Anyone own a web host here?

[16bwhitt]

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone had experience owning a webhost? Whether if it be through reseller hosting, or actually owning your own web server. I have been browsing and doing a little bit of posting for the past few weeks, and have not encountered anyone that owns their own host on here.

If you have had experience owning a web host, if you could be ever so grateful and answer some questions that would be great.

1) Reseller or Dedicated
2) Are you a web designer?
3) How much do you spend monthly on hosting?
4) How much do you charge?
5) Do you make a profit?
6)How much time do you spend working on the business?
7) Do you have employees?

Any further information is welcome! Thank you!

 

[frostbyte5014]

I had a data center at one time a few years back and hosted websites and email. Also hosted cloud and backup storage. I found I was spending way too much time maintaining servers and software updates. Not to mention the initial cost I had invested. After a few years of running it I found a hosting provider that could provide me everything I had and then some for a lot less money and work.

 

[Markverhyden]

I run my owner servers but they are all for hosting my stuff, email, etc. For customers they are always 3rd party hosted. My volume is small so I only resell email via appriver hosted.

 

[TenYardFight]

NY jimbo has a robust hosting business.

I charge about 35 clients 120 to 300 per year to host their website on my managed dedicated server at Liquid Web. I pay Liquid Web 188 per month and I leverage their support team every time I have even the smallest issue. Do the math...I make a little money, but I find my profit divided by the hours I spend roughly equals my standard hourly rate. So it's not free money, but it is generally easy work.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Don't make hosting your primary business if thats what you are thinking as statistically speaking its highly highly likely to fail.

If you are already in the computer repair business or maybe in the web hosting business and you are going to run into clients that may ask about web hosting then sure knock yourself out. If you are going that route I would recommend a knownhost vps.

 

[16bwhitt]

Thanks- I am thinking GoDaddy Pro is my best bet. Does anyone have any experience using that?

Of course, it's not my main source of revenue. Computer Repair, Networking and Web Design.

 

[Frick]

Godaddy hosting supporting is horrible IMO. Get yourself a vps I small dedicated server from a company with excellent support.

A feel to look at: liqudweb, verticalswitch, a small orange.

They all offer whm/cpanel for the hosting platform at good prices.

 

[gadgetfixup]

1) Reseller or Dedicated - not sure what that means. We own 3 dedicated servers hosted in a datacenter and manage them ourselves.
2) Are you a web designer? - yes but not full time business
3) How much do you spend monthly on hosting? - $200
4) How much do you charge? - $14.99 a month for Cpanel shared hosting. We got out of the Windows VPS business due to abuse by customers.
5) Do you make a profit? No, but we have reliable and secure webhosting for our sites and our clients. Something I couldn't purchase anywhere else for a reasonable price.
6)How much time do you spend working on the business? Since it's set up on WHMCS, not much time at all. It handles all the billing, suspensions and reinstatements. It took us quite a bit to get it all set up though.
7) Do you have employees? Yes but they don't work on webhosting.

Webhosting is a cut-throat business if you're trying to offer it to the public. There are thousands if not millions of scammers just looking for small hosts to abuse and destroy. We don't advertise our web hosting business except to local clients. I want to know who is on my servers and that they'll not abuse them. If I could find a good and reliable webhosting service, I would have never purchased my own servers, pay COLO fees and manage all of them myself.

I last paid for hosting with a hosting company about 10 years ago. The last company I was with was Liquidweb paying about $200 a month for a dedicated server. During the 3 years I leased with them, they never did any updates and while I was taking the only vacation I've had in the last 20 years, my server was hijacked and completely stolen. Seems there was an Apache exploit that they knew about but never installed the patch and this hacker gained root access and dumped all my accounts and in a matter of a day got all my IPs on RBLs. It took LW a week to get my server back online with some of the data recovered but they did a reboot with an image from a wrong server and I had nothing but issues after that. PHP, MySQL and all sorts of processes had wrong configuration files. Nobody could get emails delivered without petitioning RBLs for removal, it was ugly and frankly LW could care less. Here I was paying for managed hosting and had a dedicated server unpatched and way behind on updates. I ate a lot of crow from my customers for that mess.

That is when I purchased my first dedi and learned how to run it myself. It wasn't fun and it wasn't easy. But now I have a firm grasp on server security and we rarely have an issue. Like I said before, I'd never do this for a business open to the public but I needed a reliable hosting service that could keep my sites fast and online, I found nobody cared more about that than me.

I actually have an extra dedi if someone is looking for one. I had a larger client that we worked with for a few years that closed shop and just been hanging on to this dedi in case another whale comes along. I'll have to get the specs but getting tired of COLO hosting for a server just laying dormant. I'd sell it cheap. Just PM me if interested and I'll get the details to you.

I couldn't remember what the details were on this dedi so I did some checking. HP Proliant, Dual L5420 Xeons (8 Cores) 2.5 Ghz, 16GB Ram, 1TB Hard Drive. Older technology by today's standards but we're still using them to host about 50 websites on the other boxes with similar specs. On our Cpanel boxes we run dual 1TB drives with one set as a backup drive. I'd let this go for $200 and COLO is $40 a month with the datacenter I'm in or just have them ship it to your datacenter of choice. I really like our datacenter and would highly recommend them.

 

[drpcfix]

I tried it back in 2009~

I acquired a business with about 200 paying hosting customers that was running on liquidweb virtual cpanel servers (2).

We tried building small business websites in joomla/wordpress, and keeping the hosting/registrar business.

We had no tooling for automated billing and it killed us.. Also, that segment is not interested in spending much money in my experience.

My only advice is invest properly in FULLY automated billing/shutoff/payment updates/etc - so if cards expire you don't have to spend 4 hours chasing down $15 from a customer.

 

[gadgetfixup]

I tried it back in 2009~

I acquired a business with about 200 paying hosting customers that was running on liquidweb virtual cpanel servers (2).

We tried building small business websites in joomla/wordpress, and keeping the hosting/registrar business.

We had no tooling for automated billing and it killed us.. Also, that segment is not interested in spending much money in my experience.

My only advice is invest properly in FULLY automated billing/shutoff/payment updates/etc - so if cards expire you don't have to spend 4 hours chasing down $15 from a customer.

Yeah WHMCS is $16-$20 a month and it ties into our dedis. It does all the billing, suspensions and unspends when they pay. It pays for itself every month saving us the headache of chasing small money. Highly recommend their software.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

That reminds me, knownhost sells whmcs for 5 bucks a month.

 

[16bwhitt]

1) Reseller or Dedicated - not sure what that means. We own 3 dedicated servers hosted in a datacenter and manage them ourselves.
2) Are you a web designer? - yes but not full time business
3) How much do you spend monthly on hosting? - $200
4) How much do you charge? - $14.99 a month for Cpanel shared hosting. We got out of the Windows VPS business due to abuse by customers.
5) Do you make a profit? No, but we have reliable and secure webhosting for our sites and our clients. Something I couldn't purchase anywhere else for a reasonable price.
6)How much time do you spend working on the business? Since it's set up on WHMCS, not much time at all. It handles all the billing, suspensions and reinstatements. It took us quite a bit to get it all set up though.
7) Do you have employees? Yes but they don't work on webhosting.

Webhosting is a cut-throat business if you're trying to offer it to the public. There are thousands if not millions of scammers just looking for small hosts to abuse and destroy. We don't advertise our web hosting business except to local clients. I want to know who is on my servers and that they'll not abuse them. If I could find a good and reliable webhosting service, I would have never purchased my own servers, pay COLO fees and manage all of them myself.

I last paid for hosting with a hosting company about 10 years ago. The last company I was with was Liquidweb paying about $200 a month for a dedicated server. During the 3 years I leased with them, they never did any updates and while I was taking the only vacation I've had in the last 20 years, my server was hijacked and completely stolen. Seems there was an Apache exploit that they knew about but never installed the patch and this hacker gained root access and dumped all my accounts and in a matter of a day got all my IPs on RBLs. It took LW a week to get my server back online with some of the data recovered but they did a reboot with an image from a wrong server and I had nothing but issues after that. PHP, MySQL and all sorts of processes had wrong configuration files. Nobody could get emails delivered without petitioning RBLs for removal, it was ugly and frankly LW could care less. Here I was paying for managed hosting and had a dedicated server unpatched and way behind on updates. I ate a lot of crow from my customers for that mess.

That is when I purchased my first dedi and learned how to run it myself. It wasn't fun and it wasn't easy. But now I have a firm grasp on server security and we rarely have an issue. Like I said before, I'd never do this for a business open to the public but I needed a reliable hosting service that could keep my sites fast and online, I found nobody cared more about that than me.

I actually have an extra dedi if someone is looking for one. I had a larger client that we worked with for a few years that closed shop and just been hanging on to this dedi in case another whale comes along. I'll have to get the specs but getting tired of COLO hosting for a server just laying dormant. I'd sell it cheap. Just PM me if interested and I'll get the details to you.

I couldn't remember what the details were on this dedi so I did some checking. HP Proliant, Dual L5420 Xeons (8 Cores) 2.5 Ghz, 16GB Ram, 1TB Hard Drive. Older technology by today's standards but we're still using them to host about 50 websites on the other boxes with similar specs. On our Cpanel boxes we run dual 1TB drives with one set as a backup drive. I'd let this go for $200 and COLO is $40 a month with the datacenter I'm in or just have them ship it to your datacenter of choice. I really like our datacenter and would highly recommend them.

Wow! Thank you for all your information! Sorry to hear about the data breach LW had, especially on your vacation! I guess the old say goes - if you want something done RIGHT, do it yourself.

I support a few websites for businesses on GoDaddy. I know, a lot of people moan and groan when they hear GoDaddy, but, I have had no problems with them, the sites are not speed demons, but their support is top notch. I have pondered upgrading to their GoDaddy Pro option. I am also a big fan on SiteGround. Superfast servers, with top notch support, but they are located in Bulgaria and their English is very nice and friendly, but sometimes not understandable. Of course, their email and chat support is very quick and very understandable.

If I may ask, how did you go about learning server?

 

[TenYardFight]

I agree with everything inbargains said, but I would still recommend finding a good managed hosting provider and "manage" THEM rather than learn to optimize and secure your own server. That is, unless you already know a lot about that. The time you spend learning it from scratch won't pay off in full anytime soon.

 

[Moez]

We provide hosting for clients for whom we provide all their IT needs. We charge a bit of a premium over other hosts, but we provide a level of redundancy you don't often find. In addition to our main VPS, all data and the database is mirrored nightly to an Azure server. Using DNSMadeEasy and their DNS failover, if it detects an outage with our main server, it automatically fails over to the Azure server by changing the IP for the A host. It works amazing. Plus we have monitoring enabled beyond what's provided by our host (monitoring from 3 different companies).

I would suggest going with a managed VPS provider. We have used KnownHost, WiredTree and FullHost with great success. I strongly recommend KH if you are in the US and FH if you're in Canada.

 

[tucsonpc]

I haven't done any reseller hosting, but I've looked into it a bit with HostGator (my hosting provider). Reasonable monthly prices, I think, and they include a bunch of addon software that you can install, including cpanel/WHCMS.

 

[jzukerman]

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone had experience owning a webhost? Whether if it be through reseller hosting, or actually owning your own web server. I have been browsing and doing a little bit of posting for the past few weeks, and have not encountered anyone that owns their own host on here.

If you have had experience owning a web host, if you could be ever so grateful and answer some questions that would be great.

1) Reseller or Dedicated
2) Are you a web designer?
3) How much do you spend monthly on hosting?
4) How much do you charge?
5) Do you make a profit?
6)How much time do you spend working on the business?
7) Do you have employees?

Any further information is welcome! Thank you!

1) VPS actually.
2) No. I refer my clients to a colleague who does web design work.
3) Less than a $100.
4) Basic plan starts at $5.00 a month
5) Yes, minimal, since webhosting is more about lots of clients than individual clients paying a lot of money. It's a Value Add service that I offer to my existing clients.
6) Couple of hours a week, reviewing e-mails, updating server software, etc. Mostly automated with use of WHMCS billing system, cPanel auto-upgrades, etc.
7) No.

My primary business is small business IT consulting. I offer website hosting to my existing clients to get them off expensive hosting that doesn't have flexibility for DNS records mostly. I don't actively market my webhosting side business.

 

[WindsorComputerRepair]

Yes, No, and Yes.
When I was rather young, I started a web hosting company.
We actually used a webhosting reseller account (WHM) + WHMCS to offer shared CpAnel to clients.\
This was, of course rubbish, and if you're thinking of selling webhosting, let me help you out - Don't.
Just. Don't.

Obviously, this business model did not work, I was 16 at the time, and webhosting is a cutthroat business.
However, I was employed by a web design agency....

This got things going in that instead of my boss putting everyone's website on Go-Daddy, he would use my services.
For business clients, I charged 10$/month for a basic website on a one year term, 1 Database, 10 GB bandwidth, w/e.
But we had plans ranging from 4.99-19.99.

After two years of doing this, I quit the job on not the best terms, and subsequently my boss went on a cocaine fuel rampage and decided to delete the in-house backups and all the virtual accounts on the server. (This is a story for another time, haha. He was a very unprofessional character. PM me if you care to actually hear about it)

A half dozen lawsuits later (Thankfully, all against him and not me, he was liable for all damages) and this also went south.

In the end, I was purchasing hostgator re-selling hosting for 49$ (?) a month at the time, and overselling it by about 5000%. (So, 49.99-(10*~70) )

Worth it?
I guess, had the lawsuit thing not happened....
But the ONLY reason this worked is because my boss was sending me clients that were specifically looking for this service.
You're unlikely to be so lucky.

Now, I do managed hosting for my clients simply because it is easier to have access to everything instead of trying to switch between softlayer, amazon, azure or whatever my clients are using.

For now, we use Amazon, however we're going to set up a rack for hosted VOIP services that will be local (To reduce latency and increase voice quality as much as possible)

But, that's about it. And it ain't cheap, either.

 

[allstarit]

I dont do too much in the way of webhosting but i do offer it to my msp clients as an addon.

I do however do domain management and DNS records on my Cpanel server. Ill take care of clients domain renewals and manage it via whmcs.

As mentioned above it can become time consuming to maintain a web server for little return. I see it ok as a addon service but would be hard as your primary service

 

[fencepost]

I have a few that I'm hosting on a reseller account, basically just nets enough to cover the cost of my own website hosting. I'm only doing it for folks who are otherwise already customers.

For DNS, I've been moving folks from GoDaddy to Namecheap for the much better DNS options (including dynamic DNS!) but I'm hoping they do another Move Your Domain Day in January - if they do, there are a bunch of domains that I don't control but have influence on that I'm going to make sure get moved.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

(including dynamic DNS!)

How much does it cost for dynamic dns?