Hosting
Best Way to Start a Website Hosting Service?
P May 24, 2008
from the don't-reinvent-the-wheel dept.
Businesses
Kwirl writes "Lets say that I wanted to start a small business
endeavor, namely reselling my server space and offering pre-built
websites. What resources would I need to start something like this
on my own? What hosting service would best suit those needs? What
would be the best way to manage a subdomain-level service that
provided a basic forum, registration, a web site and some controlled
administrative access for my friends so they couldn't easily
terrorize each other? I'm curious to know if I could start something
like this on my own, and without much more than just my own server
space, time, and creativity. I'm not looking to make a living out of
this, its mostly just a way for me to more efficiently manage having
several friends each wanting me to built or run a web site for them,
and perhaps make some small residual income if a market exists. The
Slashdot community represents such a broad swatch of experience and
expertise that I'd like to know how you would approach a project of
this nature."
[+] b
Related Stories
Firehose:Starting a forum/website hosting service, how?
Best Way to Start a Website Hosting Service?
*
Plesk
1. Don't
But, if you insist..
Set up a simple box running Plesk. It automates most of the tasks of
handling users, billing and maintenance. It also allows them to
mange their own accounts.
Quick, simple
Run far, far away from Plesk.
It might simplify SOME things, but it sure as hell makes other
things more difficult.
+
+
Systems like that also do all the hard work for you - which is great
if you know what you're doing, but otherwise when you run into a
real problem, or if Plesk goes wrong, you have no idea what to do
next.
I agree with the original comment of "dont", as far as setting up
your own server at least.
Don't, because the market is full of bedroom hosts who don't know
what they're doing.
Don't, because unless you're going into it seriously (and by that I
mean investing time and money heavily, hiring enough staff to
provide 24/7 support and decent SLAs, and charging appropriately
serious money), the margins have to be so low to be competitive that
you're losing money when the customer submits more than one ticket a
year. Which they will do, because they've come to you, which means
they don't know what they're doing.
But most of all, don't, because if you have to ask how to do it, you
shouldn't be doing it. You really can't be going into this if you
have so little understanding of the issues involved in running a
server and the associated services that you need to ask. It's not
fair on your paying customers, because when they have a problem, you
won't be able to help.
If you want to resell space, do just that - go find a company
dedicated to selling reseller accounts. They will give you a
whitelabel reseller account and look after all the server issues
themselves, leaving you free to pimp out the space.
If you do, just make sure you have an exit strategy, tied to some
kind of dead mans switch (even if it's just leaving details with a
friend) - I've heard of far too many resellers disappearing, leaving
the customers unable to get access to their sites, and the resellers
in a difficult position as they should have no direct contact with
the end customers.
Making a server run smoothly and securely on the big bad internet is
an arduous task.
Not so hard, ADSL + NAT(on router) + Linux + Apache + mod-security +
static content
Now, managing users... that's hard!
I think the web-hosting market is quite saturated.. Unless you have
some brilliant idea or you have superior hardware and very cheap
price, you will not attract customers.
You simply aren't going to be able to compete with a $4.00/month
multi-gigabyte hosti
*
*
How to succeed in 10 easy steps (Score:5, Insightful)
by name*censored* (884880) on Saturday May 24, @03:42AM (#23525804)
1) Line up a patsy
2) Get some matches/lighter/firestarters
3) Burn down all competing datacentres in your city
4) Set up a webserver company
Seriously though, it's an incredibly overcrowded market - if you
have an idea on something new or innovative to offer, then by all
means go for it. But as they say, there's nothing new under the sun,
and you'd have much better luck trying to compete within a market
that isn't so overcrowded. Professional encryption/sensitive data
management perhaps?
Seriously though, it's an incredibly overcrowded market - if you
have an idea on something new or innovative to offer, then by all
means go for it. But as they say, there's nothing new under the sun,
and you'd have much better luck trying to compete within a market
that isn't so overcrowded.
Very true. There exists about a gazillion different website hosting
services, some even offer to do it for free if the site is static.
I've seen some offer like 15e per year with full SSH access, PHP and
such. So I just wonder what does the OP think he ca
+
+
How to succeed in 10 easy steps
I think that's kind of the consensus here. The OP doesn't know that
the 90's are long past and that once hot market is now saturated.
There's only one chance any such endeavor could really work out and
that where he simply knows enough people or knows enough people that
know enough people to really trust this person with their site and
doesn't care that there are services out there that will do it
better and/or cheaper and that the number of subscribers is high
enough to at least break even. All of that, in and of itself, is
pretty difficult if not improbable.
I would recommend that this guy volunteer or intern with a hosting
company to see what it's like and what the real challenges wind up
being.
What I would be inclined to do is something a little different. I
would set about getting people to buy their own gear and help them
set it up at their own location. Perhaps it's ultimately as
unworkable as building your own hosting facility, but at least in
this case, the risk is distributed among the subscribers and since
they would actually own and control their own boxes, they would feel
less risk
Headline 2
atom-rss.com
(Region1)
Headline 2
atom-rss.com
(Region1)
Headline 2
atom-rss.com
Headline 2
atom-rss.com
(Region1)
Headline 2
atom-rss.com
Headline 2
atom-rss.com
Headline 22
atom-rss.com 2
Headline 22
atom-rss.com 2
Headline 22
atom-rss.com 2
Headline 22
atom-rss.com 2
Headline 22
atom-rss.com 2
Headline 3
atom-rss.com 3
Headline 22
atom-rss.com 2
Headline 3
atom-rss.com 3
2
3
2
3
2
3
2
3
2
2
2
2
