy lifting.
Unless your client need to rent vps, there is no reason to be a vps provider.