In this chapter, we’re going to talk about how to plan your web hosting business. A hosting business is a type of online business that provides website hosting (and related services) to other website owners.
Decide your Business Strategy
Imagine you’re the boss of the cafe and before you're going to sell delicious food or beverages, you need preparation in order to make the operation of your cafe going smooth. It’s the same with planning your web hosting service!
If we’re talking about a restaurant that includes the organization structure, the price and menu, the location, tax, and everything. The concept is what service you provide and how you want to offer to the customers. Based on our experience, here are the things you need to have in your business plan:
1. Branding
Deciding on a unique and exclusive brand name is essential before launching your business because it will become the identity of your brand and it will be memorable for your customers.
2. Market Target
You must identify your target audience to make your market appealing to them. It could be individuals, web designers, web developers, e-commerce, blogger, or anyone who wants to create a website.
3. Payment Model
Will the cost be incurred on a monthly, yearly, or usage-based basis? Which currencies? How complicated? Will you do manual or recurring payments? You can choose a payment model that works with your business model and improves cash flow management by being aware of your options.
4. Additional Service
What else are you going to sell other than web hosting and domains? This could be such as website development and design, SSL certificates, domain registration, and many more. Offering additional services can make your business grow and reach the revenue as well as customer needs.
5. Pricing
What price point will you sell at? Cheap and lots of customers, or expensive and fewer customers. You can consider factors such as the cost of the reseller hosting plan, the value you're offering to your clients, and the level of market competition when determining the price.
6. End Goal
It’s important to know what is your end goal - do you want a few solid customers in your local area or do you want a global huge business? Instead of entering the business blindly, you'll be able to make wise decisions and plan ahead of time by clearly defining your end goals and knowing what it takes to reach them.
7. Provide Support
Do you want to do all the support yourself or do you want to team up with others? It's essential to think about what type of customer support you want to offer to the customers.
Choose your Providers
In our previous guide, we talked about web hosting in general. We recommend a reseller account and explain how to set one up in a later article.
You need to have a domain name provider that can offer you domain name registration and management services. To have a domain name provider, the easiest way is to partner with a domain name registrar.
At Upmind we support lots of domain registrars including Enom, Hexonet, and OpenSRS.
All domain providers sell the same domain - you should make a decision based on pricing or your view of the company.
Once you've chosen your approach, you must also select the domain name extensions—such as.com,.net, and. org—that you want to provide to your clients. Every domain name extension is unique in its function, appeal, and cost; to register and renew a domain name under it, you must pay a fee to the registry running the extension.
Client, Billing, and Order Management
Managing your clients and billing them was previously complicated, but with Upmind it is really straightforward.
Upmind is the best and simplest solution on how to manage your web hosting package, domain, or anything that you’re selling, you need tools that support billing, order, and client management. We would like to introduce Upmind as the comprehensive solution, especially for beginners as this application is very complete and straightforward. Upmind also offers a free plan in which you might have up to 50 clients, up to 2 provisioning configurations, and 2 payment gateway.
Selecting Upmind will help you provide the best services for your client by combining robust e-commerce features - client management, e-commerce, and billing - into one cloud application that becomes the core of your business operations. Additionally, Upmind fits into your business as it has multiple integrations with third parties like the web hosting provider, domain registrar, servers, payment gateway, and some of the third-party services that could be connected to Upmind by the API. Upmind has a unique integration that meets the needs of the service industry, especially web hosting.
By using Upmind, you can:
Offer recurring services, we have monthly, quarterly, annual, and customized basis a month, which you can manage on each product billing.
The client can manage their own account and you as an admin have visibility to the client's account which you can impersonate as the client.
Service desk, where you can support the client on the ticket that they have created, the client can contact you every time they might need your help.
Increase customer lifetime value, ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), and retain the customer.
Better data security through controlled account access.
Businesses can effectively create and manage invoices with its user-friendly interface, providing an efficient and straightforward billing process. Order tracking and processing are made simple by the platform's order management system, which also simplifies workflow and reduces operational complexity.
Furthermore, Upmind offers businesses fully customizable reporting tools that enable thorough analysis of order trends. The ability to analyze helps strategic planning and decision-making for the long term.
Website Payment Gateway Provider
You need a payment provider in order to accept payments from your customers. Here is some advice on how to choose one:
- Select a payment provider that your customers trust, for example, debit cards, credit cards (through a provider like Stripe), or PayPal.
- Find a provider that you can integrate into software you want to use like Upmind.
We generally suggest the following:
PayPal: is the most popular and reliable payment gateway provider which provides a user-friendly interface, a secure payment gateway for receiving and sending money, and seamless integration. It also received payment methods from debit cards and credit cards and is a very trusted name.
Stripe: is mostly a credit and debit card provider and is easy to set up and integrate. These payment gateways offer a diverse payment method, prioritize security through encryption compliance measures, and seamlessly integrate with popular e-commerce platforms. They boast user-friendly interfaces, catering to various businesses, while also providing fraud prevention tools and real-time analytics for streamlined payment processing.
In order to get started with Upmind and set up your website and brand, please follow this guide:
First, you can create an Upmind account here
You can set up your brand and product by following these guidelines https://docs.upmind.com/docs.
We are available to assist you, so please use the Live Chat feature to contact Upmind support with any questions you may have.
