I don’t know much at all about webhosting apart from the fack I pay my hosts a certain amount and my sites are online.

How would you go about starting your own hosting company, what would you need to buy?

you would need to get either a reseller account, a VPS, or a dedicated server.

I definitely recommend starting off with a Reseller account. That way it gives you a feel for the business, and you dont have to worry about things like hackers, learning a new operating system, and arnt responsible for the hardware (not to mention the initial investment)

I m confused with the “Bandwidth Limit” with “Bandwidth”.
What is the difference between them.

Bandwidth is Speed of data transfer while Bandwidth Limit is the total size of data that can be transferred over the period of time.

Let us consider that you have hosted a website.

Now when some one tries to access your web page from any place, the following things happen,
– the request will be send from the user’s machine to server (where the website is hosted)
– the server fetches the data of the web page and sends it to the machine from where the request came.

The amount of data that is send from the server is measured in terms of Bytes. The data transfered for every such request is calculated and summed up. The total size of data that can be transferred over the period of a month is usually controlled by the web hosting provider called as “Bandwidth Limit”.

Hi,

What do you think about live chat support? Do you prefer your web host to take phone calls or you think that chattting with cutomer support is better

Well both are important as hosting needs to have phone support and live chat.

I prefer using Live Chat Support.

I feel both are very important. While Live Chat is an easy way to assist customers, answering the phone is very important as that will say allot about a company. You may not always have access to a computer when you need to get in touch with your host which is why you should always have the toll-free stored in your cell phone.

Providing both LiveChat & Phone Support is very important. A customer deserves to be able to contact the company as easily as possible in a way that suits them.

2 Recommendations of chat software would be BoldChat (if on a budget comes equipt with a free version) or LiveChatNow, a more advanced LiveChat solution at a higher price but is very nice to use for a business and clients.

Live Chat is a very good way of helping out your clients, i use it on my site any find it very useful

I’ve never liked live chat. Usually, the rep (or sometimes two reps) who are working the system are so overburdened with chat windows, that conversing becomes a long, drawn-out process. It’s much easier to pickup the phone, ask your question, and be done!

I believe live chat is good for pre-sales support.

I find live chat support semi-useless. If it’s for a small problem, then I agree, live chat is easy enough if the resolution time is 5 minutes. If it’s a major problem, where you need to get other people involved to fix it, reboot the server, etc…then live chat is useless and using a trouble ticket system is the way to go. You can’t just waste a tech’s time on live chat asking “is it fixed yet?”.

Well both are important as hosting needs to have phone support and live chat. Live chat and tickets are good support for webhosting.I prefer both live chat and phone support aswell tickets.

i was wondering is that live chat really help you get more clients or is that just something live chat providers say to get you to buy from them?

In my experience, live chat support doesnt help a lot, if any. But, having a live sales chat available sometimes, does help. If you do decide to offer a live sales chat, I suggest using one that has the ability to not show the chat icon when you are not online.

i think live chat definitely help. As sometimes when your clients need help urgently, at least support is there to help and it will help you to maintain your customers.

If you have the time and the work force then chats are highly preferred by clients browsing your site. They are far more likely to click the “live chat” link than to go through the effort of opening a sales request and checking their email for responses.

Just out of interest does anyone on here buy or sell “unlimited” shared hosting. It is sometimes a scam where companies shut down after a few months or ban users for no reason. Does anyone have any comments on using or selling this supposed “unlimited” hosting?

I dont believe in unlimited anything. They will have some hidden clauses like CPU usage, when you really start to have some good traffic, they will kick you out.

just dont believe in those. just get a host that offers certain amount of space and bandwidth.

Most hosting plans give you one shared ip for free but you can purchase more if required.
Why would I want to have a dedicated or more than one IP address ?

Thanks in advance for any help.

a dedicated ip lets you have your own ssl certificate – eg https://yoursite.com – this is a must if you sell stuff from your website, eg take customer details, credit card info etc.

There are someconcepts listed here, as to reasons to have a dedicated IP.

2. SSL . Yes, you do need a dedicated Ip if you want your Own SSL certificate for your site, however, almost all hosts will let you use their shared SSL at no additional cost to you. Some charge a fee, but most don’t. You don’t need a dedicated IP if you use their shared SSL.

3. With a dedicated IP, you can upload your site and test scripts (cgi-programs) if you set things up with the sites IP, instead of the domain name.
You can still upload your site with a shared IP, but you must use a special link to view it until the name works, and you can’t test cgi scripts until the name works. Front page should not be used to upload a site until thename works in your browser. Front page hidden scripts and includes will be broken if you upload by IP instead of your domain name in most cases. This breaks menus and forms.

The shared IP can get black listed. However, this is generally due to spammers sending spam through the server. The servers main IP is generally the mail servers IP, and that is what gets banned. This would affect all sites on that machine even if they have their own dedicated IP, because it is the email servers IP that is listed in the headers, and that is what IP all the outgoing mail comes from. Dedicated or not, it will still affect you, and it is a hassle for the host to get cleared up in most cases.

you can also have dedicated IP’s for your custom nameservers. As long as your host sets it all up correctly, your clients won’t know that you’re a reseller.

A disadvantage perhaps is that you don’t normally get a free dedicated IP. So you spend a monthly fee for it.

Can anyone tell me why should I get a dedicated Server rather than a shared hosting for my business. What is the up and down?

One of the downfalls to shared hosting is your website can be affected alot more by other clients actions. If anothe client spams then your emails may be blacklisted because they are from the same IP.

It depends on the reliability & amount of security you’re looking for. Shared hosting can be very risky as others have described in this thread. Your site’s security and reliability depends on other customers’ practices.

Dedicated server is more flexible, but costly….

Go for dedicated only if:
1. You want complete control of the server, and want complete security for your data.
2. You have too much traffic, more than few hundread GB per month.

U can also choose VPS or semi-dedi servers.

Yes, There are also semi-dedi servers that can be used more efficient for a beginners’ usage.

In my opinion:-

Up(s):
1: You can control your server better.
2: You are in a better position to provide support.
3: You can limit the number of customers you want on that server.

Down(s):
1: More maintaince.
2: Can be quite complicating, if you do not have enough computer skills to manage it.
3: Definately more expensive.
4: Most dedicated servers renting companies do not provide sufficient software(s) for the best use. And such software needs licenses, so you might need to purchase them.

In shared hosting,If another site is DDOS attacked then your site will go down as well. If another client installs a faulty script that hogs the cpu, your site will lag until that has been corrected. A good host will minize these risks for you, but if the site is mission critical to your business then I would go with a dedicated server.

It really depends on what you are looking for

Recently overselling is big issue in web hosting industry. so I just wanted to get your opinions on it….. Do you think overselling is justified?

choosing a web host can be a very confusing exercise, especially when you consider the growing number of web hosts and their confusing advertisements.which things to be consider when choosing a web host, plz. gives some tips for that.

Some Tips:

H-SPHERE is the best hosting control panel i have been gone so far.

Linux Hosting is the best option you can choose. Because it is cheap as well as gives high performance.

I don’t know what is happened to many of the customers who buy their cheap hosting from many small sites. Normally the sites had reseller accounts and they sells account very cheaply to attract customers.

Some of the things you should see for in a host.
– customer support
– uptime (research the net for this…read reviews, etc.)
– a good CP

Always avoid resellers.

What are three major criteria you use to decide upon a host?

Cheap, Good Support, Reliable, Fast Response

For me, I would say:

1. Solution (whether it matches the requirements)
2. Technical infrastructure (financial and technical muscle of the company)
3. Consumer feedback

Services and Support are the two main things and then the rates.