How to start your own Web Hosting company
If you remember gold-digging, apart from the prospectors there were companies delivering them the pickaxes and different bunch of stuff. Same here with the internet. There are companies who utilize it, and someone who serves them by offering dedicated servers to host their project on. Let’s start and see what you need to do to start a web host company.
Branding, branding, branding
Starting a web hosting company may be tough but as you may know, there are tens of thousands of hosting companies out there. What is the point of even really starting it? This is a common misconception because every industry and hosting is not an exception requires its own unique hosting companies offering something that others cannot really offer due to their focus on specific clients or simply because they cannot concentrate on smaller clients to gather enough profits. What’s your trump card here might be? Perhaps it may be DDoS-protected servers or your custom approach to any customer, personal technical support, etc. Similar to starting a company in any business vertical you should have a clear idea of why you are better than the others or at least stay on the same level with them. Concentrate on one thing at a time and don’t try to do everything perfectly, you will simply fail due to the lack of resources. Most certainly big players on the market already use this strategy and thanks to a lot of dollars in their pocket they stay successful. Ask yourself and write answers to these questions:
- What is your target audience or ICP (Ideal customer profile)?
- Why would they want to buy from you?
- The company name is very important. It's what shows up on the surface that counts. It needs to be quite catchy yet simple but nothing like 999SUPERWEBHOST999. So what is it?
- What would you will offer to your customers? It may be Shared hosting, Virtual Private Servers, or dedicated servers at least in the beginning. If you would like to sell certain server solutions you need an extensive background in it.
Partner with different hosting companies
Unless you have a spare $200k to start a web hosting company big you’ll definitely partner with other companies on the hosting market to resell their servers to your clients and you don’t want to pick up weird-looking hosters selling something at extremely cheap prices. This is a one-way ticket to bankruptcy because your customers will inevitably complain about the quality of your service, such as faulty HDDs for example. Instead, find someone who you can trust like BlueServers. We offer:
- 1 and 10 Gbit ports for our servers
- 24/7 incredible support
- Affordable pricing
- Positive reviews
- Hardware RAIDs of different complexity from 1 to 10 and 5.
- Only Tier 3 Data centers
- DDoS Protection
Our partner program is quite versatile and very honest with its parties. You can always our team to see how you can start your business by working with the best.
Website, Billing, and all that jazz
Alright, you have decided why you are distinct from the other players on the market, you have even found a reliable partner to work with. Time for people to see that you have appeared on the market. Build a website. We cannot give you advice on how to do it. Some prefer to buy it from the market, somebody likes to order it from a development agency, it is up to your taste and your budget. The website is great but how people would order from you? It should not be like: “Hey man here is my credit card number. Send money here”. Ensure that you have something more robust which is not require you any additional hassle. We suggest WHMCS or cPanel / WHM if you are selling shared hosting. WHMCS is very popular with young hosters thanks to its ease of use and customizability. Also, WHMCS allows you to have a ticket system for your technical team to solve any problems that might appear with your customers.
Time to find you some customers
Word of mouth is probably the best source of finding you new clients in the very beginning so start with your friends and relatives and their friends. From the very beginning, you should make your service not good but exceptional. People need to feel that they are enjoying working with you, so they will return to you and tell their friends about you. So personalize your service to the max. It is very difficult to do but the price will pay off very soon. If you feel that you cannot manage so many customers on your own, make sure to hire additional personnel and use additional sources of leads:
- Social networks: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. It all depends on your ICP.
- Offline sources like magazines, local print, etc.
- Banner ads on websites that are focused on hosting.
Expand and grow
Finding new clients is great, but remember that you need to retain the ones you are attracted to your business. The churn rate is very important, especially in the hosting business. Remember when we told you to answer questions about your business? This is very important and crucial to why your business is growing right now. Remember the values and the mission you have put when creating a company otherwise you will lose your customers very quickly. So here are a few points to remember:
- Your values. Don’t forget them.
- Be honest with your customers. If somehow you messed up, be open with them about it, they will be furious, but grateful that you’ve told the truth.
- As insurance make sure to write SLA and Terms of Service Agreement.
Most of the time your customers will help you to see where your business should go, so keep a close eye on their complaints or suggestions about your service. Who knows, perhaps when the time is right, some of them will suggest something that makes you millions of dollars in the future.
Conclusion
As you can see starting a web hosting company is simple and difficult at the same you way. That’s why you need a partner who can back you up on this thorny way. BlueServers is quite successfully working with different companies and helps them to achieve their success in the hosting business. Join us by contacting our team via LiveChat and start your hosting business today.
Blog