Questions : What features are favored in a hosting company?

How about not using OVH and not using the very typical WHMCS and Multicraft combination? That'd already set you apart from everyone else.

Yes, I realize that on another thread, I said that you could reduce costs with OVH and have to have some money to get a WHMCS and Multicraft license. Not relevant, however.

 

Investing cheaply is not ideal for a business that would be providing quality. If your interested of delivering to customers, you will want to invest in a quality provider or two.

I has good experiences with Limestone Networks to warrant the expenses of their hardware and upgrade costs.

Also as others stated as well do some things differently that would be beneficial to the customers. Otherwise you will only look like just like everyone else who is doing this business already. Thus potential customers completely ignoring you as a "risky" business that is not worth undertaking.

 

Uptime, latency, and performance. Rock solid service goes a long way.

 

Just reference people based on my personal experience using their servicing. I don't support any NOCs that does not do their job as 100% advertised and LSN is one of the few that lives up to their promises.

 

*wants to start hosting company*

in signature

Are you over 18 btw? Or have your parents permission to do this?

 

Answer:

 

As long as he got parent consent and they (or even an adult partner) to help him with the age restricted items he would be able to operate within legal "limits".

 

Being of the legal age to run/own a company;
Being a registered company;
Using proper SSL certificates (DigiCert, Comodo, RapidSSL, etc, preferably a EV certificate) rather than just default CloudFlare SSL;
Using something other than a template website;
Getting a nice looking WHMCS theme (if you use WHMCS);
Not just using the standard Multicrapcraft;
Displaying proper information about your servers / hardware, i.e not saying your servers run 64GB DDR3 RAM and saying you use an E3 1271v3 (E3 series can't have 64GB of RAM, 32GB max);
Getting proper advertisements;
Not lying to your customers ("NO LAG!!");
Get a logo;
Use a proper PayPal email (and use the business account types, i.e [email protected] or [email protected]);
Have multiple locations;
Don't charge $70/gb (or some other stupid price);
Don't charge $1/gb;
Have an actual business plan - not just a summer host business plan;
Have support reps.

 

I would like to expand on some of these subjects.

You can be of under aged provided that some other adult is within the company to help you with the aged restricted items. On a Minecraft popular forum community people admitted that they started under aged and did just fine doing what I just said.

Some places don't requires you to be registered. Although even then I do agree it pays in the end to get this as soon as the business start "kicking into gears".

In my opinion themes are fine as long as you put in time and efforts to modify them.

It fine to use Multicraft, the newer version seems better than it was. At the end of the day it comes down what the company have to offer. NOT whether or not they have a "in house" control panel.

While your example is accurate, v5s CAN address up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM. So that "general assumption" is starting to deteriorate and will only get more irrelevant as more providers get their hands on these E3s.

Regarding pricing it depends on what you have to offer. If you can offer "the best of everything including the kitchen sink" then it will cost you a good premium. Just look at some "high end" VPS providers a few will charge you $20-$50/GB of RAM because of the management, features, quality, reliability, and etc. Charging a premium price is acceptable IF you provides that premium experience.

Regarding support staffs it is relevant if your charging high end price and/or says you have live support 24/7. Otherwise at most a partner during the evening hours can be enough to "cut the mustard" at least during start up phrase. Then add staffs "on demand".

 

Actually you want BOTH the panel and website URLs secured. SSLs are easily obtained now of days so it not real "pain" to do this as well.

 

Yes, for your website (panel & billing).

I recommend this, https://www.namecheap.com/security/...ust/true-businessid-with-ev-multi-domain.aspx

With this you can cover:

www.yourhost.com
yourhost.com
billing.yourhost.com
panel.yourhost.com

And you have 1 spare, remaining SAN for anything else you want to secure at a late date.

Too pricey? You shouldn't be starting a hosting company with a tiny budget, if you're in this to do it properly, make sure you've got the budget.

 

That's a nice budget indeed, as long as you keep your steam "running" then you won't have a problem maintaining "in the game" for months to come while your building up reputation and customers.