For all interested in web hosting....

[Pilot51688]

Hey everyone,

For everyone (since I can see that there are many) that want to create a business in the successful web hosting market...I highly recommend purchasing servers, NOT buying a reseller account from another web hosting company. Although running your own servers requires a few extra hours for the upkeep...it also offers numerous advantages.

Additional Responsibilities:

1) Required maintinance (minimal, but pops up from time to time)
2) User must install any resources he/she would like to offer
3) The cost (I recommend stack servers from Dell->High quality at a low price->Starting at $3,500 for a high-quality server)
4) User has to buy a control panel or make his/her own.

Advantages:

1) Pays off itself very quickly (this offers more of a chance to make money later instead of having to deduct from incomes to pay for the reseller account).
2) YOU can MAKE sure that your servers are up, and do not have to rely on others to keep them up to your promise (of 99.9% uptime or whatever)
3) You can set them up as you please...you can install virus protection, open specific ports, etc (for the more advanced user).
4) YOU can set them up the way you want...the features YOU want to offer; not restricted by what your hosting company offers you as a reseller).
5) NO monthly fees, No restrictions (bandwidth and space -> Depends on how many servers you have and their hard drives in addition to your isp...the majority of web hosts don't have restrictions on bandwidth, so take advantage of it:) ).
6) You can make your control panels to offer the features that you please, not the ones that come with the hosting company's reseller accounts

........and many, many more........

As most of you can probably tell, buying your own server takes a lot of time and money initially...but if you are truely serious about a web hosting business, it is extremely beneficial to purchase and run your own servers in the long run (and please....for the sake of users, don't be desperate and try to run a hosting service off your home computer....it really doesn't work because home computers are not designed to do this...)

Cheers!
Michael

[Nevermore]

You say no monthly fees, but what about the line rental? You'll need at least a 2 Mb DSL (Not ADSL) conenction, which can cost £70/month easily. If you want to offer hosting to more than 5 customers, or any high-traffic sites, you're looking at either leasing a T3/OC-1 line or moving to a data centre - this is cheaper - starting at about £50/month - but reduces your control a lot.
Also, you haven't considered the problem which cripples a lot of small businesses: contingency planning. You haven't talked about any fire suppression, fire detection, specialist materials, etc. If your server catches fire, or is destroyed in a bigger fire, you're likely to lose all your customers and creditability, forever. If you go bankrupt you're business will also be closed and you;ll be banned from starting another. Theft is also a possibility. And what about backups and archiving? These are more than the 'time to time', 'minimal' maintenance responsibility. Sure, software can do it for you, but that reduces your control, and you still have to take the data off site, or it's worse than useless.
And lastly, I don't agree with "the majority of web hosts don't have restrictions on bandwidth, so take advantage of it". a) They do, b) If you're hosting it elsewhere then what was the point? c) If you're hosting from your home connection - probably ADSL at 128 or 256 Kb/second - then several concurrent 56 Kb modem users can render your site unusable.

I don't mean to be rude, but I think you need to rethink this.

[jimr451]

I'll throw out another major concern: security.

As a former system admin for an ISP, I can tell you it takes a lot of knowledge and diligence to keep your servers from being hacked or compromised.

I've seen several small hosting companies, where the "admin" hardly knows anything about networking, firewalls, intrusion detection, hardening machines, etc. This is a disaster waiting to happen, and eventually it will.

I don't know how bad the lawsuits get for hacked web hosters, but I can imagine just one incident could bankrupt you or at least cost you your reputation.

-Jim

[Page-Zone]

If you don't know how to run the server you purchased the additional savings in the long run isn't going to help you much when the server is down and you don't know how to get it back up.

I would recommend just the opposite. Get a reseller account somewhere, let them worry about the server administration and you worry about creating a client base and learning how to administer a server, provide customer support, etc... This IS if you are starting on a shoestring budget. If you have a large budget get your own server right off and hire a server admin. Most of the prices I've seen for a good administrator are around $150/mo per server. And that is a bargain.

[Pilot51688]

Ok guys,

I see where you are coming from. I didn't think about other people's viewpoints when I made this article. Personally, I have programmed for about 12 years; I went to college and majored in these areas. In addition, the security around here is awesome. My internet connection is cable, but the flip side is that when I do a speed test, 9/10 sites register it as an OC-1, the other registers it as a T3. As you can see, I'm coming from a different standpoint when I wrote this article; my apologies for all who misinterpreted it.

Cheers!
Michael