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How to start your own hosting company for free ?!?
By markneter | August 30, 2007
(1 votes, average: 1 out of 10)
Loading ...“How to start my own hosting company?” This was the question that I asked myself 8 years ago. After making a research I understood that it is not easy for an individual to establish his/her hosting company! You should be familiar with the latest hardware and software, and you need to have the money to invest them. (I am not talking about buying only a cheap computer and installing several free software). Say that you are a tech guy who has the money required for this investments, also remember that you should make agreements with bandwidth providers, hire some employees (you can’t work 7/24), deal with support, sales, finance, marketing and operational works etc. etc. Briefly, it is really hard to run a physical hosting company.
It was so 8 years ago, and it is the same now! Nothing changed! If you are the guy that I described above, you don’t need suggestions from me, cause you are one step beyond me! But what if not? Don’t quail yourself, nowadays we have some other ways to start a hosting company. Additionaly, there are some companies that offers this service free. Now I am going to explain how to start a hosting company easily (compared the starting one physically) and some free or cheap solutions.
What is reseller hosting?
Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his/her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The reseller purchases the host’s services wholesale and then sells them to his customers for a profit. The certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to reseller account. (Source:Wikipedia)
Basically, you’ll buy a reseller package from a provider, and sell hosting services under your brand within the limits of your reseller package. With a reseller package, you don’t have to deal with hardware, software, maintenance, backups or anything technical. All you have to do is, designing a website or using a pre-built template, learning the simple to use control panel, and start marketing your company. Most of the reseller hosts even doesn’t provide support and outsource it to the main company. (Mostly applicable if you are targeting english speaking customers.)
Which companies provide reseller hosting accounts?
Actually, I can’t provide you a full list, or a suggestions for reseller accounts. The Web Host Magazine’s Reseller Hosting section should help you to find some paid companies that offer reseller hosting. (http://www.webhostmagazine.com/wh/re/), for free alternatives continue to read.
Free Reseller Hosting Alternatives
There are two free alternatives I know that serves for different purposes;
The first is resellers panel, which offers you a free reseller account that you can sell your own hosting services for a premium. Their free reseller hosting program offers complete automation for your web hosting business. They provide the hosting service, the billing and the 24/7 technical support to your clients. You have the freedom to set up your own prices and thus maintain full control over your profits. In addition, as a reseller you have full access to your clients’ accounts and to detailed statistics of all your sales. Follow this link to start your hosting business at resellers panel.
Resellers Panel is a great free way to start your own paid hosting company. I said paid, cause there is another alternative to start your own free hosting company. As you know there are many free hosting providers that offers visitors free web hosting with some limitations. They give the service for free for either making money by adding advertisement to users pages, and/or forcing them to upgrade paid premium packages.
ByetHost allows you to start your own free hosting company for free. You will have your own free hosting company under your brand, add advertisements to users pages, and make money from this advertisements. You will get 100% of the ad revenue, but nothing if someone signup for a paid package, or upgrades their free hosting account. Honestly, I don’t think that the ad-revenue is a big amount. A friend of mine operates a free hosting site (not at ByetHost), makes about $300 monthy with 2000 active users.
You can find a list of ByetHost resellers I’ve found at ByetHost Clones post. This people started their free hosting companies at ByetHost and giving out free hosting to the community under their own brand. The post may give you an idea what type of features you can offer to your potential users.
If you want to operate your own free web hosting business for fun, you should start with ByetHost immediately, otherwise Resellers Panel is a better solution for starting a web hosting business, especially if you have a good customer potential.
Dedicated Servers
A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. (Source: Wikipedia)
If you want to increse your freedom on your hosting business, offer customized hosting packages and services to your clients, and have a total control of your servers, you should lease a dedicated server from a provider. Although it offers more, you should also have the technical knowledge to get all this additional opportunities, otherwise you will use it as a regular reseller hosting package. The only difference will be all your clients sites will be on your own dedicated servers and didn’t affected from other clients of your provider.
Unfortunately there are no free dedicated server providers that I know as reseller hosting, but if required I can suggest you some software to use for your hosting business in my later posts. That is all for this post.
Feel free to ask a question, or giving a feedback using the comment form below. Moreover, I’ll be glad if you add the other free services you know.
Tags: Article, Dedicated Server, Online Business, Reseller Hosting, Web Hosting | No Comments »