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How big is YOUR company?


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  • 5 weeks later...

where you can go depends on how far you want to crawl walk and run. yes this is a renewal of being a babe. you have to crawl before you can walk, you have to walk before you can run. and running a successful web hosting business is what you are looking for. how do you get there you ask? it has already been mentioned, setting yourself apart from the big dogs. customer support, one on one, no matter how stupid the question.

 

i started like may others with a hope. this was back in 2002, i didnt know jack flash about a server, or running a server, or hosting. all i knew is that there were many companies making a ton of money doing it. so i decided to learn how. (still learning granted) so i purchased a resellar account, gave away free accounts, learned what i could about linux, ftp, php, mysql, html, xml, css,xhtml, and oh the rest of those lovely scripting languages.

 

not saying you have to be a programmer to be successful at hosting,but it certainly helps to have knowledge.

 

i now have 4 servers host 35 clients, growing by about 5 clients a month, hosting a niche market, that i have perfected, and i am content, the servers are paid for by this hosting escapade, all my 65 domains are paid for from the hosting, so at this point, do i think i am making a profit, no, but i am not spending money from my bank account. yes there are tricks, and there are successes and failures in this business, but know in your heart if you persist, you will win.

 

just wanted to kick in my 2 cents

 

 

 

later,

DosDawg

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have 47 clients with 329 domains. Profit:...

We dont go after hosting clients, why bother? There are more than enough hosts out there. All of our clients are either here based on word of mouth or design/development customers.

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We never even started out looking for hosting clients - we're a computer forensics company... but one thing leads to another and... it gets kinda out of hand.

 

Never one to turn away a good British Pound, when I hear of how badly some of our clients have been treated by some of the bigger hosting companies, we figured we'd just help out the odd one or two.

 

Although we're officially a reseller we have one account with a UK host which is full and another with a USA host which is rapidly filling up.

 

How much profit? You'll have to pay my accountant for that kind of info ;)

 

Almost all of our design and hosting work now comes from word of mouth - and the fact that we make Soholaunch templates...

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  • 2 weeks later...

well pop mine in really quick, i just started mine like 4 yrs ago as a web designer when i ws back in high school, then last year i decided to start as a real company. so i started with a reseller account, lets just say bad ideal, their servers messed up like every week. so i went to a dedicated, installed whmcs and now i have 6 clients, all of which are local. they question the the price i charge which is 30 a month, i go and tel them that yes u can get a hosting for anywhere from free to 10 a month but what is the offer they make. can they see u within the hour (all my clients are like 3 miles from me). then i also tell them that i can help them in more than one way. from hosting to tech support to anything else, cost extra depending on what it is. well just wanted to let u all know any questions then email me mirvine (at) darkcloudhosting (dot) com

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  • 3 weeks later...

Our company started mid 2007 and we have grown fairly quickly. We have over 200 servers that are for our clients and also we have servers for shared hosting accounts. I think I can contribute much of the success to the amount of investing we did and time put in. I remember having my mobile phone set to ring when a support ticket was made, and I also left the live chat on all night. I would wake up at 2am, then 3am, then 5am....and solve whatever issues there were. Now I'm able to hire people to help out so I can just SLEEP.

 

For all you hosts out there, don't think there isn't anyone wanting hosting....this is a global market, you'll find them.

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  • 2 months later...

Some very interesting stories in here. It's great to see so many successful web hosting companies around, as well as the newer members.

 

I originally started my web hosting in the late 90's under a different company name. My father actually started it by paying the reseller fee's while i designed and operated the site. I don't believe WHMCS was around back then. I wasn't very good at E-Marketing and SEO then so the company never amounted anything.

 

In January of this year I started Strike Data. It's been growing rapidly since. Just under 500 registered user's on the site. 99% done by free advertising.

 

I purchased a small amount of PPC but most traffic comes from word of mouth, forums, and seo.

 

Currently only 2 servers (one dedicated, one reseller) but steadily growing and hoping to hit 3 by early-mid 2009

 

We also offer web design and search engine optimization solutions

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  • 3 months later...

I don't generally host, I only have about 35 hosting clients it's too hard to make any real money. Most of my servers are full of design customers that i throw the hosting in with. Have 4 servers full of design clients much better margins that way!

 

Was looking into to ADSL reselling and loads of other stuff but figure I'll just stick to design and development some really big commercial clients coming up so get to make some serious money!

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  • 5 months later...

Interesting thread!

 

I primarily do e-commerce web design for a niche group. I offer shopping cart software that is a "hosted cart" so the hosting just goes hand in hand with what I offer. I don't advertise the hosting, but I do some advertising for my shopping cart on my own sites that I run and do just fine. Some people come to me for the cart (and therefore hosting) but most come for the web design and I can offer them a "complete" package. I have a little over 200 active hosting clients. I started using WHMCS in August 2005...waaay back when.

 

I also offer "green" web hosting which, at the time that I started it, wasn't very common. Now there are lots out there.

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  • 4 weeks later...
I am not to interested in hosting or domain names. These are just requirements to have in order to project a professional image in the website design industry.

 

If they are not vital to your success dont include them, You wont give them the value they deserve so you wont support them as you should, that will just give you a bad reputation.

 

I personally dont think that providing hosting or domains are vital to your design company however i am sure that there are others that would disagree, this is just my own viewpoint on your post

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As for the final results of our company - we have ZERO debt, and almost ZERO profit :) Our employees take a share of what the company makes. They are paid an hourly wage (or salary), however as we grow, raises are made. There is no desire to turn the company into a multi-million dollar company or grow big as that leads to headache and lack of personal touch which our clients love.

 

Zero profit?!

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This is purely a hobby for me, everything is at cost (this includes covering paypal fees, WHMCS, cpanel, fantastico, sitebuilder, domains, server, colo, etc...) I may make a few extra pennies from advertisements. I'm just about topping off my second server (just under 200 clients - I leave enough room for ALL my clients to upgrade to the largest package on each server). To cut costs, I answer tech and sales questions only through email and support tickets, but everything is answered rather quickly since I do most of my work on my phone.

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Zero profit meaning the company itself doesn't make any money. Since all staff are the lifeblood of the company, they get their bonuses etc which would normally be "profit" for the owners of the company. Without reliable staff, we'd not be in business, so we operate with zero profit as the money is distributed and/or put back into the business for more hardware, advertising or features.

 

It's been a while since I've been on this thread, but just to update we're over 300 servers now hosting at The Planet, and have expanded operations to data centers in Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom. More servers, more staff, more headaches (from time to time) but essentially everything runs as it should.

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300 servers is cool.... I'd like to be there someday, but for what I do... I'd be a million dollar company :) And I mean just in profit......

 

 

Zero profit meaning the company itself doesn't make any money. Since all staff are the lifeblood of the company, they get their bonuses etc which would normally be "profit" for the owners of the company. Without reliable staff, we'd not be in business, so we operate with zero profit as the money is distributed and/or put back into the business for more hardware, advertising or features.

 

It's been a while since I've been on this thread, but just to update we're over 300 servers now hosting at The Planet, and have expanded operations to data centers in Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom. More servers, more staff, more headaches (from time to time) but essentially everything runs as it should.

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I have just started our company about 4 - 5 months ago, and we have many vps servers with DMEhosting.com. I'm very interested in the hosting industry and i d my best to learn things that i don't know. I'm working hard to get it more successful and stable.

 

Regards

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