How to make my own Hosting Business?

Maxwell

I want to make my own hosting business but I have many questions.

I'm experienced with the hosting industry, I worked on the back end of a couple over the years, I know WHM/cpanel like the back of my hand along with virtulizor. I have even written code for a host's custom billing system.

The issues I'm having is as follows:

1) How do I get clients? My biggest fear of this is doing lots of work getting some clients and just breaking even or nothing at all.

2) Where to host? Every host I've used was bad. These hosts have some stupid limitation or would be difficult to even make money from. Of course colocation is the answer but pretty much all places don't have good DDoS protection and no one is going to buy hosting in 2021 that doesn't have DDoS protection.

3) What to offer? I feel VPS hosting would be the best option as everyone and their dog does cpanel hosting. What do you think?

Why would I do this?

Well I really like the hosting space and I know there are lots of issues and stupid limitations in this industry and I would like to (try) fix.

• I have lots of experience doing that backend stuff (that's the easy part).
• I have about 100K burning a hole in my pocke

Relevantos

Get 10 EPYC NVMe servers, 40G network cards, switch, etc, and do a proxmox cluster. Then with that cluster, sell Cloud VPSes on fast hardware and maybe perhaps marginally profit.

Maxwell

@Relevantos said:
Get 10 EPYC NVMe servers, 40G network cards, switch, etc, and do a proxmox cluster. Then with that cluster, sell Cloud VPSes on fast hardware and maybe perhaps marginally profit.

I appreciate that feedback

Barbaross

Well firstly, having experience in the hosting industry was a great first step and leaves you a lot better off to start with some experience up your sleeve.

As for getting clients, there are numerous ways to advertise your business, and here are some examples.

• Social Media Ads (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.)
• Google Ads
• Fiverr (There are some SEO & marketing specialists on there. NEVER base it off of price, always check reviews.)
• Forums (Web Hosting Talk, etc.)
• Paid Advertisements (BSA, ADEX, etc.)
• & So many more.

It's all about how, where, and your timing.

As for making a profit, or even breaking even, unless you have clients lined up before you open that cover your monthly costs, it can, and most likely will take time for you to make a profit, or even break even. And that's just a generalized projection, it all depends on your monthly costs, and keep in mind. Every business is different.

So although colocation would be the best bet, it also comes with a lot more startup costs. Not only that but it can also be risky if you don't look into your host well enough, and 3-6 months down the road have to move to a new host.

If you decide to go down the colocation route, keep in mind these few things:

• You will have to buy your own hardware, and either direct ship it to the data center and do all of your initial configurations remotely, or pay them to configure it for you (generally colocation packages unless otherwise stated include a "rack and stack" with cable management or in other words they put your server on the rails and set up your power and networking cords) or have it shipped to your home, configure it and then ship it out.
• You are responsible for your hardware replacements and failures. Some data centers offer you to store some extra drives, ram, etc. for free when you get a colocation package from them, others provide prices for the parts. You will most likely have to pay a "remote hands" or "labor" fee to the data center for replacing your failed parts.
• Location matters, typically you want to keep your servers close to your target base audience for a better end-to-end connection.
• Don't take the first offer you receive, there are MANY data centers out there looking for new customers, keep your options open.
• If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Many hosts offer these unheard-of prices. The reason why they are unheard of is due to them actually LOSING money to gain your business, in hopes to gain enough business from the lower price to eventually make a profit. In most cases, this fails. Miserably. Generally, they will go out of business and disappear off the map, never to be heard from again.

Although "everyone and their dog" offers cPanel Hosting, a lot of them offer VPS's as well. Ultimately it doesn't come down to what you offer, it comes down to how you offer it, and what you can provide that others do not. A big one many larger companies are lacking in is customer service. VPS's however would be a great starting point.

I hope this helps shed some light on your questions.

Opsidian

I don't recommend buying VPS because of limited server(ram, cpu etc.) and feature (like softaculous, backup, DDoS etc.) resource. I recommend HostWithLove reseller plans. They provide a lot of resource with affordable prices(you can find their recurring discount codes on WHT offer pages). Getting new customers won't be easy if your budget is low. You can advertise your site on Google, WHT and some other platforms(like hosting search sites). And you can help people on WHT and other forums by adding your signature. Good luck.

MonstaHost

The back end stuff, while amazing and a great skill to have, is only going to help you once you have the clients in place. Without the clients, your prior knowledge and $100k is not much help.

Unless you truly have a burning desire to start a web hosting business and learn all about sales, marketing and the business side of things... you would probably be better off getting a good job and sticking that $100k in the stock market. Knowledge and a pile of cash are not a reason to start a business.

If you're asking how to get clients, you're already losing. Your highest margin, and reliable income clients will be from word-of-mouth. What is a local need that needs to be filled? What problems are you seeing people experience that you believe you can help with? How you are a differentiator in the over-sold hosting market will help form the start of your answers. Network with local businesses. Team up with local non-profits to offer help to get your name out there.

AlphaRacks

2 - Where are you looking? I have contacts (Hell this forum has some great posters) with great colo options with DDoS protection suitable for Shared or VPS servers - Depending on which region you're in it might be easier or harder to find a good provider but not impossible, here in Australia we have really bad bandwidth costs and DDoS protection as a result is often expensive or unavailable but asking the question to multiple providers I've found some that provide great DDoS protection and with a good firewall in place you're pretty well set - you don't need to aim for a network capacity of 28.8 Tbps like OVH, You just need to provide a solution, Unless you're planning to attract the type of customer to attract negative attention DDoS attacks are probably not even your main concern.

3) Whatever you want, My suggestion is a solid Shared product, Not your main market and then find out what you like doing, what you like selling, make the best of that product you can and go with that, At the end of the day you want it to be a product you can be proud of, not one you'll find tiresome promoting like shared hosting.

If you have 100k burning a hole, and you need it spend I'd also consider looking at buying a small SaaS product, Paying a developer and a marketer to try growing it, Or any other type of micro-business, It's a good industry from my experience.