Quote:
|
Originally Posted by XzNetworks
Everything above is correct, though for starting in web hosting, you have to spend money to make money, the money must be spent wisely though, so search for a good reseller host, don't just pick the first one you see. And I recommend, making your business plan, site design, before you buy your hosting because if you don't have those then you will go nowhere. You marketing strategies are very important for a sucessful web host.
|
This is a very valid statment. In the web hosting industry you must spend money to make money. Basically that is in any business but web hosting for sure. I will give you a break down on some of the costs from start up to mid size to corporate.
Start up:
Reseller services would probably be best if you do not already have customer in line that would sign up for your services. Basic reseller plans come with about 5-10GB of disk space and 20-30GB of monthly data transfer. Depending on the size of the reseller plan you get, your growth limit will be reached quickly with a steady flow of customers.
Dedicated Servers: To manage or not to manage? That is the question?
A dedicated server is excellent, you have control over pretty much how everything is run. In return you also have control over your uptime and downtime. If you are not technical savvy than you will face some problems down the road if you go with an unmanaged full root access dedicated server. Managed on the other hand would work out perfect. The hosting provider would basically manage the linux box, also still providing the freedom and control of your own services. Dedicated servers can be expensive. I am sure you have seen the ads on tophosts.com for dedicated servers starting at $59.00 a month. Well, what you need to look at is the processor, hard drive space, memory, and your monthly data transfer. These prices can be appealing, but if your company is growing at a steady rate, and quality is what you are aiming for than these low priced dedicated servers would not be for your company. You would want to look for a higher processor, more memory, more hard drive space, more monthly data transfer and better quality server! These prices can run anywhere from 120.00 to 250.00 depending on if your new dedicated is managed or full root access to you.
What if my company gets bigger and I need more?
Well, then it might be time to get into a carrier hotel or datacenter. Rack space at a carrier hotel can become quite expensive. For example if you are looking to get into a premium carrier hotel you can look on spending about 450-550.00 a month just for a half rack in a shared cage with other hosting companies or other ISP's. Plus depending on the colocation you might need to get a bandwidth provider or 3 for redundacy
. Bandwidth is not cheap, example if you pay $65.00 per mb, and you want a 10/mbps commit and 100 burstable with 95% payable then you are looking to spend 650.00 a month just for your internet connection supplied to your servers. Plus you must get software licenses's when running your own boxes (Cpanel, Helm, Plesk) whatever you wish to use. Depending on the amount of servers you have that can become expensive aswell ($32.50 PER CPanel license) Plus your network if you are getting direct IP allocation from ARIN, the start cost on a full class C would be around 1,250 a year. Well you get the point!!
Becoming a host is not cheap if you really want to make a profit out of it!