Web Hosting Box

The web hosting industry is at the heart of all e-commerce and online business opportunities, as every website online needs a web server to function. Not only does web hosting provide the tools and resources needed to build online businesses in nearly any industry, it also provides business opportunities in and of itself. By utilizing reseller hosting plans you can start a web hosting business from scratch with minimal effort and investment, and absolutely no expertise or experience. While not all hosting resellers will be successful, by following the tips below you may be able to build a web hosting business from scratch.

Choosing a Reseller Hosting Plan

Your reseller hosting plan will be the service that gives you access to wholesale server resources, which can be split up into plans and allocated amongst your customers as you see fit. Thus, it is important to consider the features and attributes of each plan carefully before purchasing one. As a general rule of thumb, the more comprehensive the hosting plan, the cheaper the server resources will be overall. Just as in any other industry, if you purchase server resources in bulk you receive the greatest discounts and will be able to earn the highest profit margins from your clients. It is also imperative to choose a hosting provider that is known for being reliable, as their reliability will reflect on the reputation of your own hosting business.

Creating Effective Hosting Plans and Building a Professional Website

Fortunately, during the process of selecting a good reseller hosting plan you’ll get a good idea of what hosting clients are looking for when they shop for a web hosting service. Put yourself in the shoes of your clients and begin creating hosting plans that could realistically compete with other web hosts. One of the best ways to do this is to distinguish your plans from other hosts’  by offering additional web-based services, and sizing your plans differently than other hosts. For example, if you are a web developer, programmer, or Internet marketer, you can bundle your site creation and promotion services with your hosting plans to solicit more clients. You can also use the robust site builder tools provided within your reseller hosting account to create professional web hosting websites that advertise your services.

Branding and Advertising Your Hosting Services

Reseller hosting plans also allow you to customize the control panel of your customers’ hosting accounts with the logo of your business. This will help you effectively establish your company’s brand and portray professionalism to your clients by distinguishing yourself from the competition. Reseller hosting plans also include free advertising credits for search engines and social networking sites such as Yahoo, Google, Bing, and Facebook. You can utilize these advertising credits to immediately begin promoting your hosting services to targeted audiences via pay per click advertising, which appears on the sides and above search engine results when related keywords are searched for.

Dedicated web hosting is usually seen as the top of the hosting industry, offering unparalleled access to customized Web server resources that are only allowed to be utilized by one webmaster at any given time. The majority of cheap web hosting plans offered by major web hosting providers are operating within the shared hosting environment, which is much less robust than dedicated hosting because you have to share a web server with hundreds of other website owners, which usually amounts to thousands of other websites.

While dedicated hosting is definitely preferable over shared or some types of VPS hosting, not all dedicated hosting types are the same. The enhanced functionality and additional capabilities offered with a dedicated server come with difficult server administration duties that must be performed to ensure optimal server performance. Fortunately, managed hosting provides an all-inclusive solution that does not require the webmaster to be familiar with Web server administration. The following paragraphs provide a brief overview of the pros, cons, and types of managed web hosting.

Partially Managed Versus Fully Managed Web Hosting

There are two main types of managed web hosting – partially managed hosting and fully managed hosting. However, the boundaries that separate these two types of managed hosting are not always made clear by individual web hosting providers. For example, what one web hosting provider may call fully managed, may be another hosting provider’s idea of a partially managed plan. In general, a fully managed hosting plan will include 24-hour customer service, on-site technical support, and fully managed server administration and performance maintenance. On the other hand, a partially managed web hosting plan would only provide services such as routine server resets, and ensuring basic functionality of the server. Partially managed hosting is therefore only ideal for webmasters on a budget that are experienced with server administration. The following are the pros and cons of fully managed hosting.

Pros of Fully Managed Hosting

Perhaps the most appealing advantage of fully managed web hosting is the ability to focus on more important tasks associated with managing an online business, while the managed hosting provider handles all of the administrative server duties on a continual basis. Since you no longer have to update, optimize, and maintain the performance of your web server, you can boost the productivity of your business in other areas, expanding your outreach into more diverse endeavors. Instead of spending several hours of your day trying to fix technological bugs within hosting control panels and performing server maintenance, you can spend the same amount of time soliciting new clients and expanding your business for greater profits.

Cons of Fully Managed Hosting

Unfortunately, for webmasters that are experienced and demand the utmost control over their web server, a fully managed hosting plan may not be the best solution. Along with the simplified server management and included technical support comes reduced freedom over the software configuration of your server. Hosting providers tend to think that webmasters that do not know how to use a Web server should not have full control over it, as they may accidentally cause software errors that will consume the time of the hosting providers employees unnecessarily. Fully managed hosting also tends to cost more than other types of dedicated hosting.

There are many articles and guides online they claim to teach you how to change web hosting providers without experiencing site downtime. However, many of these guides do not provide a clear outline of the steps involved in changing web hosts. The following is a step-by-step guide for changing web hosts, while minimizing site downtime, preventing data loss, and finding the best quality service for your money.

Find a Suitable Web Host

The first step in changing web hosting providers is finding a hosting company that offers a selection of services that can accommodate your needs and requirements as a webmaster. It is especially important to review the terms and conditions governing the hosting plan in relation to transferring domain names from one web host to another, as some hosts charge domain transferring fees. If you are unhappy with your current web host for a particular reason, it is best to inquire with any prospective host to avoid similar problems in the future.

Create Backups

After narrowing your list of prospective web hosts, you’ll need to gain a thorough understanding of the hosting transfer process. During the hosting transfer, the data from one web server is transferred to another, thereby causing the websites to be hosted on the new hosting provider’s servers. However, it is possible for data loss to occur during the transfer process if server backups are not created beforehand. Fortunately, within the control panel of your web hosting account you should be able to complete server backups on a scheduled basis, which can quickly and easily be restored within the control panel of your new hosting account.

Transferring Server Data

After you’ve found a suitable web host and created backups of your websites, there are two ways to transfer the server data to your new hosting account – you can utilize FTP (file transfer protocol) client’s to securely transfer the files from one server to another directly, or you can restore the server backup file that you exported from your previous hosting plan. Both methods are equally effective and ultimately accomplish the same goal, however the FTP method may need to be used if the backup module of the control panel offered within the new hosting account is not compatible with your created backup.

Adjusting Domain Registrar Account Settings

After you’ve restored or transferred the data to your new web server, the final step is to adjust the domain settings for each of your websites within the registrar account. To do this you’ll simply need to point the domains to the DNS (domain name system) servers of your new hosting provider, which will be given to you within the control panel of your new hosting plan when you attempt to associate a domain with the account. If your new hosting account includes two IP addresses and allows you to install DNS software on the server root, you may even be able to create your own custom name servers to be used for your websites.

If you’ve been shopping for a web hosting plan recently, you’ve probably read that plans that utilize dedicated servers are the most powerful and robust on the market. While this is true, it is important to note that there are two types of dedicated hosting – managed and unmanaged – each one geared towards a completely different type of webmaster. An unmanaged dedicated web hosting plan essentially puts you in complete control of the web server, so that you are effectively leasing a server that is stored in a remote location. A managed dedicated web hosting plan gives you access to comprehensive support and customer service that allows you to focus on the important aspects of your online business, while the web hosting provider deals with server administration tasks. So what exactly does a managed web hosting provider do that an unmanaged web hosting provider does not?

Server Setup

When you purchase a managed web hosting plan, you have the option to choose which operating system you would like on your web server. It is important to note that Windows web hosting is usually more expensive than Linux hosting, because Windows is not a free open-source operating system like Linux. When you make your decision and purchase a plan, a managed hosting provider will automatically install the desired operating system and set up the server so that is fully functional before you ever log into your control panel. With many cheaper unmanaged hosting plans there is no operating system installed on the server, or an undesirable operating system is installed, so the webmaster is required to install the software and set up the server themselves.

Server Backups and Maintenance

Managed web hosting providers also perform the task of keeping the hardware and software configuration of your web server secure at all times. To do this, the managed web hosting provider will make complete backups of your entire web server on a routine basis, and then store the backups on several redundant servers to prevent data loss. Within unmanaged web hosting plan you would need to log into your control panel, which you would have to install first,  and manually create a backup of your server. Theoretically you could create a Cron job within an unmanaged hosting plan to have server backups performed automatically on a scheduled basis, however this is much more difficult than simply using a managed hosting plan. Managed hosting providers also defragment web servers and perform daily server maintenance to ensure that the server is functioning optimally at all times.

Technical Support and Customer Service

The level of customer support and services offered with a managed web hosting plan is leaps and bounds above that offered with an unmanaged hosting plan. In fact, many unmanaged hosting providers do not offer technical support at all, and may require the webmaster to use their own internet technology specialist or assistant in order to fix problems that occur within the software installed on the server. Most managed hosting providers offer 24-hour technical support and comprehensive customer service, which is an essential feature for the vast majority of novice to intermediate webmasters.

Choosing the right hosting plan is difficult enough when you don’t have to factor in an endless sea of choices and the possibility of receiving terrible service from the hosting provider you choose. Unfortunately, shady business is all too common in the web hosting industry, so it is therefore important to make sure you choose the right company from the beginning. Even so, it is not uncommon for someone to be stuck with a hosting plan that they despise, being afflicted with site downtime and poor performance.

Most people would like to believe that the unreliable service will end soon, and that they’ll be able to enjoy a web hosting plan that will meet all of their requirements. Nonetheless, if you’re having a bad experience with your hosting provider it may be time to make a change, and/or request a refund. The following information details when it is best to switch hosting providers.

Persistent Downtime

Persistent site downtime is absolutely unacceptable in the hosting industry, especially if you currently own an online business that depends on the reliability of your hosting provider. If your hosting provider offers an uptime guarantee, and most do today, be sure to take them up on this guarantee, and at the very least ask for a discount on your current bill because of the inconvenience. If the company refuses to provide some sort of compensation for the persistent downtime then it is time to find a new hosting provider. Any down time that lasts longer than a few hours should warrant a web hosting provider change as well.

Bad Customer Service

If you’ve been on the phone with customer service several times, only to be treated poorly each time, then it may be time to consider a new hosting provider. Good customer service is an integral aspect of every good web hosting provider, and many times being a webmaster requires immediate assistance from trained professionals, not half an hour delays and unfriendly people that do not know what they’re talking about. If you’ve had problems with your hosting provider’s customer support, you may need to start thinking about different options, before you encounter a serious issue that needs immediate support. Customer service should be friendly, fast and knowledgeable about every aspect of web hosting.

Unfair Terms and Fees

If you’ve been noticing unusually high, unfair or unexpected fees on your monthly bills, you may want to contact the hosting provider to let them know how you feel. If you’re told there is nothing they can do, or if you continue to receive inflated bills each month, it may be in the best interest of your online business to cancel your hosting plan with the current provider. Likewise, you should examine the terms and conditions of any hosting plan before you make the decision to purchase the plan, especially if you’re required to pay a year in advance, as is the case with many shared hosting plans, which are often unreliable.