WebHosting Problem

I'm trying to set up my own little hosting provider. But i don't know what to price people.

I want to offer a package that is adjustable. It includes ASP, CGI, Perl, PHP and X ftp accounts/customer. Also X pop3 accounts/customer. They get Xmb/customer webspace.

Now I want a formula that creates a reasonable price both for me and the customer. Like, 3 times the mb amount plus the.... blablabla etc etc. Can you guys help me on this? I tried a few but i wasn't really satisfied with my own results :)

Really its all up to you, but think of it this way, be CHEEPER then everyone else.... your a small company, probably not running the fasts servers or most advanced.... start off with small prices like 5 bux a month or something like that.... @5 bux a month you have 20 customers u make 100 a month for doing absolutely nothing.....

then also add the money you would get from advertising(i suggest u look into that) and your making decent money, let your customers grow and grow... start offering MORE and charege MORE for it and then you will ahve 100 customers @ 10 bux a month ur making 1000 bux a month.

see where im getting to?

start small.

Yea thats good advice, because if you put your prices up too high to start with then probably no one will use your services and they'll just go somewhere else.

The cheapest hosting I have seen is $1.99 per month and that gives you:100 MB space
~ 10 e-mails
~ FrontPage extensions
~ Apache ASP
~ 24-hour FTP access

I always wanted to do that myself, but having a full-time job I just wouldn't have the time to dedicate to it.

Just watch out. People are going to want guaranteed uptime...and you're gonna have to give refunds (or god forbid getting sued) if your server goes down and you aren't aroudn to make sure it's back up within a few minutes.

That alone scared me off of web hosting, until I have the time (and can make enough money off it) to actually do it myself 24x7.

Slightly different principle - we provide a web site content management tool that I wrote for our users (UK buying groups) - but for what it's worth here's our pricelist.

Hope it's helps some ;)

There are some really top-end services out there, some who provide respectable low-end hosting requirements with their domain-name sales. Browse around and see what the market is offering, then price your quality of features, support and reliability accordingly. :D

Thanx guys. Found something. :D

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Sick Dwarf
I'm trying to set up my own little hosting provider. But i don't know what to price people.

I want to offer a package that is adjustable. It includes ASP, CGI, Perl, PHP and X ftp accounts/customer. Also X pop3 accounts/customer. They get Xmb/customer webspace.

Now I want a formula that creates a reasonable price both for me and the customer. Like, 3 times the mb amount plus the.... blablabla etc etc. Can you guys help me on this? I tried a few but i wasn't really satisfied with my own results :)

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i tried to come up with a formula as well, then i decided not to, but adjusted the prices accordingly so it is cheaper than everyone else, like what Dome said, and vary services, like how many pop accts, etc, and offer the friendliest personal service, and be more reliable than the big people. good luck!

p.s. one important thing to keep in mind is that you don't compromise security.

regards,
mark.

I know you said you found something, but for everyone else interested....

I was checking around my local ISP's prices and all, and came out to a formula that did well.

This is in USD by the way.

(.25 * MB) + (.50 * POP3) + (2 * FTP)

50 mb with 10 pop3 and 1 ftp account = 19.50/mo (my ISP is 20.00/mo)
100mb with 35 pop3 and 3 ftp = 48.50/mo (my ISP is 50.00/mo)

Mmmmm, that is a nice formula, keep posting pplz.

we are hosting ourselves..
the easiest way to earn much money with small input is to get a dedicated server.
if you have the ded youll certainly also get a 24/7-rebooting service!

actually you dont have to care about anything beside setting up the domains and accounts..

if the server goes offline you always can rely on the guarantee you got from the provider hosting your ded..

+ do not forget to limit the traffic for your customers.
6 gigs or something like that should be enough.

It seems that there's also a trend by new hosting services to offer limited free pro hosting packages. For example: run a paying host service but when you start you give (let's say) 20 free hosting packages away on first come first served base... this will attract ppl to your host for sure ;) . Specially when you offer 5gb traffic, 100 Mb Space, php, cgi, ftp, asp, email
If you want to do things like that: notify me first please... ;)

lol

Don't forget about volume discounts.

You generally want to increase gains when they pay more.

e.g.

10mb,1 e-mail for $3/mon
50mb, 2 e-mails for $5/mon
120mb, 5 e-mails for $10/mon
300mb, 15 e-mails for $20/mon

also, don't forget about marketing (ad-free, cgi-bin, blah blah blah).

good luck, try not to sell shell accounts, eggbots = downtime.

well, if your just starting out and you have no customers so far, you might be able to bump up the price a bit, and say it's a "deticated server", because tecnically, it is! just a thought....

-Mike