What do you really need to know for starting a web hosting business?

LeatherCrafting

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Most of you are a lot more experienced than I am but I do have my fair share of knowledge when it comes down to Linux but what do you really need to know?
 

R Langley

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Most of you are a lot more experienced than I am but I do have my fair share of knowledge when it comes down to Linux but what do you really need to know?
It depends on what your exactly trying to do with hosting???
 

LeatherCrafting

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LeatherCrafting
Like I mentioned in the title "What really do you need to know for starting a web hosting business?"

I understand this brunch out to many aspects but lets try see if we can get everything you need to know for starting a web hosting business. I will start it this off more better.

This is for webhosting aspect of starting a web hosting business.
- Dedicated Server
- cPanel
- WHMCS

But what else would do you really need to know?
 

WPCycle

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WPCycle

A key element that I didn't see mentioned...a business plan!!!

The web hosting business is a business. Web hosting is just a product/service of that business. Once you have the core elements of business covered, you can run just about any business. The specifics to web hosting (Linux, management, server, etc)...that's different.

So going further...how trained are you in Linux and what is your overall plan?

An example....you could be very skilled in Linux and may want to deal with Support tickets;

- but can you do sales?
- do you have a marketing plan?
- are you doing accounting?
- will the business be registered?
- will you have a business or separate bank account?

There's a lot more to think about, but the hosting side is actually the easy side of it, especially if you know what you're doing and stay on top of security. My background before hosting was music. As fun as it appears, the actual music is 5% of the business. One can have the talent (like managing a server), but without doing the 95% of the business, the greatest song ever made will never be know to anyone.
 

LJSHost

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These days, not much.

The level of technical understand for starting a hosting firm is really at the bottom of barrel now. If you know a little bit about Linux and how the internet works your good to go.
Even people with zero technical knowledge can start a hosting business thanks to fully managed VPS and reseller products.

If you have a basic knowledge of networking, linux, cPanel, DNS, domain name you should be able to handle everything yourself without running to your host for help for every little issue.
 

RDO Servers

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You can get:
A reseller account from a quality provider
WHMCS license
Outsourced Help Desk Support plan

Then you will simply need to be able to market your new business and attract customers.

As your business grows, your knowledge will also.

When your ready to get into VPS and dedicated server sales, you will need to learn more about Node management and network infrastructure. However even this can be minimized if you are still reselling.
 

LeatherCrafting

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Some nice couple of posts here! What about if your server is getting DDoS? What is the way around this?
 

R Langley

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R Langley
If your running your own hardware buy DDoS application and buy bigger network fibers. The principle of it is to have higher internet speeds like 10Gb connection would project you for about 7-8Gb/s of DDoS then you can have DDoS hardware to detect and filter out the attack its very expensive.
 

LJSHost

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You have some solutions for DDOS at the software level some firewalls have DDOS filtering, mostly DDOS is something that you want your host to deal with on the network level, they will just null route the traffic until it stops or use filtration systems to ease the attack.
 

RDO Servers

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This will depend on what your upstream provider has in place.

Some will have DDoS protection included, some offer it as a add-on service.
You can also route your traffic through Cloudflare, Incapsula, X4B, etc for remote DDoS protection.

When comparing DDoS protection, be sure to ask what level of DDoS protection is provided. I have seen many hosts offer DDoS protected services, but if you read the fine print, they only give you 2Gbps of protection or less.
 

LeatherCrafting

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Keep it coming! Getting some solid information here! Pretty glad I joined and Mr R Langley you have a good knowledge about this particular industry.
 

Laurence Flynn

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@LeatherCrafting - how deep do you want to go? If you leverage a managed hosting plan then you can just act as a middle man between your client and your host when it comes to support queries.

The minimum knowledge you need is comprehensive understanding of your control panel - cPanel/WHM, Plesk or whatever.

But if you have root access on a server why not learn some basic admin skills? Plenty of tutorials online and your host will also help you out.

When you promote your brand via external channels (like this or other forums) or on your own site with a blog what are you going to talk about? You need to produce content with value so if you don't have server admin skills or industry knowledge you need something. Maybe marketing knowledge or SEO knowledge or programming knowledge or WordPress knowledge etc.
 

Anonymously

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I assume that you are asking which skills you need. You will need either of two. Marketing and system administration. If you are a good system administrator, you will need to find a marketer, and vice versa. That's the basic. The rest are minor details.
 

archhosting

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The more you know the better off you will be against your competition. But you really don't need much, it's why there are so many horrible web hosting services out there.
 
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