Re: Hosting Your Own Web Sites

I think a result area in a strategy to lower the cost of site hosting for
your clients could be to develop improved capability domain name
re-delegation capability so you can flick the switch to other site hosts
quick as you can assume there will be more delivery failure in low cost
options.

I only have a vague idea of exactly how that process works. I see
organisations talk in "days". I mean, I want it in minutes.

I want to be able to say "Fred will do it for $50. Your doing it for $100.
My client dosn't like me overspending his money. I need to flick to Fred".

Then I want to go online, type in the details of the redelegation. Then wait
a couple of minutes and see www.mycliensthopesanddreams.com take a user to
the new IP Address.

Days does seem a long time.

But I reckon price will be a "sell" as the recession bites. So being able to
say "I have some less expensive solutions for hosting to assist your
organistion recession proof itself could be a good sell. Also shorter
commitments could be another sell. Sign up for 3 months rather than 12
months.

Doing it all yourself attracts costs. You may sustain it over the short
term, but unless you load your own labour in then all you'll do is attract
customers to products that have free labor in them and they'll squeeze out
your capability to deliver products that don't write down your labor.

[I know you already know all this stuff like the rest of us, but sometimes
it's handy to hear it again as the market demand seduces you]

Out in the marketplace for site hosts you have less control over quality. In
that situation I normally look for two suppliers. Having two suppliers
reduces delivery risk substantially.

But there's that bloody re-delegation time lag to contend with.

Just a few thoughts

----- Original Message -----
From: "Susan Duncan" <sduncan(at)malico.com>
To: "Hadley Spagna" <hspagna(at)earthlink.net>; <hwg-business(at)mail.hwg.org>
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 3:54 AM
Subject: Re: Hosting Your Own Web Sites


> We went the 'host our own sites' route after being a reseller for another
> company for about a year.  I was fed up with technical problems that
weren't
> being resolved quickly enough.  There are pros and cons to this approach.
> The first thing to decide is what kind of hosting company do you want to
be.
> For us, we did not want to compete with the huge companies with redundant
ds3
> lines, call centres, and the likes.  It takes big bucks to do that.  What
we
> did want to do is provide cost effective hosting for our small business
> clients.  We weren't interested in hosting sites with over 3gigs of
traffic
> or clients with more than a couple of thousand products in their carts.
We
> did want to provide for Cold Fusion, email addresses at a reasonable cost,
> secure servers with only an extra setup fee, not double their hosting fee.
> Our major local hosting competitor charges about 5 times what we do for
> hosting, plus a database, plus their own SSL.  Once our clients don't fit
our
> plan anymore, paying that extra cash makes sense... their business has
grown
> to the stage where having things like roll-over servers and mirroring
makes
> sense.. and they are making the kind of money from their site to make that
> make sense.  The reality is though, most clients don't need huge amounts
of
> disk space or bandwidth.  They need the features without the huge price.
>
> That said, it made sense for us to get into the hosting business we
defined.
> A bonus was that I'm an experienced sys admin and have been running web
> servers for about six years now.
>
> If you want to get into hosting, start as a reseller.  You want to build
some
> clientele before striking out on your own.  Someone's going to have to pay
> for the hardware, software and the connection.  If you continue to be
happy
> with your hosting company, you may not even want to move, but if you do,
your
> next step is a co-location plan.  Prices and access vary greatly and I
would
> suggest finding one that you can get physical access to fairly easily.
> Things like telnet and pcanywhere are great as long as your system hasn't
> really really crashed.  Doesn't happen often, but hardware does
occasionally
> fail.
>
> The biggest pros: steady income, constant contact with your clients
> The biggest cons: you are now on call 24x7; want a holiday, better have
> someone as a backup while you're gone; you also better plan on time
dealing
> with clients, upgrading the system, maintenance, updates, etc..
>
>
> Hadley Spagna wrote:
>
> > Hi!
> >
> > I design web pages for friends and *very* small companies that don't
need
> > shopping carts, scripts or stuff like that.
> >
> > I know that many professional web designers host their own web pages and
> > register names for clients.
> >
> > Is this a silly idea for someone like me?  Do you guys have any web
sites
> > that I could go to for more information.
> >
> > I hope this isn't off topic.  Thanks so much for your help.
> >
> > Hadley
>
> --
>           Making the Web Work for You (tm)
> Susan Duncan (sduncan(at)malico.com) Voice: (613) 744-3283
> Director, Internet Development      Fax: (613) 744-1825
> http://www.malico.com         Toll Free: (877) WEB-PROS
> http://www.OttawaWEB.COM
> MALICO - Graphic Design and Internet Development
> Founders: Ottawa-Hull Chapter-Int'l Webmasters Association
> "Top 50 Web Development Companies in Canada" - Branham Report/National
Post
>
>
>

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