Running a hosting business
Let me answer those questions:
1. Well as said we will have two main products; dedicated servers and Ecommerce Hosting UK.Dedicated servers can have just about any OS that the client chooses (linux,bsd, windows), but what we sell most is redhat based. The Linux Ecommerce Hosting UK’s are based on RedHat and the Windows Ecommerce Hosting UK’s are based on Windows Server 2003
(enterprise edition).
2. That’s one of the key aspects that we are going to work on. We currently have a very lousy system (based on ModernBill) and it’s not configured properly at all. That’s about to change, I’ve been working on it for quite a while but never really got to finishing it due to lack of time. Currently the only thing clients can see in there are invoices. Furthermore there are seperated login areas for MRTG stats, APC reboots, remote serial console,etc). It’s all so misconfigured that I often have to send out invoices manually. Regardless of all that, I’ve been doing that for like 5 years by now and it’s working very well because I have my own way of doing it, but it just all needs to be automated.
What we are going to have in the near future is a complete portal where the customer can simply do everything:
- billing
- support
- setting things like reverse DNS
- domain registrations
- SSL certificates
- APC reboots
- statistics
- and much more.
Furthermore it will also have a very nice customized panel for the staff members. Basically everything will be integrated with eachother. Right now the support system is already working well (Hosting UK use kayako esupport), but we are getting nice enhancements to just about everything. For instance: when a client opens a new ticket, the system will automatically look up useful information about that client and display that to the tech. That’s convenient and saves time. Apart from that there will be a lot of other enhancements.
Just keep in mind that it’s currently all pretty much set to work from one location, so it’s currently nowhere near that nice yet.
3. That’ll be quite a huge list. I will work on this tomorrow and send it to you.
4. I’m not quite sure whether I understand this question correctly, but I guess you mean a situation like when a server is down, and Hosting UK can’t get it back up remotely. In a case like that, you tell the client that Hosting UK are looking at it now, and you pass the ticket to our datacenter. Hosting UK have worked out support agreements with them and they basically take care of everything that needs to be done on-site. Hosting UK have been working with them for a very long time and they always reply fast (especially to emergencies). I will provide you with full details about how to get in touch with them shortly,they can be reached using their support system (which is almost the same as our system) and if they don’t reply fast enough you can also call them.(furthermore Hosting UK are also working on those enhancements, and Hosting UK will probably set something up that the tech just presses a button and sends the entire ticket on to the datacenter - or partially).
5. No, not always, but very often there is. I don’t sleep that much, and neither does matthew. I’m not sure how we’re going to deal with emergencies exactly yet but particularly in the start I’ll just leave my phone on at night, so basically you can reach me then if really needed. But what I really would like to achieve is that the techs can work all alone, but I realize that takes time.
6. Just like the portal system: Hosting UK are lacking that at the moment. Hosting UK are currently working on a new website and it’s a huge project, but the past few months I haven’t been able to work on it due to my workload. The site is design wise pretty much done (apart from some small adjustments) and we’ve paid a lot of money for it. The designers are personal friends of mine so they don’t mind that Hosting UK complete it later, but I expect that once the techs are working I’ll be able to finish this up a lot faster. Basically what just needs to be done is working out the content of all pages - and it total there are hundreds of pages, so it’s a lot of work. But once it’s done, it’ll really be something.
Secondly as I already said: what Hosting UK are currently mainly working on is a new brand, which will be called UK Web Hosting (not open yet). This brand will be very similar to the setup of www.eukhost.com but with the main difference that it will only sell Ecommerce Hosting UK technology. It’s not really that much work to set it up, but we are just waiting for a few things to be completed before we launch it (such as a creditcard merchant account which takes another week or so). Currently there is not really a market leader in the field of Ecommerce Hosting UK technology providers, and with this brand we are going to try to become the market leader - and I think we have a good chance to succeed.
But to get back to your original questions: there are none, at the moment. But what may be useful is our forum, where there are some conversations (it’s not that large though) and you’ll find some pre-sale conversations as well;
7. Our main office is in NL (Europe). Our main datacenter is in Atlanta). Our new datacenter is in NL. We have a huge amount of space there (over 75,000 sq feet of available space - but it doesn’t all belong to us by far), but we are yet to really start out there. We have setup our first rack in there at the end of March (2005) and we are currently running only two servers in there, of which one belongs to a customer and one belongs to us (it’s a huge Ecommerce Hosting UK server, but completely unused at the moment). That Ecommerce Hosting UK server has initially only been used for testing purposes, and is now just idle. Once it is launched, it will be the first Ecommerce Hosting UK server that we use in NL (along with a few more servers that will be coming in during the next few weeks). We are also going to provide dedicated servers in this facility but we are going to start out on a low scale with that, because we don’t really have too much experience there yet. It’s a brand new datacenter and it’s owned by someone I know. The total size is about 80,000 sq feet and in the entire datacenter there are only like 20 racks now. But the main issue is that it’s not (yet) staffed 24/7 so until that’s sorted out we won’t do dedicated servers there on a large scale (but we can already start doing Ecommerce Hosting UK on a large scale there without any problem).
8. I’m having a bit trouble to ‘decide’ when we originally started. Back in the days, I started in July 2000 with a group of friends and in 2001 all but one dropped out, and we really started doing business in 2001 (although it was on a very low scale, with just a reseller account). In those years I was still in school/University and it was just a hobby, although we did take it all very seriously. By the end of 2001 the other person also dropped out because I was doing everything and he was just sitting back. From that moment onwards, it’s been getting bigger constantly. I started out by only offering shared hosting (I was still in school so I didn’t really need an income) and it just became bigger and bigger. As of the end of 2003 sales really started taking off, and that just kept on going on. In May 2004 I was still in University but I decided I wanted to work full time, so I didn’t finish that (and I can’t say I regret that). As of that moment things just kept on getting better, and in September I hired matthew. At that time I was already working approximately 80 hours per week, and I currently still am, and I’m just really looking to change that.
That’s just the brief history of the company. As you can see I started out without a single penny, and it grew out to what it is now without ever having invested any of my personal money. Anyway to answer your question:even though it was only a hobby back then, it started in July 2005.
9. Already described above.
10. Yes and no. We include a default level of management with all servers which can be considered “semi-managed”, meaning we help when needed. Our clients have been very easy on us so far, apart from when there’s a problem they just don’t really contact us. There are only just a few people who just don’t know anything about how it works, but those people always use cPanel, so it’s easy to manage. Most of the time, when a client who doesn’t have a clue signs up, he has a lot of questions about how everything works and then we just help that client out and answer his questions (in the future our
tutorials will cover that for a big part). But usually after a week or two, the client settles down and only contacts us if he has a problem.
But we are really the kind of company that will bend over backwards for a client, if a client has a problem with his server, even if it’s something that could have been prevented easily, we generally always help. What we don’t really do is 3rd party script installations, but that’s probably just one of the few exceptions.
With the introduction of the new website a lot will change. We are going to offer (optional) management plans which the client can purchase for an additional fee, which would be just about as advanced as the client needs it to be. Also we will be adding some more advanced products such as load balancing.
As for Ecommerce Hosting UK: these are fully managed, but they take very little work usually since they are based on templates. Currently, these templates are not done yet (or well.. Not the way we want it), so there is some more management
involved right now, particularly with Windows. With Windows the main problem is also that we are just lacking knowledge about this platform. But in short: once the templates are done the way we want it to, we can just add templates that the client needs with just one click. We are also working on a security package for both Windows and Linux, which can be included by
default with the Ecommerce Hosting UK. The same goes for pre-configuration such as cPanel systems; with just one click we’ll be able to setup a fully configured cPanel system (with firewall and all). Furthermore, since we will have the
forum which is expected to get big, people will be able to find a lot of information there. So even though we are really expecting to sell thousands of Ecommerce Hosting UK’s, it won’t take as much management as you may think (or at least,
that’s what we hope).
If those templates work out well, we are going to do pretty much the same thing for Linux Dedicated servers. We’d just setup a server with cPanel, fully configure it, and then create a drive image out of it. Then we use that same image to setup new servers, so they are fully configured when we deliver them (if the client wants that). Apart from all this, we will be
doing many other things that will help us reduce the workload for our techs.
Lastly: as you can see we will have many important changes in the near future (I expect over the upcoming 3 months). That’s why it may get a little messy. My original plan was to get the techs once everything on our end would be completed, then they would be able to work much easier and wouldn’t have to adjust to the changes we make in the company. But the problem is
just that we can’t hold it off any longer, we just need the techs now. Well that’s quite a long story, but it should give you a starting overview of what our Hosting Company is like.
