How to host a website on your computer

Meet Demyan. An aspiring Russian blogger who is tired of posting his notes on Tumblr and wants his own website. But Demyan is greedy. So greedy that he feels sorry for $3 a month for hosting.

One day, Demyan was told that he could create hosting directly on his computer. And not just hosting, but a whole dedicated server that will host not only a blog, but also an online store where Demyan will sell his T-shirts, hats and other merch.

In this article, we will talk about how Demyan made his hosting. And also why the stingy pays twice.

Business characteristics

The main feature of business is that when providing services, every slightest mistake can cost a lot of money. You must be able to not only provide good hosting, but also give competent advice to clients. Even if you are simply impolite, the client will very quickly and easily switch to a competing company. And each client who leaves reduces the level of your reputation in the market, correspondingly reducing your earnings. Therefore, business requires stability and responsibility.

There are several ways to organize this business. You can open your own company, recruit support staff, technical services, maintenance personnel, and act as a director yourself. Or you can outsource a number of functions and do the organizational work yourself. Be that as it may, in order to open your own business in this area, you need to go through certain stages of its formation.

How does traditional hosting work?

When you view a website in a browser, you can do this because the browser has downloaded some files filled with code and converted the markup into something you can actually see.
Just like on your computer, these files are stored on your hard drive for you to access. However, instead of your hard drive, they are located on another computer - the so-called server. Servers are more powerful than computers and can simultaneously manage thousands of users who simultaneously access the resource.

In traditional hosting, there are many resources on one server, and the power of this server is distributed between them in approximately equal proportions.

Company registration

The business allows you to work with any form of ownership. Hosting can be provided by an individual entrepreneur, OJSC or LLC. The first option will be the cheapest and fastest, since the state duty is 800 rubles. The rest will cost 1500-2500 rubles, but, in addition, you will need to form an authorized capital of at least 10 thousand rubles.

An important point when registering is that you need to open a bank account. In principle, this is a standard procedure for registration, but you need to choose a bank that provides the most convenient and favorable conditions for organizing payments via the Internet. The fact is that the bulk of payments from clients will come to you through electronic payment systems. Therefore, the bank must provide a reliable and convenient “Bank-Client” system.

Also, if you want to open a large company, you need to obtain a license for telematics services, which costs at least 12 thousand rubles.

The best providers for business

We have collected for you only trusted companies that provide quality services. Now you don’t have to waste time searching for a decent option, just choose the appropriate one from those presented in our rating.

Organization of a business plan

Having decided to open such a business, you must first calculate all the expected expenses and correlate them with the expected income. The main expenses will be:

• purchasing or renting premises where the server will be located;
• buying or renting a server;
• employee salaries;
• Communal expenses;
• taxes.

If you see that starting your own business is too expensive, look for ways to optimize it. For example, certain functions can be outsourced or paid for the amount of work performed, rather than hiring full-time employees for a stable salary. In addition, you don’t have to buy your own server right away; you can rent it.

Server

The cornerstone of your business is the server. Its characteristics determine which customer segment you can serve, and your business as a whole depends on its performance. The server can be Windows or Unix, it all depends on which one is more convenient for you to work with. You can also choose a server of any required configuration and power on the market.

At first, your company can be served by one server. It is enough to serve approximately 100-200 clients. When their number exceeds these numbers, you can buy another server. You can build a business on your own server, or you can rent it. You can also purchase a used server.

The server must be located in a data center. If you plan to install your server there, it will cost about 2,500 rubles. The final amount depends on the reliability of the center, traffic, port and other characteristics. If you plan to rent it, you need to prepare at least 6 thousand rubles. Therefore, it would be more logical to still buy your own unit, even a used one.

Control panel

To manage hosting, you need to install special software. It facilitates communication between the client and the hoster and facilitates administration. Each participant in the process can log into the system under his own account and carry out all the necessary actions permitted by access. For such purposes, you can use DirectAdmin, Helm, Plesk, CPanel, ISPManager and others. It all depends on your needs and financial capabilities.

For example, cPanel provides the following operational capabilities:

• Organization of a mail server and its management using various web systems.
• Protection against hacker attacks - a reliable firewall.
• Reliable work with domains and DNS depending on the tariff plan: creation of domains and subdomains, etc.
• Installation of the most popular content management systems.
• Monitoring the operation of PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, as well as setting limits on the number of queries to them, their number and other nuances.
• Minitoring and logging of the server and existing accounts.
• Built-in billing system for making payments by clients.

Please note that this software must be licensed. The cost of a license usually depends on the period of use and the number of servers served. A similar program costs $45 for a month, $425 for a year, $775 for two years. You can purchase ISPManager for 656 rubles. for a month for one server, but then you need to purchase a billing system separately. For example, BillManager will cost 625 rubles. for a month.

Reselling

There is another way to open your own hosting - sign a partnership agreement with a well-known hoster. Then, based on established agreements, he will often allocate his server for you to work with. This significantly reduces startup costs, but has its own inconveniences. So, if the service goes down, you won’t be able to restart it yourself; you’ll have to contact the hoster, and this is precious time for which clients pay money. Such cases greatly damage your reputation.

This method of providing services is called reselling. In fact, you become an intermediary between the hoster and the client, providing the latter with hosting and its maintenance.

Legal and financial issues

A few more important issues that need to be resolved before opening your own business - how to legally formalize your relationship with the client and how to pay for services. As a rule, there are no problems with private clients; a user agreement is sufficient, which will be drawn up directly on the site upon registration. But legal entities may require a written agreement to be signed. You need to be prepared for this; you have your contract in hand, drawn up and read by a lawyer.

Also think about what payment system will operate in your company. It is advisable to provide all possible options so that the client can choose the one that suits him. Popular ones are:

• Bank account;
• electronic banking;
• Z-Payment;
• Yandex money;
• WebMoney wallet with personal passport and others.

Another story of a small hosting provider

A personal story about how I opened my own hosting, which even brings some profit. Inspired by the story habrahabr.ru/blogs/hosting/93364 The idea of ​​becoming a hosting provider came to me by accident, when one of the former clients of the web studio where I officially work asked where I could host my website.

While also doing web development for myself, I have a virtual server for testing software. The server resources are not used even by 10%, so the thought of why not make money stuck in my head.

This idea had to be thought through to the smallest detail. I wanted to not only pay for myself, but also earn at least a little money. Realizing that you couldn’t make money on hosting for $2, I decided that I would charge my clients a much larger amount. Naturally, the question immediately arose of how to find clients willing to pay that amount for hosting and how to compete with $2 hosting providers.

By asking myself, what do I get paid for at my day job? I realized two things for myself. Firstly, I am paid for my knowledge. Secondly, for the work itself.

This gave me the idea that my potential client is an organization at least related to the computer field

. Firstly, as a rule, an organization is willing to pay more than a private client. Secondly, the less knowledge such an organization had about computers, the more of my knowledge and services I could sell to it.

Surveys of friends and some organizations (with whom I dealt at work) showed that they would rather pay a living person than enter a visa number on a website. This is easily explained - live communication inspires confidence in them, hence my conclusion - mandatory communication with the client, at least by phone

.

Despite the fact that today probably all hosting sites advertise 24/7 phone support

, at the stage of concluding a contract, the representative of such an office is still virtual.

Next, a list of potential clients was built, it included: museums, theaters, social movements and some other small organizations.

So what can you charge for besides regular hosting services?

Since my clients are completely far from anything related to
IT
, I offered them to solve “practically any” problems related to websites.
Such clients are disgusted by words like ftp/php/dns/ssh. What takes me 5 minutes to do will take them many hours and a lot of tedious calls with “stupid questions.” I gained this experience at my main job: when making websites, I had to provide some kind of support for them, even if they were built on a CMS like WordPress
or
Joomla
, clients still had almost anecdotal questions.

How did I find clients?

To be honest, the first ten are organizations already familiar to me. I reached the second ten through my first clients.

To briefly summarize all of the above:

• I provide services only to organizations far from the computer field
• I look for clients myself and through friends
• one hosting plan (up to 3GB of space / unlimited traffic)
• I don't have my own website
• I don't advertise anywhere
• no online billing
• only a written signed contract
• I give some support on their sites
• clients do not use a control panel (they simply do not need it), so a free analogue of paid cpanel and Parallels Plesk was taken
• backups are made to an external server (which is at my disposal for the services of its administration)
• all clients (except for one) are from the city where I live

Now in numbers:

• 24 clients today
• one VDS server ($40 per month)
• tariff plan - $30 per month
• minimum payment for 12 months (this saves me from having to deal with the routine associated with money transfers every month)
• I spend about 20 hours a month on all clients together (mostly small questions from the series “how to reduce an image in the correct proportion for the site”)
• These 20 hours include daily viewing of server status logs and backups

Having learned about the peculiarities of some organizations, I offered them a new service - hosting and mail administration. For them it was a headache, for me it was to reset the password, open a new mailbox, etc. This is a separate service for $30 per month. 11 clients use it. These 11 clients do not want to go into the control panel and add anything there, so they preferred that I do it.

In order to sign contracts, I had to officially register and pay taxes.

As a result, for each month:

-$40 per server $30 * 24 = $720 for hosting $30 * 11 = $330 for hosting and mail administration After taxes, $850 remains

If you divide this by hours of work, it comes out to $42.5 per hour, which is not bad considering that hosting is just my hobby.

I have no plans to develop my hosting further, so I am no longer looking for new clients. This is explained by the fact that being a hoster is not my favorite activity, and at the initial stage I set the bar at 20-30 hours a month for this business.

Nevertheless, this is a very interesting experience for me. If you find the right approach to clients and provide them with the necessary knowledge and experience, then you can easily compete with hosters for $2. I think similar experience can be applied in other areas.

UPDATE

Technical side of the matter:

• Server on rackspacecloud
• 512MB RAM
• 20 GB HDD
• Virtualmin control panel

UPDATE 2

In case of holidays, weekends, etc. My assistant is in charge of the server. Calls from the company's official number are simply forwarded to him. Payment according to working hours. Over the past year he has never had to work.

Good luck to you in your endeavors and creative success in the new year!

Income and expenses

The main source of income will be tariff plans for your services. Their size depends on the costs of premises, equipment, personnel, and software. Depending on how much money you have to invest in order for the hosting to work well, the tariffs for services will be the same.

But high competition in the market dictates its own laws. According to experts, today hosting prices have dropped significantly and continue to decline. Just a couple of years ago, the price for hosting was set at 3,500 rubles, and today its average cost is 1,000 rubles. for a year or 83 rubles. per month.

Tariff calculation in this case is simple. At a price of 83 rubles. per month, taking into account 6% tax, the tariff for the provision of services must be at least 78 rubles. You need to spend at least 1920 rubles on the server, about 2340 rubles on its software. Total monthly expenses for the provision of services – 4260 rubles. This means that you need to serve at least 54 clients per month, or rather accounts (registered users).

Operation optimization

You can optimize hosting costs by reducing the number of these accounts, but increasing their cost. To do this, you need to take the following steps:

• Offer several tariff plans. The minimum should include, for example, the ability to host two websites, respectively, two databases, and have a small amount of disk space in reserve. A slightly more expensive tariff plan will offer the opportunity to host more websites and databases, and so on. This will enable each user to select a tariff plan to suit their needs without overpaying. You benefit from customer loyalty.
• Additional income can be received from related services, for example, setting up a site, transferring it from another server, installing, debugging a site management system, etc.
• In addition to purely technical ones, you can offer other services related to the operation of the site: administration, promotion, monitoring, etc.

Profitability

Let's calculate how much money Demyan managed to save:

1. Electricity
   . The average electricity tariff in Russia is 5.31 rubles/kWh. The average computer consumes about 600 Wh. This means that Demyan pays 2,300 rubles a month for electricity alone.
2. Internet. 100 Mbit/s costs Demyan 500 rubles per month + 100 for IP. And he was also very lucky with a generous provider.

From this we get that a dedicated server costs Demyan 2,950 rubles per month.

Wherein:

1. No technical support. All problems are solved by Demyan himself, using instructions and forums.
2. Demyan has nightmares about his electricity bills. It’s good that he has a single-tariff system and doesn’t have to pay for overspending.
3. The presence of a blog on the Internet depends on the city power grid.
4. Unlicensed Windows on the server forces Demyan to twitch every time the doorbell rings.

And Unihost offers approximately the same server for only 2,500 rubles per month, without all of the above problems. That is, Demyan “cheated” himself out of 450 rubles a month, and also got into trouble with the law.

Technical support and administration

Once again I would like to draw your attention to the fact that technical customer support is perhaps the main thing that you should pay attention to if you want to open such a business. Even if you have difficulties in providing services, high-quality support will ideally smooth this out. Your employees must understand configurations, settings, and typical customer problems. It is important to be ready to answer any question around the clock, seven days a week, all year round, seven days a week.

It is important to take care of the client, always warn him about possible failures or technical work on the server, and do not try to keep silent about them. Such trust is justified a hundredfold.

Benefits of hosting ratings for business

We presented 5 proven providers who are leaders among domestic companies. Thanks to the rating, you will be able to choose the right hosting for and not risk the site. Do not neglect studying information, do not chase for free services. Quality hosting is important for several reasons:

• ensures stable operation of the site;
• convenient control panel for webmasters;
• prompt technical support;
• ensures the safety and security of data through backup;
• provides additional tools for working with the site.

Study reviews, technical specifications and other parameters of web hosting. This way you can quickly choose the right option for your business.

Server or cloud?

There are several main differences between web server hosting and cloud hosting.
The main difference lies in the structural distribution of allocated resources. Shared hosting servers are servers with multiple websites. Hosting companies create and maintain these servers and host multiple websites on them. This means that if your site is hosted on a shared server, it is competing for the same resources as many other sites.

Some companies host thousands of websites on each server, which significantly reduces the speed and performance of each resource. It can also pose a security risk - once a hacker gains access to one website, other websites on the server become vulnerable.

Cloud hosting is a service that exists on several servers. Instead of one shared server, your website is hosted in a server cloud. This means the company can move your site's hosting between servers, better accommodating performance spikes and other loads. Cloud hosting is more dynamic than regular hosting, which means it can perform better and be more secure.