Tips for an Upcoming Provider

[raindog308]

Is it not difficult to create a unique hosting service this late in the game?

Yes!  It is difficult!  That is the point.

I mean, really, I could (in theory) try to copy DigitalOcean, but that's been done dozens of times as well. I could try to offer the cheapest VPSs on the market, but I'd rather maintain a sustainable business.


The fact of the matter here is that each company is made different by the people who are behind it. It's that simple, really. The company's policies, the company's support, and the company's leadership are what make it unique. Those factors are what puts Company A over Company B in the same price range.

If you cannot answer the question "why would a potential customer pick me over another host" you will fail.  Consider:

• There are already thousands of hosts.
• There are hundreds in each price range
• I can think of at least a half-dozen that I personally have used and trust in the high-end, mid-range, and low end category.
• I can think of many specialist hosts I would buy from.
• Any customer will discover them long before they discover your new company - just from reputation, discussion, advertising they can afford, etc.

So why would I pick you?  

Not to pick on you...just saying, that's the question you need to answer.

 

[OSTKCabal]

Well, I mean, I could say "Yeah, pick us because we'll be offering KVM VPS hosting with good hardware at low prices." - I wouldn't be lying, but what company HASN'T said that? I completely agree with you that it's difficult to create a unique host. It's quite true indeed.

It's because of this that I believe the customer service and community interaction will be the strong point of my company. We've already proven that much to our game server clients, and now we want to try a very different demographic - The VPS market. I completely understand and accept that VPS hosting will be a learning curve for me personally, in terms of my leadership of the company and in my public relations/marketing. I am fully prepared to follow this learning curve, however, and become better at what I do through my interactions with the VPS hosting market and forums/websites like this one. In fact, I am very excited to!


For anybody who is curious, we have finalized our hardware configurations and plans for our first round of "promotional" VPS plans.

The Hardware...

These nodes are fully company-owned and located in the Steadfast Networks 725 S. Wells facility.

Intel Xeon E3-1230v2 (4C/8T) @ 3.30GHz

32GB Kingston DDR3 ECC RAM

4x 250GB Samsung 840 Evo SSDs (HW RAID-10)

LSI MegaRAID 9271-4i

1Gbps Network Port

The Network...

Inbound traffic routed through GigeNET for provider-level DDoS Protection up to 4Gbps/4MPPS. Outbound routed through the Steadfast blend.

The Plans...

Our promotional plans are designed to get our name "out there", as well as offer stellar KVM performance at low-end pricing.

$6 - 512MB RAM / 1x vCPU / 7GB SSD / 500GB BW / 1 IPv4 / 16 IPv6

$12 - 1GB RAM / 2x vCPU / 15GB SSD / 1TB BW / 1 IPv4 / 16 IPv6

And so on.

Let me know about your thoughts.
 

- Wyatt T.

 

[nunim]

My advice in regards to starting a LowEndHost, DON'T DO IT!

Why compete with Thousands or others for pennies on the dollar? 

 

[OSTKCabal]

My advice in regards to starting a LowEndHost, DON'T DO IT!

Why compete with Thousands or others for pennies on the dollar? 

Because we have mid-to-high range plans in store too.

 

[mhosts]

I want to add a private note. Finish your education goals and have a job that covers your living. If you start a company it is your wife and your best friend. You will only have time for your company. And you have to spend five years for this. Five years of hard work and eating spaghetti to cut costs. You need insurances and have to take care for bills and taxes. My best friends are in the industry and they are spending 50% of their time for paper works. I see a lot youngsters failing as startups because they did not think about laws, taxes, bills, contracts, lawyers. If you do not fail you have to employ people. You need to know people and choose the right employees. Employees create more paper work. You will not see Solus or terminals for weeks.

You will be your own boss so you have to do all work not the work you like.

This is a bit of a stretch... Yes, there is without a doubt paperwork, time and effort required to run a business. But no matter what you do in life, this is the same. The benefits of owing your own business and being your own boss allows for schedule flexibility and for you to be more responsible and accountable for your actions. Owning your own business puts you in a position where you can directly feel the rewards of your hard work and that, can bring much more satisfaction than a typical 9/5 mon-fri job.

Yes, paperwork can become daunting at times, but part of being a business owner requires innovation and critical thinking. Automate and refine business tasks where possible, and cut out meaningless, redundant and time consuming tasks if/where possible. If you measure your actions along the way, you will directly see profits related to your decisions. This in itself, for some people, is worth the effort as you cannot get this if you aren't in a decisions making, empowered position. Keep things simple and there is always time to be in consoles and doing the fun stuff.

 

[MannDude]

Because we have mid-to-high range plans in store too.

Under the same, or a different brand?

To compete in the low-end, it's not about performance and function for the most part. It's almost entirely price and resources. You're not going to have much luck unless you're doing something uniquely different while also offering a product that is affordable and not run-of-the-mill.

If you're going to do lowend and target regular and more reasonable markets, I'd separate the two brands entirely.

 

[OSTKCabal]

Under the same, or a different brand?

To compete in the low-end, it's not about performance and function for the most part. It's almost entirely price and resources. You're not going to have much luck unless you're doing something uniquely different while also offering a product that is affordable and not run-of-the-mill.

If you're going to do lowend and target regular and more reasonable markets, I'd separate the two brands entirely.

I should reiterate that the deals I posted above are largely promotional and are not our permanent view for the company. They are designed both to get some of our leftover Intel Xeon E3-1230v2s into production (As we begin attempting to switch fully to Haswell-based machines.), as well as to get our brand "out there". I'm not even sure that these promotional deals will be announced publicly on our billing software, just through deals to forums such as this.

 

[drserver]

Under the same, or a different brand?

To compete in the low-end, it's not about performance and function for the most part. It's almost entirely price and resources. You're not going to have much luck unless you're doing something uniquely different while also offering a product that is affordable and not run-of-the-mill.

If you're going to do lowend and target regular and more reasonable markets, I'd separate the two brands entirely.

That is exactly what we did and it clear success.

 

[meaton]

1. Is DDoS Protection important to you? Does it add value to the service you are buying from?

No it's not important to me, adds no value to the service for me.

2. What is your personal favorite - OpenVZ or KVM?

KVM

3. Do you prefer to pay a bit more for the latest hardware (Xeon E3-1270V3 Haswell, Samsung 840 Pro SSDs, LSI MegaRAID), or would you prefer to save a few bucks on slightly older hardware?

Latest hardware

4. Does company-owned hardware add value and a trust factor to your provider?

Yes, it does

5. How dependent are you personally on 24/7/365 support?

It doesn't matter. That being said, I expect someone to be available 24/7 for any hardware/network failures.

 

[farhanideas]

2. What is your personal favorite - OpenVZ or KVM?

 

 For me Openvz because OpenVZ hosting platform you'll be rest assured that no such issue can happen. though there's high trafficking around you'll not come back to grasp concerning it as a result of the machines square measure specified the processor doesn't get affected with the traffic.

 

[Darwin]

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