Is it worth starting a hosting company?

[Mike]

With all the big players now, do you think it is worth starting a hosting company? There are so many out there, and PPC advertising would be very expensive for such a competitive market.

Views?

[Matt]

I voted no.

If you're trying to sell hosting to a general audience online, for me it's not worth it at all.

I DO have a reseller account, but I don't even have a site for it or anything, and don't plan to. But I do web development locally, and all the sites I've done so far are hosted by me. It's not very profitable, but with enough clients I'll make a bit of a profit. The greatest thing is that I can host all my sites there too, basically for free.

So, try selling hosting to a local market or your clients. I'm sure people in your city would rather buy hosting from someone in the same place that they can talk to and maybe even meet, if they want. And since I'm from a small town, there's kind of a feeling of "support your local businesses" :).

Instead of offering the basic bronze/silver/gold type hosting, you could also host specific apps, like a forum hosting service or an ecommerce hosting service.

You could also start a "niche" hosting company. For example, host band sites..allow mp3 downloads of that band.

So basically, a general hosting company would take a lot of promotion and marketing to be profitable. At least you won't have any trouble finding a template! ;)

Was my post even on topic? I hope so... :)

Matt

[Chris]

They are alot of work to get started... the payoff is that if you get lucky and have success you've got GREAT residual income. You just need to get above a critical mass of clients. A thousand customers for instance would be a good number.

[Mike]

Thanks for the replies guys, if I did start a hosting company up, I will probably do what you said Matt - thanks for the idea;)

BTW Chris, amongst all your sites do you own a hosting one?

[Chris]

jalichosting.com -- but I don't promote it I simply use it for paid design clients and people I know locally.

[incka]

Could I host a music video site on jalic and how much would it cost me. Im wanting 50gb of space.

[Chris]

No. Since it's copyrighted it'd be illegal.

[incka]

But launch and singing fool do it. And music brigade.

[alexbank]

Hi,
i'm owner of
It business is not easy and you need marketing strategies

[KeithMcL]

I voted No too. There's far too many people running hosting companies now, imo.

If you're lucky and become really popular really fast (like HostRocket and iPowerWeb for instance), chances are you'll end up being overwhelmed with new clients, end up not being able to deal with this influx of requests, have a really hard time dealing with it, end up providing bad service and customer care and end up a dot-com failure.

If you think you can manage to ride the wave and come out on top, then by all means...go for it.

[Percept]

I also voted no, the hosting market is completely satured IMHO.

[MarkB]

I say yes, but only if you have a ready audience for it (ie, your own design clients). Then you don't need to slash your prices (as you can incorporate the cost into maintenance contracts), and you don't need to basically beg for clients...

[snoopers]

I voted no also - the market is simply too competitve. A lot of people are starting a web host because they think its going to be easy money. Of course, this isn't true. And all those new players are causing price wars.

[lo0ol]

I'm actually not sure, since I've never done it myself. From my viewpoint it looks like it's incredibly saturated. The real trouble is to get started. Like you said, PPC is quite expensive. You might want to go other places rather than AdWords and Overture- there are some smaller, pure hosting PPC websites that might work.

[incka]

If you can find a reseller host like dathorn you could make a tidy profit and still seem incredibly cheep

[emke]

I've considered starting up a hosting comapny in past and while I think I would find ways to find clients. I counted on about 200 to make a reasonable profit. I decided against it. While it's a extremely competitive market it's also a very demanding one.

You need to provide 24/7 support and that means no vacations, no free time as problems can arise anytime and I just don't feel comfortable doing that.

That's why I've decided to jump into making affialiate sites as once you've made them they don't require that much time to invest in them afterwards and you can make more sites. More sites mean more money :)