Start web hosting business

[sid-180]

Is it worth setting up a web hosting company in this day and age or is it a saturated market!

A friend of mine set one up 7 months back a d has already grown it to 4,700 users on his books.

Now I know he achieved this with good SEO company which he hired.

So would I be mad to set one up given that there are allot our hosting companies out there.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

I would say saturated. Pretty much all the same and pretty hard to beat on the prices.

 

[edd1e]

I wouldn't bother to be honest, there is plenty of choice out there at present. Unless of course you can somehow put a new unique spin on it... which would be hard to do.

 

[sid-180]

Just what I thought. Thanks guys.

 

[uniQ]

General web hosting has been saturated for years but that doesn't make it impossible to carve your corner from it with a USP and good business plan. I would speak to your friend though as it sounds like they must be doing something "right"?

 

[sid-180]

General web hosting has been saturated for years but that doesn't make it impossible to carve your corner from it with a USP and good business plan. I would speak to your friend though as it sounds like they must be doing something "right"?

I know the SEO company he is using and he doesn't have any USP apart from he advertises dedicated UK support.

 

[uniQ]

I know the SEO company he is using and he doesn't have any USP apart from he advertises dedicated UK support.

OK?

 

[Super-Spy]

I guess the question for your friend's business is whether he is making a profit ?

Depending on his pricing and costs, he may have 4,700 users but not making a decent profit or maybe losing money in the hope that he builds even more volume in the future

 

[Frxn]

It's very saturated especially since people started realising they could oversell their resources, however if you tap into a niche market your chances of success will be much greater than if you just became yet another web host. I know a few guys that have done this and related services like web design, gameserver hosting etc. (hobbyist students though, not doing it to make a living) and they've found more success 'offline' than 'online'. It is a tough industry but on the plus side the costs aren't too great that you can't give it a go to see how you do and call it quits later if it just doesn't work out.

Best thing is probably just to talk to your friend and try to emulate what they've done.

 

[Ewaf]

Extremely competitive. Its not just a case of using the seo agency he uses and making money, it will take months and months to begin to rank well, and cost a lot of money. And even if you do achieve good visibility in the search engines, you still have to pile money into SEO to stay ahead of the game.

I would strongly recommend you don't pursue this unless you have bucket loads of money and a lot of patience.

 

[aln]

It's saturated but most hosting companies are crap, thus your USP can be not being useless. You can definetly make a living at it if you're good at running hosting infrastructure and good at bringing in customers, otherwise I imagine it'd be a hard life.

One does need to question your expertise when you're asking such questions on a PC forum. If you worked for a hosting company? Do you know how much of a pita customers who pay £20 a year can be?

 

[p_r_i_m_e]

Do you know how much of a pita customers who pay £20 a year can be?

too true!!!

 

[Beansprout]

It's true that it is a competitive market, but so are things like car insurance...yet there are often new providers popping up (even if most are just brands of existing large companies - eg ever year I seem to ultimately end up with Admiral even though Elephant or whoever were the "cheapest quote").

However, what's also true is that it is a 24/7/365 operation and not something to do part time, and not something easy. But it can be fun.