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mfine
10-05-2011, 10:47 PM
How much do you pay for hosting?

vangogh
10-06-2011, 12:53 AM
I run one of the linux VPS servers at LiquidWeb (http://www.liquidweb.com/cart/content/vps/) with an extra add on or two.

May I ask why you want to know what people pay for hosting? I'd guess most people here are on a shared hosting account and paying between $5 and $10 a month.

mfine
10-06-2011, 01:55 AM
I run one of the linux VPS servers at LiquidWeb (http://www.liquidweb.com/cart/content/vps/) with an extra add on or two.

May I ask why you want to know what people pay for hosting? I'd guess most people here are on a shared hosting account and paying between $5 and $10 a month.

I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to offer hosting, or possibly even set up a company as a hosting reseller. I have a company who is willing to discuss profit sharing on web hosting, so I'm weighing that. They also have a unique cloud computing solution.

vangogh
10-06-2011, 02:42 AM
It's a low margin business so you'll need a significant number of customers before it really becomes worthwhile. Until you have enough customers you're best bet is probably going to be to think what value you can add on top of the hosting. Can you offer an easy to use CMS or maybe a specific application for a specific industry. That way you can charge more than the few dollars someone would pay for the hosting even though you're still essentially offering hosting.

Hosting is under $10/month and if you're reselling your probably make no more than $5/month per account. If you have to handle a couple of support calls a year per account most of your profit is gone. On the other hand if you get people to sign up for some kind of monthly application that doesn't involve a lot of time to maintain on your part you can charge more. The support calls probably increase a little, but probably not as much as your overall increase in price because of the application.

If you have a web design or development business or something where you naturally manage people's website you can buy space on a server and charge your customers a few dollars to host their sites. You're like already handling the support calls in that case so it becomes a few extra dollars a month.

Some people have more luck with hosting by promoting companies through an affiliate link. I remember one person started by offering a free WordPress install as long as you used his recommended hosting, which probably paid about $100 per account he signed up.

I don't want to discourage you at all. Just want you to know hosting sounds easier than it really is. I think if you're a little creative in how you set up your business you can make some decent money, though you'll likely want to consider it as only part of your business at first unless you have the resources to scale the business to a significant size.

jimr451
10-06-2011, 06:51 AM
I agree that it's generally a "low margin" business. I've considered this several times over the years, but there are several drawbacks. One big one for me is that you (as the reseller) don't control the platform. So if there is a problem, you are at the mercy of your provider to fix it. For instance, if the site goes down, or your client needs a backup restored. Also, if you are consulting like me, you have to draw a clear line between "free support" and "paid consulting" time. I actually get paid sometimes for troubleshooting a hosting problem for the client.

One thing you might look into is "premium" hosting. There are clients out there who will pay $100+ / month to have a dedicated rep (you) who is responsive to their needs. Some plans include "maintenance" hours as well. The trick is finding those clients, and managing costs so you can still make a profit.

I think either way it's a commodity business, which means you need scale to make it work well.

-Jim

vangogh
10-06-2011, 10:47 AM
One big one for me is that you (as the reseller) don't control the platform.

I remember those days. Clients would contact me with an issue and all I could do was contact the host. Then it'd be all about waiting and hoping the host fixed things before my clients got too upset. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't.

MyITGuy
10-15-2011, 10:00 AM
How much do you pay for hosting?
About $900 per month plus the cost of hardware =P

MyITGuy
10-15-2011, 10:04 AM
I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to offer hosting, or possibly even set up a company as a hosting reseller. I have a company who is willing to discuss profit sharing on web hosting, so I'm weighing that. They also have a unique cloud computing solution.

Check out Web Hosting Talk - The largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet (http://www.webhostingtalk.com) and you will find allot of answers to your questions.

Honestly, hosting is a low margin business and is tough to compete with the larger providers who offer unlimited everything (Generally best to avoid unlimited providers though), and offer the support your clients want/expect (I.E. Will you be able to offer 24/7 support that other companies are, if not you will need to explain this to your clients).

Personally, I've been offering hosting to my managed services clients only so I have more control over their systems in terms of uptime, support, security and redundancy. I just started offering hosting to the public since I already had the infrastructure in place...but so far no takers =(