August 30, 200917 yr Hi everyone, As i am due to be buying aload of new webspace soon, i will be looking at offering hosting as a seperate service (rather than just an extra for my clients) But im unsure of the best way to set the pricing: At the moment i am looking at 4 options. 500mb space 4gb bandwidth £1.50 per month 1gb space 10gb bandwidth £2.50 per month 5gb space 50gb bandwidth £6 per month 10gb space 100gb bandwidth £10 per month 1 year bought in advance would be the price of 10 months. Let me know your thoughts. Reaper
August 30, 200917 yr My advice is don't try an compete with the big cheap hosts, it's simply not worth it and you'll inevitably be out of pocket unless you have a huge number of customers. Lets say I purchased your cheapest plan at £15/year and I'm one of those clients who's always asking for support. Is that £15 going to cover your costs, both in providing the server and all the hours you spend supporting me? If anything I'd suggest giving less resources and charging more! What's easier to manage...? 100 customers paying £15/year 10 customers paying £99/year
August 30, 200917 yr You need to find the right balance. If you charge to much for very small amount of space & bandwidth you will loose a fair few customers. Charge to little and you will attract spammers, script kiddies etc. You need to evaluate the market place and pick a niche and target it with the appropriate pricing. We worked ours out by looking at our biggest competitor and performing some calculations like how much space we could afford to give, how much bandwidth could be utilized etc. I believe our prices are perfectly set for what they offer - they are not to expensive to deter customers and yet they will discourage spammers, script kiddies etc. Look at your target market - query domain names to find their hosting providers, look at their packages, infrastructure size... Can you compete against them in terms of resources, power and labor. Setting up a stable hosting company is not easy (believe me) - be prepared for long nights - especially when things crash (Which they will inevitably). Please set it up properly and do research - to many people don't and inevitably fail Good luck man - let me know If I can provide any assistance consultancy wise (Peartree being a hosting provider we know a few bits and bobs )
August 31, 200917 yr Author Well its going to be stuck on one of your VPS's peartree, so if it goes wrong, ill be ringing you at 2am Im not planning on it becoming a large hosting company, just a little side earner for people i know that already have sites (mainly low maintenance 5 page brochure sites) and want to move from US to UK. Reaper
August 31, 200917 yr If your plan is a sideline, does the money actually cover your costs then? i.e if you broke down your webspace allocation based on the price of your VPS, would 10 people paying £1.50 cover your basic costs? and would those people actually have that amount of diskspace or would there be some hoping they don't use it?
August 31, 200917 yr Author Yes, they are designed so that it covers my costs. Just a way to fill my VPS, and keep it so i can guarantee it isnt oversold.
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