What kind of web hosting do you use?
Discussion
I hope this is ok with the mods?
I noticed quite a few replies in the other post about web hosting. People seem to be using the usual companies, Fast hosts, Krystal, TSO, etc.
My company has provided datacentre web hosting for many years, but only for our existing customers. It's more used as an additional service we can offer our customers to save them having to deal with yet another 3rd party. Many of the hosting solutions are for bespoke systems we have created for the client.
Over the second lock down, we have been looking at ways to improve on our offerings and had previously avoided the general web hosting market as it's quite flooded. However, it wouldn't really cost us anything extra to start offering it. We already have spare capacity in our datacentre racks.
My question, mainly for market research, if you dont mind is what type of hosting are you using?
Most of our larger customers have a virtual machine that we manage for them. The smaller ones are on Cpanel hosting for example to host a wordpress site.
It would really help if you could give me an idea of how many use shared hosting, cpanel, dedicated IP, VM etc.
Also, what are your expectations from a support perspective for your webhosting. For example, If you installed a bad plugin that broke your website, would you expect to contact the host to resolve this?
You don't have to give me prices or who you are using for your hosting and I am not looking to approach / poach anyone.
What I hope to achieve from this is where to allocate our resources. We can allocate additional Cpanel shared hosting if the majority of people seem to go in that direction.
Many thanks
Andy
I noticed quite a few replies in the other post about web hosting. People seem to be using the usual companies, Fast hosts, Krystal, TSO, etc.
My company has provided datacentre web hosting for many years, but only for our existing customers. It's more used as an additional service we can offer our customers to save them having to deal with yet another 3rd party. Many of the hosting solutions are for bespoke systems we have created for the client.
Over the second lock down, we have been looking at ways to improve on our offerings and had previously avoided the general web hosting market as it's quite flooded. However, it wouldn't really cost us anything extra to start offering it. We already have spare capacity in our datacentre racks.
My question, mainly for market research, if you dont mind is what type of hosting are you using?
Most of our larger customers have a virtual machine that we manage for them. The smaller ones are on Cpanel hosting for example to host a wordpress site.
It would really help if you could give me an idea of how many use shared hosting, cpanel, dedicated IP, VM etc.
Also, what are your expectations from a support perspective for your webhosting. For example, If you installed a bad plugin that broke your website, would you expect to contact the host to resolve this?
You don't have to give me prices or who you are using for your hosting and I am not looking to approach / poach anyone.
What I hope to achieve from this is where to allocate our resources. We can allocate additional Cpanel shared hosting if the majority of people seem to go in that direction.
Many thanks
Andy
Also, what are your expectations from a support perspective for your webhosting. For example, If you installed a bad plugin that broke your website, would you expect to contact the host to resolve this?
Nope, that’s webmaster or developers responsibility. However you will get asked A LOT but its not a hosts responsibility
Nope, that’s webmaster or developers responsibility. However you will get asked A LOT but its not a hosts responsibility
jonamv8 said:
Also, what are your expectations from a support perspective for your webhosting. For example, If you installed a bad plugin that broke your website, would you expect to contact the host to resolve this?
Nope, that’s webmaster or developers responsibility. However you will get asked A LOT but its not a hosts responsibility
Thanks for replying, the concern for me is not server capacity. It's support requests hitting the helpdesk. Nope, that’s webmaster or developers responsibility. However you will get asked A LOT but its not a hosts responsibility
With my hosting business, whilst we don't 'fix' a dodgy plugin issue we can rollback to the previous days backup free of charge upon request. We also include malware monitoring and clean-ups for free.
Most are looking for the following these days
1 - Good support with a UK based person they can actually speak to
2 - Free SSL
3 - Backups included
4 - It just works (Uptime)
That's all most require.
There is not much money to be made in hosting and you'll need a good support system for the many support tickets that will come your way. I can guarantee most of these will be how to setup their personal device with email settings.
If you're looking to offer shared hosting then look up cPanel, Cloud Linux, Mail Channels, Jet Backup or Acronis, Nixstats and Imunify360. Those combined will get you into a good place to start with.
Most are looking for the following these days
1 - Good support with a UK based person they can actually speak to
2 - Free SSL
3 - Backups included
4 - It just works (Uptime)
That's all most require.
There is not much money to be made in hosting and you'll need a good support system for the many support tickets that will come your way. I can guarantee most of these will be how to setup their personal device with email settings.
If you're looking to offer shared hosting then look up cPanel, Cloud Linux, Mail Channels, Jet Backup or Acronis, Nixstats and Imunify360. Those combined will get you into a good place to start with.
Edited by HantsRat on Thursday 19th November 08:08
HantsRat said:
With my hosting business, whilst we don't 'fix' a dodgy plugin issue we can rollback to the previous days backup free of charge upon request. We also include malware monitoring and clean-ups for free.
Most are looking for the following these days
1 - Good support with a UK based person they can actually speak to
2 - Free SSL
3 - Backups included
4 - It just works (Uptime)
That's all most require.
There is not much money to be made in hosting and you'll need a good support system for the many support tickets that will come your way. I can guarantee most of these will be how to setup their personal device with email settings.
If you're looking to offer shared hosting then look up cPanel, Cloud Linux, Mail Channels, Jet Backup or Acronis, Nixstats and Imunify360. Those combined will get you into a good place to start with.
Many thanks thats very helpful. Most are looking for the following these days
1 - Good support with a UK based person they can actually speak to
2 - Free SSL
3 - Backups included
4 - It just works (Uptime)
That's all most require.
There is not much money to be made in hosting and you'll need a good support system for the many support tickets that will come your way. I can guarantee most of these will be how to setup their personal device with email settings.
If you're looking to offer shared hosting then look up cPanel, Cloud Linux, Mail Channels, Jet Backup or Acronis, Nixstats and Imunify360. Those combined will get you into a good place to start with.
Edited by HantsRat on Thursday 19th November 08:08
We already have a few Cpanel boxes running.
To be honest, I didn't really want to be offering pop3 / smtp type email through them. All our managed support customers are on 365 and that works well for us.
We already have WHMCS, for automated billing and setup. My hope was to turn it all on and leave it, but I have a horrible feeling this will just generate a load of support we don't really want for a few quid a month.
This was partly the reason for asking what most people use for their company webhosting. Is it cpanel / shared hosting, or do people go for a VM to isolate their site.
andyb28 said:
Many thanks thats very helpful.
We already have a few Cpanel boxes running.
To be honest, I didn't really want to be offering pop3 / smtp type email through them. All our managed support customers are on 365 and that works well for us.
We already have WHMCS, for automated billing and setup. My hope was to turn it all on and leave it, but I have a horrible feeling this will just generate a load of support we don't really want for a few quid a month.
This was partly the reason for asking what most people use for their company webhosting. Is it cpanel / shared hosting, or do people go for a VM to isolate their site.
In my opinion, Unless they're really big customers most can't afford or don't want to pay extra for a VM/VPS. They just want a simple site on a shared host for a few quid a month.We already have a few Cpanel boxes running.
To be honest, I didn't really want to be offering pop3 / smtp type email through them. All our managed support customers are on 365 and that works well for us.
We already have WHMCS, for automated billing and setup. My hope was to turn it all on and leave it, but I have a horrible feeling this will just generate a load of support we don't really want for a few quid a month.
This was partly the reason for asking what most people use for their company webhosting. Is it cpanel / shared hosting, or do people go for a VM to isolate their site.
Agree with IMAP - I'm trying to push those onto MS365 but again it comes down to a cost thing. If they can have it for free albeit with limited features, they prefer it. (Bigger businesses aside).
One other thing to think of is many customers now expect website migrations for free when moving host so take this point on board in terms of support support time required.
Shared hosting has become a race to the bottom IMO. Unless you have some way of getting massive volume and then also providing round the clock decent support it could easily turn into a nightmare. Still might make sense for your existing clients though.
I've used many of the usual hosting companies. Siteground stands out for me mostly because they really do understand Wordpress and the problems that can arise.
I've used many of the usual hosting companies. Siteground stands out for me mostly because they really do understand Wordpress and the problems that can arise.
I currently provide hosting for my clients, using a few virtual servers at RackSpace/AWS with Virtualmin control panel. I've often considered making services available more widely but as others have mentioned it's a race to the bottom. I'd rather provide decent reliable hosting to a few clients who are willing to pay a premium, than stretching resources to compete with the big shared hosts, and having to deal with support tickets or employ someone to do so.
A lot of the work and projects I'm involved in now are shifting to containerisation via Docker, Kubernetes etc. I suspect eventually all websites even basic static sites and WP sites will just sit in a container which can be moved anywhere.
I also agree with the points made on email hosting. I don't offer it to new clients and i'm actively trying to persuade existing clients to M365 or Google Workspace. I don't set up any email services on newly provisioned servers. Even outgoing emails now all go via a third party like Mailgun/Sendgrid.
Backups are also critical!
A lot of the work and projects I'm involved in now are shifting to containerisation via Docker, Kubernetes etc. I suspect eventually all websites even basic static sites and WP sites will just sit in a container which can be moved anywhere.
I also agree with the points made on email hosting. I don't offer it to new clients and i'm actively trying to persuade existing clients to M365 or Google Workspace. I don't set up any email services on newly provisioned servers. Even outgoing emails now all go via a third party like Mailgun/Sendgrid.
Backups are also critical!
Hi Andy, even though we've not met we've probably crossed paths on other forums in the past. 
As others have alluded to, shared hosting tends to be about volume unless you're doing it as an 'addon' service to existing clients... the issues are that people have very high expectations of their hosting company. Not just from a server and service reliability perspective, but also lightning quick support replies and solving issues that may well 'technically' be outside your remit as a hosting provider.
In my previous business, we used to *try* to demarcate support - but it actually gets to a point where showing or telling the customer to talk to their developer or read the manual is slower than just fixing the issue for them. Htaccess rewrite rules, wp-config misconfigurations, slow performing Magento sites; they are all typical hosting support tickets that clients expect you to solve. And to be fair by going 'above and beyond' by helping solve those issues for clients is how we got so big in the first place. But by and large you're going to be helping people get set up on day 1, and then once they're up and running you'll hear very little from most customers.
How much datacentre space/capacity have you got spare? Would your MSP clients be interested in 'private cloud' type solutions using OpenStack or some other alternative?
As others have alluded to, shared hosting tends to be about volume unless you're doing it as an 'addon' service to existing clients... the issues are that people have very high expectations of their hosting company. Not just from a server and service reliability perspective, but also lightning quick support replies and solving issues that may well 'technically' be outside your remit as a hosting provider.
In my previous business, we used to *try* to demarcate support - but it actually gets to a point where showing or telling the customer to talk to their developer or read the manual is slower than just fixing the issue for them. Htaccess rewrite rules, wp-config misconfigurations, slow performing Magento sites; they are all typical hosting support tickets that clients expect you to solve. And to be fair by going 'above and beyond' by helping solve those issues for clients is how we got so big in the first place. But by and large you're going to be helping people get set up on day 1, and then once they're up and running you'll hear very little from most customers.
How much datacentre space/capacity have you got spare? Would your MSP clients be interested in 'private cloud' type solutions using OpenStack or some other alternative?
dazmanultra said:
Hi Andy, even though we've not met we've probably crossed paths on other forums in the past.
As others have alluded to, shared hosting tends to be about volume unless you're doing it as an 'addon' service to existing clients... the issues are that people have very high expectations of their hosting company. Not just from a server and service reliability perspective, but also lightning quick support replies and solving issues that may well 'technically' be outside your remit as a hosting provider.
In my previous business, we used to *try* to demarcate support - but it actually gets to a point where showing or telling the customer to talk to their developer or read the manual is slower than just fixing the issue for them. Htaccess rewrite rules, wp-config misconfigurations, slow performing Magento sites; they are all typical hosting support tickets that clients expect you to solve. And to be fair by going 'above and beyond' by helping solve those issues for clients is how we got so big in the first place. But by and large you're going to be helping people get set up on day 1, and then once they're up and running you'll hear very little from most customers.
How much datacentre space/capacity have you got spare? Would your MSP clients be interested in 'private cloud' type solutions using OpenStack or some other alternative?
I rememeber you well from "other forums" Dazman. As others have alluded to, shared hosting tends to be about volume unless you're doing it as an 'addon' service to existing clients... the issues are that people have very high expectations of their hosting company. Not just from a server and service reliability perspective, but also lightning quick support replies and solving issues that may well 'technically' be outside your remit as a hosting provider.
In my previous business, we used to *try* to demarcate support - but it actually gets to a point where showing or telling the customer to talk to their developer or read the manual is slower than just fixing the issue for them. Htaccess rewrite rules, wp-config misconfigurations, slow performing Magento sites; they are all typical hosting support tickets that clients expect you to solve. And to be fair by going 'above and beyond' by helping solve those issues for clients is how we got so big in the first place. But by and large you're going to be helping people get set up on day 1, and then once they're up and running you'll hear very little from most customers.
How much datacentre space/capacity have you got spare? Would your MSP clients be interested in 'private cloud' type solutions using OpenStack or some other alternative?
The points you and others have made here are valid and to be honest have confirmed my own concerns.
We do not want to hand hold cusotmers for £15 a month, we also do not want to scale this too the levels that others have done to make it work. We aren't web hosts, we provide it to our existing customers and thats probably as far as we will go with it. It compliments other services we provide well and that is all we really need.
For a fleeting moment, I thought we could use spare capacity for this as it wouldn't really cost us anything. However, it obviously would if the expectations are how you descibe the market to now be. It was a race to the bottom when we provided webhosting form Redbus many years ago. We dropped it then for similar reasons and focused on bespoke stuff thats more profitable.
We will always need to be in control of the hosting for bespoke systems we create for our customers, so will always need our network and racks.
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