Lot's of thoughts. Please excuse the long post.
As a purchaser, maybe that all sounds pretty good. It certainly doesn't
sound like much of a business plan, though. I'd reexamine offering
unlimited domains. If a reseller/developer places dozens of low-traffic
domains on your servers, you still have to deal with the associated overhead
that each one requires. That translates into additional equipment costs. I
know there are a few web hosts offering similar arrangements, but they have
to overload their equipment so badly that performance suffers badly.
One place that offering unlimited domains really begins to look bad is in
evaluating your marketing costs. If you figure it costs X dollars to
attract a new customer, then you have few avenues of gaining additional
revenue from that customer, because he just keeps piling additional
low-traffic sites onto his account.
If you've already got all the control-panel software written, and it's
secure, then you at least don't have to invest in several hundred
(thousands?) of hours of development before you open shop. If you don't,
there are very few off the shelf control-panels available for Windows
platforms. The one thing that might make it a little easier for you would
be if you truly stick to a one-price system, then at least you don't have to
tie everything into a billing system. Any way you look at it, the software
development is a major undertaking that has to eventually be recooped.
If I'm a developer and I've got dozens of domains running under my "all you
can eat" plan, if the servers that they're on go down, you better believe
I'll want someone at the other end of a telephone line within minutes. CF
can be particularly tough to support in a shared hosting environment. If
you think you can place a pile of automation software on a rack full of web
servers and then just check your bank statements once a month, I think
you'll be in for a rough ride.
By offering everything under the sun for a fixed price, and then explicitly
stating that support is very limited, you're really positioning yourself as
a low-end hosting company right out of the gate. There are lots of those
companies around. The hands off approach to common management tasks would
certainly be welcome to a lot of developers and resellers, but without good
support, I don't think it's going to be attactive primarily to those folks
looking for a bargain.
If you examine the current direction of the web hosting industry, you'll see
that it's moving in exactly the opposite direction. "Managed services" is
the buzzword. Not hands off, but very hands on, value-added services that
will be profitable in the long run.
Jim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Beer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "CF-Community" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 10:19 PM
Subject: self-serv Hosting for CF'ers
> Hello all,
>
> On the CF-Talk list there have been many threads asking about web site
> hosting companies that offer self-service (create your own domains, data
> sources, etc).
>
> Would anyone mind if I posted a list of questions on here, basically a
short
> survey, asking what kinds of features people would like to see in such a
> service? I'm considering starting such a business and would really
> appreciate some input.
>
> Some of the things I think are important to offer are:
>
> Unlimited domains, one flat rate.
> 200 megs disk space included.
> Two servers for each account - one for testing and staging, one for
> production (disk space shared across both).
> Automated DNS setup for domains, including MX records and aliases.
> Unlimited mail accounts (domain) with unlimited users per (imap and pop3).
> Maybe offering shared Exchange Server accounts (domain-based).
> No charge for ODBC/OLE DB connections - unlimited.
> MS SQL Server DBs created on demand - no extra charge for two dbs.
> Unlimited FTP accounts to any directories in your area with unlimited
users.
> Register your own CFX and COM objects. We would require they be called
> using a generic wrapper that we provide.
>
> All controlled fully through a web-based control panel. SQL Server users
> would use Enterprise Manager for DB access.
>
> The pricing model we've thought about would be all of the above is covered
> under a flat rate, with the only extra charges being for extra disk space
> (200 megs included) and high-bandwidth sites (don't have a cost-point for
> bandwidth yet). Bandwidth would be charged by the monthly aggregated
> average of throughput - not by total bytes transferred. Exchange Server
> domain accounts would also be an extra charge.
>
> The drawback would be that customer service would be almost non-existant,
> with the exception of server monitoring, etc.. the servers will be up and
> running.. you wouldn't get phone support for the first few months at the
> least. E-mail support would be available but probably sporadic at times...
>
> Any thoughts?
>
>
>
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