5 Keys to Running your Web Hosting Company

When you decide to go into business as a web hosting service provider, you’re embarking on a very competitive journey. Becoming a major player may not be your goal. Maybe you just want to carve out enough of the market for yourself to create an above average income.

Regardless of your income goals, there are a few things you need to have, if you want to succeed at a web hosting provider. Without these five things, the only way you will achieve success is through pure dumb luck. Here are the five keys to running your web hosting company and achieving success.

Loyal Customers

Of course, no business can become successful without customers. You have to market to find new customers and work hard to retain current customers. It cost far more to find a new customer and turn them into a loyal buyer than it does to retain a current customer.

Your marketing strategy should be set up in a way to build your business every single month. Whether you are going after small, local businesses, personal bloggers or large corporations, you need a solid marketing plan. Make sure your plan includes finding new customers and retaining current customers.

24/7/365 Support

Web hosting providers simply cannot survive without 24/7/365 support for customers. Nobody wants to wait to get the issue with their website fixes while losing out on traffic because their site is down. Without full, 24/7 support, your business won’t last. Customers will leave for another provider offering this type of around-the-clock support.

The good news is, you don’t have to hire a staff to handle the support. Hosting support can be outsourced to a team of experts capable of providing just what you and your customers need. This will help to level the playing field and give you a great chance to not only survive, but thrive as a web hosting provider.

Reliable Products

Whether you provide dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, shared hosting, VPS hosting or another form of web hosting, your products must be reliable. If you suffer too much downtime, struggle to keep websites secure or go through too many other issues, customers will find someone else. Make sure the products you offer are the most reliable possible.

Reliability comes from using up-to-date technology and software. The more up-to-date your operation remains the more reliable you will be. Of course, it also helps to have a team of experts helping make sure you provide a very reliable service with very little downtime.

Professional Server Monitoring

Most technical support requests happen because of an issue with the server. If your servers are not professionally monitored, 24/7, you may not catch the issue right away. This could leave customers with websites down for hours or even days. However, with the right monitoring, you won’t have anything to worry about.

Affordable Pricing

The hosting industry is one of the few where price isn’t always what dictates the buying decision. Since shared hosting can be as cheap as $1 per month, many customers have wised up. Consumers realized they get what they pay for, but there is still a limit. If you try to charge $20 a month for a package worth about $5 per month, they will catch on.

Set your prices at an affordable rate, but don’t try to beat the competition on price. Most consumers don’t care about saving a few dollars a month if they know you offer better, more reliable products.

Without these five things you will need quite a bit of luck to survive as a web hosting provider. You need support, monitoring, reliability and the right pricing to create loyal customers.