Webhosting and Site Creation Business

External Since: Aug 04, 2005 Posts: 3

Hi all,
I don't know if this is in the right group but my question is, how do
you go about providing a website creation & hosting service as a
business? For example I could approach small businesses in the area
and ask if they would like 1) A domain name, 2) A nice web site at that
location, 3) maintenance support including changes.

The difficultly in providing this seems to be the way that webhosting
companies provide this service & their pricing scheme. I would like to
provide all 3 of the above services at a one off fee e.g. £250 for a
simple web-site. I don't want re-curring costs every month from many
different web hosting companies. This would be too difficult to manage
& maybe the customer may not like re-curring monthly charges either.
The solution in my opinion would be to be able to manage all my domains
in one place, and keep adding to it as my customer base grows. Instead
of tying myself to one specific package, I would need the flexibility
of growing web space, domains, traffic and databases etc. Any ideas or
companies that provide a simple solution?

External Since: Jun 29, 2005 Posts: 88

jonswaino.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com wrote:

> Hi all,
> I don't know if this is in the right group but my question is, how do
> you go about providing a website creation & hosting service as a
> business? For example I could approach small businesses in the area
> and ask if they would like 1) A domain name, 2) A nice web site at
> that location, 3) maintenance support including changes.
>
> The difficultly in providing this seems to be the way that webhosting
> companies provide this service & their pricing scheme. I would like
> to provide all 3 of the above services at a one off fee e.g. £250 for
> a simple web-site. I don't want re-curring costs every month from
> many different web hosting companies. This would be too difficult to
> manage & maybe the customer may not like re-curring monthly charges
> either. The solution in my opinion would be to be able to manage all
> my domains in one place, and keep adding to it as my customer base
> grows. Instead of tying myself to one specific package, I would need
> the flexibility of growing web space, domains, traffic and databases
> etc. Any ideas or companies that provide a simple solution?

You say you'll provide this at a one-off fee. Have you taken into
consideration your own monthly bills, such as electricity, bandwidth
and location rental? Even if you choose to do this out of your own
home, you still have rent and other bills to pay.

When setting up your pricing table, calculate the minimum price out
from these factors:
1. Cost of equipment (hardware, routers, cabling, workload)
2. Cost of software (licenses, maintenance, support)
3. Bandwidth costs (high-speed DSL line)
4. Space rental costs (office space, computer room, data center)
5. Electricity and other utilities
6. Website design and development (work time or hiring costs)
7. Domain registry fees (if you're handling it yourself)
8. Handling costs (accounting, postage, supplies)
9. Your own workload

If you're renting space at a local data center, items 3-5 can be
combined into one. Items 3-5 and 7-9 are recurring, so you want to take
this into consideration. Also keep in mind the cost of future upgrades
(both software and hardware) and replacement parts. Equipment can and
will break down at some point in time (you never know when it will
happen; it could even be 5-10 years from now), so it might be a good
idea to have spare parts ready.

I don't know of any serious hosting companies that don't charge by the
month, more or less because of the reasons mentioned above.

An alternative to monthly billing would be to charge by the year, and
remind the customer a month or two in advance of the next billing
cycle, something which several companies have as a payment option.

--
Kim André Akerø
- kimandre.TakeThisOut@NOSPAMbetadome.com
(remove NOSPAM to contact me directly)