Your biggest pain as a provider

[sundaymouse]

I'll start the first discussion thread, if no one disapproves...

What is your biggest on-neck pain when operating a relatively-small VPS business?

 

[D. Strout]

Though I'm not one myself, I've heard a lot of providers complain about chargebacks, and how much of a pain they are what with the associated fees, fighting them, etc. 

 

[notFound]

My ass on this seat

 

[drmike]

My ass on this seat

You need a stand up desk... Just like in school when some of us thought it was nap time

Watch out for the numb feet though.

 

[Francisco]

Though I'm not one myself, I've heard a lot of providers complain about chargebacks, and how much of a pain they are what with the associated fees, fighting them, etc.

That's something a little verification would resolve.

I think one issue a lot of providers (big & small) will have is having to compete on price/resources all the damn time. The bigger brands should all be in a good enough position that they don't need to dump coupons all the time or things like that to keep up with sales, but newer brands are pretty much forced to jump in at 2GB for ~$5 on E3's.

If you're in a pretty unique physical location, or offer a lot of features others don't, you should be able to long haul it and grow that way. The problem is that new hosts don't follow the guidelines countless people have recommended: Have a years capital and time to dedicate to the project.

There is simply way too many that jump in and expect to break even and be profitable within a month and don't have long term goals or failsafes incase things don't go their way. While I feel I'm kinda kneecapping, the LE kickstarter has run twice and has given everyone a solid feel of what most people would do in the market if they were given a free server to run a brand.

Very few of them had solid business plans and some of the ones that did weren't even in the top 3 picks (likely because their pricing was "too high").

Francisco

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

Pretty sure I'm one of the bigger pains Fran has to deal with >_>

 

[drmike]

newer brands are pretty much forced to jump in at 2GB for ~$5 on E3's.

NO! WRONG!  These child hosts aren't 'brands' or businesses.  Where is the uniqueness of selling same old OpenVZ + Solus on a beat network on an E3 with 32GB of RAM while selling 2GB plans?   In other industries we call something like this fraud and an inevitable failure. Spare me the hosting oversell ratio stuff.  I know,  I was talking about that when a good number of you were in diapers.

No one forces anyone to jump on the sinking $7 ship.

Very few of them had solid business plans and some of the ones that did weren't even in the top 3 picks

Referring to the old site and their TWO very flawed and failed giveaway promotions, where a prize was never issued.   Ho hum, that's not legal either.  Someone over there should know better since a gaming giveaway years prior ended in a lawsuit against CC.  Just saying...

I read the most recent contest applications and they were HORRID.  Not a single person should have been given anything.  There was maybe 1 or 2 that had some potential and that was very minor potential.  Nothing among the heap was commercially viable.

So...

I'd view the biggest pain today for  a would-be provider being developing a niche and identifying a market / customer base without bending over and getting mugged with the last hope 'business' model of the low end.  This means real pricing, real resources sold and able to be used by customers and frankly, something more than just ping and power.

Some already developed concepts that stand out:

1. Storage VPS --- Backupsy

2. Protected network - BuyVM

3. Cloud - ???

 

[Setsura]

3. Cloud - ???

iwStack? They seem to be doing a decent job.

Also,

I'd view the biggest pain today for  a would-be provider being developing a niche and identifying a market / customer base without bending over and getting mugged with the last hope 'business' model of the low end.  This means real pricing, real resources sold and able to be used by customers and frankly, something more than just ping and power.

This pretty much.

 

[Coastercraze]

Not sure what the biggest pain would be, but I can say taxes can be a pain sometimes.

 

[Virtovo]

Not sure what the biggest pain would be, but I can say taxes can be a pain sometimes.

Especially when it's decided you've opened a tax nexus in a state and it's your responsibility to collect sales tax now.

 

[drmike]

That hazard of a tax nexus isn't needing to collect sales tax - that is minor.  It's when the nexus is believed to exist and they want to tax your income/profits/etc.

 

[cubixcloud]

I see taxes being a pain just because it's taxes. Hopefully no one is charging for sales tax. We don't charge sales taxes and have a sales tax permit but use it for our hardware/software sales for our IT/MSP customers.

 

[jarland]

"I didn't do anything."

$ stat file
Modify: 2013-12-30 17:27:08.000000000 -0600

/facepalm

 

[cubixcloud]

Our biggest pain was dealing with customers that wanted to run camfrog servers and not expect to get DDoS. Or get mad when we would null route them for 24 hours. True DDoS mitigation to absorb the attack is not cheap. We could provide if they were willing to pay. Solution was not allowing it in the end. 

Dealing with commoditized markets such as VPS. Not really a pain, but you have to definitely find a niche and stick with it.

 

[KS_Samuel]

PayPal subscriptions.

I hate them, I hate the disputes. I wish customers would read the terms of a PayPal sub.

 

[drmike]

PayPal subscriptions.

I hate them, I hate the disputes. I wish customers would read the terms of a PayPal sub.

I've said it before, I think PayPal subscriptions are horrendous.

If providers have way to disable such, great idea to do such --- to avoid the inevitable customer misunderstanding and autobill joy.

 

[cubixcloud]

PayPal subscriptions.

I hate them, I hate the disputes. I wish customers would read the terms of a PayPal sub.

We haven't had any disputes. We've filed fraud disputes before for customers that are fake.

The key to disputes is simply staying on top of things before it gets to that point. But then again, you do have those customers that will file a dispute just because.

 

[cubixcloud]

We prefer the approach of automated recurring billing but with credit/debit/bank account. PayPal has been good too.

 

[KS_Samuel]

We haven't had any disputes. We've filed fraud disputes before for customers that are fake.

The key to disputes is simply staying on top of things before it gets to that point. But then again, you do have those customers that will file a dispute just because.

We get disputes from people that cancel service then fail to cancel their sub. Which PayPal clearly states is their responsibility.

Worst one we had was a cancelled service in May.. A refund of the last 7 months was asked for a few weeks ago.. Took us ages to piece it together.

 

[KuJoe]

We get disputes from people that cancel service then fail to cancel their sub. Which PayPal clearly states is their responsibility.

Worst one we had was a cancelled service in May.. A refund of the last 7 months was asked for a few weeks ago.. Took us ages to piece it together.

We have a WHMCS plugin that automatically cancels Paypal Subscriptions when service is terminated/cancelled. I believe I posted the code somewhere on here but I can provide you the code so you can port it over to your billing system if you're not using WHMCS.

I hate Paypal Subscriptions with a passion.