How To Start Your Own Web hosting Company?

• May 8, 2011 22:08
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Web hosting can be one of the most lucrative internet businesses to be involved with. Start up costs are low and overhead can be kept at a minimum. Other than a business name you only need four things in order to start your own web hosting company. You will need to obtain a reseller account, billing software, a merchant account, and a system for customer service.

If you are in a hurry it is possible to get all of this set up and running in a single day. If it fits into your plans do not be afraid to jump in to the web hosting business with both feet.

The first thing you’re going to need if you want to start your own web hosting company is a reseller account. You are going to obtain a reseller account from a larger web hosting company and resell the space and bandwidth they provide to you. Most larger web hosting companies offer a variety of reseller accounts for you to choose from. The cost of a reseller account will be based on how much space and how much bandwidth you will need. Obviously, the more customers that you wish to accommodate, the more space and bandwidth you are going to need. You can easily start off with one of the smaller reseller packages and upgrade as your business grows.

The second thing your web hosting company is going to need is billing software. Some hosting companies provide this billing software along with your reseller account. If they do not then a little searching on your part should turn up several viable options. Billing software is used to automate the process of setting up your customer accounts after payment has been verified. The billing software you choose should be able to handle accepting payment from the customer and emailing the account details such as login information and nameservers to your customer automatically. A good billing software will make the setup of new accounts a hands off experience for you.

The third thing you will need is a way for your web hosting company to get paid. You will need a merchant account of some type. This can be a regular merchant account acquired through your bank or through a service online. If you cannot or do not wish to obtain your own merchant account you can just as easily use a third party billing option such as PayPal. Most people who are experienced online shoppers will have no problem trusting and paying a merchant who uses PayPal to process their payments.

The fourth and final thing you’re going to need is a customer service system. This can be as simple or as complicated as you wish to make it for yourself. At a bare minimum, you need to provide a support email address that is monitored regularly. Your customers will not accept anything less than an email response within 24 hours. Another option would be to set up a help desk. A help desk works very similar to email but is software that is installed on your server and your customers go to a web page to fill out a support request form.

And there you have the four simple steps required to start your own web hosting business. You need to purchase a reseller account, acquire and install billing software, obtain a merchant account or other way of processing payments, and set up a customer service support system. Setting up your own web hosting company is very easy to do. How well you will do in the web hosting business will be determined by how well you treat your customers.